His evaluations - he likes the Pittsburgh Pirates' new stadium but dislikes Chase Field, in Phoenix - seem to me to be accurate and well-judged, with one conspicuous exception. so open as to allude, at least symbolically, to the notion that the outfield extends into infinity.'

'The most important thing,' he writes, 'was that the space of the ballpark itself was. Goldberger has philosophical, even poetic, criteria for what makes a good shrine to the horsehide. It had never occurred to me, though, that the core of this dynamic was football fans' affection for pregame tailgate parties, which are, of course, impossible without a parking lot.

Likewise, everyone knows that the turn in the 1960s to now-maligned circular, multisport stadiums like Veterans Stadium, in Philadelphia - Goldberger calls them 'concrete doughnuts' - was driven by the rise in the popularity of professional football. 'Without trains,' he states flatly, 'baseball would not have become a national game.' The book is studded with insightful observations, such as that early ballparks would have been impossible without the advent of streetcars public transit and baseball essentially grew up together. 'Ballpark: Baseball in the American City' is both a beautifully illustrated history of North American baseball stadiums and a defense of the simple but enduring idea of a ballpark that fits neatly into the hum and hive of a grid of city streets, accessible primarily by public transit.Ī Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Goldberger has an easy way with his descriptions, and his analyses of various ballparks are done with clarity and wit. It was 1991 and I was, in writer Paul Goldberger's formulation, unwittingly part of Fenway's 'tightly woven connection to its city's urban fabric.' My first apartment after college, when I was an earnest young publishing drone, was a bare three blocks from Fenway Park - close enough to hear the cheers drifting in through the open window on sweltering summer nights.

Ballpark paul goldberger