Ballpark: Baseball in the American City to be featured at Fall Conference in Ogden in September 2023

August 14, 2023 by Nicole Mason
Book Club

Ballpark: Baseball in the American City to be featured at Fall Conference in Ogden in September 2023

By Michael Maloy, AICP, Herriman City Planning Director

Paul Goldberger’s 2019 book Ballpark: Baseball in the American City will be a featured session at the APA Utah Fall Conference in Ogden, Utah, on Friday, September 29, 2023. Whether you have read the book—or even like baseball—or not, attendees will love our next “book club” session, which will feature an image-rich presentation by Mark McGrath, AICP—an experienced long-range planner for Taylorsville, Utah, an adjunct instructor at the University of Utah, and a long-time fan of “America’s National Pastime.”

About the Book

The 384-page book is beautifully illustrated, easy to read, and readily available in print, digital, and audio formats. Amazon describes Goldberger’s book as follows:

“An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball, told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged.

From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn, [which] was a “saloon in the open air”), to the much-mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit’s Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati’s Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America’s favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked the Victorian age in their accommodations—bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class; the “concrete donuts” of the 1950s and ‘60s made plain television’s grip on the public’s attention; and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore’s Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and baseball’s role in urban development. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the way in which baseball’s history is concurrent with our cultural history: the rise of urban parks and public transportation, the development of new building materials, and engineering and design skills. And how the site details and the requirements of the game—the diamond, the outfields, the walls, the grandstands—shaped our most beloved ballparks.

A fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities—where dreams are as limitless as the outfields.”

About the Author

Huffington Post described Paul Goldberger as “the leading figure in architecture criticism,”[who is] now a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair. From 1997 through 2011, Goldberger served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where he wrote the magazine’s celebrated “Sky Line” column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City. He was formerly Dean of the Parsons School of Design, a division of The New School. He began his career at The New York Times, where in 1984 his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism (www.paulgoldberger.com).

Extra Innings

Session attendees can also enter a drawing for a free hard copy of the book or a beautiful Josh Bach necktie imprinted with baseball stadiums. In hitting this session, how could you possibly foul out?