Take Me Out to the Ballpark An Illustrated Tour of Baseball Parks Past and Present

Take Me Out to the Ballpark is a wonderful tour through every park in the Major League, alongside dozens more stadiums from the minor leagues, negro leagues and baseball's past. Packed with hundreds of photographs and loaded with facts, stories and statistics, it's the ultimate resource for diehards and casual fans alike. Virtually every stadium that has ever hosted a professional game is here and brought to life through detailed retelling of its history and construction, stories of the famous players who called it home, and accounts of the incredible events that have taken place on the field. Discussions of the peculiar variations among each ballpark's playing field - a trait unique to baseball among professional sports - examine what makes each park different and demonstrate how sometimes even the slightest variation can have a monumental effect on a game's outcome. - Every stadium is displayed in huge full-color photographs and illustrations - over 250 in all - including every current Major League stadium, important minor league parks, famous negro league fields and notable stadiums from baseball's past. - Each feature is crammed with the statistics baseball fans love - who got the park's first hit, total cost of construction, what date saw the biggest crowd, numbers of balls that have make it over the fences, and much more. - Legends of all the famous athletes and their spectacular achievements, along with fun stories of unusual incidents and incredible occurrences, uncover the singular "personality" that makes each park unique. - Special sections explore all the things that make a trip to the ballpark a one-of-a-kind experience, from hot dogs to Cracker Jacks, announcers to organists, scoreboards to mascots. Covers every current major league park, including: Shea Stadium - Fenway Park - Wrigley Field - Dodger Stadium - Oriole Park at Camden Yards - Yankee Stadium - Coors Field - The Skydome - The Ballpark in Arlington - Busch Stadium - Jacobs Field - and many more! Historical features on bygone classics from baseball's past: Ebbets Field - The Polo Grounds - Tiger Stadium - Comisky Park - The Astrodome - Forbes Field - League Parks, food at the park, the evolution of night baseball, and much, much more! Plus region-by-region examinations of minor league parks and fields from the negro leagues, and fun features on the history of ballparks, food at the park, the evolution of night baseball, and much, much more!Leventhal, Josh is the author of 'Take Me Out to the Ballpark An Illustrated Tour of Baseball Parks Past and Present', published 2000 under ISBN 9781579121129 and ISBN 1579121128.