City Baseball Magic: Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense About Cities and Baseball Parks

by Philip Bess

City Baseball Magic is a polemic on behalf of the traditional urban baseball park, and an exercise in "pragmatic idealism." Todays new "retro" baseball stadiums look wonderful, but they are outrageously expensive and do not provide the intimacy nor foster the sense of community that was possible with the classic neighborhood ballparks (built in the early 1900's) because they are conceived as suburban buildings. They are a drain on taxpayers, they yield seating arrangements that are worse for the average fan in the upper deck, they result in huge ticket price increases, and they tend to destroy the physical and spatial fabric of cities. But most of these liabilities can be ameliorated by once again understanding the baseball park as an urban building subject to the physical constraints of urban networks of streets and blocks. To demonstrate this thesis, Bess offers the wonderfully conceived Armour Field plan, a proposal for neighborhood design and a new ballpark that was originally presented in the late 1980's as an alternative for the new stadium that the Chicago White Sox were determined to have built to replace the venerable old Comiskey Park on Chicago's south side. Still relevant today, the proposed ballpark addresses social, cultural, and economic issues, as well as issues of baseball and urban aesthetics; and demonstrates the superiority of the traditional urban baseball park over the modern stadium in ways both tangible and intangible. Includes 46 illustrations and photos.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Urbanism

64 pages, Paperback

First published September 8, 1999

Reviews

[Jeramey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for baseball fans and urban thinkers. Really an essay, not a full book, but backed with real world examples and potential scenarios where urban stadiums could thrive.

[Timothy Hoiland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since the 1989 publication of City Baseball Magic, a wonderful essay by architect, urban planner, and baseball fan Philip Bess, twenty-three (23!) new major-league ballparks have opened. In these pages Bess extols the virtues of ballparks designed for the flourishing of actual cities and neighborhoods – unlike the prevailing model then (and to a distressing extent in some cases, still) of plopping down a massive stadium on a cheap suburban plot amidst an endless sea of parking.

Gone, graciously, are the days of perfectly circular, perfectly awful multi-purpose stadiums. Gone too, with a couple of lamentable exceptions, is artificial turf. So I'm confident Bess would say we've made progress. But among the newer ballparks there's quite an aesthetic range, to say nothing of economic and neighborhood considerations. Starting with Camden Yards in 1992 (stunning), all the way up through Marlins Park in 2012 (yikes), the ballpark renaissance has certainly been a mixed bag.

I'd love to sit down with Philip Bess and pick his brain. Until then, I'll keep ruminating on the "uncommon" insights in City Baseball Magic.

[Faith Baboolal (Tuttle) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a great, quick read for any fan of baseball and good architecture. I had the fortune of meeting Phillip Bess, as he is currently the Graduate Director at the Notre Dame School of Architecture where I attended undergraduate school. His work in urban design is very thought-provoking and counters what has been the norm the past couple of decades. As you'll get a taste of in this book, he advocates a traditional urban design that promotes a healthy community lifestyle, propelled by his love for the great American game.

The book itself contains many great images and examples. You don't have to know a lot about architecture or urban design to understand it.