To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909-1976

by Bruce Kuklick

Shibe Park was demolished in 1976, and today its site is surrounded by the devastation of North Philadelphia. Kuklick, however, vividly evokes the feelings people had about the home of the Philadelphia Athletics and later the Phillies.

Genres: Baseball, History, Sports

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very informative about the history of professional baseball in Philadelphia, with a fairly balanced treatment of the A's (prior to their departure in 1954) and the Phillies (up to their last game in Connie Mack Stadium in October 1970. I learned a lot about Shibe Park and the neighborhood in which it resided, although I don't think the book did a good enough job capturing the glamor of the ball park (relative to the wooden structures that preceded it everywhere in the nation), which was the first steel and concrete baseball stadium ever built. Had it been placed in a part of Philadelphia that weathered neighborhood changes more gracefully, we might still be attending games there and it might be held in the same high level of esteem as Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good book on Philly's historic ballparks.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Mr. Kuklick said it's a sociological treatise wrapped around a baseball story.

[Robert Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having visited Connie Mack Stadium in the late 60’s with my dad, I can relate to the stadium, the area, the aura and, ultimately, the sadness as this Grand Dame of baseball became a spent, tangled urban horror. Mr. Kuklick, on page 108, expertly captures my experience in 1966, as I walked up the ramp leading from the turnstiles to the concourse to the field … ‘Inside they remembered the push and noise of the crowd, As they walked up the runway, more of the field came in view with each step. Few could forget the look of the green lawn juxtaposed against the dirty concrete.’ I close my eyes today and can still see that field from fifty six years ago.

Connie Mack Stadium was, for me, the true field of heroes. Reminiscences of booing a young, then respected Pete Rose from the lower level third base seats, sitting in the center field bleachers behind Willie Stargell with my Cub Scout pack and seeing my favorite, Manny Sanguillen, as a guest of a friend who had earned Phillies tickets for exceptional grades in 1969 are cherished.

As for the book — quality, detail and nostalgia run through. Having worked in that area in the late 1990’s I totally agree with Mr. Kuklick’s description and assessment of the area surrounding 21st and Lehigh. Today Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium is just a memory but memories live as long as we, those fortunate enough to have been there, continue to live.

[Mary Torpey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was brutal reading, honestly, and only the (considerable amount of) love I have for my father motivated me to finish. I have no doubt that it is faithfully researched, but nothing about Shibe Park truly comes alive in these pages. Rather than read it, contemplate the quote from the epilogue that made it onto the jacket flap--"There used to be a ball park at Twenty-first and Lehigh, but Shibe Park had its time, and then its time was over." Boom, you just saved yourself 196 pages of dreary text. Philadelphia baseball diehards might want to pick it up, but for my part, the next time I'm about to read a book about a ballpark by a dude who made his living writing and teaching about American philosophy, I hope I will stop myself.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, a good read for those interested in Shibe Park and its surrounding neighborhood during the lifespan of the ballpark. My Dad took the trolley to the park as a boy with his brother and had wonderful memories of the classic A's teams of the late 1920s. The book evoked a well formed picture in the imagination of those times. The book bounced around a bit chronologically because the seperate chapters were related to socioeconomic matters as well as baseball eras. A bit dry at times for one mainly interested in the park and the baseball. A bit overreaching in its analysis in the epilogue, but also raised matters for more thoughtful reflection there as well.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shibe Park was the home ballpark for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1909 to 1954, the year the team moved to Kansas City home for the Philadelphia Phillies from 1938 to 1971. To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia by Penn history professor, Bruce Kuklick, is a history of the parcel land on which the Shibe Park was stood, the neighborhood around the Park and the baseball played in it. While he discusses these factors and others, Kuklick was most interested in conveying the feelings that people had for it. (This focus becomes obvious in the last chapter of the book.) My interest in baseball parks generally has more to do with public policy, urban planning and public finance and how those factors affect the location and re-location of ballparks in Major League cities. While my interests do not perfectly align with Kuklick’s, this book gave me a better sense of how those factors played in Philadelphia when Shibe Park was built and later when the Phillies left it for a new stadium in a very different part of the city.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent history of Shibe Park as well as of the history of Philadelphia corresponding to the years 1909-1976 of the stadium's existence.

[Gerald J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Great history of ballpark and North Philadelphia

[Carla]

I read this my senior year of college and decided to reread it. A solid history of Shibe Park and North Philly.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally got to a slow read of this after gutting it for papers and comps. This is an excellent history of the neighborhood around Shibe Park, known as "Swampuddle" or the Square, as well as the rise and fall of the Philadelphia Athletics and Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. Kuklick explores how the two are connected as the neighborhood sprung up as Irish and Irish-Americans populated the neighborhood, then changed to a poor African-American neighborhood in the 1950s-60s, before the withdrawal of white capital buttressed by the Phillies leaving causing a death spiral to what became Alleghany West (itself a creation of the Tasty Baking company). Its a peak into a North Philly that can be seen mostly in the remaining buildings and a long forgotten interconnected Philadelphia Athletics (winner of five World Series behind the dictatorship of Connie Mack) with a urban place.