Captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 we were beginning to experience a huge resurgence of downtown living, downtown working, Downtown Entertainment and so forth, and it might not have happened in baltimore in 1992, it could have happened in another city five years later, ten years later, but some other team would have said at some point we dont want a concrete doughnut that looks like a freeway overpass. We want a real ballpark. Architects would have ultimately i think responded. Thats my sense. We never know 100 because what happened what happened. Right. Customer push back, customer isnt want t didnt want the product . Yes. Ultimately in architecture, what clients want matters. One of the things that the people of populace are proudest of is that they serve their clients and they do what their clients wanted. Happily here they had an enlightened client who wanted something important. But to the point about downtown revivals were just happening anyway and would have made its way into baseball for the first time somewhere, one of the reasons i feel for kansas city that maybe its just as well that it didnt happen 15 years ago when there was a minor push to move the royals downtown because i dont know that Downtown Kansas City was truly ready for it yet. We might have expected or you might have expected too much from a ballpark. It cant alone turnaround a downtown, but what it can do is be a fantastic reinforcement of a larger revival and make it stronger and push it forward even more and connect all the other things happening. Today, as opposed to 15 years ago, there are so many more People Living in Downtown Kansas City, there are more people working, more entertainment, there are whole new neighborhoods that are developing and the momentum of the city is more focused downtown than it used to be. In fact, now it wouldnt all be on the shoulders of a ballpark to turn around a downtown which it wouldnt have succeeded doing anyway. We have time for two more questions. Im that white sox guy, im curious of your impression of the old comiskey and the monstrosity of the new comiskey. I agree with you. Its the last of the concrete doughnuts. It opened one year before camden yards and baltimore changed everything. It was out of date the minute it opened. Its a sort of sad story. I gather, though i havent been back to it in a while, that they a few years ago did some changes people say made it a little better. I think a better way to put it, it made it a little less awful. The best comment about it was from a really perceptive writer named john pastier who loves baseball who calculate that the front row of the upper deck at the new comiskey park is farther from the field than the last row of the old upper deck in the old one. So much of baseball is about intimacy and how can you maneuver things so that the greatest number of people are the closest to the field and the most connected to the field, which is again another important thing that camden yards in baltimore did. They actually really thought of that. Many of the concorete doughnuts are truly circles about this abstract shape of a big circle because you could kind of put a diamond in it, football gridiron in it, it all kind of could be pumped into a circle, but, in fact, it doesnt work for baseball. Just briefly, the good and bad of the old comiskey . The old comiskey, i thought, was funky and nice. It didnt have quite the truly beautiful appeal of wrigley uptown. It didnt have the magic of the brick wall and the ivy and all that stuff. It didnt integrate into the neighborhood as well, but it was a wonderful ballpark. The best of those early generation of ballparks were they were among the only buildings ever built that sort of combined funkiness and mon new mentality, two things that are almost always mutually exclusive in architecture and that one exemplified that. There was something kind of grand and funky about it at the same time. I found it very likable, but not loveable as wrigley was always loveable. But it was still 100 times better than the new one. You get the last word. Lucky me. I was going to say, i agree with you on everything, actually, and i would love to not even my wife doesnt agree with me on everything. Im better than she is. I would love to have im all for downtown development. Ive lived in kansas city and watched it grow over the years. We have this one cultural part of our city that is maybe not like other towns because were from the midwest and were cattle and into barbecue and you talk about football being a tailgating kind of sport and baseball not, but here, tailgating is a really big part of baseball and i wonder how the general public that goes to those games and tailgates and spend hours setting up their tailgates for the royals baseball games, and it may not be as big as it is for the chiefs right. Thats an interesting question. Its an interesting question. I dont have an answer to that. I would say that tailgates at royal stadium and im a season Ticket Holder and have been for 20 years are pathetic and can go away. I thought thats what he was going to say. Im going to defer to the local on this actually. Look im not a tailgater. I prefer to go to a restaurant myself. There are a lot of people who tailgate. You are kind. You know, i defer to the local and his wisdom. I said it at the talk of the Downtown Council this morning that, you know, any city that is big enough to contain both Arthur Bryants and the Nelson Atkins museum has to be more interesting and complicated and wonderful than most citieses in america. Thank you for that comment. I still believe that. You know, just do your barbecue some other time. Thank you. Thank you. Could we give a round of applause for paul. Thank you. Week nights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight a look at civil war objects. Historians Harold Holzer and Valerie Paley held talks about arty facts in their joint publication, the civil war in 50 objects. They discuss a pipe and a model of abraham lincolns hand. Watch tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. American history tv on cspan 3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this weekend, saturday, at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, on american artifacts, library of congress curator beverly ranit on life in the 1930s and 40s through color photographs and sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on real america, three films on the 1976 elections produced by the u. S. Information agency for an international audience. Then at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the presidency, acceptance speeches from five president ial nominees, harry truman, adlaid stevenson, dwight eisenhower, john kennedy and richard nixon, exploring the american story, watch American History tv this weekend on cspan 3. Next, coauthors david mills and kayla westra discuss their book great wartime escapes and rescues which focuses on world war ii prisoners of war and concentration camps. This is an hour and 15 minutes. Good evening. Im Steve Leeberg with the pub a