Architectural critic. People are here to hear you talk about kauffman stadium. Have you talked to the audience about who you are and what you have done prior to writing about ballparks, which is a long story . I have spent most of my life i have been lucky because i have spent my life about what interests me, but i guess so have you. I try. Or i guess about what pisses me off. Off her it passes you whether it pisses you off or you like it. I am not very good at making choices. I found a place where my interests intersect. Did you study architecture . I studied architectural history. I went to yale, a place where those of you went to princeton do not always acknowledge. I heard about it in connecticut . A place called connecticut. I struggled i studied architectural history. I then began a career as a journalist. I toyed with going to architecture school. I thought the world had enough second rate architects and did not need another. Did think i was a pretty decent writer. Working at that like the new yorker . That was the Second Chapter of my career. I started at the new york times. We can talk about either one. What is the difference between working at the times and the new yorker . Two great institutions. The newerence york times is like a huge university. It does everything and has range, people and a huge but not everybody is necessarily there are some stoners. Right. It is a mixed bag. Everyone is at a certain level but not necessarily the most amazing. The new yorker was like a Small Liberal Arts College where everybody was as good as the best people in the big university. That is how it went how id felt to me when i went from one to the other. Had a great time there. You have an office in the old building . I moved over in the late 1990s when they were on 43rd street. I was in the second old building. They had moved the murals. Maybe you can tell everyone about that. Paul a cartoonist famously started drawing on the walls. They were kept as the sacred object. When the new yorker emerged managedhe street, they to cut it out of the wall and take it across the street. Bought by the was newhouse family, which owned conde nast, the Magazine Company. For several years, they allowed it to operate as a separate entity. And then gradually, they started folding it into the rest of the Magazine Company to save money on back office stuff and accounting. Into theit moved headquarters of conde nast and became not quite just another egg is in but not quite as special. I have been to the of this is in the replacement of the world trade center. Loved was things i the research you did into the earliest ballparks and how emphatic you are they baseball is an urban game. Not a game played in iowa cornfields. Despite field of dreams, which is everyones favorite tearjerker. It is not an accurate statement of what baseball has been about. I am in the midwesterner, so i am fine about that fine with that. The beginnings maybe specifically a new york game. Talked about you how they were 100 baseball teams in Brooklyn New York by 1858. New york was a huge center of baseball. It was a game that in the early years really grew big in a lot of the both northeastern and midwestern industrial cities. Bywas played a lot workingclass immigrants. Brooklyn had all of these teams. They were sometimes made up of in a. Thin a few blocks residential area sometimes they were connected with a factory. Whichse early chapters, was totally new information. Stuff that was that i did not know it all. It was connected with the population growth of brooklyn. You talked about how brooklyn was 25,000 people in 1835. There were 250000 and 1855. It is interesting to me how you talk about the connection between immigrants and this american pastime that is so important to us now. Paul absolutely. The other thing that was it was one of the things that was fascinating to me as well. Game was built on if you say immigrant laborers, but immigrant players. Years, it transitioned into being a spectator sport, but it did not start out that way. It started as a thing people played. It got more and more organized. People started going to see it. A lot of the early games of the new york teams, they played across the hudson river in hoboken on a field that was called elysian field. But then, you mentioned they played a lot of games in medicine square. I was like, that is where Madison Square garden is. No. The first medicine the first Madison Square garden was at medicine square was at Madison Square. They moved away because development was coming up around it. The scenea lot of the theme of the book is how baseball is a city game. Nevertheless, it came to be played on the outskirts because even in those 19th deck those 19th century years, land was cheap, cities were developing really fast. You did not put a bowl field right a ballfield in the center of the Business District next to the bank. You needed more land. It was too expensive. They would be on the edge, but the cities were growing so fast that those parcels of land were often surrounded by development and became in the center of a neighborhood. Fenway park is a good example. Host and we are and we are going to get to that. Speaking of immigrants, you have some interesting facts we talk about the bifurcated world of baseball. In a yearbook, one half in your book, one half of this world is separated by a german immigrant who bought the st. Louis browns in the 1880s. Story. His is a great it is a missouri story even though it is the other side of the state. Chris vander i was a tavern owner. Go ahead. He had a beer station in the outfield should in the outfield. Paul he thought it would be a great way to sell more beer. He opened up a branch of his tavern. A little beer garden in the outfield that would be a branch of his tavern from down the street. He was good at Cross Marketing because he also had the waiters in the actual tavern dressed up in browns uniforms. He was pushing both directions. Things toot of other entertain people. Billed the ballpark as the coney island of the west. It was all about entertainment. If we think there is too much distraction in ballparks today, it has a long history. But he was like a workingclass he wanted a workingclass audience. He kept ticket prices down to a quarter. He served beer. He did all this other stuff. Paul it was all about entertaining the workingclass. And i was like american league. Paul he was part of a group of teams that were officially called the American Association. It was colloquially known as the beer and Whiskey League. That is the league i want to be in. Paul the beer and Whiskey League was a cool thing. Theopposite number was National League. The American Association is not the root of todays american leak. The National League is the root. Out trying to push baseball in the opposite direction. It was all about making it more presbyterian. Paul exclusive, virtuous. There was no baseball played on sunday. There was no alcohol served in any of the ballparks. It was all about how baseball represents virtue and uprightness and every noble thing in the american character. But a lot of those things were code words for a certain kind of elitism. In keeping out the riffraff and so forth. They would allow the riffraff in where they could make money from them. In many of the ballparks, particularly the National League ones, there was a very rigid economic segregation. The bleachers were completely separate from the rest of the ballpark. You could not walk from a cheap seat into the grandstand area. You had a separate entrance, separate bathrooms. Rigid economic segregation. Some of that to be fair was kind of the weird way people did things in those days. Housed metropolitan opera in new york, which was built in 1883, around the time baseball was getting bigger and bigger and a lot of the stuff we are talking about was happening, the upper balcony, the cheapest seats were called the family circle. You entered them through a separate door on the street through their own lobby and the rn and their own staircase. It never connected to the main lobby so the fancy people did not have to mix with the poor people upstairs. There was an expectation of economic segregation in those days that was considered strangely normal by both sides of the equation for a well. Wer avatars for that know in kansas city, i think good comes from chicago. William hobart who owned the Chicago White sox. Paul he was the founder of the National League. And albert spalding. Paul he founded spalding sportinggoods. They were the great advocates of the National League and virtue and and the kind of mythology that led to ultimately field of dreams and stuff like that. You have some of his writing should paul he was wet you have some of his writing in the book. Paul he was wildly over the top about character and manhood. Was laterd to what revealed to be an entirely and fake history of the origins of baseball. The National League commissioned a study or all of Major League Baseball studied commission on Major League Baseball that determined it was invented by this man named Abner Doubleday fields in rural cooperstown, new york. Baseball was started and subsequently started. That was basically a fiction created to further this myth of rural virtue because in because cities were considered dirty and messy and full of immigrants and all that. This noble game could not possibly have had its roots there. So they devise history. It carried the day enough to get the hall of fame built in cooperstown. Even the hall of fame itself has acknowledged that it is pretty much made up. What is thought to be the actual origins . I do not know. Paul there is a wonderful guy named john thorne who is a fantastic writer who is the official historian of Major League Baseball who wrote a book called, baseball in the garden of eden. It traces how the game developed. Developed from many games, some of which are english games look not only cricket but rounders. There were different versions played in different areas. A lot of it was in new england. There is no James Naismith should James Naismith. Paul there is no single moment like James Naismith with basketball. Bennett all gradually came together then it all gradually came together as a cup more popular. There was one set of rules played in new york and in boston. At one point as the game came more and more common and popular, and intercity games begin to be played, there was a kind of summit meeting and they actually brought together representatives of teams from various cities into new york. They agreed on codifying a set of rules. If i remember correctly, i think the number of innings was not nine everywhere. Certain other key things. Different versions were played differently. Beginning in the mid19th century onward, those things were more codified. All right. There is a section in your book after the part we are talking about which you call the golden age. I want to talk about that. When did the golden age of american ballparks arrive and why was it golden . Paul i guess i should say first there was an age before the golden age. As things were getting bigger and baseball was becoming more sport, and a spectator the fields with the few seats became more elaborate. And started burning down. Paul and started burning down. The most elaborate was this amazing thing in boston called south end grounds that had these huge victorian towers. A beautiful picture. Paul it only lasted Something Like eight or nine years and it burned down. The owners had underinsured it so they could not afford to rebuild it. Fireproofs construction became possible, steel, concrete, they began to be built that way. Baseball was becoming bigger. It was essentially our only professional sport in this country. Mel another thing let digress for half a second to say that another thing that contributed to its growth and this is another wonderful reminder of how baseball connects to everything was the development of intercity train service. It was when there were train connections between various cities that the leagues really developed and professional baseball meeting they could travel to places. Meaning they could not to places. Paul a team in brooklyn could really only play and other team in oakland or maybe across the river in brooklyn or maybe across the river in new york. You cannot really play a team in chicago it was going to take three or four days to get there. You could not have a reliable schedule. Once there was intercity train service, everything began to fall into place and real modern baseball developed. Ahead, it was only at the moment of jet travel permitting fast coasttocoast travel in this country that baseball, Major League Baseball, expanded to california. It is not an accident those things coincided. These classic stadiums most of these will be familiar. Habit field. We know about wrigley in chicago. Shy park. Paul i wish i brought pictures because shy bark is incredible. Park was 1909. It was one of the earliest of the golden age. One of the most ornate. Elaboratee an beauxarts building on the outside. Then you go through this huge rotunda and you are in the field. As you select from the other side, it was just a field. If you sell it from the if you salt it from the home plate side, you could have thought it was an upper house. An incredibly important moment in the evolution of this. And then of course came forbes field in pittsburgh. Fenway, tiger stadium, wrigley. Which of those is the greatest . What are your standards of judgment . You do develop a clear way of thinking. Maybe you could explain that to people, like what you think is good. Paul it is a combination of things. First, on the exterior, is it a nice piece of civic architecture that feels at home in the city . Because a ballpark, other things is an important part of public space. Along with parks we were beginning to develop in the mid19th century and even cemeteries, the ballpark was one of the ways in which workingclass immigrants or workingclass people in general could experience some bit of the countryside. If you worked in factory, you probably worked six days a week, had nothing but sundays off. You had no way to go to the country. Going to the ballpark was one of the experiences you could have. That is another reason the National Leagues ban on sunday games had a whole other agenda. It was about keeping immigrants out. There is also the field itself and the seating and how close you felt to the action. How well you sell it and the weight how well you saw it. One of the things that is remarkable to me of these fields, i have been to fenway. I have jogged around wrigley. It is amazing to me how much it fits into the neighborhood it is in. It does not feel over imposing. It is right there. I expected it to be a big deal. I was like, it is a building. Paul you have this enormous thing that seats 40,000 people. And yet, it sits there with all these houses around it. It seems absolutely normal. You put it very well by saying that. Probably although i never saw it maybe its field was the best of all. It is so legendary because it was lost. Paul partly. A lot of important history happened there. Isis everyone know what it does everyone know what it is . Paul majorleague baseball was integrated because Jackie Robinson let the record show seen by the dodgers when he league in the negro kansas city. Kansas city plays an Important Role in that history. Probably the very best. Both because of its history and its physical qualities. There are funny things were kid thatcrew things up the one things up. That the one where they had only one entrance . Paul it was a rotunda and it was designed to small. Designed too small. You could not get in. Paul it would never pass the fire laws. They made some tweaks. They also forgot a pressbox, which is interesting. All of that eventually got taken care of. While theyallparks, were grand and beautiful buildings, also were creatures of circumstance. Determined byere the streets of the neighborhood or how much land the owners could buy. Hadfith in washington, d. C. An amazing notch cut out of right field because there were two houses that would not sell. They shaped it around. It was far enough out. Like that bugs bunny cartoon where he refuses to sell his house. Paul right. The most famous example is the Green Monster at fenway, which has to do with the way a street cut close to the edge of the site and could not allow the field as much space in left field as in right field. That asymmetry and difference and idiosyncrasy is a key part of baseball and baseball history. Unlike a hockey rink or basketball that is like your thesis should your thesis. Paul the diamond is exact and precise. The outfield varies. There are kind of no rules about the outfield. Theoretically, it could go on forever. Like the polo grounds. [indiscernible] paul there are no absolute rules. All of those parks had their idiosyncrasies and were strange as you mentioned. As the book progresses, we enter what i call the Empire Strikes stadiums,of baseball which you call the era of concrete donuts beginning in the 1950s. Can you set that up . Paul you just said all that needs to be said. Another part of the thesis of the book is baseball reflects our whole cultural attitude about cities over the years. Were everywhere in this country pretty much rejecting cities and moving out whatever the automobile would take us in the postwar era, we started moving baseball out too. Clevelands mistake by the lake. Clevelands mistake by the lake is almost in category by itself. What it actually did it is actually the beginning of very carnations trend, which was municipal financing of stadiums which nobody else was doing then and cleveland just decided to do it. It opened a lot of