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Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

Kuklick, Bruce. To Everything A Season: and Urban , 1909-1976. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. pp. xii, 237. 22 black and white plates, maps, essay on sources, and index. $19.95 (U.S.) Stephen Scheinberg

Volume 21, Number 2, March 1993

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1016800ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1016800ar

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Publisher(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine

ISSN 0703-0428 (print) 1918-5138 (digital)

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Cite this review Scheinberg, S. (1993). Review of [Kuklick, Bruce. To Everything A Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909-1976. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. pp. xii, 237. 22 black and white plates, maps, essay on sources, and index. $19.95 (U.S.)]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 21(2), 122–123. https://doi.org/10.7202/1016800ar

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unavoidable, results from the question• selves practicing an insecure and usual• crete and steel stadiums, the successors naire—regrettably not reproduced in the ly ill-financed form of peasant agriculture to the often dangerous wooden struc• text—that apparently asked stand• in their back yards and on railroad rights- tures of the late 19th century. Three of ardized, simple-answer questions of a of-way in the city. Freeman's study these ball parks still survive—Wrigley random sample of more than 600 respon• reminds us that the failure of many third- Field in Chicago, in Boston, dents. With this method, the author world governments to create conditions and New York's —Comis- gleaned a large body of replicable data, for the profitable pursuit of small-scale key Park in Chicago closed last year. but was understandably not able to rural agriculture and industry has the per• Shibe survived over sixty-one years as achieve as much depth as students of verse side-effect of displacing peasant an anchor to North City, a new neighbour• Kenya society and politics might wish. agriculture from rural areas to cities. How• hood that developed in the shadow of ever, the study does not address these Philadelphia and persisted into an era of For example, one would like to know implications of its findings. There is much demographic transformation and the more about how urban agriculture is re• scope here for further study. harsh politics of urban renewal. lated to the rural agrarian economy, and thus the society as a whole. Do Obviously, Prof. Freeman could not have Benjamin Shibe, a sporting goods some urban farmers maintain relations been expected to do justice to all these manufacturer and his partner and field with kin elsewhere in the country, and questions in a slender volume. What he manager of the Philadelphia A's, the what are the economic dimensions of has done is a valuable study that legendary Connie Mack, located their such relations? To what extent is provides an excellent base for further in• new stadium in an area previously residence in the city a reaction to in• vestigation of agrarian society and ur• referred to as Swampoodle. Cheap open tolerable conditions in the rural areas, banization in Africa and elsewhere in the land and its accessibility by the Broad and what is it that was intolerable? To third world. Street trolley, as well as three railway what extent is the move an attempt to lines, made the site appealing. Opening seek a better life in the city? The author CHRISTOPHER LEO day fans approached an ornate French speculates on the answers but the sur• Political Science renaissance facade, with a tower at its vey method necessarily prevented him University of Winnipeg corner containing offices for the partners. from finding out his respondents' own Inside there was seating for 23,000 with answers to those questions. Kuklick, Bruce. To Everything A Season: a theoretical capacity, including stan• Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, dees, for a then incredible 40,000. It would also be interesting to know 1909-1976. Princeton: Princeton what role ethnicity plays in the politics University Press, 1991. pp. xii, 237. 22 Professor Kuklick's emphasis is on the of urban agriculture. Is the central city black and white plates, maps, essay on role of this ferro-concrete structure as a more ethnically mixed than the suburbs sources, and index. $19.95 (U.S.). part of the connective tissue in "the way because the people there prefer to live sport is instrumental in ordinary people's near the area where they eventually This is a history of a ball park, the construction of a meaningful past for hope to obtain employment, as the neighbourhood it was a part of, the themselves." Thus his title may be evoca• author speculates, or because Kikuyu teams that played in it, and particularly tive of past seasons of baseball glory, people and perhaps Wakamba are loath the place of the park in the lives and im• but it is intended as a commentary on the to allow others to encroach on "their" ter• aginations of the fans, players, and transient role of a piece of urban architec• ritory? owners. It was no field of dreams, in the ture in containing or perpetuating the middle of an Iowa corn field. Baseball is, public memory of an important element Another set of questions has to do with for Bruce Kuklick, a peculiarly urban of popular culture. Shibe Park's season Kenya's development strategy. Freeman phenomenon. A Ronald Reagan might is past, the A's long ago departed for hints at a problem when he points out reinvent it for his Iowa radio audience in Kansas City and then Oakland and few that lack of investment in rural agriculture the 1930s, but big league baseball grew recall their tie to Philadelphia. The Phil• and industry drives rural residents, frus• with the cities. lies have played in Veterans Stadium trated by lack of economic opportunity, for over twenty years now and Kuklick to the cities. However, rural escapees do Shibe Park (much later renamed Connie is not interested in rekindling nostalgia not find the golden opportunities they Mack Stadium) opened in 1909. It was but in understanding Shibe's role as a hope for. In the end they often find them• the first of the privately-financed con• cultural artifact.

122 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXI, No. 2 (March, 1993) Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

The author is far more successful in Mack was forced to retire from field Kuklick's failures may be the result of press• giving us a sense of how the players and management after a tenure of fifty years. ing too hard to knock one out of the park. the owners thought about the stadium His sons were caught up in a family rival• In this slim book, the urban historian may la• than he is in conveying the ordinary ry that finally resulted in the sale of the ment the absence of a comparative citizen's feelings. Kuklick has uncovered A's and their move to Kansas City in framework, the historian of popular culture the anti-nostalgic reactions of old 1954. The football Eagles moved to will perhaps desire a fuller treatment of the ballplayers. Most memorable was the for the 1958 season, where fans, and the fan will certainly want more comment of Amos Strunk who was in the they had not only many more seats but colour on players and important games. A's lineup for the 1909 opening game. also parking space. Yet, these are not three strikes on the Strunk, who had been a hard hitting out• author. He has, to leave the metaphor, fielder for the A's, was invited to appear Kuklick gives us a picture of the ball opened up some interesting new areas in at the 1970 closing ceremony but park's steady, seemingly inexorable, sports history which should prove in• refused since "I hold no sentimental decline. Perhaps, he observes, if Mr. spirational for future scholars. value about the closing of this property Mack had overcome his racist and it means nothing to me at all." prejudices to sign black stars such as STEPHEN SCHEINBERG Satchel Paige, the great black pitcher Roy Campanella, Orestes Minoso, or Department of History who was not welcomed to the major Henry Aaron, the A's might have trium• Concordia University, Montreal leagues until long after his prime said phed and stayed on in Philadelphia only "well...they wouldn't let me and and even at Shibe. Yet, the Yankees Hamilton, Kenneth Marvin. Black Towns my boys play there." Such gems are and the Red Sox were similarly delin• and Profit: Promotion and Development not complemented by the voices of or• quent in signing black stars, and so in the Trans-Appalachian West, dinary fans. perhaps we ought to consign this con• 1877-1915. Urbana and Chicago: jecture to the Cleopatra's nose file that University of Illinois Press, 1991. index, Interviews were an important part of also holds the note on Mr. Mack's illustrations. Pp. 152, appendices. $29.95 the research for the book, but the failure to buy Babe Ruth from the minor (U.S.). voices of the fans seem muted. Kuk• league Orioles. lick never fully presents these ordi• Professor Hamilton of the Department of nary Philadelphians, and does not Shibe's 1970 demise is attributed by History, Southern Methodist University, has reveal enough of his interviews with Kuklick to persistently poor teams, tech• presented an important account of the them to provide the access required nical limitations on the expansion of founding of black towns in the Trans-Ap• to allow us to grasp the popular im• seating beyond 33,000, inadequate palachian West. His work, broken into five agination. Perhaps a Studs Terkel parking facilities in a crowded neigh• chapters, chronicles the development of could tap and bring alive the imagina• bourhood, and its situation in a chang• Nicodemus, Kansas; Mound Bayou, Missis• tion of the baseball fan. The intersec• ing and increasingly more dangerous sippi; Langston City, Oklahoma; Boley, Ok• tion of popular culture and social area. Some, or all of these factors may lahoma; and Allensworth, California. history may require more than the have contributed but they were not uni• Hamilton poses a challenge to existing historian's conventional methodology que to Philadelphia. in scholarship and its emphasis on blacks can uncover. Chicago was and is not known for win• seeking refuge from racial oppression as ning baseball, has limited parking in its the major impetus for establishing all black Shibe Park had its few seasons of tri• environs and has a small seating towns in the late 19th and early 20th cen• umph with the A's and their $100,000 capacity. Comiskey which only closed turies. He does not reject the racial haven infield from 1910-14, the 1927-32 team last year is in the heart of the South thesis but does assert that an essential ele• with stars such as Jimmy Faxx, AI Sim• Side ghetto and the Yankee Stadium ment is missing. Hamilton reveals that an mons, and Lefty neighbourhood, recently vividly entrepreneurial profit motive drove black Grove, and the 1950 Philly . described in Bonfire of the Vanities, is founders as it did their white counterparts These were only interludes for Philadel• no safer. This is only to suggest that engaged in the enterprise of town founding. phia fans who were victims of Connie Professor Kuklick's failure to invoke any Mack's penchant to break up winning comparisons leaves us with a narrowly To illustrate the cogency of his observa• teams, and the inability of the Phillies focused picture and no means of tions, Hamilton relates the promotional management to build a winner. weighing the analysis. activities of black agents like Edwin Mc-

123 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol XXI, No. 2 (March, 1993)