Ballparks As America: the Fan Experience at Major League Baseball Parks in the Twentieth Century
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BALLPARKS AS AMERICA: THE FAN EXPERIENCE AT MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PARKS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Seth S. Tannenbaum May 2019 Examining Committee Members: Bryant Simon, Advisory Chair, Department of History Petra Goedde, Department of History Rebecca Alpert, Department of Religion Steven A. Riess, External Member, Department of History, Northeastern Illinois University © Copyright 2019 by Seth S. Tannenbaum All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This dissertation is a history of the change in form and location of ballparks that explains why that change happened, when it did, and what this tells us about broader society, about hopes and fears, and about tastes and prejudices. It uses case studies of five important and trend-setting ballparks to understand what it meant to go to a major league game in the twentieth century. I examine the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium in the first half of the twentieth century, what I call the classic ballpark era, Dodger Stadium and the Astrodome from the 1950s through the 1980s, what I call the multi-use ballpark era, and Camden Yards in the retro-chic ballpark era—the 1990s and beyond. I treat baseball as a reflection of larger American culture that sometimes also shaped that culture. I argue that baseball games were a purportedly inclusive space that was actually exclusive and divided, but that the exclusion and division was masked by rhetoric about the game and the relative lack of explicit policies barring anyone. Instead, owners built a system that was economically and socially stratified and increasingly physically removed from lower-class and non-white city residents. Ballparks’ tiers allowed owners to give wealthier fans the option of sitting in the seats closest to home plate where they would not have to interact with poorer fans who owners pushed to the cheaper seats further from the action. That masked exclusion gave middle- and upper-class fans a space that was comfortable and safe because it was anything but truly accessible to all Americans. I also argue that owners had to change the image of the ballpark and tinker with the exclusion there as fans’ tastes and their visions of what a city should look and feel like changed. iii For my parents, my sister, and for Phoebe. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Generous research support for this project came from the William and Madeline Welder Smith Research Travel Award from the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, the Elsie Van Dyck DeWitt Scholarship from the Office for Fellowships at Vassar College, and the Alvin Achenbaum Travel Grant from the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. Funding from the History Department, College of Liberal Arts, and Center for the Humanities at Temple University allowed me to travel to conferences where I received invaluable feedback on my work as did the Roberta Park Travel Award from the North American Society for Sport History and grants from Drexel University and the American Historical Association. In some ways, I have spent my life working on this project and in other ways, I only came to seriously think about the questions this dissertation explores in the last several years. I would like to thank Tim Wiles, formerly of the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center and Library at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, who gave a 17-year old looking for an unpaid internship a chance to hang out at the Hall of Fame and learn that baseball is also the object of serious study. When I arrived at Temple to begin my graduate studies, I was planning a very different project. After classes on Consumer Culture History and Food History taught by Bryant Simon and some pointed and important prodding from my classmates and friends Jess Bird and John Worsencroft, I decided to see where this food and the baseball fan experience thing would lead. Thanks for the push and the freedom to explore something totally different. v Throughout this project, I was fortunate to benefit from the assistance and generosity of a host of archivists. At the Giamatti Research center, which now feels like a second home, Jim Gates and the Frank and Peggy Steele Interns, particularly Katie Walden, have always been helpful and generous with their time. No one in Cooperstown made my time more enjoyable or more productive than Cassidy Lent who is equal parts friend, confidant, and advisor. At the Hartman Center, Joshua Larkin-Rowley helped me navigate extensive collections to target just what I was looking for. My friend Ashley Chaifetz kindly hosted me during my visit to Durham. At the Briscoe Center, Stephanie Malmros, Margaret Schlankey, and the rest of the staff helped me efficiently sort through a wealth of material. At the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Eric Joseph Colleary kindly showed me fire-damaged documents and guided me through the Norman Bel Geddes papers. My cousins David, Maria, and Leon Tannenbaum generously hosted and fed me in Austin. I received essential research support from Joe Idell and Nick Reynolds of the Temple University library’s interlibrary loan office. Reference librarians Rebecca Lloyd and David Murray also helped me along the way. A long list of people including Tom Cole, Cary Wintz, Walter Buenger, Katherine Hoffman, Annie Golden, Mike Vance, Brett Derbes, and Merline Pitre helped me understand Harris County Texas’s complicated voter-eligibility requirements of the early 1960s. Lou Moore shared scanned copies of hard-to-acquire black newspapers from Houston. Jerry Podair helped me gain access to the Walter O’Malley archive by putting me in touch with Brent Shyer and Robert Schweppe of O’Malley Seidler Partners, LLC. Brent and Robert generously mailed me photocopies of hundreds of pages of documents. Bill Friedman, Paula vi Lavigne, Lindsay Rovegno, and Scott Harves helped me access video clippings about contemporary ballpark food. Bob Pascal, Bruce Leith, Pat Rooney, John Morley, Daniel Borschke, Carl Mittleman, Bill Hunt, Bob Smith, Sandy Rose, Hector Griswold, George Raub, IV, and Jonathan Muscalo all helped me to understand the past, present, and future of ballpark concessions. Throughout my education, I have been fortunate to learn from scholars who taught me to treasure the study of history. Byron Davis, Harry Gratwick, Bill Koons, Jim Merrell, Maria Höhn, and a host of others showed me that learning about the past can be fun and serious at the same time. In graduate school, my advisor, Bryant Simon, my committee members, Rebecca Alpert and Petra Goedde, and my outside reader Steve Riess helped me shape and improve my ideas. Bryant has been a great advisor and mentor, always confident that I could do more and do it better and inspiring me to hone my abilities with every draft. Rebecca has taken time away from her administrative duties and her religion department duties to let a historian bounce ideas about baseball off of her and to help him become a better teacher. Petra ran a Center for the Humanities at Temple seminar that helped to solidify the notion that my work had something to offer the broader intellectual community and that I had valuable advice to offer others about their own work. Steve was incredibly kind to a nervous graduate student and first-time attendee at the annual convention of the North American Society for Sport History. It was a pleasure to later present at a small conference in Brooklyn with him and an honor to share a panel with him at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. I could not have made it through this process without an excellent support network. Fellow graduate students John Worsencroft, Jess Bird, Tommy Richards, David vii Thomas, Tom Reinstein, Kaete O’Connell, Meredith Hohe, Silke Zoller, Minju Bae, Melanie Newport, Sarah Robey, and Carly Goodman made the experience worlds better. My soon-to-be in-laws have welcomed into their family with open arms. My parents, Carl and Sabina, have supported me throughout this quixotic process, learned what to ask and what not to ask, and all around helped make me who I am today. My sister, Heather, who moved back to Philadelphia in time for the end of this process, is a wonderful friend. None of this, however, could have happened without my fiancé, Phoebe Jones. Phoebe makes my life infinitely easier and more fun and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with her. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 2. THE POLO GROUNDS: HOT DOGS AND A TIERED EXPERIENCE AT THE BALLPARK ........................................................................................................ 20 3. YANKEE STADIUM: BIGGER IS BETTER, BUT LOCATION STILL MATTERS ................................................................................................................... 77 4. DODGER STADIUM: A REMADE CITY ..............................................................