168 the New England Quarterly
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168 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Marla Miller, Associate Professor of History at the University of Mas- sachusetts, Amherst, researches and writes about women’s labor his- tory in the early republic. Her book The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution appeared in 2006. Level Playing Fields: How the Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/81/1/168/1794177/tneq.2008.81.1.168.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Shaped Baseball. By Robert Morris. (Lincoln: University of Ne- braska Press, 2007. Pp. x, 184.$24.95.) Robert Morris’s fascinating, compact text examines an underappre- ciated aspect of our national pastime: the playing field. Disregarding ballpark structures, Morris addresses playing surfaces and their sur- rounding landscapes. Through the Murphy brothers, John and Tom, the author investigates how innovative groundskeepers’ craftsmanship and maintenance affected the baseball diamond’s evolution. Unfortunately, Morris did not find enough material fully to reveal the lives of the idiosyncratic artisans at the center of his story. Their Irish backgrounds, rural influences, and fiery dispositions drew pop- ular attention in their day, when Irish-American players dominated baseball, but what attracted the brothers to their vocation remains a mystery. Morris compensates for his biographical shortfall with an entertaining discourse about land use in postbellum America, specif- ically how ball-playing lots were developed and standardized. Before the specifications of playing fields were regularized, each ballpark was adapted to its natural terrain and the home team’s playing style. With urban land at a premium, franchises looked for inexpensive acreage near population centers that was accessible to pedestrian and trolley traffic. These sites, however, were often un- developed. Some were low lying and easily flooded; others were in need of serious grading. Approaching each impediment as a chal- lenge to making ballgrounds functional and affordable, groundskeep- ers cleared trees, grew and cropped grass, removed infield peb- bles, improved drainage, and leveled the playing surface. Treating early ballgrounds in Pittsburgh and New York in particular, Morris shows how the Murphy brothers applied their skills and imagina- tion to such problems, thus becoming pioneers in establishing stan- dards and practices that later generations of groundskeepers would adopt. The most engaging pages in the book deal with the Murphys’ talent in adapting playing fields to the “small ball” tactics of teams managed by John McGraw in New York and Ned Hanlon in Baltimore. In city BOOK REVIEWS 169 after city, the in-demand Murphys built up foul lines, hardened in- fields, and kept outfield grass thick to obscure runways that benefited artful players like Willie Keeler. The Murphys even experimented with elevating the pitching area and scattering soap flakes around it, presenting visiting pitchers with an unexpected lubricant in the dirt they grabbed to improve their grip on the ball. Such clever strate- gies gave homefield teams a distinct advantage. During the 1890s, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/81/1/168/1794177/tneq.2008.81.1.168.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 when the Murphys established their reputations, home teams won, on average, 60 percent of their games, and the National League fields the brothers had prepared brought their teams twelve pennants in a twenty-year span. Learning about the Murphy brothers and their generation will hold readers’ attention, and Morris’s argument that groundskeepers, who have remained largely invisible to the baseball public, should be rec- ognized for their contribution to the sport is well taken. One may not always agree with the author’s assumptions about land use, but his arguments will have you thinking outside the diamond. Jerrold Casway, Professor of History and Social Sciences Division Chair at Howard College, in Columbia, Maryland, has written many articles about nineteenth-century baseball history. His most recent book is Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball, and he is currently working on a study entitled “The Culture and Ethnicity of Nineteenth-Century Baseball.” Franconia Notch and the Women Who Saved It. By Kimberly A. Jarvis. (Lebanon, N.H.: University Press of New England / Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 214.$25.95 paper.) On 3 August 1923, one of New Hampshire’s best-known resort hotels, the Profile House, burned to the ground. Located in the scenic Franconia Notch area of the White Mountains—an area known internationally for natural attractions, including the Old Man of the Mountain and the Flume—the Profile House had been a popular destination for decades. Its loss prompted the hotel’s owners to put thousands of acres at the heart of Franconia Notch on the market. Franconia Notch and the Women Who Saved It tells the story of subsequent efforts by the State of New Hampshire and by private conservation groups to purchase and preserve this property, thereby keeping it out of the hands of timber companies..