Description:
Major League Baseball's 30 stadiums--each with its own distinct ambience and dimensions--greatly affect both a fan's devotion and a team's specific style of play. If not for the familiar sun- and beer-drenched bleachers and vine-covered walls, why else would fans perennially flock to Chicago's Wrigley Field to support yet another losing season? And, in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, where the "grass" never needs mowing, why not assemble rosters with speed in mind? Ahuja's Fields of Dreams is a baseball stadium tour guide, including both stadium logistics (tickets, concessions, parking) and profiles of each Major League town (lodging, restaurants, and attractions). But the book's strength lies in its ability to capture what it's like to be a fan in each Major League city, including past stadium heroics (slim for some hapless clubs) and descriptions of parks from home plate to foul pole. The author, who moonlights as a baseball tour guide, describes venerable Wrigley as "a great baseball park in a great neighborhood where you can see the game the way it should be--up close and personal." Montreal's Olympic Stadium contains "everything there is to dislike about a modern-day ballpark," but its "nightlife is absolutely incredible--unlike anything I've seen since visiting New Orleans." Fields of Dreams also includes Tropicana Field and Bank One Ballpark, the respective homes of 1998's expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Arizona Diamondbacks. --Rob McDonald
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