Dr. Seth Tannenbaum Book Talk

Celebrated as a democratic space for all Americans, the major league ballpark in fact privileged middle- and upper-class white male fans while tacitly marginalizing poor urban residents and people of color. Seth Tannenbaum’s Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark examines how the game’s economically and socially stratified system reflected changing understandings of urban space, inclusion, and the body politic.

Major League Baseball owners and executives masked exclusion and division by touting the game’s accessibility and instituting few overtly discriminatory policies. Affluent white males enjoyed a comfortable, safe space that reinforced their status as the prototypical American citizen. At the same time, ballparks relocated in response to how these favored fans felt about cities. Tannenbaum traces this journey from the urban locales of the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium through the suburban-oriented Dodger Stadium and Houston Astrodome to the cloistered fantasy of city life offered by Camden Yards. As he shows, owners’ pursuit of greater profits incorporated existing barriers that helped shape the structure of modern parks.

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Host or Publisher Connie Mack - Dick Allen Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)