Wrigley Field: The Unauthorized Biography - Softcover

Shea, Stuart; Castle, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574889419 ISBN 13: 9781574889413

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2006

Synopsis

Bathed in sun and suds, Wrigley Field is home to the perfect baseball viewing experience. The ultimate neighborhood ballpark serves as a sort of time capsule, transporting us to an era where every park felt like a day at Wrigley Field. But postcard memories aside, Wrigley’s modern cachet is a unique success story. From its construction in 1914 by the implausibly successful Charlie Weeghman (for a baseball team that was not the Chicago Cubs) to serving as the venue for George Halas’s Bears, Wrigley Field has hosted many different kinds of sporting events for America’s second city. Stuart Shea’s unparalleled history of Wrigley Field documents a park and its place within the surrounding community, its influence on who lives where in Chicago and why, and as a home to teams and events that have helped a city define itself.

Beyond Wrigley’s status as both a living treasure and a historical artifact, Shea looks at the current plans to renovate the park; the combative relationship among the team’s owners, the city, and the neighborhood; and the strange blend of interdependence and mutual annoyance that have handicapped efforts to preserve, promote, and adapt the park to the twenty-first century. Unlike any other history of a ballpark, this “unauthorized biography” chronicles the ballpark as a venue for women’s baseball, football, boxing, and soccer, among other sports. As Shea explains, the tension between past and present, memory and the future, or America as we imagine it and as it is, has rarely been so well captured in one place.

About this title

From the Publisher

Details the unique historical relationship between a classic ballpark and its city; Presents an intimate account of one of baseball's best venues, from construction to adding lights to the expansive changes to come; Covers the park's association with other teams and sports beyond the Cubs and baseball.

About the Author

Stuart Shea is a former baseball columnist for Total Sports and America Online and coauthored two editions of the USA Today Baseball Insider. He also wrote Rock & Roll's Most Wanted™ (Brassey’s, Inc., 2002) and has contributed to ESPN.COM, BASEBALLPROSPECTUS.COM, the Music Hound Guide to Lounge Music, Reactor Magazine, New Scene, and NEWCITY.COM He lives twenty-four blocks north of Wrigley Field.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1574889419
• ISBN 13: 9781574889413
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 339