I love baseball.
The endless innings, punctuated by occasional bursts of excitement, make the perfect backdrop to a long summer day. Even the most casual spectator can enjoy a hot dog and a couple Bud Lights under July’s lazy sun.
So what does baseball have to do with climate? Baseball and its setting, the ballpark, are near-perfect reflections of American development and urban design, which greatly influence greenhouse gas emissions.
I’ve been thinking a lot about ballparks and urban design lately because I just read Paul Goldberger’s fantastic book Ballpark: Baseball in the American City. Goldberger argues that how we design ballparks reflects our “attitudes toward cities and community, our notions of public space, and our changing views about the nature of place.” He continues (emphasis added):
“The sport whose playing field symbolizes the connection and the interdependency between the rural and the urban is also a metaphor for how we have chosen to deal with our cities, the extent to which we have seen them as a natural habitat versus the extent to which we have seen them as something to escape from, or, more recently, as something to try to return to.”
In other words, the history of ballparks tells us a lot about the history of cities. Early ballparks were products of necessity, wedged between city blocks, leading to eccentric quirks like Boston’s green monster. Similarly, subway systems and apartments were packed haphazardly into cities of the 19th century, creating a sort of chaotic spirit that defines Philadelphia or New York.
But many ballparks built after World War II represented the car-centric urban flight that created sprawling suburbs (the Astrodome in Houston was seven miles from downtown; Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City is eight).
This move to the ‘burbs created a climate problem, even if we didn’t see it at the time:
Suburban ballparks, surrounded by parking lots, encourage individual car use.
With more cars on the road, cities funnel money into highways and parking lots.
The result is more air and carbon pollution, dirtying our environment and heating the Planet.
Aside from their environmental problems, these ballparks also left us with a hollowed sense of place. With post-war ballparks, as with the suburbs, we lost the notion of the ballpark (or the city) as a public meeting space: The car swapped the bustling downtown of shops, plazas, and neighborhoods for lonely, isolated structures spaced out by surface parking, interstate highways, and private parks (also known as lawns).
Fortunately, the 1990s saw a resurgence of interest in cities and shared public space. More than any other ballpark, Camden Yards in Baltimore — with its downtown location and steel and brick facade — marked this resurgence. Writes Goldberger:
“Camden Yards was the new paradigm, setting baseball architecture on a different track: building in the city; celebrating local qualities through both a ballpark’s specific architecture and the connections it established with its surroundings; leaving room for idiosyncrasy and design quirks.”
These central, accessible ballparks have revitalized entire neighborhoods, injecting life and money into cities. And, of course, the ballpark’s return to the city isn’t just an economic win; it’s also an environmental one.
Urban parks (and cities in general) are great for the Planet, as they encourage environmentally friendly transit, like walking, cycling, or bussing. And city planners can more easily fit public transit systems and dense apartments around urban parks than those in the suburbs.
I’ll end with a final note about cities and baseball: Growing up in suburban Northeast Ohio, going downtown usually meant going to the ballpark.
These outings weren’t just a nostalgic embrace of the bond between father and son but also my first exposure to urban living: the dynamic and lively crowds weaving through parks, alleys, and bars, alive with an energy only found in a city.
Without Jacobs Field in the heart of Cleveland, these trips may never have happened, and I would never have associated my childhood love (baseball) with my adulthood love (urban living). As Goldberger writes:
“The greatest joy [the ballpark] can bring us is when it is embedded in the real city, with all the energy, diversity, and dynamism a city can display at its best, and the exhilaration the baseball park offers becomes not only a celebration of sport, but of the whole urban life.”