Philip J. Lowry

A labor of love no doubt, but not exactly a compelling read. You'll skim through the sections on how the fences at the park in question changed 27 times between 1904 and 1966, but some of what the author calls "phenomena" are interesting. Mostly the book suffers from a lack of pictures, and the pictures that are provided are pretty bad. Which may be understandable given that some of these places were torn down decades ago. I guess this is more of a reference work, but I imagine the people really interested number closer to the hundreds than the thousands. As a former baseball fan, what I found most interesting were all the things left in the outfields of old ballparks, including a doghouse where a fielder once got his head stuck, allowing an inside-the-park homer. There were also parks that weren't flat--the outfield, for example, might slope considerably up to the wall or even have a cliff with a path up it! Most of these oddities were in ballparks not used by the so-called major leagues on a regular basis, however.… (mere)