The Pastime

While attending the 37th annual SABR convention in St. Louis, I had a tough time looking through the books available for sale in the vendors’ room. My difficulty didn’t lie in a lack of interesting books to choose from, but the fact that I had very limited space in my carry-on luggage to bring back books. I ended up buying two books from the University of Nebraska Press: Level Playing Fields, by Peter Morris; and The Tour to End All Tours, by James Elfers.

As it turned out, my flight from St. Louis to Omaha was delayed on the day I was to return, so the helpful American Airlines agent got me moved to another flight so I could get home that day. Of course, the flight I was to take had a connection in Dallas, of all places. I might be the only person that went from Missouri to Nebraska by way of Texas. In any case, the delay in St. Louis and the stopover at Dallas-Fort Worth airport allowed me enough time to begin — and finish — Level Playing Fields, an account of how the Murphy brothers literally shaped the playing fields of baseball in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

John and Tom Murphy worked as groundskeepers for some of the most notable teams of the 1890’s to 1910’s. Beginning with the notorious Baltimore Orioles in John McGraw’s playing days, the Murphys revolutionized the way a baseball field was taken care of. The practice of building up the foul lines to steer bunts fair, hardening the area in front of home plate to facilitate the “Baltimore Chop”, the building up of pitchers’ mound, and numerous other innovations can be attributed to these brothers.

John Murphy later became the head groundskeeper for the legendary Polo Grounds, working under John McGraw, now a manager. Murphy refined his work to the point that the Polo Grounds were known as the best playing surface in the majors, and one of the most visually appealing. Murphy’s detail-oriented work ethic paid off in New York, and he finally received the recognition he had been seeking, though he’s been largely forgotten today.

The book itself is very accessible, and a quick read. It provides not only great detail of the work that went into making a field playable, but offers some great insight into the game of that era. Morris provides the reader with a thoughtful background on the development of the baseball field in the United States, and why the shape of the field itself played a large part in baseball becoming the popular sport it is today, instead of cricket or other bat and ball games.

Filling a hole in the history of the game, Level Playing Fields is a book I’d recommend to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of just how and why a ball field looks as it does. In Derek Zumsteg’s book The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball, he mentions many of the ways that groundskeepers affected how the game is played, and wishes that there were a definitive history of the early days of groundskeeping. This is that book.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.