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Goldberger’s book is steeped in this kind of history, contextualization, and reconsideration of spaces that often inspire passionate affinity and devotion.

The venerable ballpark is iconic now, but a century ago it was an advertisement.

Fenway Park, for instance, got its name because the Red Sox’s then-owners wanted to spur development to Boston’s Fenway. But as Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes in his new book, Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, such real estate impulses in the business of baseball aren’t new. “We envision a stadium district that will be active and inviting 365 days a year for athletes, fans, and Oaklanders alike.” Aerial rendering of the new Oakland A’s ballpark Courtesy BIGīallclub-as-developer feels unnatural-baseball teams should be in the business of baseball. (There’s also a separate BIG proposal to redevelop the soon-to-be-former coliseum site.) “We are honored and excited to team with the Oakland A’s to help imagine their future home where sports culture and local community culture unite as one,” Ingels said last year. It’s also the centerpiece of an Athletics-controlled micro-city that includes mixed-use housing, public space, a commuter gondola, and extensions of the street grid. Scheduled to open in 2023, the retro-modernist building straddles “golden age” ballparks and Norman Bel Geddes’s streamlined aesthetic. In November 2018, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) released its initial plans (they were revised in February) for a new 34,000-seat ballpark on West Oakland’s waterfront. And with the Raiders decamping for Las Vegas, there’s no longer a case-if there ever were one-for staying the Coliseum’s demolition. It’s aesthetically blunt and cookie-cutter, and increasingly apocalyptic: Raw sewage spews into clubhouses while mice die in soda machines. Opened in 1966, the stadium served MLB’s Athletics and the NFL’s Raiders, the latter of which took priority. But next to Boston’s Fenway Park (1912), Chicago’s Wrigley Field (1914), and Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium (1962)-masterpieces all-Major League Baseball’s fourth-oldest ballpark is the worst kind of concrete-donut-era relic. There are undoubtedly fans of Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, in East Oakland, California, the way some people appreciate fatbergs or long-thought-extinct bacteria.

BIG’s design for the new Oakland A’s ballpark Courtesy BIG