Baseball Palace of the World: The Last Year of Comiskey Park
Description:
Baseball fans are hopeless romantics, not to say fantasists to them the game is, in many ways, emblematic of life itself. What makes Douglas Bukowski stand out among White Sox fans is the sensitivity of his recollections and the excellence of his prose.
Whether you're a fan of the Mets, the Cubs, the Tigers, or the Little League, you'll find a lot to interest you in this unique history of the park that was the home of the first All-Star game, where the color line in the American League was erased, where Shoeless Joe Jackson played and colorful Bill Veeck walked the aisles on his peg leg. It was also where, unexpectedly, Babe Ruth kissed Cardinal O'Donnells's ring, as well as the scene of a notorious disco-demolition riot.
In short, you will learn how the park started, how it lived, and how it, regrettably, died. Comiskey Park was the soul of baseball not just South Side Chicago baseball, not just white Sox baseball but Baseball writ large. You'll also get an insight into the controversy and politicking that went on behind the scenes of the traumatic baseball drama that fascinated aficionados all over America.
The author gives the play-by-play details, based on contemporary accounts and on interviews with players and management; the fascinating narrative is told in journal form names, dates, events that lends it an immediacy and flavor that all baseball fans will cheer.
Included in this landmark memoir are fifty-four photographs most never published that illuminate Comiskey Park's glorious, never-to-be -forgotten past.