ballparks

Though baseball's opening day is still more than a month off, it isn't too early for a nut like me to dig out one of the classic books of the game: Josh Leventhal's "Take Me Out to the Ballpark," an illustrated tour of playing fields past and present.
Note: To be precise, in this case "present" means only up to 2000, which was the year of publication.
But what's a decade or so when you can learn that Sunny Jim Bottomley knocked in 12 runs on Sept. 16, 1924, as the Cardinals beat the Dodgers 17 to 3. And when you can read what Babe Ruth thought of the now-fabled, almost sacred "friendly confines" of Chicago's Wrigley Field.
Ruth was quoted in the fall of 1932 when the New York Yankees were in the process of sweeping the Cubs 4-zip in the World Series. Ruth went five for 15 in those four games, hitting two homers and batting in a total of six runs.
The Babe, who in his day was the highest-paid player in baseball, had this to say of Wrigley, "I'd pay half my salary," he said, "if I could bat in this dump all the time."
There are a lot of such tidbits from the greatest sport of them all.
Item: In a game at Ebbets Field in 1926, three Brooklyn Dodgers were caught standing on third base at the same time. Two were tagged out to end the inning.
Item: At least until 2000, no one had ever hit a ball over the right-field grandstand of Boston's Fenway Park. However the Red Sox installed a special red seat in the right-field bleachers where a ball hit by Ted Williams, estimated to have carried 502 feet, hit a fan on the head, crushing his straw hat.
Item: On April 17, 1945, at Sportsman's Park, a one-armed outfielder named Pete Gray made his debut with the American League St. Louis Browns, going one for four against Detroit. He went on to play 77 games that season, when war service had decimated major-league rosters.
Item: At Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut, home to the university's baseball team and, for a time, the New Haven Ravens Class AA franchise, authorities in the 1920s installed a double-wide seat for William Howard Taft.
See, the former president, Supreme Court justice, Yale alum and law professor was a truly big man, his usual weight being around 320 pounds.
Item: On Sept. 15, 1963, the San Francisco Giants fielded an outfield of three brothers, Felipe, Jesus and Matty Alou.
Those are just a few samples. You gotta love this game.