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0195123603. First printing. As new in like dust jacket.

0195123603. First printing. As new in like dust jacket.

xv, [1], 225, [7] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Timed to be released at

xv, [1], 225, [7] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Timed to be released at the start of 2008 spring training, Neil Sullivan's The Diamond in the Bronx chronicles the entire history of a stadium that has been home to the greatest dynasty in sports history, a stadium that will see its final Yankees game in 2008. As Yankee Stadium is about to become a memory, an indelible part of the cultural history of baseball and of New York City, Neil Sullivan's The Diamond in the Bronx offers a fascinating account of its history and its position at the intersection of sports, business, government, and society, Sullivan tells how Yankee Stadium came to be built in 1923, at a time when the Bronx was a burgeoning borough that held middle class housing for immigrants as well as hunting lodges for wealthy Manhattanites, an era when small children could ride the subway, alone, to the ball game, and when many of the ballplayers themselves lived on the Grand Concourse. As the city and the Bronx changed, Yankeedom changed too, and the stadium is now surrounded by of parking lots, symbolic of the team's suburban fan base and the decline of the South Bronx. In recent years the team has threatened to leave New York City, prompting extravagant proposals for keeping it there, including a billion dollar new stadium in Manhattan to be financed with public money. The resulting stadium controversy tells us much about the public's changing views of government and the changing nature of professional sports. The Diamond in the Bronx offers a wealth of detail, insight, and historical perspective. No sport has mattered more to Americans than baseball--and no team has had a greater impact on baseball than the New York Yankees. Now Neil Sullivan delivers a narrative worthy of his fabled subject, in this marvelous history of Yankee Stadium. Fans have a box-seat at the Stadium's first Opening Day: The stunning visual impact of the baseball's first true stadium, the festivities, the players (including Babe Ruth who christened the Stadium with its first home run), and the game in which the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. The Stadium was immediately known as "The House That Ruth Built, " but Sullivan takes us behind the scenes to meet the politicians, businessmen and fixers who were even more responsible for the Stadium than the Babe was: Colonel Jacob Ruppert, the beer baron and Tammany Hall insider who bought the Yankees and built the Stadium; Mayors like Jimmy Walker who reigned during the Yankees first Golden Age, John Lindsay who fought hard for liberal causes in the 1960s but even harder for a refurbished Stadium, and Rudy Giuliani, who has taken a hard-nosed approach to most welfare but who supports a stadium subsidy for the Yankees. Here too are the great seasons including the cross town World Series rivalries with the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sullivan looks at the legendary players like Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle as well as lesser lights like Jake Powell to see their impact beyond the diamond. Along the way, Sullivan uses the story of the Stadium to examine issues ranging from racial integration and urban renewal to the reasons why New York City, even during tough times, has come to adopt the Stadium as a public obligation. Neil Sullivan knows baseball and city politics and the connections between the two. In these pages, he tells how Yankee Stadium is not just the most revered venue in American sports, but also a part of urban history as compelling as the grandest baseball legend.