For Sullivan (The Dodgers Move West), the business of baseball provides a window on city politics as well as on the shifting economics and demographics of American society in the past 100 years. Several times since the original Baltimore Orioles moved to New York to become the Highlanders in 1903, stadium controversies and other conflicts between the team and the city have flared. (He also shows how since Yankee Stadium was built in 1923, race has become entangled in New York's debate over funding for sports stadiums—two teams left in the 1950s, as the city's nonwhite populations were significantly increasing.) In the past few decades, in New York and elsewhere, an uneasy consensus over the benefits of sports stadiums has begun to fall apart again, and government funding for stadiums is once again a matter of heated public debate. Sullivan himself, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College in New York, is clearly skeptical about public spending on stadiums, noting that the Yankees benefit more from having their stadium in the Bronx than does New York City. Except for the wealthy, he argues, baseball stadiums mainly carry a symbolic value for the city's residents, yielding little economic benefit. But as Sullivan's own evident love for the game shows—his book is awash in World Series statistics—symbols can carry a lot of weight. Sullivan's scholarly book will be more appealing to intellectual baseball fans and urban history enthusiasts than to the riotous weekend crowd in Yankee Stadium's bleachers. (Apr.)
