Rating: 
Summary: A Delightful Treat!
Review: "Take Me Out To The Ballpark" is a delightful, stadium shaped book-tour through ballparks of the past and present. While focusing on major league ball parks, distinguished homes of minor and Negro league teams are also highlighted.
Almost all major league parks of the Twentieth Century are featured. Most segments combine narratives and pictures along with lists of stadium firsts and highlights.
"Take Me Out To The Ballpark" is a real treat for every baseball fan.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible!
Review: Any baseball fan will absolutely love this book! This book will stay on your sofa table at all times so it is easily accessible! Very indepth stats on ALL Baseball Stadiums! This is a MUST for the TRUE baseball fan!
Rating:
Summary: Baseball extravaganza
Review: Baseball extravaganza
Adam MacFarlaneTake Me Out To The Ballpark is probably...no IS the most detaled baseball book. It has from photos to history that goes way back to 1910! one of the best facts in it is that there is 2 W. Sox stadiums.And it shows them to!If your a baseball fan then this is gold for you! I give it a 10/10!So quit mess'n around and read this
RAD book. *
Rating: 
Summary: A Lot Of Flash
Review: I am an afficionado of ballpark books and was interested when this first came out. The odd shape of this book causes a lot of the pictures in the book to be cropped inappropriately. The size and shape of this book is very awkward. The coverage of minor league and ballpark of the past is adequate, one of the few books that pay attention to minor league ballparks. Sloppy editing let a number of reversed photographs slip through. Very annoying. This is not the best book on the market on the subject. Diamonds, Lost Ballparks, the deleted Take Me Out To The Ballpark, The Ballpark Book, Diamond Diagrams, and Green Cathedrals all surpass this volume. This book tries to touch on many ballparks without going in to much depth about history and design. Based on the price, size, shape, and content, this is not necessarily the best value for everyone. If you are just getting started exploring ballpark history, one of the other aforementioned books would be more appropriate.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Gift For Baseball Fans
Review: I consider this to be the ideal coffee table book for any baseball fan. The information contained can be enjoyed by someone with a few minutes to spare or hours of free time, and the diamond shape of the text itself makes it an interesting conversation starter. Opening the book to any page will introduce new facts and information to fans of all levels. What surprised me about this book is that it is indeed valuable on a scholarly level. From the cover, I expected it to be aimed at new-comers to baseball and/or children, with a lot of flashy (but meaningless) pictures and facts, alongside stats the average fan already knows. I quickly discovered my expectations were wrong. The book provides interesting and insightful knowledge about each ballpark featured. For instance, everyone knows where Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's record, but how many people know the winning pitcher for the 1891 season opener at Cleveland's League Park? (it was Cy Young) The two most powerful reactions I had to reading this book were an immediate need for the baseball season to begin and my own desire to visit each ballpark featured. This book is as much a promotional guide to the baseball attractions around the country as it is an informative one. So, be warned: reading this book may cause you to plan a very expensive trip in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Great Gift For Baseball Fans
Review: I consider this to be the ideal coffee table book for any baseball fan. The information contained can be enjoyed by someone with a few minutes to spare or hours of free time, and the diamond shape of the text itself makes it an interesting conversation starter. Opening the book to any page will introduce new facts and information to fans of all levels. What surprised me about this book is that it is indeed valuable on a scholarly level. From the cover, I expected it to be aimed at new-comers to baseball and/or children, with a lot of flashy (but meaningless) pictures and facts, alongside stats the average fan already knows. I quickly discovered my expectations were wrong. The book provides interesting and insightful knowledge about each ballpark featured. For instance, everyone knows where Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's record, but how many people know the winning pitcher for the 1891 season opener at Cleveland's League Park? (it was Cy Young) The two most powerful reactions I had to reading this book were an immediate need for the baseball season to begin and my own desire to visit each ballpark featured. This book is as much a promotional guide to the baseball attractions around the country as it is an informative one. So, be warned: reading this book may cause you to plan a very expensive trip in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! Informative and Great Pictures
Review: I enjoyed reading this book very much. The articles are informative and I loved some of the great pictures of ballparks around the country. It's not perfect, but i would defiantly recommend it if you enjoy classic or new ballparks. You can usually pick this up as a bargain book at a pretty good price.
Rating:
Summary: Homerun!!!
Review: I think that this is a wonderful book. I love baseball so was thrilled to be given this book as a present. You can spend hours pouring over each and every page, learning interesting facts about the ballparks where some of the most exciting games took place.
My only complaint would be the size and shape of this book. It is shaped like a ballpark and thus doesn't fit easily onto a bookshelf -which means that you have to leave it out on a desk or table. Perhaps that was the editor's idea... having it out in the open just makes it too tempting to pick up and enjoy over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: Take Me Out to the Ballpark
Review: Josh Leventhal has reseached all the ballparks from the start of the majors to present times. All the stadiums your fathers and yourselfs have grown up with are all in this book like Fenway Park in Boston and the Polo Grounds in New York. With well written information and pictures that make you feel like you have grown up with this ballpark in your own hometown. This masterpiece of a book communicates with you what it takes to own a major league ballpark in todays world. From groundskeeeping to conscession sales you will truly get the idea of how a ballpark works! This is a 5 star dream come book to baseball lovers!
Rating:
Summary: This book is a "double," not a home run
Review: Josh Leventhal's ambitious book really does make the attempt to present a lot of information about ballparks in a creative way -- but, frankly, other books accomplish the task in a more professional and complete manner. The first thing that you will notice about "Take Me Out To The Ballpark" is the shape of the book itself. The cover and the pages are indeed shaped like a baseball park, where the spine and bottom edge are straight (like the foul lines of a field) and the other edges are rounded (like the outfield wall of a symmetrical stadium). I give the author and publisher credit for a creative effort, but sometimes the rounded edges of the pages cause important portions of photographs to be cut off. It also tends to make the layout of some of the pages cluttered. While the text is enlightening, and some attempt (although not enough for my taste) is made to provide the information in a format that is consistent from park to park, it is troubling to me to see some mistakes and questionable decision making on which photos to include. For instance, an aerial shot of old Braves Field on page 20 is printed upside down (the airplane carrying the photographer was obviously beyond centerfield looking back toward home plate -- but the photo is printed on the page with home plate at the bottom of the shot). Even worse, a beautiful color shot of Camden Yards is printed backwards (i.e., the negative was turned the wrong way, making the mirror image of the scene appear in print) on page 15. Regarding the decision making on which photos to include, I offer the two-page spread on "Minor League Ballparks of the Midwest" as an example. First, I don't understand the criteria employed to select exactly which parks are included in such sections. Second, one of the four parks highlighted in this section is the fairly unremarkable Midway Stadium in St. Paul -- yet two photos of it are shown here, plus it is the stadium that adorns the front (and back) cover of the book itself. There are also two shots of Victory Field in Indianapolis, yet both shots show similar orientations of the scenery. And worst of all, there are no shots of John O'Donnell Stadium in Davenport, even though it is one of the four parks highlighted in this section. O'Donnell, which sits right on the banks of the Mississippi River, provides one of the best views in all of baseball (hence it being included in BASEBALLPARKS.COM's "Ten Must-See Parks" list), yet there are no photos at all of this park in "Take Me Out To The Ballpark." To be fair, there is a lot of enjoyable information in this book. The parks of the Majors are fairly well covered, and features on upcoming parks are also included. However, there are several other books I would recommend more highly than this one. For instance, "The Ballpark Book" by Ron Smith and published by The Sporting News, is more complete, better organized and more graphically pleasing -- and it's every bit as up-to-date. And on the topic of ballpark history, "Diamonds -- The Evolution of the Ballpark" by Michael Gershman and "Lost Ballparks" by Lawrence Ritter are more enlightening. And perhaps the best book ever written on baseball parks is "Green Cathedrals" by Philip Lowry, although this book, sadly, is now out of print. So while "Take Me Out To The Ballpark" has a great deal of interesting information and quite a few excellent photos of new and old parks, there are better books out there on baseball parks.
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