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Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: "Storied Stadiums" is the most poorly written book I've read in quite some time. To illustrate, here's one example among many:"Note merely how offspring spurred the pastime's throb. Brooklyn baseball began a century before proving that even in the fifty-second World Series-Game Seven, October 4, 1955, Brooklyn 2, Yankees 0, after losing seven straight Series, five to New York-a franchise could run into luck" (page 20). One must work extremely hard to deconstruct the author's circuitous (and sometimes inexplicable) line of thought and the device of using various song titles to introduce each section seems rather silly. Considering the author's qualifications, I would have expected a more polished and professional style. Quite disappointing on the whole.
Rating: 
Summary: This book gets an undeserved bad rap
Review: Curt, I loved Voices of the Game and Storytellers, but you lost your way on this one. How about this sentence: "Classic parks forged a Mayberry of puppies and emerald turf and picket fences and small-town marms -- frozen in amber, but fixed and sure."
WHAT? Claptrap....pure and simple....and that was only page 3.
My real favorite was "If Bogart means Key Largo, baseball can mean year." HUH? At least match the verb syntax, Curt. Fantastic research, but you need to relearn writing for the reader. For God's sake, tell your editor(s) to find a new line of work.
Rating:
Summary: Learn how to write
Review: Curt, I loved Voices of the Game and Storytellers, but you lost your way on this one. How about this sentence: "Classic parks forged a Mayberry of puppies and emerald turf and picket fences and small-town marms -- frozen in amber, but fixed and sure."
WHAT? Claptrap....pure and simple....and that was only page 3.
My real favorite was "If Bogart means Key Largo, baseball can mean year." HUH? At least match the verb syntax, Curt. Fantastic research, but you need to relearn writing for the reader. For God's sake, tell your editor(s) to find a new line of work.
Rating: 
Summary: Curt Smith's Stadium Book
Review: I don't think this is a terrific book, but I do feel that most of the other reviewers have been a tad too hard on it. Most of them make a point to mention that they've been unable to make it past page 76 or 100, but I haven't had that problem. Anyway, it takes about that long to get used to Smith's strange and sometimes baffling prose.
It's true that there are a few passages that just don't make sense, and that some historical quotes (Churchill, FDR, Jackie Gleason) lead into lists of stats without any logical segway. I'd like to make the case, however, that this book is quirky and lovable, just like the ballparks it worships.
It's not that Smith's prose is totally without rhyme or reason, but that it follows its own patterns and logic that take a long time to get used to, kind of like learning how a hard single down the left field line will strike the low wall at Fenway and carom at a right angle into shallow left field (something Hideki Matsiu has yet to grasp).
Mostly, it's just a lot of fun. The writing is a bit overcooked and flashy, but I think Smith is trying to emulate Brooklyn's radio announcer Red Barber, whose erudition he obiviously admired. Sometimes, it leaves me staring blankly at, or re-reading sentences much like when reading something as weighty as James Joyce's Ulysses. And at nearly 600 pages, I can't imagine anyone but the most addicted baseball fanatic reading all the way through it. I will have to count myself in that number, because I am tearing through this thing.
Smith does pour on the numbers with Byzantine lists of players' statistics and ballparks' dimensions, and there are many errors present, factual and typographical. As a matter of fact, the painting of the Houston Astrodome is reverse for some reason.
Either way, even if it's just because I am hugely obsessed with baseball, I love this book despite its many flaws.
Rating:
Summary: DON'T BOTHER!
Review: I only wish I had read the reviews before buying this book. Very rarely will I put a book back on the shelf without finishing it, but this book is one of those rare exceptions. It seems to me that the author has forgotten one of the most important rules in writing, "write to express, not impress." He takes so much time being clever and amusing that the true stories of these glorious stadiums are lost in unreadable rhetoric.
Rating:
Summary: Storied Stadiums in Shambles
Review: I recently purchased this book and found it to be incredibly disappointing - Baseball history through a James Joyce-ian stream of consciousness writing style that is hard to understand and harder to digest. All chapters are written in a " running dialogue" style, which causes the reader to be feel left out of the conversation. Dozens (perhaps hundreds) of unrelated and confusing comments about political issues, celebrities, etc., which badly detract from the baseball core. Additionally, MANY
inaccuracies (both statistical and factual) and typos throughout the text .....3-4 in the section about Shea Stadium from 1964-1975 alone (nothing gets past this Mets' fan!). DO NOT GO HERE if you are looking for faithful commentaries and interesting insights on historic stadiums or reliable documentation on baseball history...this book falls WAY, WAY short in both areas. I would give it 0 stars, but the ratings mandate me to give it one. Spend your money instead on " To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park - 1909-1976", a VASTLY SUPERIOR and thoughtful book, even if you do not live in/near Philadelphia (I am transplanted from North Jersey to South Jersey, but could not put the Shibe Park book down!).
Rating:
Summary: Storied Stadiums
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. I can't believe the author actally writes this way in "real life." It's full of imcomplete sentences, obscure jargon, paragraphs without transitions and a structure that defies logic. There's plenty of good information within to go with the inevitable errors of fact, but not enough to make a read worth the effort. This book, which cries out desperately for an editor, is more about the teams and pennant races than the stadiums. As Mr. Smith's former boss would say, "Read my lips. Don't buy this book."
Rating:
Summary: Is this why ballplayers are going to go on strike?
Review: Presidential speechwriter? Yikes. Poor president. Actually, I'm wondering how Mr. Smith got hired -- if he was in my English or journalism class, I'd flunk him. Like a high school newspaper reporter, he seems to have little clue when it comes to using quotes. Various sections in "Storied Stadiums" open with unrelated passages from, say, Jack Paar that Smith strains to tie into the 1940s Pittsburgh Pirates. Other times, he overaccentuates a point by dragging in a "zinger" -- usually from a modern-day sportswriter supposedly musing on days of baseball past. They're suspiciously irrelevant. Not to mention cantakerous. I don't know anyone who'd sit down with a 500-plus-page book on baseball and have any patience for Smith's seemingly drunken mumblings. I'm among the [angry] -- and I only checked out from the public library. Now I gotta carry the damn thing back.
Rating:
Summary: Great Subject, Lousy Book
Review: This book utterly failed to meet any of the expectations I had for it. The biggest and most obvious problem is that Smith adopted a writing style that is painful to read. It's like Ring Lardner or Red Smith after taking a foul ball to the head. It tries way, WAY too hard, and comes off as gimmicky. Smith also likes to use quotes for no particular purpose related to baseball history. A quote by Jackie Gleason about how he drank to get bagged leads into a note that fans went out to celebrate when the Philly Atlantics snapped the Reds 79 game winning streak. The quote is longer than the actual baseball-related text! I almost never put down a book before finishing. This was one of those times, 63 of the most painful pages I've read in some time into the book. Avoid at all costs.
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