Context

Sometimes, the ballpark made the player. Think Babe Ruth and Yankee Stadium or Wally Moon and the Coliseum. Other times, the ballpark provided context signaling city, team and player. Think anyone at Wrigley Field. Think anyone at Comiskey Park, but, most of all, think Minnie Minoso. The connection between player and ballpark was made obvious again this week with all those clips showing what made Minoso a fan favorite on the South Side. With No. 9 in home pinstripes, he could only be hitting, running, sliding in the confines of the Baseball Palace of the World. The arches, church-window like in form, showed the world that here was a green cathedral, as Philip Lowry would have it. This week, somebody on eBay sold a snapshot of Ruth batting at Comiskey Park in July of 1925. You can tell it’s Ruth from the silhouette, the ballpark from the arches in the background. According to the seller, Ruth was about to hit a homerun. He did it often enough in Chicago that Charles Comiskey expanded the park for the 1927 season by extending the upper deck around the entire perimeter. If Comiskey couldn’t assemble a Murderers’ Row of his own, he could let Sox fans watch the Bronx version when it came to town. Two weeks ago, the Sox assembled a kind of memorial to Minoso—in the parking lot the site of Minoso’s ballpark. There were no arches to provide a familiar backdrop, just plenty of asphalt.