Turns out, there is a way to write about Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the Polo Grounds in New York, Metropolitan Stadium in Minnesota, Municipal Stadium in Kansas City and Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis and tie it in with a barely remembered Negro League park in Memphis.
Here’s a snippet of this from my latest for The Hardball Times:
Martin Stadium’s legacy is empowered as much by what it wasn’t — a white-owned facility leased to black-owned baseball teams. Martin Stadium was built by a black Memphian, for black events — sports, concerts, rallies, community meetings — in a majority black neighborhood. For a time, it was the only black-owned park in the Negro Leagues, not to mention a source of pride among African-Americans in the South.
“Go Crazy, Folks, Go Crazy!” 