Modern readers may take it for granted that the playing fields of professional baseball stadiums all look pretty much the same. It wasn’t always that way. Home field advantage once meant more than being in familiar surroundings supported by loyal fans. It could also mean knowing where the furrows were under the tall grass, or that you could safely bunt because the foul lines had been molded to keep balls in play. Such were the conditions of play at the turn of the 20th century. How we got from there to here, though the lives of two landscaping brothers, is the ostensible arc of Morris’ book. It sounds inviting, and offers quite a lot of detail of interest, but in the end is a history that reveals how little we actually know.
Morris is something of a prolific baseball researcher and writer, with five other books to his name, most published in the first decade of the 2000s. His directness and clarity make for easy reading. Unfortunately, his subject is not well represented in the literature and Morris is repeatedly left to speculating, both on his subjects, and on many causes of changes to landscaping practices.
The Introduction lays out the themes of the manuscript, including a call to remember what was once of great importance to many Americans—the state of the soil. Until the mid-20th century, the majority of citizens were farmers and at least in the early years not very good ones. Because land was plentiful, and labor was not, the most rapacious methods of cultivation were employed on the assumption that once exhausted, new fields were available just over the horizon. Apparently, it was cheaper and easier to clear new land than to keep cleared land fertile, but as the frontier began to recede, many American minds bent to the task of improving farming methods. As much of rural America was constantly on the move, baseball fields for farming communities would have been temporary affairs on any available land. Regulation baseball fields, on the other hand, were markers of permanence, of people and settlements that could return again and again to the same spot for a game of ball, of people who had time and finances to invest in leisure. These were the products of town or city dwellers. Morris argues that baseball won the day among ball games because the game had less demanding land requirements than cricket, which required a larger playing field and more maintenance. Given the many other variables at play, it seems unlikely that land considerations alone were the deciding difference. (Kaufman and Patterson suggest that as cricket was walled-off as a marker of social prestige, baseball became the preferred game of the middle and lower classes.)
Chapter One lays out the socioeconomic conditions of 19th century America as a backdrop to what follows in later chapters. Most relevant to Morris’ story is the arrival of a pair of Irish immigrants whose children (Tom and John Murphy) are the book’s protagonists. The overarching theme here is urbanization and the resulting difficulties of settling large numbers of rural immigrants in the newly emergent metropolises. An interesting wrinkle, barely touched upon, is the mid-19th century parks movement, which sought to preserve undeveloped urban plots as spaces of psychological solace for those living within environments of roads and buildings and conveyances. A number of baseball clubs tried using these parks as fields. Many were run off as a result of broken windows and rowdyism.
Chapter Two finally gets down to baseball and discussion of the many difficulties 19th century clubs had in finding and maintaining suitable fields. The ideal location was not a clearing in the forest, but a piece of land that had been cleared of tree stumps, large stones, and other obstructions, that was relatively level, and in which the grass was kept cut. But precisely this kind of land was valuable to commercial interests and was often quickly appropriated and built on. In some cities, clubs gained permission to play in new city parks, but they were not welcome long for obvious reasons, including boisterous behavior, damages to the park grounds, and broken windows in neighboring buildings. Clubs began moving outside city centers but were often tenants whose contracts could be cancelled midseason. When moving to the outskirts, the club had to bear two calculations in mind: which way was growth headed, and would they be close enough to attract an audience? Even the best fields were not ideal by today’s standards. Many were not level and included hillocks or gullies, some were soggy and filled with water after rain, while others had infields of soft or pebbly soil. Ground rules referred literally to rules peculiar to a particular field and dealt with such things as how to play balls that hit trees, fell into streams, got lost in high grass, or came in contact with spectators, who often sat or stood very close to the game. Managerial strategy was affected by decisions about which players could best navigate the terrain. Even today the visiting club may suffer the disadvantage of travel exhaustion, but in 19th century the home club suffered exhaustion from groundskeeping duties.
Chapter Three opens with the acknowledgment that little is known of the early life and training of the Irish landscaper Tom Murphy, before moving on to discuss the team he worked for and how it symbolized something of the age it dominated. Morris doesn’t get around to the idea until much later in the chapter, but sharp readers will pick up on the fact that baseball, and the Orioles in particular, were symptomatic of larger socioeconomic forces, most especially the devaluing of virtue in the rush to riches. The late 19th century was an era of robber barons and monopolies, when making money—and lots of it—overshadowed empathy, fairness and respect. This was reflected in baseball in the way words such as aggressiveness and hustle, formerly descriptive of ungentlemanly deportment, now became emblems of a win-at-all-costs attitude. Murphy was employed to shape the Orioles’ home field to maximum winning advantage. The infield foul lines were moulded to keep bunts in fair territory. The ground in front of home plate was packed hard to facilitate bouncing balls over the heads of infielders. The home-to-first-base path was given a slight downward slope. The outfield grass was allowed to grow to mask furrows and small rises. Presumably such manipulative practices spread to other teams and fields, but Morris focuses exclusively on the Orioles, who during 1894-98 had an amazing home record of 264-73, a winning rate of 783%. Things turned against the Orioles, and the monopolies, when audiences realized stolen victories were hollow victories. Morris outlines three major changes enacted at this juncture, brought about by the pressure of competition from the newly formed American league, to help restore a sense of fairness, on and off the field. These included rules to prevent the doctoring of playing fields and the addition of a second umpire. The third change appears to be no change at all, but the thwarting of an effort by a group of team owners to further monopolize ownership.
Chapter Four then picks up in 1885 with Tom Murphy’s brother, John, who in the following thirteen years worked for at least as many teams. The documentary evidence is paltry and circumstantial, forcing Morris to speculate frequently about John’s actual whereabouts and achievements. Morris concludes that John’s frequent change of employers was a result of his self-regard as a groundskeeper and the difficulty of finding an owner respectful of his abilities. That he was rarely out of work was evidence of his skills. Of singular importance in this era, Morris argues, was the ability to control flooding. As teams were forced out of urban centers, they often ended up in low lands prone to flooding, either from nearby waterways or from rain. In 1884, a St. Louis groundskeeper began using tarpaulin to protect parts of the infield from rain, but that still left large areas of the field uncovered. Drying techniques included burning oil or gasoline, as well as the liberal application of sawdust, a practice that Morris sees tied to the introduction of the pitcher’s mound (which was not fixed in height until 1950) and the frequent attempt to wrest advantage from the adjustment of the same.
Chapters Five, Six and Seven are quite short, profiling the employment trajectories of our fraternal subjects, Tom and John Murphy. Given the absence of sources, Morris’ account amounts to little more than a list of years and clubs. The chapters are padded out with a brief recounting of the formation of the American league at the turn of the century, and a brief recapitulation of Pittsburgh's turn-of-the-century ballfields. In between we learn of the arrest and conviction of brother Tom for a baseball bat assault on the brother of Connie Mack.
By the time we get to Chapter Eight, John is working again in New York, presenting Morris the opportunity to diverge at length on the history of New York ballparks, including the development of the Polo Grounds, a facility which initially was large enough to accommodate two full-sized baseball fields, and which actually did that for some time. Owner John B. Day strung a canvas sheet to separate the outfields used by his two clubs, one American Association, one National League, with the result that on occasion balls hit to the outfield might roll into the outfield play of the neighboring field. Typical problems in New York were not unlike problems discussed earlier, such as the lack of land for constructing ball fields, the poor quality of and lack of transport to land that was available, short term leases that could be—and sometimes were—terminated midseason, and flooding. Particular to New York were fields that were at one time used as landfills, smelled of garbage, and subject to miasmas in heavy rain, and another field that was literally blasted out of rock with dynamite.
On the introduction of ticketing, Morris cites George Kirsch on the persuasive argument of fees for fields. Apparently, fans were reluctant to spend money on something that used to be free, but were won over by the idea that owners needed the money to maintain stadia. In fact, as Morris notes, most owners were reluctant to invest in structures and locations they saw as temporary, subject to being burned down, flooded, or appropriated by more powerful political or business interests. It was perhaps, Morris suggests, the foresight in seeing that expensive and extensive developments might actually help secure a plot of land that changed the ways of owners, beginning with the Giants’ John T. Brush, responsible for raising baseball’s first steel and concrete stadium at the Polo Grounds in 1911.
Chapters Nine and Ten give us more detail on John Murphy than all of the past eight chapters combined. Hired by Brush to look after the Polo Grounds, his work began to be noticed not just by locals, but by visiting press, who wrote glowing descriptions of Murphy’s manicured fields. Morris includes a number of extended quotes from these reports to provide the reader with a sense of how impressive his work must have been. As a result, Murphy became a travelling consultant, hired by owners from around the country to assist local groundskeepers achieve similar effects. At the Polo Grounds, he had a small staff to help with the more labor intensive seasons and tasks, and feeling secure in his work and his finances (he was rumored to make as much as some of the league’s best players), he married. In 1908 the Giants began an 11-year spring training residence in Marlin, Texas. As with their home playing fields, most teams never invested in spring training facilities and generally changed location year-to-year, but the Giants invested in Marlin, principally through the work of Murphy, who was able to grow grass where not much had grown before.
The chronology of the Murphy brothers concludes in Chapter 11. Tom was released from prison a couple of months before the end of his three-year sentence and fairly disappears from the historical record, while brother John, still employed by the Giants, suffered a fatal heart attack in 1913 at the age of 57. Chapter Twelve purports to be a summary of the Murphy brothers’ legacy, but by now you realize Morris is padding out the book; the ostensible topic might take all of three paragraphs to conclude. Instead we’re treated to a review of post-Murphy developments in baseball groundskeeping, including the move to steel and concrete stadiums, the growing need and presence of automobile parking, rules requiring the provision of locker rooms, introduction of infield warning tracks in the 1940s, advances in tarpaulin technology, and the adoption of the outdoor batting cage.
The Epilog is perhaps even more ambitious in scope, seeking to place the Murphy story within the context of not only recorded baseball, but all of American history as well. It’s a finely written chapter that could pretty much stand on it’s own as an extended essay, but here it seems out of place, as if the author and publisher are grasping at relevance. Morris himself acknowledges as much:
It may seem a gross overstatement to imply a relationship between the literal and tangible playing fields that the Murphy brothers worked on so assiduously and the metaphorical “level playing field” created when Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier.
But a writer’s job is to convince you otherwise. Morris does a fine job relaying what facts are available. The problem is trying to build a book out of so few. An Afterword provides a review of the sleuthing involved and is of interest to historians and those curious about their craft. Altogether, Level Playing Field was an interesting read that left me wanting to know more about Murphy’s contemporaries, none of which, as I recall, make an appearance in this book.
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