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Faithful to Fenway: Believing in Boston, Baseball, and America's Most Beloved Ballpark, by Michael Ian Borer. New York and London: New York University Press, 2008. 263pp. $18.95 paper. ISBN: 0814799779
Baseball fans have all heard stories about the mesmerizing experience of attending a ballgame at Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox. Michael Ian Borer, the author of Faithful to Fenway, explores how and why this iconic stadium has come to represent the identity of the city of Boston, while also serving as a physical location where traditions, stories, civic responsibilities, and a religious-like devotion to baseball (and the Red Sox) are shared between fans and passed down between generations.
Borer adopts a very broad agenda. He wants to find out "what Fenway park means for Boston and the people who revere the ballpark" (p. 6); and "how people use urban places to make sense of the world they live in" (p. 10). Fenway Park serves as a cultural object and a public space, and both features are central to the construction of an expansive imagined community around the Red Sox and the city of Boston.
The book's strongest attributes are its quantity and quality of information about the origins and sustenance of this historic structure in the city. Based on secondary sources, Borer details the real estate Interests underlying the development of Fenway Park...