-- at 8:00 p.m. eastern, a conversation about betraying abraham lincoln on the strange -- on the stage. lynn vincent and sarah vladek speak about their book, indianapolis: the true story on the worst see disaster. >> thanks. i want to thank the library for putting on this event, the library board, jonathan and the staff who work with us who she mentioned as well. the library is a fantastic institution. we are lucky to have it. look at this awesome auditorium. speaking of great public spaces, this is one. >> libraries and ballparks. two the most important things in the city. >> you have had this incredibly distinguished career, as an

architectural critic. people are here to hear you talk about kauffman stadium. have you talked to the audience about who you are and what you have done prior to writing about ballparks, which is a long story? >> i have spent most of my life -- i have been lucky because i have spent my life about what interests me, but i guess so have you. >> i try. or i guess about what pisses me off. off --her it passes you whether it pisses you off or you like it. i am not very good at making choices. i found a place where my interests intersect. >> did you study architecture? >> i studied architectural history. i went to yale, a place where those of you went to princeton do not always acknowledge. .> i heard about it

in connecticut? >> a place called connecticut. i struggled -- i studied architectural history. i then began a career as a journalist. i toyed with going to architecture school. i thought the world had enough second rate architects and did not need another. did think i was a pretty decent writer. working at that like the new yorker? >> that was the second chapter of my career. i started at the new york times. >> we can talk about either one. what is the difference between working at the times and the new yorker? two great institutions. -- the newerence york times is like a huge university. it does everything and has range, people and a huge but not everybody is necessarily

-- >> there are some stoners. >> right. it is a mixed bag. everyone is at a certain level but not necessarily the most amazing. the new yorker was like a small liberal arts college where everybody was as good as the best people in the big university. that is how it went -- how i'd felt to me when i went from one to the other. had a great time there. you have an office in the old building? >> i moved over in the late 1990's when they were on 43rd street. i was in the second old building. they had moved the murals. >> maybe you can tell everyone about that. paul: a cartoonist famously started drawing on the walls. they were kept as the sacred object. when the new yorker emerged

managedhe street, they to cut it out of the wall and take it across the street. bought by the was newhouse family, which owned conde nast, the magazine company. for several years, they allowed it to operate as a separate entity. and then gradually, they started folding it into the rest of the magazine company to save money on back office stuff and accounting. into theit moved headquarters of conde nast and became not quite just another egg is in but not quite as special. >> i have been to the of this is in the replacement of the world trade center. loved was things i the research you did into the earliest ballparks and how

emphatic you are they baseball is an urban game. not a game played in iowa cornfields. >> despite field of dreams, which is everyone's favorite tearjerker. it is not an accurate statement of what baseball has been about. >> i am in the midwesterner, so i am fine about that -- fine with that. the beginnings -- maybe specifically a new york game. talked about-- you how they were 100 baseball teams in brooklyn new york by 1858. >> new york was a huge center of baseball. it was a game that in the early years really grew big in a lot of the both northeastern and midwestern industrial cities. bywas played a lot working-class immigrants. brooklyn had all of these teams. they were sometimes made up of in a.thin a few blocks

residential area sometimes they were connected with a factory. whichse early chapters, was totally new information. stuff that was -- that i did not know it all. it was connected with the population growth of brooklyn. you talked about how brooklyn was 25,000 people in 1835. there were 250000 and 1855. it is interesting to me how you talk about the connection between immigrants and this american pastime that is so important to us now. paul: absolutely. the other thing that was -- it was one of the things that was fascinating to me as well. game was built on -- if you say immigrant laborers, but immigrant players.

years, it transitioned into being a spectator sport, but it did not start out that way. it started as a thing people played. it got more and more organized. people started going to see it. a lot of the early games of the new york teams, they played across the hudson river in hoboken on a field that was called elysian field. but then, -- >> you mentioned they played a lot of games in medicine square. i was like, that is where madison square garden is. >> no. the first medicine -- the first madison square garden was at medicine square -- was at madison square. they moved away because development was coming up around it.

-- the scenea lot of -- the theme of the book is how baseball is a city game. nevertheless, it came to be played on the outskirts because even in those 19th deck those 19th century years, land was cheap, cities were developing really fast. you did not put a bowl field right -- a ballfield in the center of the business district next to the bank. you needed more land. it was too expensive. they would be on the edge, but the cities were growing so fast that those parcels of land were often surrounded by development and became in the center of a neighborhood. fenway park is a good example. host: and we are -- >> and we are going to get to that. speaking of immigrants, you have some interesting facts we talk about the bifurcated world of baseball.

in a yearbook, one half -- in your book, one half of this world is separated by a german immigrant who bought the st. louis browns in the 1880's. story.his is a great it is a missouri story even though it is the other side of the state. chris vander i was a tavern owner. >> go ahead. he had a beer station in the outfield should -- in the outfield. paul: he thought it would be a great way to sell more beer. he opened up a branch of his tavern. a little beer garden in the outfield that would be a branch of his tavern from down the street. he was good at cross marketing because he also had the waiters in the actual tavern dressed up in browns uniforms. he was pushing both directions.

things toot of other entertain people. billed the ballpark as the coney island of the west. it was all about entertainment. if we think there is too much distraction in ballparks today, it has a long history. >> but he was like a working-class -- he wanted a working-class audience. he kept ticket prices down to a quarter. he served beer. he did all this other stuff. paul: it was all about entertaining the working-class. >> and i was like american league. paul: he was part of a group of teams that were officially called the american association. it was colloquially known as the beer and whiskey league. >> that is the league i want to be in. paul: the beer and whiskey league was a cool thing.

theopposite number was national league. the american association is not the root of today's american leak. the national league is the root. out trying to push baseball in the opposite direction. it was all about making it more -- >> presbyterian. paul: exclusive, virtuous. there was no baseball played on sunday. there was no alcohol served in any of the ballparks. it was all about how baseball represents virtue and uprightness and every noble thing in the american character. but a lot of those things were code words for a certain kind of elitism. in keeping out the riffraff and so forth. they would allow the riffraff in where they could make money from them.

in many of the ballparks, particularly the national league ones, there was a very rigid economic segregation. the bleachers were completely separate from the rest of the ballpark. you could not walk from a cheap seat into the grandstand area. you had a separate entrance, separate bathrooms. rigid economic segregation. some of that to be fair was kind of the weird way people did things in those days. housed metropolitan opera in new york, which was built in 1883, around the time baseball was getting bigger and bigger and a lot of the stuff we are talking about was happening, the upper balcony, the cheapest seats were called the family circle. you entered them through a separate door on the street through their own lobby and the rn -- and their own staircase.

it never connected to the main lobby so the fancy people did not have to mix with the poor people upstairs. there was an expectation of economic segregation in those days that was considered strangely normal by both sides of the equation for a well. -- wer avatars for that know in kansas city, i think good comes from chicago. william hobart who owned the chicago white sox. paul: he was the founder of the national league. >> and albert spalding. paul: he founded spalding sporting-goods. they were the great advocates of the national league and virtue and -- and the kind of mythology that led to ultimately field of dreams and stuff like that. >> you have some of his writing should paul: he was wet -- you have some of his writing in the

book. paul: he was wildly over the top about character and manhood. was laterd to what revealed to be an entirely and fake history of the origins of baseball. the national league commissioned a study or all of major league baseball studied commission on major league baseball that determined it was invented by this man named abner doubleday fields in rural cooperstown, new york. baseball was started and subsequently started. that was basically a fiction created to further this myth of rural virtue because in -- because cities were considered dirty and messy and full of immigrants and all that.

this noble game could not possibly have had its roots there. so they devise history. it carried the day enough to get the hall of fame built in cooperstown. even the hall of fame itself has acknowledged that it is pretty much made up. >> what is thought to be the actual origins? i do not know. paul: there is a wonderful guy named john thorne who is a fantastic writer who is the official historian of major league baseball who wrote a book called, baseball in the garden of eden. it traces how the game developed. developed from many games, some of which are english games look not only cricket but rounders. there were different versions played in different areas. a lot of it was in new england. >> there is no james naismith

should -- james naismith. paul: there is no single moment like james naismith with basketball. bennett all gradually came together -- then it all gradually came together as a cup more popular. there was one set of rules played in new york and in boston. at one point as the game came more and more common and popular, and intercity games begin to be played, there was a kind of summit meeting and they actually brought together representatives of teams from various cities into new york. they agreed on codifying a set of rules. if i remember correctly, i think the number of innings was not nine everywhere. certain other key things. different versions were played differently. beginning in the mid-19th century onward, those things

were more codified. >> all right. there is a section in your book after the part we are talking about which you call the golden age. i want to talk about that. when did the golden age of american ballparks arrive and why was it golden? paul: i guess i should say first there was an age before the golden age. as things were getting bigger and baseball was becoming more sport, and a spectator the fields with the few seats became more elaborate. >> and started burning down. paul: and started burning down. the most elaborate was this amazing thing in boston called south end grounds that had these huge victorian towers. >> a beautiful picture. paul: it only lasted something like eight or nine years and it

burned down. the owners had underinsured it so they could not afford to rebuild it. fireproofs construction became possible, steel, concrete, they began to be built that way. baseball was becoming bigger. >> it was essentially our only professional sport in this country. mel: another thing -- let digress for half a second to say that another thing that contributed to its growth -- and this is another wonderful reminder of how baseball connects to everything -- was the development of intercity train service. it was when there were train connections between various cities that the leagues really developed and professional baseball -- >> meeting they could travel to

places. -- meaning they could not to places. paul: a team in brooklyn could really only play and other team in oakland or maybe across the river -- in brooklyn or maybe across the river in new york. you cannot really play a team in chicago it was going to take three or four days to get there. you could not have a reliable schedule. once there was intercity train service, everything began to fall into place and real modern baseball developed. ahead, it was only at the moment of jet travel permitting fast coast-to-coast travel in this country that baseball, major league baseball, expanded to california. it is not an accident those things coincided. --these classic stadiums

most of these will be familiar. habit field. we know about wrigley in chicago. shy park. paul: i wish i brought pictures because shy bark is incredible. park was 1909. it was one of the earliest of the golden age. one of the most ornate. elaboratee an beaux-arts building on the outside. then you go through this huge rotunda and you are in the field. as you select from the other side, it was just a field. if you sell it from the -- if you salt it from the home plate side, you could have thought it was an upper house. an incredibly important moment in the evolution of this. and then of course came forbes field in pittsburgh. fenway, tiger stadium,

wrigley. >> which of those is the greatest? what are your standards of judgment? you do develop a clear way of thinking. maybe you could explain that to people, like what you think is good. paul: it is a combination of things. first, on the exterior, is it a nice piece of civic architecture that feels at home in the city? because a ballpark, other things is an important part of public space. along with parks we were beginning to develop in the mid-19th century and even cemeteries, the ballpark was one of the ways in which working-class immigrants or working-class people in general could experience some bit of the countryside.

if you worked in factory, you probably worked six days a week, had nothing but sundays off. you had no way to go to the country. going to the ballpark was one of the experiences you could have. that is another reason the national league's ban on sunday games had a whole other agenda. it was about keeping immigrants out. there is also the field itself and the seating and how close you felt to the action. how well you sell it and the weight -- how well you saw it. >> one of the things that is remarkable to me of these fields, i have been to fenway. i have jogged around wrigley. it is amazing to me how much it fits into the neighborhood it is in. it does not feel over imposing. it is right there. i expected it to be a big deal. i was like, it is a building.

paul: you have this enormous thing that seats 40,000 people. and yet, it sits there with all these houses around it. it seems absolutely normal. you put it very well by saying that. probably -- although i never saw it -- maybe it's field was the best of all. >> it is so legendary because it was lost. paul: partly. a lot of important history happened there. isis everyone know what it -- does everyone know what it is? paul: major-league baseball was integrated because jackie robinson -- let the record show -- seen by the dodgers when he league in the negro kansas city. kansas city plays an important role in that history. probably the very

best. both because of its history and its physical qualities. >> there are funny things were kid thatcrew things up the one -- things up. that the one where they had only one entrance? paul: it was a rotunda and it was designed to small. -- designed too small. >> you could not get in. paul: it would never pass the fire laws. they made some tweaks. they also forgot a pressbox, which is interesting. all of that eventually got taken care of. while theyallparks, were grand and beautiful buildings, also were creatures of circumstance. determined byere the streets of the neighborhood

or how much land the owners could buy. hadfith in washington, d.c. an amazing notch cut out of right field because there were two houses that would not sell. they shaped it around. it was far enough out. >> like that bugs bunny cartoon where he refuses to sell his house. paul: right. the most famous example is the green monster at fenway, which has to do with the way a street cut close to the edge of the site and could not allow the field as much space in left field as in right field. that asymmetry and difference and idiosyncrasy is a key part of baseball and baseball history. unlike a hockey rink or basketball --

>> that is like your thesis should -- your thesis. paul: the diamond is exact and precise. the outfield varies. there are kind of no rules about the outfield. theoretically, it could go on forever. >> like the polo grounds. [indiscernible] paul: there are no absolute rules. all of those parks had their idiosyncrasies and were strange as you mentioned. as the book progresses, we enter what i call the empire strikes stadiums,of baseball which you call the era of concrete donuts beginning in the 1950's. can you set that up? paul: you just said all that needs to be said. another part of the thesis of the book is baseball reflects

our whole cultural attitude about cities over the years. were everywhere in this country pretty much rejecting cities and moving out whatever the automobile would take us in the postwar era, we started moving baseball out too. >> cleveland's mistake by the lake. >> cleveland's mistake by the lake is almost in category by itself. what it actually did -- it is actually the beginning of very carnations trend, which was municipal financing of stadiums which nobody else was doing then and cleveland just decided to do it. it opened a lot of bad doors. it was not a good stadium because it was far too big.

it was bad on so many levels. movie,ead to one great which i just recently watched with my son. major-league holds up. donutse other concrete that read the most egregious offenders? >> probably rfk in washington, veterans stadium in philadelphia. three rivers in pittsburgh. candlestick in san francisco. truly horrible place. there were plenty of others. even worse was the later part of that generation when they foolishly thought that the way to solve the problems of those things was to put roofs on them so we cut things like the king dome in seattle, which is truly

the worst place in which i have ever seen a baseball game in my life. and many others. that was a grim time. myth -- io based on a am talking a lot about myths tonight. >> baseball is about myth. paul: there are good myths and bad myths. maybe i should have said fallacy. the fallacy that you can have football and baseball in the same ballpark. compromisingthout both of them a lot. >> here is where we come off looking semi-decent. we did not do this. paul: kansas city was the only city in america in the 1970's actually in that it is the only place other than l.a. where -- dodger stadium was built for baseball only.

in the postwar era for several decades, only dodger stadium and arrowhead andy kaufman -- and kaufman were billed as baseball only places. everybody else thought you could do it all in the same stadium. we got this whole generation of truly horrible places. complementary of the architecture. you point out that one of the things it does not do is be a regular. what are the things that you think are good about kaufman? mixed about it. the first thing that has to be said as it was built as a baseball park, not a multipurpose stadium. kansas city deserves credit for making that decision. then, there is a beautiful lyrical flow to the way the

walls curve down. it is quite lovely, really. if you see it from the home plate side, it looks a little more like a big out crate -- big concrete stadiums. they have done a lot of work on it in the last generation when the team decided to stay there. is more comfortable in some ways then it was before -- some ways than it was before. the nicest thing is the lyrical thing in the outfield. and then the waterfall and the scoreboard and all that stuff, which is kind of a cool relic of a certain mid century style that i like a lot. not though i like it, i do like it so much i would argue against a downtown stadium.

>> we are getting there. i would love there to be a downs down -- a downtown stadium. happened wasg that camden yards. you spent a lot time -- a lot of time talking about camden yards. paul: camden yards is transformational. >> how many people have been to camden yards? a lot. oriolese baltimore completely changed baseball in 1992 with the opening of that ballpark. in theed their ass playoffs. paul: unfortunately, good architecture is not a guarantee of good baseball. that is a whole other discussion. building type evolves a certain amount. libraries, hospitals, schools, houses. everything changes over time.

baseball parks are the only example i can think of where one single building completely turned around a whole way of building things 180 degrees. >> everyone started building downtown after that. paul: most built downtown. everybody started building baseball only and fairly traditional in layout, often more eccentric and idiosyncratic, which it very much is. >> my wife is from san francisco. being able to hit a homerun into the ocean is awesome. paul: san francisco went from having one of the worst ballparks to one of the best. leaping over everyone else in one fell swoop. camden yards was transformational. it really was. >> is that an hok stadium? paul: it is an hok stadium. designed out of kansas city.

>> so we have this amazing design firm and this long tradition. you are very emphatic about how important it has been. i'm going to quote you. by happenstance, kansas city became the nation's center for sports architecture. many of the architectural designs for sports facilities all over the world would emerge from this medium-sized midwest city that otherwise had no claim as an architectural center. elaborate. is this good? why did they get all that business? back to kind of goes the arrowhead kaufman complex. done -- was originally when that was originally done, the basic idea is done by an amed charlesn

deaton who came up with a notion of a rolling roof. >> we talk about all the time. paul: that would sit in between the two stadiums and could roll in one direction or the other depending on which one was in use. when it was not in use on either one, it would be in the center and create covered plaza. -- create a covered plaza. that was the early 1970's when no one was doing anything remotely like that. everybody said this is really cool. they started building it and not only was the technology not fully there to do it easily, and it was going to be quite a bit more expensive than the county had anticipated. it was engineered out. by then, they had already begun to build the two separate stadiums so they kept going. charles deaton ended up working

for a local firm which then merged with another firm. it got so much attention that they started getting other jobs to do ballparks and other athletic facilities. they attracted the attention of hok, which is an international firm that happens to be st. louis-based that was not strong in sports architecture. they said, why don't you let us buy you and become part of us? we will be sports architects. you guys can keep doing it. several of the architects said ok. they became the sports division of hok but set the division -- the condition they would remain in kansas city. smart, aggressive and got an enormous amount of work.

and just kept growing. there are not all that many ballparks and arenas in football stadiums that get built. thoughot as low -- as houses and schools. it is not as though we need 100 different architecture firms doing them. 90 of them would be out of work most of the time. specialized.nd they were able to say to clients, we know how all this stuff works. indeed they do. that firm over the years eventually broke away from the changedirm hok and then its name to populace. they are still across the street. made kansas city as i said, the world capital. sports architecture is one of the major exports of kansas city. upwe are going to open this

for questions in just one second. i'm going to try to end this at 7:30 so you can sign. time when i want you to talk about the downtown stadium in kansas city that we should have built. i think -- it would be awfully hard for kansas city -- >> get that firm from denver. paul: there are a couple of other people doing stuff. the rather interesting and talented new york architect is doing the new ballpark for oakland, which is one of the most interesting and promising projects around. some wonderfulne stuff including the ballpark that i think is my very favorite among relatively recent ones, asch is pnc in pittsburgh,

well as camden yards, san francisco, which is fantastic and quite a number of others. thatuld be hard to imagine the team would not select the local architect and happens to also be the most famous sports architecture firm in the world. it is not like they would say, -- these are just local guys. we better go do some big guys from new york and chicago when the biggest people happen to be the local people. the big question about a downtown bar part is not who the architect would be but precisely where the site should be and how it would be paid for. question ite is no is the right thing for kansas city to do. the thing that is least appealing about kaufman is the location. >> there never was any economic

development around the stadium. paul: kind of a nowhere place. you have to drive to and from it. it is surrounded by a sea of asphalt parking spaces. it is not connected to anything. in the yearsseen since baltimore is how beautifully baseball integrates into a whole urban fabric. people want that. they like it. they love being able to walk or take a streetcar to a game. they love being able to have something to eat, drink, go to other places, combine it with other things. things werethose available at the old metropolitan stadium, which i never saw -- which i never saw kid -- which i never saw. paul: 22nd in brooklyn. >> that was the site of baseball stadiums in kansas city up until

the 1970's. the chiefs played their the last time they -- played there the last time they won the super bowl. paul: underscoring the point that a good ballpark is not going to work for football. municipal stadium was so much a baseball park. so completely and so good a baseball park that to make it tok for football, they had put huge rows of temporary seating into the outfield on one side. as a result of that, the chiefs could not play any home games for the first month of the season. wait for the baseball season to end before they could actually convert it to football use because it was so much of a natural baseball park. >> this is part of what your

book is about. if you have a question, step up to the microphone. walk right up here. about has told me stories going to that stadium when the a's were leaving and nobody was there. hitting a whole pile of fall balls -- of foul ball's. he would run around and pick them up. here we have our questioners. haveam from chicago, but been here 10 years. i'm fully behind the local team. how much would you say the longevity of wrigley field and fenway park has to do with their locations? [indiscernible] kerman ski park closed.

that was traumatic for a lot of white sox fans. sound into there neighborhood. -- are sewn into the neighborhood. paul: completely. it is a lot of different historical circumstances that led those all parts to be retained. we almost lost fenway. the red sox under the previous ownership were working on plans to replace it. -- there ise team no certainty what would have happened -- but ultimately, they sold the team. decidedequent ownership that was crazy and they had a great asset. if only they could upgrade it -- modernize it generally denies it gently little bit, which turned out to be the case.

chicago is beautifully integrated in to the neighborhood. it remains one of the most beloved places there is. on the other hand, so are other places we were not lucky enough to keep. it is ironic that everts field in brooklyn was lost. it could be spectacular today. it went in the 1950's partly because nobody cared about brooklyn and the fan base had moved to the suburbs. today, everyone wants to be in brooklyn. ballpark that was even better than wrigley and fenway, it would probably be the nicest place of all. it is always many factors. location is a big part of it. >> i know about the multipurpose teams like pittsburgh and cincinnati. they knocked those downs and built separate baseball and

football stadiums. here, we already have separate stadiums. if we were to build the ballpark downtown, where they necessarily follow with football or would they leave arrowhead where it is? >> i am quite sure they would leave arrowhead where it is. my understanding is the chiefs acquire --ly -- 122 wanted to acquire kaufman as a practice field. they would use it as a practice field. that is one reason. the other is that football does not fit downtown the way baseball does. >> football, you want a huge parking lot. paul: there are several reasons and tailgating is a very important one of those reasons. it is part of a culture of football. people do tailgate in the parking lot and so forth.

also, a football stadium is invariably bigger. therefore, i think a little more intrusive in city. a baseball park -- it is hardly small. it is just enough smaller that it fits into a city nicely. the final reason that may be the ist important, -- that maybe the most important, a football stadium is used eight times a year. a baseball park is used at a minimum 81 times as year. the thing that kills a city is dead things that are not operating. --is enough that we have every city needs a convention center, but they are big boxes that are empty often. we do not want another big empty thing. be,trong argument would leave arrowhead where it is. let them take over the whole complex and move the royals into

downtown. >> whenever i see the proposals for a downtown ballpark, there are the negative comments, what will people do for parking? paul: they will figure it out. san francisco has minimal parking and it seems to work. most of them do. you're going to have -- more and more people living downtown and more and more people will walk or they will park in outlying areas or have a shuttle. it will work. well in aorked so dozen or more other cities including houston, which is one

of the most automobile centric cities in the world and they moved from the astrodome into downtown. it would work hereto. -- work here too. >> in your book, you argue the original design for camden was going to be another concrete dome. without the pushback of jacob have had ad we proliferation of concrete domes? paul: that is an interesting question. it is definitely true the first scheme hok presented to the orioles -- it was not a dome, but it was a more traditional concrete open stadium. the owner of the orioles said to me, i think what they did was fun to chicago and give that to the white sox. the new kaminski park looked a like what they tried to sell.

it opened the year before. it is possible given that it did take longer to build the baltimore one. but then they got it. they produced something quite wonderful. happened,d not somewhere, something else would have happened because we were beginning to experience a huge resurgence of downtown living, downtown working, downtown entertainment and so forth. it might not have happened in baltimore in -- in 1992. it could have happened in another city five years later. some other team would have said at some point, we do not want a concrete donut that looks like a freeway overpass. we want a real baseball park. architects would have ultimately i think responded. knowis -- we will never

100% because what happened happened. >> the customer did not want the product. in all of architecture, what clients want matters. people at things the populace are proudest of is that they serve their clients. they do what their clients want. they had a very enlightened client who wanted something important. downtownint about revivals, which is happening anyway, it would have made its way into baseball somewhere. it is one of the reasons i feel for kansas city. maybe it is just as well it did not happen 15 years ago when there was a minor push to move the royals downtown. i do not know that downtown kansas city was truly ready for

it yet. we might have expected or you might have expected too much from a ballpark. downtown. what it can do is the a fantastic reinforcement of a larger revival and make it even stronger and push it forward even more and connect all the other things happening. today as opposed to 15 years ago, there are so mean more people living in downtown kansas city. there are more people working. there are whole new neighborhoods that are developing. the whole momentum of the city is more focused downtown than it used to be. in fact, now, it would not be on the shoulders of a ballpark to

turn around a downtown, which it would not have succeeded in doing anyway. >> we have for two more questions. >> i am the white sox guy. your impression of the old kaminski. newthat monstrosity of the kaminski. paul: i agree with you. it is the last of the concrete donut. opened one year before camden yards and baltimore changed everything. it was out of date the minute it opened. it is a sort of said story. -- sort of sad story. i gather that a few years ago, they did some changes that people say made it a little better. i think a better way to put it, made it a little less awful. the best comment about it was from a really perceptive writer named john past year who is

another architecture writer who loves baseball. said that the front row of the upper deck is farther from old upperthan the deck in the old one. so much about baseball is about intimacy and, how can you maneuver things so the greatest number of people are the closest to the field and the most connected to the field, which is another important thing that baltimore did. they thought of that. many of the concrete donuts are truly just circles that were about this abstract shape of a big circle. you can put a diamond in it. could put a football gridiron in it. it could all be plumped into a circle. it does not work for baseball. >> very briefly, the good and bad of the old kaminski. paul: the old kaminski i thought

was funky and nice. truly not have quite the beautiful appeal of wrigley uptown. it did not have the magic of the brick wall and the ivy and that stuff. it did not integrate into the neighborhood as well. it was a wonderful ballpark. the best of those early generations of ballparks were among the only buildings ever built that combined funkiness and money mentality, 2 -- and monumentality. that one exemplified that. it was something grand and funky at the same time. i found it very likable, but not lovable as a wrigley was always lovable. it was still 100 times better than the new one. >> you get the last word.

>> lucky me. i was going to say, i agree with you on everything, actually. paul: even my wife does not agree with me on everything. >> i am better than she is. i'm all for downtown development. i would love to have a stadium downtown. we have this one cultural part of our city that has made me not towns because we are in the midwest and into barbecue. you talk about football being tailgating. but here, tailgating is a really big part of baseball. i wonder how the general public that goes to those games and tailgates and they spend hours setting up their tailgates for the royals baseball games -- and it may not matter -- and may not be as big as for the chiefs. questionis interesting

-- an interesting question. i do not have an answer to that. --ould say i'm going to defer to the local on this, actually. look, -- >> i am not a tailgater. i prefer to go to a restaurant, but i know there are a lot of people who tailgate. local. defer to the i said at the talk of the downtown council this morning enoughy city that is big to contain both arthur bryant and the nelson atkins easy him has to be more interesting -- atkins museum has to be more interesting than most cities in america. do your barbecue some other time. >> thank you. >> thank you.

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