I’ve never heard of Alex Reisner before today. My gratitude to Adam Kalsey for the link. I just now realized that Reisner’s post is from March of 2006, almost 2 years ago. But this is timeless, not timely.
What a marvelous, brief examination of history and its forces: Baseball Geography and Transportation. Effectively annotated with dated maps, in an almost schematic method, this article demonstrates the changes wrought on baseball by the move from trains to planes and automobiles. Both the distribution of teams and the shapes of stadiums were disrupted by travel methods. Obvious when you think about it…but I never have.
This is one article I would like to see expanded and fleshed out a bit more. Compare Reisner’s effort to this two-page spread in The Atlantic. Reisner did the hard work of making connections, and forcefully making his point with his illustrations. A touch more work and this goes from remarkable to simply outstanding.