Bethany Beach Books Meet the Author: Seth Tannenbaum

Meet Seth Tannenbaum author of "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites" at Bethany Beach Books on Saturday, June 27th at 630pm.

Celebrated as a democratic space for all Americans, the major league ballpark in fact privileged the middle and upper middle class white male fan while tacitly marginalizing poor urban residents and people of color.  Seth Tannenbaum examines how the game's economically and socially stratified system reflected changing understandings of urban space, inclusion, and the body politic.

A revealing social history, "Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites" revises the persistent myth of the ballpark as an egalitarian melting pot. 

Seth S. Tannenbaum is an assistant professor of sport studies at Manhattanville University where he teaches classes like Baseball and American Society, Spectators and Fans, Urban Sport, and American Sport History. He earned a PhD in American History at Temple University and a BA in History at Vassar College. Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth Century Ballpark, which examines Americans’ changing understandings of urban areas, inclusion, and the body politic, is his first book. It analyzes how team owners used ballparks’ designs, locations, and amenities to keep fans coming back to the park amidst significant changes in cities and in leisure consumption patterns. His other scholarship has been published in The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Sport History, Nine: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture, the Washington Post, and the Philadelphia Inquirer among a number of other venues.