The story behind the book

Sacred Grounds is the product of many things:

• A love of ballparks across America (and Toronto)

• A passion for photographing them 

• A love of baseball

• Access that the regular fan does not have 

• Relationships built over 16+ years working in the game of baseball

• A Tuesday night out at Mario’s on Pittsburgh’s Southside watching Paul Skenes pitch at Wrigley.

Here’s how it started …

The Pirates were scheduled to open the 2017 season at Fenway Park in Boston.  There aren’t many cooler places for Opening Day than a ballpark that’s over a century old, has a Green Monster, Pesky Pole and countless iconic moments! 

So, a month before the opener, I went and bought a digital camera to capture some cool pictures from that day and here we are, eight years later, in book form with photos from that camera, a Sony DSC-HX80.

With the idea that someday I wouldn’t be making my living as a TV reporter for a Major League Baseball team, my original plan was to take photos of every ballpark and save them for myself in hopes of one day making a cool photo album for my own coffee table.  

Then I met Kyle Fager and pitched him on the concept that became Sacred Grounds.  Kyle and his team put a lot into this book.  We’ve tracked down, scheduled, and did interviews with over 90+ people.  We went through thousands of photos and picked the best for the book, and put the rest on the site.  We carefully selected the size of the book along with each color, font and story inside of it.  

We put on one helluva production and we will NEVER shortchange the reader with our efforts to make this as entertaining, funny and thorough as we possibly can.  

We want people to get lost in baseball through photos and stories from those directly involved in either that big moment that you’ll remember forever or just the ballpark experience in general.   

This is a book for fans of every team, or just the game in general.  

Every moment spent at a baseball stadium is special and we hope you enjoy this book, this website and the stories from the people you grew up rooting for!  

Read as much or little as you’d like in each sitting.  Get lost in baseball.  Let us take you on a photographic tour of all 30 ballparks, plus the National Baseball Hall of Fame!  Enjoy some stories that maybe you’ve never heard, or even a twist on a story you have heard. 

Most of all, thank you for your support!