Frommer, an oral history professor in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program, has found that same love of the game in Boston, where the Red Sox dominate television sets in the city's restaurants and bars from April through October, he said. Such devotion to the game and the team is at the core of Frommer's latest book, "Remembering Fenway Park," published in March. Frommer spoke about his book and signed copies for students at Howe Library in Hanover on Wednesday.
Red Sox fans are as attached to Fenway Park as they are to the team itself, according to Frommer, a resident of Lyme, N.H.
"Fenway is part of the history of Boston," Frommer said. "People can still remember when they were brought there as kids by their grandfather or father."
Since Fenway's opening in 1912, the number of prominent baseball players who have called it home including Babe Ruth, Carl Yastrzemski and Luis Tiant has contributed to the ballpark's allure, Frommer said.
"It's an amazing thing in Boston, seeing this obsession with Red Sox baseball," Frommer said. "People are walking the streets with the B' emblem [on their hats]."
Frommer has also written books about New York baseball, notably "A Yankee Century and Beyond" in 2007 and "New York City Baseball: The Last Golden Age" in 1992.
Frommer's writing goes beyond the nine innings to explore baseball as an American pastime, John Thorn, the official baseball historian for Major League Baseball, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"He is always going to take a broader look at whatever aspect of baseball he selects," Thorn said.
Frommer possesses a particularly comprehensive knowledge of teams as organizations, according to Dick Bresciani, the Red Sox vice president for publications and archives and team historian.
"[Frommer] has an ability to pursue stories by going into different things about a franchise players, the front office, the stadium," Bresciani said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "He has a knack for coming up with one of the better means of accruing information."
Frommer's writing helped illuminate the contributions of Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson to the game of baseball, according to baseball historian Lee Lowenfish. Robinson, the first African-American player to enter the Major League, was signed by Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers' executive, effectively breaking baseball's color barrier.
"[Frommer's] books on this issue were helpful to anyone wanting to get to the core of these great pioneering individuals in the 1980s," Lowenfish said in an email to The Dartmouth. "It was a time for some reason that Rickey and Robinson were not held in the esteem they should be and Frommer did good work to correct that."
Frommer not only understands the intricacies of the game, but also the cultural significance of baseball to communities across the country, according to MALS Chair Donald Pease.
"He is a historian who knows that baseball matters to groups in the United States," Pease said.
Frommer's success has positively affected the ambitions of MALS students, according to Pease.
"Students who take his class have a sense that they want to undertake the type of projects that [he] has," Pease said.
Frommer's ability to document the accounts of everyone associated with Fenway not merely players and team executives, but also fans and grounds keepers effectively conveys Boston's deep connection to the ballpark, according to Larry Cancro, senior vice president for Fenway affairs.
"He weaves a story through the perspectives of many people so that you see what the masses feel about a topic," Cancro said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Fenway Park is like a second home to almost everyone in New England, and you really get that tone as you're reading through [his] book."
Frommer said the strength of "Red Sox Nation" a club that began in response to fans' growing enthusiasm for the Red Sox following their World Series win in 2004 is evident during road games when fans can be heard cheering during Red Sox home runs.
"A lot of the fans go to cities like Cleveland or Tampa Bay," Frommer said. "If they can't get into Fenway, they'll plan their weekends around going to other ballparks they're like groupies following the Red Sox."
Fenway's charm may become ever more unique given that the new wave of baseball stadiums initiated with the construction of Baltimore's Camden Yards in 1992 represents a radically different spectator experience, Frommer said.
"The only music that was at stadiums [in the early days of Fenway] was the organ music," Frommer said. "Now if you go to a game, the music is just deafening I think it ruins the atmosphere because people are trying to concentrate on the game and have conversations."
