Verb Plow

"Out of the Rack and Ruin"

2012-01-16T04:14:00.001-08:00

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Coming Soon? The Residences at Fenway Park

2011-12-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

On my recent book tour for the bestselling Fenway 1912, when people ask me what I think the future holds for Fenway Park, I answer “real estate.”

As I note in Fenway 1912, part of the reason Fenway Park was built where it was built in the first place was to spur real estate development. And when Fenway Park is replaced, real estate development will also be the issue.

Once the economic benefits of the Sox 100th anniversary are fully exploited by the Red Sox, and every last $250 brick and $75 book is sold [Note: my Fenway 1912 is about 1/3 the price . . . just sayin’], I expect that, ever so slowly, and likely in a whisper campaign to start, we will soon start hearing how Fenway Park, regrettably, is no longer “economically viable,” and that changing economic conditions in the game have rendered the park “economically obsolete” The Red Sox will announce, with regret, that they are reluctantly “exploring alternatives.”

This will take years, but if – or when - the team slips back into “also-ran” status and uses Fenway Park as the reason they can no longer afford to hire high-priced free agents, the inexorable move will have begun. It will not be quick and it will not be easy, because, exclusive of needed infrastructure, building a new ballpark in Boston will be a billion dollar undertaking. But billion dollar undertakings are what people like John Henry (or, if the Sox are sold, a guy like John Henry) do. Someday, and I think that day will come in the next two decades, the Red Sox will move from Fenway Park.

Note that I did not say that Fenway Park will be torn down, because it will not, but the Red Sox will no longer play there. Fenway will, however, be transformed.

I suspect some plan has already been scrawled on much more than a napkin. Remember, Mrs. Henry, Linda Pizzuti, has a background in real estate development and reportedly has been given some authority in this regard around Fenway Park. I think she and other real estate developers look at Fenway Park and don’t just see images of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams cavorting across the field. They look at the stands and see images of hotels and restaurants and condos with names like “The Residences at Fenway Park.”

I think the field itself – and the left field wall – will be preserved and maintained as they are. So will the façade on Yawkey way and perhaps a portion of the bleachers. But I expect the grandstand and most other seating areas to be converted into commercial, residential and hotel space, the most exclusive of which will offer views of the field. Perhaps a few seats will remain so the field can occasionally retain its’ “historic” use, but by and large I think the field will prove to be a private backyard and playground for the wealthy residents of the grandstand condos and hotels. I can envision nearly the entire stands being replaced by condos and hotels built within and on top of the existing structures, perhaps with some limited public access on the roof, so it will still be possible for the general public – at a price - to “experience” Fenway Park, or at least “see” it, and buy the ubiquitous souvenir. If they’re smart, they’ll include a public museum or something similar. Apart from that however, I see a luxury hotel and high priced condos – say 500 or so, starting at a couple of million dollars each, with the “best” going for upwards of $20 million. Fenway Park won’t be torn down, but it will become something it is increasingly – and sadly - becoming now; a place for the wealthy, the well-to-do and the connected. As I argue in Fenway 1912, Fenway Park has always evolved, which is why it remains today, and further evolution – not that I necessarily agree - is probably inevitable. Someday in the not too distant future, instead of saying “I’m going to Fenway,” and having everyone know you mean you are going to see the Red Sox play, you may well have to say something else.

And the next time you go to Fenway, remember that you’re not only watching a game on a field where Babe Ruth and Ted Williams once played, but perhaps from a viewpoint that some fatcat might one day enjoy while smoking a cigar and soaking in the Jacuzzi on his balcony.

Glenn Stout is the author of the best-selling Fenway 1912.

The Readers Have Spoken

2011-12-11T06:50:00.000-08:00

The readers have spoken. Fenway 1912 is easily the best selling Fenway Park book of the season and the best selling Red Sox book of the fall, and is also a Boston Globe best seller this morning. Although Amazon may be temporarily out of copies (more are shipping to Amaqzon now), it is still easily acquired by Christmas from your local bookstore, which will either have the book in stock or can easily order it, or through other online sources such as indiebound.com or barnesandnoble.com.

For those still wondering what Fenway Park book to purchase this season, I encourage you to compare reviews of my book, which has been praised by the most respected review sources in the country, with those of other Fenway Park books. There is a reason Boston area readers have made Fenway 1912 a best seller. Then buy two books . . . as long as one of them is Fenway 1912.

After reading, you will never look at Fenway Park the same way, I promise. And if you don't believe me, here are what others have said:

“In the capable hands of Stout, it promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete.” - Sports Illustrated.com

“Glenn Stout has long been respected among literary-minded baseball fans for his meticulously researched and graceful writing about the sport, particularly on that perpetually fertile subject, the Boston Red Sox . . . Stout has come to be viewed by many as the don of the unofficial chroniclers after his definitive and refreshingly unsparing “Red Sox Century. . .’’ With his latest book, “Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year,’’ Stout has crafted an ideal companion to “Red Sox Century. . .’’ Stout’s vivid writing and extraordinary research make the journey worthwhile in so many ways. Fenway, of course, takes center stage. In an appropriately sentimental remembrance of his own pivotal early adulthood experiences there, Stout recognizes the ballpark as “a place that can change your life and sometimes does. . .’’ Stout’s words stoke the reader’s mind, painting such a detailed and vivid portrait of the ballplayers and ballpark that you will likely feel as if you were in the creaky grandstand yourself. It’s so much more fulfilling than the images of spoiled modern stars we saw blow their chances this September. And perhaps cathartic, too.”- Chad Finn, Boston Globe.

“Stout, who edits the annual volume of “Best American Sports Writing,” takes as his subject not Fenway today. . . but Fenway as it came into existence in the winter of 1911-12 and as the scene of five games of the 1912 World’s Series (as it was then called), one of the most thrilling in the long history of what sportswriters call the Fall Classic. It’s a fascinating story, and Stout tells it very well.” - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

“Glenn Stout’s Fenway 1912 offers up a stunningly rich buffet of pleasures for the baseball fan, centered around the construction and opening of Fenway Park almost a century ago and the wild season that followed . . .To say more would be to give too much away: This book is a must-read for any Red Sox fan and a great choice for anyone who enjoys a dip into baseball history at its best. If the developments of the World Series that year seem too outlandish to believe, blame that on baseball, not the author.” -Steve Kettman, Huffington Post

“During the 2012 baseball season, the enterprising owners of the Red Sox – just like their predecessors – will be eager to capitalize on the financial windfall generated by Fenway’s 100th anniversary. Red Sox players from past and present will be paraded around the sacred grounds in commemoration, hour-long specials on MLB TV will cycle through the nation’s television sets, and the team will hawk Fenway merchandise from its website and stores. Yet it is Stout, with his well-researched, comprehensive narrative, who quietly offers perhaps the most fitting tribute of all. - The Christian Science Monitor

“The one-hundredth anniversary of the construction of Boston’s Fenway Park inspires this glowing, vivid account by Glenn Stout of the first Red Sox season in their new, architecturally cutting-edge headquarters. Never the biggest or most glamorous of fields, Fenway nonetheless has sheltered its share of glory and prowess, all of which emerge in this rich rendition of the 1912 season that culminated in the Sox facing World Series rivals the New York Giants.” -Barnes and Noble Review.com

“Along with Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Boston’s Fenway Park represents the last physical connection to baseball’s early-twentieth-century history. . . Stout, editor of The Best American Sports Writing series reprises Fenway’s first year, culminating with the dramatic Sox’s victory over the New York Giants in an eight-game World Series, four games to three (the second game was declared a tie). Stout also examines the press coverage of the era. So many reporters would converge on the Series that the Sox greatly expanded the press box rather than give journalists valuable box seats. He also examines the prevalence of gambling, which would reach scandal proportions with the 1919 Black Sox, but in 1912, all the principals looked the other way. In addition, there are miniprofiles of players such as Smoky Joe Wood and Tris Speaker of the Sox as well as the larger-than-life owners and managers of the era. While some sports histories are bone-dry and distant, Stout imbues his account with a unique vibrancy and a razor-sharp intelligence. A wonderful sports book.” - Starred review, Booklist

“The book I really want to feature . . . is Glenn Stout’s Fenway 1912.. . Fenway 1912 combines what is – by far – the most detailed study of the building of Fenway park we are likely to have with an enjoyable look at the first season of the park . . . Stout lets us in on some information I don’t believe has been published before . . . Stout covers the progress of the season exceedlingly well; the games, the players and the context. . . the faith of the publisher in this author was by no means displaced.” – Bill Nowlin, Diehard Magazine

“If you are a lifelong Red Sox fan, a lifelong Red Sox hater, a rabid baseballholic or merely a casual baseball fan, Glenn Stout’s new book, Fenway 1912, is an amazing read into the birth of a ballpark, the 1912 Red Sox and the transition to the modern baseball era. His ability to weave together the tiniest detail and apparent minutiae into a rip-roaring page-turner that is hard to put down is simply amazing. If someone had told me that I’d be fascinated by the 1912 Red Sox I’d have laughed outright, but Mr. Stout is able to make the reader care about a baseball season that happened almost 100 years ago. . . Even if you are a confirmed Red Sox hater – if you love baseball you’ll find plenty to like in this book. If you know a Red Sox fan there probably isn’t a better book to give to them as gift. And if you haven’t had the privilege of visiting Fenway Park you’ll find yourself thinking about how to go to a few games in the Friendly Confines of Fenway to watch a baseball game in the oldest ballpark in the major leagues. I can whole-heartedly recommend this book. I’ll be buying several copies to give as gifts this holiday season. – Amazon reader review

“From tearing up the sod from a previous ballfield and moving it to the under-construction Fenway to details about the construction of the building to the intricacies of the daily life of the players, every detail of Fenway Park is covered in this book. Mr. Stout clearly has a passion for his material, and I am amazed at the research that must have gone into this. Anyone involved in this project is discussed: groundskeeper, architect, coaches, owners, players. Even at 416 pages, this wasn’t boring and kept me reading even though I don’t follow baseball. . . This has got to be THE definitive work on this subject. I can’t imagine even a dissertation that could be more complete.” - ADVANCE REVIEW via netgalley

“Fenway 1912 is not [just] light reading & pretty pictures. There’s going to be stuff in there that even Dick Bresciani doesn’t know. . . a book that everyone who covers this team has to buy, and read, and keep handy, so that when people ask us where the bones are buried, we can look wise and have the answer at our fingertips.“ -Boston Baseball

“To many fans, Fenway is the Mecca of baseball, a symbol of everything the game represents and aspires to be. But in 1912, it was just one of four new baseball stadiums utilizing newly developed concrete-and-steel construction methods—evidence, writes Best American Sports Writing series editor Stout (Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, 2009, etc.) “of just how deeply the game of baseball had become ingrained into the fabric of American life.” The Sox’ 1912 season was a remarkable one, and the author takes the reader inside the locker room, management offices and the field. The team featured such luminaries as Hall-of-Famer Tris Speaker, pitching ace “Smoky” Joe Wood, player/manager Jake Stahl and a supporting cast of characters including Duffy Lewis, “Hick” Cady, “Heinie” Wagner, Buck O’Brien and the Sox’ famous booster club the Royal Rooters. But the book’s most important character is Fenway itself, and Stout spares no detail of its design, construction and effect on the game. The author’s meticulous approach makes the book a valuable addition to baseball history . . . The author does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the game between that era—when “the owners were the kings and the players lowly serfs”—and today. Throughout, Fenway Park, “a ballpark for the heart and soul,” shines as a beacon for America’s game. Baseball diehards and historians, and of course Red Sox fans, will find much of interest in this paean to one of sport’s most famous venues.” – KIRKUS Reviews

“In his new work, Stout (Red Sox Century) turns back the clock to 1912 to capture the first season the Boston Red Sox played on their now storied home field. The author gives a detailed account of how Fenway was constructed using “reinforced concrete,” an improvement from the wooden ballpark it replaced. Of course, a ballpark is nothing without a team, and Stout weaves the story of the new ballpark into the saga of the Red Sox ownership, players, fans, and the city of Boston. . . Stout’s knowledge of the sport and passion for the game certainly come across in his writing, especially when he is uncovering little known details of this bygone era of baseball. The book is full of fun and informative anecdotes about Fenway’s past and present including the connection between the ballpark and the sinking of Titanic, the origins of the term “Green Monster,” and how the new field with its cliff in left field, its short porch in right, and the bleachers in center affected Sox outfielders Duffy Lewis and Tris Speaker. Finished off with an epilogue that captures the major moments in Fenway history, this work is a well-constructed tribute to Fenway on its upcoming 100th anniversary. – Publisher’s Weekly

Maybe Baseball Isn't Over

2011-11-29T04:56:00.001-08:00

About a month ago I wrote a commentary (reprinted below) for National Public Radio about the end of the baseball season which was used on “All Things Considered.”

I didn’t expect much of a reaction – okay, I didn’t expect ANY reaction. I thought it was okay, but nothing special.

Yet as writers, once the words escape us, we know we are not in control and cannot foresee their impact.

Some people hated the commentary, finding it too syrupy, but others – and from what I could tell, a lot of others - really liked it. A minister used it in a sermon, surely a first for anything I have ever written. And one man wrote me that “. . . it really hit home. My dad passed away last year and the end of a season is a reminder of the end of life… and after the mourning… life starting anew.”

And then there was June. I received an e-mail from a woman named June who said that the commentary moved her to tears and that she wanted to send me a painting.

I was touched, but also embarrassed. I didn’t want her to go out of her way over something that took all of about twenty minutes to write and took up about three minutes of air time on NPR. So I tried to talk her out of it, but she was persistent.

Well, here’s the painting at the top of this post. It arrived yesterday I love it. And here’s the commentary that somehow inspired it:

BASEBALL IS OVER

Baseball is over again and - for a while - so am I.

As long as I can remember this game has been my companion. The maple trees in the backyard where I grew up were known only as first base, second and third. The clothesline was an imaginary Green Monster. I fell asleep each night to the static of a distant game on an old radio and dreamed of the roaring crowd. Even now, when I think of “home” I don’t think of a house. I think of the bare spot I wore in the grass while batting, the place I ran back to after every imaginary home run.

Now another season is ending. As the sounds that only baseball makes disappear, there is a stillness left behind that feels like nothing else, and I know again I am alone.

The days that used to start with stats and coffee turning cold as I perused the blogs and box scores are done. The morning doesn’t mean it’s time to “check the west coast scores.” It means “get up and go to work.” The news is not for highlights and home runs, but wars and famines and politics. The walks I took with the dog so I could throw the ball and pretend I was cutting down the lead runner at third become simple games of fetch. The phone calls with friends that started with “Can you believe that hit?” and “What was he thinking?” end quickly or aren’t made at all. I turn my car radio from AM back to FM. My wife and daughter control the television remote and I catch up on my reading. And instead of lying awake at night and wondering how in the world he could miss that pitch, I slip into a fast slumber.

It’s over, but we’ve been through this before, baseball and I, and I’m sure I’ll survive the winter soon to come. I know even as the whoops and hollers of baseball’s newest world champion fade that somewhere in the silence that follows, another season will start to make its sound.

There will be trades, Tommy John surgeries and free agent signings for too much money. Even though there will be snow upon the ground, there will also be talk about pitchers and catchers reporting, aging veterans and rookie phenoms. Something deep inside me will start to stir, and then I’ll hear it again; a voice on a playground, a bat meeting a ball, a cheer and a slap on the back. At first it will be faint and far off, but as the days get longer the sounds of baseball will be back beside me. Soon enough, we will both be ready for another season.

[Note: the version of the commentary reproduced above varies slightly from the broadcast version. You can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=141789780&m=141881232 . Glenn Stout’s latest book is the bestselling Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year.]

The Creepy Coach

2011-11-29T03:50:00.000-08:00

It’s sad, but true and not uncommon. If you played long enough, you probably have a “creepy coach” story.

Predators are not stupid. They go where the odds are in their favor as authority figures without much direct supervision; the Catholic Church and youth church groups, the Boy Scouts and similar organizations, boarding schools. And, as the allegations against Jerry Sandusky attest, anywhere youth and sports intersect.

This is not to disparage the many fine men and women who give their time to coaching and working with children. Most think only of the kids and have the best of intentions. And in the decade or so I spent on youth league teams as a kid, and the five years I spent coaching as an adult, the vast majority of coaches I encountered were kind and caring and tried their to provide a safe and fun and positive experience. But . . .

Shortly after the charges against Jerry Sandusky were made public, I posted the following on my Facebook page for The Best American Sports Writing:

“Just watch. The narrative arc post-Penn State will follow that of the Catholic Church; the coaching profession has always been full of predators. Expect a decade long roll out of victims, not just PSU, but all schools/youth leagues, etc. Unfortunate, tragic and true.”

I hoped I was wrong, but in the weeks that have followed this scandal has begun to metastasize. Nearly every day one hears about another possible incident as victims, empowered by those who have come out of the darkness to reveal what took place under the sinister umbrella of The Second Mile and Penn State, start to speak out about their experience and lift the veil of shame and silence that has scarred the lives of so many. The allegations against Syracuse basketball assistant coach Bernie Fine are simply the latest in a trend I don’t see disappearing.

Since I wrote that Facebook post, I have spoken to many friends and acquaintances. Almost to a person, each has their own “creepy coach” story. While none, fortunately, have admitted being a victim of overt molestation, almost everyone has a story about the coach who was a little too familiar, a little off, who made them feel unsafe and uncomfortable and who now, looking back from adulthood, they now realize was probably coaching for the wrong reasons.

When I started to write this, I could recall in my experience only one such coach, one who was an alcoholic and often showed up drunk for games and practices. When he did, and when there were no adults around, he talked about sex and other adult topics he had no business talking about with us. When I think back now it seems to me that he got off on talking this way to us; that was my “creepy coach,” story. But over the past few days as I wrote these words, I recalled another incident far more disturbing.

As most young male athletes can attest, they have to wear an athletic supporter – a jock – and a plastic cup to protect the genitals. The wearing of a cup is mandatory in most youth sports, and should be. When I was a kid what was known as a “cup check,” was common practice, a way for your coach to make certain you were wearing your cup before each game or practice. Most of the time, you performed the cup check yourself, standing before the coach and striking your knuckles to your crotch so the coach could hear them strike the plastic and know you were wearing your cup. Nothing wrong with that.

But I have a memory, fuzzy and now buried so deeply that even now I not certain which coach I recall or even which sport I was playing at the time, a memory that even as I begin to write about it now produces a small wave of nausea and discomfort. I had at least a few coaches who performed the “cup check” themselves, going down the line striking your crotch with his own fist.

This was not rare and I remember never thinking much about it. If done quickly and lightly and with a sort of professional distance, while not really appropriate anymore, it was probably an act of innocence, and no big deal to most of us.

But there was one coach, one whose face, even now, I cannot see clearly enough to indentify, who I know went a little farther. He would strike you so hard that even if you were wearing a cup, it would bring a nauseating ache to your genitals.

He clearly enjoyed this. I can see the wide teeth of his leering smile, and hear his laugh, loud, and menacing. And then sometimes I think he did a little more.

Instead of striking you in the groin, or maybe after doing so and discovering you had forgotten that piece of equipment, he would reach and grope and squeeze. If you were wearing a cup, you avoided that humiliation, but if you weren’t . . .

I don’t recall ever being caught not wearing a cup, and I don’t believe that happened to me, but I do remember thinking I would NEVER, EVER forget to wear my cup. But I do have a recollection of seeing others doubled over as the coach squeezed their testicles long and hard enough to cause a howl of pain. And only then would he, still smiling, let go.

As far as I know, that was as far as it went. Whether that was enough to satisfy whatever twisted desire caused him to do this, I am not uncertain. But I do know that even this small humiliation can have an impact decades later . . .

When my daughter was younger I spent several years coaching and helping to coach her girls softball and mixed gender Little League team. For several years I did this either as an assistant coach or with someone else. Then one year I could not convince another parent or other adult to help out. During games practices, I was often the only adult left with a dozen or so kids, boys and girls.

At practice one day, one of our players, a girl of eleven or twelve, fell and scraped her knee, blood seeping through her uniform, and a wince of pain on her face. I dutifully got out my first aid kit, sat her down on the ground and helped her roll up her pant leg above her knee so I could clean and bandage the wound.

As I did so and my hand pulled her pants over her knee cap to expose the scrape and tugged it up a bit farther so I could clean the smear of blood on her inner thigh, it suddenly struck me that my hand was dangerously close to a place it should not be. With no other adult as my witness I realized that to anyone watching from afar (the field was near a playground), it might appear as if I was touching her – or trying to touch her - inappropriately. And then I thought how I might react as a parent if my daughter came home with a scraped knee and described a coach rolling up her pant leg and wiping blood off her thigh, and how depending on the way she described it, I might think that the coach was doing something he shouldn’t, something creepy.

I pulled my hand back, left the stain of blood alone and pulled the pant leg back down to the edge of the wound. I wiped it quickly with alcohol, smeared some ointment on a large Band-aide, placed it over the wound and asked her to press it tight, then told her to lift her pant leg over the wound before she pulled it down, so the bandage would stay on.

Practice resumed. Then later, as I thought about what took place later that day, as the only adult with a group of young kids, I made a decision.

At the end of the season, unable to insure I would have an assistant coach the following year, I quit coaching.

And The Winner Is . . .

2011-11-26T05:47:00.000-08:00

Received the good news this week that in addition to being a Boston Globe best seller, the best selling Red Sox book of the season and one of the best selling baseball books of the year and a finalist for Spitball Magazine's Casey Award, that Fenway 1912 is a finalist for best baseball book of the year from a major magazine and a prestigious library association. Even better is the reaction from the readers I meet.

Requiem for the Bleachers

2011-11-04T04:12:00.001-07:00

In the winter, when it is cold and dark and the snow is blowing and blotting out the far shore of Lake Champlain in northern Vermont, where I now live, and I think of summer and Fenway Park, I do not think of 1967 or 1986 or 2004 or any other season best known for either victory or loss.

I think of 1982.

I had graduated from college only a year earlier and had been in Boston only a few months. Unemployment was pressing ten percent and there was no work worth doing. For only a few pennies more than minimum wage I spent most days doing crossword puzzles and reading the Herald as a security guard at the Harvard Medical School.

But I lived in Kenmore Square, and that meant I was neighbors with Fenway Park. That winter and spring my walk back and forth to work each day brought me past Fenway. I would tip my cap, nod a ‘hello” and with each step summer was a little bit closer.

I had first seen Fenway Park sixteen years before, when I was all of eight years old. My mother was a native of Newfoundland and we were, somewhat improbably, driving there from Ohio on vacation. My father had piled us all into the old Pontiac station wagon one summer afternoon and then drove non-stop through the night. As the sun peaked over the horizon at dawn, we entered the outskirts of Boston. I remember nothing of the city as we drove through but the light towers of Fenway Park looming over a distant horizon.

I had never been to a major league ballpark before and held out little hope of doing so anytime soon. My traffic adverse father frowned on trips to either Cleveland or Cincinnati, much less Detroit or Pittsburgh or Chicago, the other cities within a reasonable driving distance from central Ohio, meaning I missed opportunities to see most of the classic ballparks of the age – Crosley Field, Tiger Stadium, Forbes Field, Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park. Even Cleveland’s rusting Stalinesque Municipal Stadium, not really a ballpark at all, eluded me.

So when I moved to Boston nearly two decades later Fenway Park was both a reason for my pilgrimage and a destination. This time I promised myself would do more than drive by with my face pressed against the car window. I planned to spend the whole summer in my neighbor’s backyard, Fenway Park. . .

[You can read the rest of this essay appear in Richard Johnson's fine new heavily illustrated book about Fenway Park, Field of our Fathers. If you are going to buy one book on Fenway Park, make it Fenway 1912. But if you are buying two, please consider Richard's book. Esaay copyright Glenn Stout, 2011, all rights reserved.]

On the Radio . . .

2011-11-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Because I had written Fenway 1912 I recently received a call from National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and was asked to write an essay on the end of the baseball season, something evocative, a sort of an elegy.

I poured a glass of wine, went down stairs, and after a few false starts, came up with something that felt genuine and seemed appropriate. It was accepted a few hours later, and the next day I went to Vermont Public Radio to record it. It evetually aired a few days later, on October 31, 2011..

I had been to VPR before. Bill Littlefield has been kind enough to have me on his show, Only a Game, several times, but Sam the engineer warned me that All Things Considered was pretty particular about recording their commentaries.

I have to say I wasn't worried. I usually write to sound, meaning that I write as much in regard to the sound of the word as I do to sense, a habit left over from the days when I wrote only poetry and often read aloud at various forums in college and later, in and around Boston. Besides, when I was younger I did a bit of theater. Although making a cold call for an interview gives me anxiety, public speaking has never bothered me at all.

They had me read through the entire piece twice, then had me re-read selected lines. The whole process took about twenty minutes.

The entire time I was reminded of the days when I was ten or twelve years old, and would go over to my old friend Richard's house for sleepovers. He was an electronics whiz and in his basement had effectively created a radio station, linking together several turntables and tape recorders, that did everything but broadcast over the air. We - or rather he - would make radio shows. I was just a reader and writer. We would re-enact and read and tape Mad Magazine parodies and until our bellies hurt, and wrote our own parodies and gossipy news bits about our elementary school classmates. We even published an occasional "underground newspaper," just having fun.

I've often thought of those days, because now I write for a living and Richard, to no surprise, is a radio and broadcasting techno genius, formerly NPR’s Master Control supervisor and technical director, and currently oversees Strategic Technology Applications for NPR labs.

Not that I know what any of that really is, but I suspect that,at its core its not all that much different than what he was doing in his basement some forty years ago, just as thew writing I do today is not all that much different. We were just having fun then, and, I suspect, we're both still having fun now.

Here's a link to the essay:

http://http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=141789780&m=141881232

A Two-For

2011-10-30T06:21:00.001-07:00

This morning Fenway 1912 was number #7 on the Boston Globe nonfiction hardcover bestseller list. The Best American Sports Writing 2011 was #8 on the nonfiction paperback list. http://http//www.boston.com/ae/books/blog/2011/10/boston_globe_be_84.html

I'll be back in Boston in December to sign more books, and at the Barnes and Noble in Burlington, Vermont on November 26.

For those readers in New York, I am scheduled to appear on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC the morning of November 4, and then will be doing a signing at the Red Sox bar, Professor Thom's, 219 second Aveue at 6:00pm that evening. This might be your only NY chance to have abook signed for the holidays.

Beer and chicken will be optional.

Let's Play Ball

2011-10-25T03:20:00.001-07:00

It was a little over eight years ago that we moved up here to the border, and a few months after we arrived, Sappho, our beautiful Lab/Shepherd./Chesapeake/God knows what/ mix of a dog who ruled me died of complications from epilepsy. I was out of town when she got sick and she died at the vets just after I got back.

When you work at home, all the time, the living things around you are really important. There’s no one down the hall to grab a coffee with or talk about the game to, no diner for lunch to sit in and watch girls out the window. But there was Sappho, a ball to throw with and a world to explore, some ears that always listened and a look that always said “What the hell are you talking about? Can I have something to eat?” So you walk and play and ruff the neck and hand out a treat and then get back to work, falling into the comfortable patterns that mark the day as sure as coffee.

I was a mess after she died. Telling my daughter, only seven then, who had never known a world without her, was gut wrenching, but it got worse; I never realized how important it was having another physical presence around, how the sound of footsteps and heavy breathing and the rattle of her rabies tag on the collar creates a little soundtrack that says you’re not by yourself.

I lasted about a week, found an ad, and then we piled in the car and drove into Quebec and came back with Sam, the goofy Golden Retriever puppy. Soon we created our own pattern, the daily walk and ball toss that for the last eight years kept me from living entirely in my head, and something I’ve written about several times before.

He died in the back of my truck yesterday on the way to the vet. I somehow knew he was going the previous day, made sure the girls said goodbye when they left for school, called the vet anyway, put his bed in the back of my truck and lifted him in. I was almost there when I looked in the rear view mirror, saw his head slump down and disappear and knew.

We already have a second dog, Scamper, a Shetland Sheepdog, so there are still sounds and patterns around and walks to take.

But there is still that certain silence.

Just Sayin'

2011-10-23T11:12:00.001-07:00

A review from one of the heavyweights:

“Stout, who edits the annual volume of “Best American Sports Writing,” takes as his subject not Fenway today. . . but Fenway as it came into existence in the winter of 1911-12 and as the scene of five games of the 1912 World’s Series (as it was then called), one of the most thrilling in the long history of what sportswriters call the Fall Classic. It’s a fascinating story, and Stout tells it very well.” - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

Yardley - a past winner of the Pulitzer Prize in criticism - makes you earn it, and doesn't often give such an unbridled thumbs up. I'll take it.

In fact, I love the fact that Yardley writes "It's a fascinting story and Stout tells it very well." For as I told Alex Belth in a recent interview [http://http//www.bronxbanterblog.com/2011/10/12/bronx-banter-interview-glenn-stout-2/]: "In prose, I aim for transparency. In many instances I almost want my actual writing to be completely invisible, so submissive to the story that you don’t notice it. I want the readers’ first reaction to be “great story” and then realize that it was the writing that delivered that experience."

That's exactly what Yardley recognized. It doesn't mean that I don't try to write without style, but there are times you just have to stay out of the way and let the story speak. I like to think there is some artistry in that.

The Rain on the Parade

2011-10-22T04:11:00.000-07:00

As the author of comprehensive histories on BOTH the Red Sox and the Cubs, I think I have some perspective here. Chicago fans, pay heed, because in Theo Epstein you have no idea what you are getting. Consider this:

“For the past 19 years or so I’ve had suspicions, some stronger than others, but to sit here today and say I played on even one team that was totally clean would be denying reality… I played pretty much my entire career in the Steroid Era.” Curt Schilling, May 8, 2009

Those words were pretty damning. Although Schilling went on to stridently proclaim his personal innocence, denying he ever used any PED in any form, and called the notion that Boston’s two most recent world championships were tainted “a load of crap,” his admission provides evidence to those who feel otherwise.

Personally I find virtually every championship from about 1989 over the next two decades, if not tainted, then certainly tarnished. And even Schilling, although he is loathe to admit it outright, has since agreed, telling The Sporting News on July 7, 2011 that “There isn’t a team in the last 20 years that has won clean.” And not winning clean means winning dirty. No matter how one personally feels about the subject, given statements such as these it is impossible not to recognize that the Steroid Era did leave a taint, one that may not diminish the accomplishment of any one team but certainly does leave a mark upon certain individuals.

Make that every individual. No one in the era, either in the clubhouse or the front office, comes away untarnished, and that includes every manager and – are you listening Chicago? – every general manager whose team benefited from the performance of players on PEDs. Even the virgins in the whorehouse, the “see no evils” who looked the other way, benefited – quite a few of those home runs won some pretty big ballgames. But virtually everyone involved he kept his suspicions to himself while accepting the glory – and the championship rings, and the adulation, and, significantly, the checks – that might not have been acquired totally on the square. While Schilling, like most players, states in effect that so many guys were using it all evens up and even though he had suspicions he never actually saw anyone take anything, and gosh darn it, you just can’t accuse someone because of some darn suspicion.

True enough. But he and everyone else might as well be wearing one of those “Stop Snitching” t-shirts that were all the rage in gangland a few years ago. Because personal consequences be damned, a person of conviction might have stood up and taken a stand, either publicly or privately and proclaimed long and loudly that the game was dirty and something should be done. Such a whistle blower, either on the field or in the front office, may have become a pariah among his peers, but he could have looked himself in the mirror without doing a moral back flip. But they all stayed silent, took the money, looked the other way and became adept at the same kind of self delusion that allows corruption to flourish in any institution.

At its core, that’s what the Steroid Era represents – corruption. Everyone agreed to go along to get along because the turnstiles were spinning and the contracts were getting bigger and more lucrative every year and fans were so swept up in the spectacle that no price was too high to pay for the privilege of watching. And everyone who knew better and stayed silent are no better than the residents of any community that look the other way as criminal syndicates or gangs act with impunity. Only no one was going to kill a ballplayer for speaking out – they just wouldn’t get asked to dinner, and would have to live off their substantial savings. The corruption of the Steroid Era floated all financial boats. Only a sucker would have turned down that, right?
In that sense uber GM like Billy Beane and even Hall of Fame managers like Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre are also tarnished. After all, who is Billy Beane minus Giambi and Tejada, or Joe Torre without Pettitte and Clemens, or Tony LaRussa without Canseco and McGwire?

Theo Epstein and Terry Francona without Manny and Ortiz, that’s who. They are simply two more names whose personal success is so inexorably bound up with the Steroid Era that, like Schilling and Manny and Ortiz, it is impossible to measure their accomplishments with any certainty. Just ask yourself, would any of these men have won a ring in an era without steroids? That is what, in the end, taints everything and everyone. We will never, ever, ever know.
And neither will they. As much as the Red Sox recent collapse, I think that explains why both Francona and Epstein “chose” to leave the Red Sox at the same time. Each benefitted mightily from the era, both financially and in terms of their personal legacies. And each reaped the harvest of credit for two “world championships.” Unfortunately, the veracity of those two world championships will never, ever be known.

Deep in their hearts, each man knows that themselves, even if the sycophants that surround both figures won’t dare utter those words. Terry Francona may believe he is one of the more capable managers of his time, but he doesn’t really know because his record as Boston manager provides far too murky a gauge, while his record at Philadelphia is pedestrian. And Theo Epstein has no idea if he is any good either. Truth to be told, neither do the Cubs, who are buying a resume they already must know to be false. Neither Francona nor Epstein can look at the record of either the 2004 or 2007 Red Sox without certain uncomfortable questions creeping in. Both succeeded during an era when spectacular performances were often delivered by a syringe.

That is why both men, if either is to create a true legacy that stands up to the scrutiny not just of others, but of themselves, needed to leave Boston and take on a challenge elsewhere. Only this time each will have to do it on the square. And this time, win or lose, at least each will be able to look at the image staring back in the mirror without blinking and glancing away, ashamed.

For Theo Epstein, the greatest challenge is not whether he delivers a world championship to Chicago, but whether this time he can look in the mirror and know his success is deserved and authentic, and that his resume is not inflated by the contents of a syringe.

Oh, Yeah! A Great Review (and small clarification)

2011-10-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

In a terrific review in the Boston Globe and on Boston.com, the esteemed Chad Finn says some terrific things about Fenway 1912, all of which I appreciate. There is, however, one point he makes about the book that is not entirely correct - and perhaps I don't make the point clear enough in the text. So I thought it best to clarify in the event a reader might take issue.

He accurately notes that I make the point that Fenway's distinctive shape does not stem from the configuration of the surrounding streets. He then notes that the reason is because the dimensions of the Huntington Avenue Grounds were retained when Fenway was built.

The larger point is true, but not for the reasons cited. Fenway's distinctive shaped stems from the shape of the plot of land, - the park was built inward to use all the space and easily could have been symmetrical, or nearly so, had that been important. It was not, however, because the game, as it was played when Fenway was built, did not reach the borders of the property. Over time, the game grew out and the city grew in to surround the park, meaning that the shape of the field area (the basic footprint for which was accidentally created when new seats were built for the 1912 World Series) evolved over time.

Fenway was NOT built with the same dimensions as the Huntington Avenue Grounds. However, it WAS built to retain the same orientation in regard to the sun, which made Lansdowne St. the border in left field. Although no one at the time thought this confined left field in any meaningful way, the accidental result, over time, became Fenway's most distinctive feature - the Green Monster.

Thanks to Chad for a terrific and considerate review. Come see me tomorrow at 1:00 at the Back Bay Events center for the Boston Book Festival. See the review at the link below:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2011/10/14/book_focuses_on_the_history_of_fenway_park_as_it_prepares_to_turn_100/

On FENWAY 1912: A Conversation

2011-10-06T06:47:00.000-07:00

How does your book differ from all the other Fenway books coming out to celebrate the ballparks’ anniversary?

Fenway 1912 breaks so much new ground it makes every other account of the building and construction of Fenway Park obsolete. In the context of the times I tell you precisely why Fenway looks the way it does, what architectural styles and influences played a part in its design, exactly how it was built, how it evolved during its first season and how Fenway Park contributed to the Red Sox 1912 world championship. Virtually none of this has appeared in any other book before. Unlike most others books about Fenway Park, which essentially tell a thumbnail history of the franchise through pictures of the ballpark, I tell the story of Fenway Park as an actual story, a drama that over the course of a little more than a year changed the history of the Red Sox and the City of Boston forever. Fenway Park is the main character, but there are many others – architect James E. McLaughlin, contractor Charles Logue, groundskeeper Jerome Kelley, and players like Tris Speaker, Smoky Joe Wood, Duffy Lewis, Royal Rooters like Nuf Ced McGreevey, team owner James McAleer and others. I think I’ve created a living history of Fenway Park.

Is your book illustrated?

Absolutely, there are plenty of photographs and illustrations in my book, most dating to its first season. All were carefully selected for their ability to reveal something new about Fenway Park. I am particularly excited about several period architectural drawings that I uncovered that will be a revelation to Red Sox fans. To the best of my knowledge, these have never been reprinted or even examined by anyone since 1912. I don’t think I am overstating things when I say that after reading Fenway 1912, fans will never be able to look at Fenway Park the same way again. I know I don’t – and I have attended hundreds of game at Fenway and have been writing about the history of this team for twenty-five years. And throughout the narrative I relate aspects of Fenway Park in 1912 to Fenway Park today, so fans can envision Fenway Park in 1912 within what exists today. Personally, I was stunned to discover in the course of my research that there was so much new information I was still able to uncover about a place that everyone thinks they already know everything about. It will be the one gift Sox fans will want this holiday season.

How were you able to discover so much new material?

Twenty-five years ago, on Fenway’s 75th anniversary, I wrote the official history of the park for the Red Sox yearbook. But when I began working on this book over three years ago I started from scratch, researching in period documents, newspaper accounts and other sources. I just don’t accept that something is true because it appeared in some book written decades later. And to do that takes time – literally years of research, months and months of searching through microfilm, old newspapers and magazines, census records, city directories, maps, and old books before I wrote a word. Let me put it to you this way – I think I did more research for Fenway 1912, telling the story of the creation and building of Fenway Park and the 1912 season, than I did for Red Sox Century, a book in which I told the entire history of the franchise.

So the entire book is about 1912, right? There’s nothing about Fenway Park since then?

Oh, not at all. When certain aspects of Fenway Park need further explanation – and when I uncovered exciting new information – I don’t hesitate to tell those stories. For example, when I discuss the left field wall, I track it through history. I uncover the day that the first fans sat where the “Green Monster” seats are today – it was in 1912! And I trace the history and first use of the phrase “Green Monster,” more precisely than anyone else ever has. That’s a great story, because the phrase was first used far earlier than most people realize, yet didn’t come into popular usage until, relatively speaking, quite recently. And here’s something else few people realize – Fenway Park wasn’t the first baseball field in Boston to be called “Fenway Park.” On occasion the Huntington Avenue Grounds, where the Red Sox played before Fenway Park was built, was itself called “the Fenway Park” due to its proximity to the Fens.

How do you manage to tell Fenway’s story while you also tell the story of the 1912 season and the 1912 World Series?

In a sense, that was the easy part of the book, because as I began to research the events of the 1912 season, I quickly realized that the personality of the ballpark was being revealed game by game, from things like the first home run hit over the left field wall (which most fans know was hit by Boston’s Hugh Bradley) to the first home run hit into the stands that was wrapped around the precursor to the “Pesky pole” in right field. Fenway Park had a dramatic impact on the fortunes of the Red Sox in 1912, and was a huge reason why a team that finished in fourth place in 1911 was able to run away with the pennant in 1912 – Tris Speaker emerged as a superstar and had an MVP season, Smoky Joe Wood, helped by some subtle changes no one else has ever recognized, went 34-5, a couple of rookie pitchers had the season of their lives. I point out precisely how Fenway Park provided the Red Sox with a huge advantage. Sort of by accident, they were perfect for the ballpark. Then, just before the World Series, while the Sox were on a road trip, Fenway Park underwent what I would still consider the most dramatic transformation in its history, as over a period of only a few weeks more than 10,000 seats were added, for the first time creating the familiar “footprint” that still remains, more or less, today. Then, during the 1912 World Series, a whole series of new quirks in Fenway’s personality were revealed.

Wait a minute, Fenway Park was changed during the 1912 season?

Absolutely. And before those changes were made it would have been almost unrecognizable to a contemporary fan. In a sense, the 1912 World Series both christened Fenway and capped things off. The Sox played the New York Giants of John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, and the fortunes of both teams swung back and forth wildly, often during the course of a single game. Series lasted eight games – one was tie – and the Series was marked by fights, arguments, threats of a player strike, charges of gambling, and an on-field riot by the fans. The full story of what took place during those eight games has never been told before because previous accounts failed to recognize the key role Fenway Park played in the Series. That element allowed me to being the Series to life, to put the reader in the stands and on the street, in the dugout and in the clubhouse.

What does Fenway Park mean to you?

It’s hard to put it in words, but in the foreword to the book I try. It’s very personal to me, and I think this is the best book I have ever written. When I was a kid I used to draw pictures of Fenway Park. I moved to Boston after college precisely because of Fenway Park and lived within walking distance of the park for all but the first few months I was in town. If it wasn’t for Fenway Park I may well have never become a working writer. Fenway Park is a place that can change your life – I know it changed mine. By writing Fenway 1912 I hope that in some small way I have repaid the debt I owe to the ballpark. Without Fenway Park, I am a different person, and I don’t think I’m the only one who can say that.

Glenn will be appearing at the Boston Book Festival at the Back Bay Events Center and signing books on October 15 @ 1:00 pm. See http://www.glennstout.net/ for more appearances.

TRIPLE PLAY

2011-10-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce the near simultaneous publication of my next three books:
The Best American Sports Writing 2011, guest edited by Jane Leavy, series editor Glenn Stout, FENWAY 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Seasons and Fenway’s Remarkable First Year by Glenn Stout, and book three in my juvenile series "Good Sports" entitled Soldier Athletes, a Junior Library Guild selection (for more see www.goodsportsbyglennstout.com). I am proud to say that beginning in 1991 I have now written, edited or ghostwritten more than eighty books with sales in excess of two million copies.

Personally, I am most excited by FENWAY 1912, the definitive story of the building of Fenway Park the 1912 season and the 1912 World Series.[PS to Sox fans: In this book, they win.]

Three years ago I set out to write the definitive account of the creation, design, and building of Fenway Park and to allow the reader to experience Fenway Park in its first year and the Red Sox championship season of 1912. I make use of sources utilized by no other purported history of either Fenway Park or the 1912 season or World Series. I promise that this book will prove to be a revelation for even the most hard core fan of either the Red Sox or Fenway Park and makes all previous histories of the park completely obsolete. Fenway 1912 includes:

-Period architectural drawings dating from 1912 that have NEVER been used elsewhere or been reproduced. To my knowledge these are the only period drawings known to exist.

-A detailed construction history of the ballpark that includes not only the schedule of the construction, but a full explication of the construction methods used and how that impacted the 1912 season and the park you see today.

- A biography of Fenway architect James E. McLaughlin and builder Charles Logue.

- A discussion of the architectural influences that are the reason Fenway Park looks the way it does today.

- Detailed discussions on how the new ballpark affected the Red Sox and the 1912 World Series, and a dramatic and lively reconstruction of both the season and the Series, including the infamous contest between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson on September 4, 1912, perhaps the greatest pitching matchup in baseball history.

- Why the Green Monster exists, why it was built the way that it was, and why and when the name "Green Monster" came into use.

- How changes made to the ballpark over the course of the 1912 season determined the future evolution of Fenway.

- Detailed analysis of the 1912 season, including Joe Wood's remarkable 34-5 pitching campaign, and how two changes - one to his windup, and one an injury to another player - resulted in one of the greatest pitching performances in baseball history.

What the critics are saying:

“Best Baseball Book Ever. If you are a lifelong Red Sox fan, a lifelong Red Sox hater, a rabid baseballholic or merely a casual baseball fan, Glenn Stout's new book, Fenway 1912, is an amazing read into the birth of a ballpark, the 1912 Red Sox and the transition to the modern baseball era. His ability to weave together the tiniest detail and apparent minutiae into a rip-roaring page-turner that is hard to put down is simply amazing.

In the capable hands of Stout, Fenway 1912 promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete. While some sports histories are bone-dry and distant, Stout imbues his account with a unique vibrancy and a razor-sharp intelligence. I am amazed at the research that must have gone into this. Anyone involved in this project is discussed: groundskeeper, architect, coaches, owners, players. Even at 416 pages, this wasn’t boring and kept me reading even though I don’t follow baseball. This has got to be THE definitive work on this subject. I can’t imagine even a dissertation that could be more complete.

Fenway 1912 is a book that everyone who covers this team has to buy, and read, and keep handy, so that when people ask us where the bones are buried, we can look wise and have the answer at our fingertips. The author’s meticulous approach makes the book a valuable addition to baseball history. Stout does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the game between that era—when “the owners were the kings and the players lowly serfs”—and today. Throughout, Fenway Park, “a ballpark for the heart and soul,” shines as a beacon for America’s game.

Baseball diehards and historians, and of course Red Sox fans, will find much of interest in this paean to one of sport’s most famous venues. Stout’s knowledge of the sport and passion for the game certainly comes across in his writing, especially when he is uncovering little known details of this bygone era of baseball. The book is full of fun and informative anecdotes about Fenway’s past and present.

Stout has done the impossible: he has put an end to the seemingly bottomless genre that is Fenway Park books. We now need no more. We get not pomp and circumstance, but the bones and blueprint of a legendary ballpark, topped with a star-filled World Series that still endures. He doesn’t pretend history is straw hats and cigars, but gives you real people, real baseball and (the best part) real Boston, the way any real writer should. This is a book for all of us, a wonderful sports book.”

[Review mash-up courtesy Amazon, Kirkus, Booklist [starred review], Publisher's Weekly, Larry Tye, Mike Rutstein, Howard Bryant, Netgalley]

For more about Fenway 1912 or The Best American Sports Writing 2011, see www.glennstout.net All three books are now available for order through any online source in or in e-book editions and are shipping to bookstores now.

PHANTOM COLUMN: The Greatest Sox Team EVER

2011-09-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Postseason tickets printed and un-used are called phantoms. Here is my "phantom" Chin Music column from the now unpublished postseason issue of "Boston Baseball." And remember, if you still want to celebrate a championship, or celebrate Fenway Park see my new book, Fenway 1912. They win in this one.

At this time of year it is sometimes helpful to look back at the optimistic, crayola tinged predictions of the spring. Entering into this season more than one prognosticator deemed the 2011 Red the “the greatest ever” and predicted season win total of 100, 105 even (and, I kid you not, NESN.com) 120 wins. Oh, and that World Series thing? The tiniest of hurdles.

Those observers who have witnessed more than just the most recent decade know that, historically, things are generally not quite that easy. The title of “greatest Sox team ever” currently resides where it has for the last 99 years, with Fenway Park’s first residents, the boys of 1912. They went 105-47 in the regular season, plus a hard fought and memorable victory over the hated New York Giants in the eight game 1912 World Series that netted them another four wins (plus one tie) for a final victory total of 109.

This team, for all its accomplishments, is not that team, although there are some interesting parallels.

For one, both the 1912 and 2011 Red Sox featured a emerging star in centerfield who put together an MVP worthy season. Tris Speaker played centerfield for the 1912 Sox, hit .383 and led the team in almost everything, just as Jacoby Ellsbury is doing this year, although major difference is that Speaker ended up in Cooperstown and Ellsbury seems destined for Seattle when his contract ends. Then again, Speaker was dealt to Cleveland a few years after his MVP season.

Both clubs also featured a new first baseman, and here the candidates are Adrian Gonzalez for the 2011’s versus Jake Stahl for the ‘12s. And while Gonzalez has had a wonderful year, he was not quite Jake Stahl, who in addition to providing a bump offensively was also the 11’s Terry Francona and Tom Werner, serving both as manager and as a minority owner.

Now the metaphor starts to stretch, although both clubs employed a catching tandem consisting of one crippled veteran and one raw recruit, Varitek and Saltalamachia versus Rough Bill Carrigan and Hick Cady. Each also had an infielder with a surprisingly potent bat (Dustin Pedroia and Larry Gardner), and a left fielder who inspired nickname. Duffy Lewis of the 1912’s had a cliff nicknamed after him in the new Fenway. So too, has Carl Crawford inspired a name or too. Unfortunately, they are unprintable. In right, Hall of Famer Harry Hooper patrolled the field for ‘12’s – J.D. Drew was paid like a Hall of Famer to do the same for the ‘11’s, although here the metaphor begins to strain beyond belief.

It thoroughly falls apart on the mound. Smoky Joe Wood was 34-5 for ‘12’s. There is, to some surprise, his equivalent on the 11’s. In fact there are four, if you add up the positive qualities and victories of Beckett, Lester, Bard and Papelbon and ignore their failures. That’s how good Wood was in 1912. Take the Sox top four pitchers this year cumulatively, overlooks each bad game and you begin to approach Smoky Joe Wood.

Enough of similarities. The difference lies in, well, the difference. And that is in the unpredictable nature of reality versus prognostication. Greatness is potential realized and to be great you have to remain on the field. The ‘12’s, with the medical assistance of a bottle of iodine and (perhaps) a bucket of Epsom salts, stayed free of serious injuries for most of the season, losing only a few players for a few weeks (Ray Collins, Hick Cady and Jake Stahl) to injuries of the knees and ankles, while everyone else managed to play through things like charlie horses, abscessed teeth and hangovers with nary an antibiotic, PED or a cortisone shot in sight.

Not so with the 11’s, for which hangnails have taken on the specter of gloom once reserved for the grippe. The supposed “greatest Sox team ever” has been neither healthy nor particularly resilient or gallant, while the ‘12’s, for what I’ve learned about them, probably stitched wounds up with barbed wire. Just before the end of the season, for example, Larry Gardner dislocated a finger, the bone popping though the skin. A little over a week later, he was back on the field. That’s the kind of injury that would put J.D. Drew in intensive care for a month.

That is where the lesson lies and that’s what is so great about the postseason. It is the time of no excuses and where predictions vaporize before reality. To win, you actually have to play the games, and for this team, once known as “greatest Sox team ever” that means staying on the field. It is there, and not the disabled list, where the possibility of redemption and glory reside. While it may be too late for the ‘11s to be the greatest Sox team ever, a successful run in October could keep them from being the most disappointing.

Glenn stout is the author of Fenway 1912. For more see Glenn’s website, www.glennstout.net.

SAME AS IT EVER WAS

2011-09-29T04:16:00.001-07:00

The brief passage below sort of sums it up. Or course, I originally wrote it in Red Sox Century back in 2000. All I had to do was add a few names . . .

. . . In the last month of the regular season History came alive. The major events of the Red Sox improbable past began to repeat and twist into the present. The 2011 Red Sox began re-enacting the roles of their ancestors in some strange public ritual. The whole history of the Red Sox was destined to be replayed and repeated, then replayed and repeated in one game while waiting for one pitch that never came, changing everything and nothing.

Hangovers were instantaneous, severe and violent. Mike Torrez screamed “I’m off the hook!” Darrell Johnson was sprayed with champagne in the Met clubhouse. Bill Buckner danced a jig on his ranch in Idaho, while Carl Crawford, Jonathan Papelbon and a cast of thousands not named Jacoby Ellsbury pushed Pesky aside, their careers distilled into a single moment, the lead of their obituaries already written. The whole 2011 roster elbowed their way past Stanley and Schiraldi and Galehouse and Willoughby. Don Zimmer, Joe McCarthy, Joe Cronin, John McNamara and Grady Little welcomed Terry Francona to the brotherhood while Joe Maddon looked on in sympathy, Buck Showalter grinned and pushed the pin into the voodoo doll a little deeper and Theo Epstein felt the pain and tried to peel the target off his forehead. Robert Andino joined Aaron Boone and Mookie and Bucky as an improbable villain and regional epithet. The dark corner deep in the heart of all Red Sox fans everywhere, the one that appeared to have healed got ripped open and suddenly seemed a little darker, a lot more crowded, and a whole lot more unpleasant.

More than one Boston fan woke the next morning and either logged on or turned on the television or clicked on the radio to confirm that the ultimate nightmare had indeed taken place. It had.

History returned to the Boston Red Sox. Fenway Park, at the end of its one hundredth season,* would have to wait at least one more season to host its first full blown championship celebration.

The worst month ever was over.

*Note: Championship celebrations in both 1912 and 1918 were both muted and took place before a half empty ballpark due to the unique circumstances of those World Series.

Fenway Park Ground Breaking 100 Years Ago

2011-09-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

One hundred years ago today, September 25, with little ceremony or fanfare, construction on Fenway Park began. It had been common knowledge in Boston for quite some time that a new park would be built, and that it would be built in the Fens, on a parcel of property once known as part of the "Dana Lands," the ancestral holding s of one of New England's most prominent families, but construction was held up until the sale of the club from the Taylor family to a consortium headed by James McAleer was made official. When the papers were signed, the work began.

Six months later, Fenway Park opened for business.

I tell the entire story, and much much more, including a complete construction and architectural history of the park and, as one reviewer wrote:

"So many cool facts were included in this book that I've forgotten more than I've remembered and I'm probably going to have to re-read at least some of it again. Since I've no knowledge of baseball prior to the eighties it was fun to read about the 1912 season during which the Red Sox and the Giants fought for baseball dominance. This is a great book with more Red Sox/Fenway facts than you'll know what to do with."

For more, including a selection from the Prologue, see the Amazon listing (click"editorial reviews" for the Prologue)

http://www.amazon.com/Fenway-1912-Ballpark-Championship-Remarkable/dp/0547195621/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315652861&sr=1-1

or my website, www.glennstout.net.

THE REVIEWS ARE IN . . .

2011-09-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

And they are terrific.

“In the capable hands of Stout, it promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete.” - Sports Illustrated.com

“Along with Chicago’s Wrigley Field, Boston’s Fenway Park represents the last physical connection to baseball’s early-twentieth-century history. . . Stout, editor of The Best American Sports Writing series reprises Fenway’s first year, culminating with the dramatic Sox’s victory over the New York Giants in an eight-game World Series, four games to three (the second game was declared a tie). Stout also examines the press coverage of the era. So many reporters would converge on the Series that the Sox greatly expanded the press box rather than give journalists valuable box seats. He also examines the prevalence of gambling, which would reach scandal proportions with the 1919 Black Sox, but in 1912, all the principals looked the other way. In addition, there are miniprofiles of players such as Smoky Joe Wood and Tris Speaker of the Sox as well as the larger-than-life owners and managers of the era. While some sports histories are bone-dry and distant, Stout imbues his account with a unique vibrancy and a razor-sharp intelligence. A wonderful sports book.” - Starred review, Booklist

“BEST BASEBALL BOOK EVER: If you are a lifelong Red Sox fan, a lifelong Red Sox hater, a rabid baseballholic or merely a casual baseball fan, Glenn Stout’s new book, Fenway 1912, is an amazing read into the birth of a ballpark, the 1912 Red Sox and the transition to the modern baseball era. His ability to weave together the tiniest detail and apparent minutiae into a rip-roaring page-turner that is hard to put down is simply amazing. If someone had told me that I’d be fascinated by the 1912 Red Sox I’d have laughed outright, but Mr. Stout is able to make the reader care about a baseball season that happened almost 100 years ago. Even if you are a confirmed Red Sox hater – if you love baseball you’ll find plenty to like in this book. If you know a Red Sox fan there probably isn’t a better book to give to them as gift. And if you haven’t had the privilege of visiting Fenway Park you’ll find yourself thinking about how to go to a few games in the Friendly Confines of Fenway to watch a baseball game in the oldest ballpark in the major leagues. I can whole-heartedly recommend this book. I’ll be buying several copies to give as gifts this holiday season." – Amazon reader review

“From tearing up the sod from a previous ballfield and moving it to the under-construction Fenway to details about the construction of the building to the intricacies of the daily life of the players, every detail of Fenway Park is covered in this book. Mr. Stout clearly has a passion for his material, and I am amazed at the research that must have gone into this. Anyone involved in this project is discussed: groundskeeper, architect, coaches, owners, players. Even at 416 pages, this wasn’t boring and kept me reading even though I don’t follow baseball. . . This has got to be THE definitive work on this subject. I can’t imagine even a dissertation that could be more complete.” - ADVANCE REVIEW via netgalley

“Fenway 1912 is not [just] light reading & pretty pictures. There’s going to be stuff in there that even Dick Bresciani doesn’t know. . . a book that everyone who covers this team has to buy, and read, and keep handy, so that when people ask us where the bones are buried, we can look wise and have the answer at our fingertips.“ -Boston Baseball

“To many fans, Fenway is the Mecca of baseball, a symbol of everything the game represents and aspires to be. But in 1912, it was just one of four new baseball stadiums utilizing newly developed concrete-and-steel construction methods—evidence, writes Best American Sports Writing series editor Stout (Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, 2009, etc.) “of just how deeply the game of baseball had become ingrained into the fabric of American life.” The Sox’ 1912 season was a remarkable one, and the author takes the reader inside the locker room, management offices and the field. The team featured such luminaries as Hall-of-Famer Tris Speaker, pitching ace “Smoky” Joe Wood, player/manager Jake Stahl and a supporting cast of characters including Duffy Lewis, “Hick” Cady, “Heinie” Wagner, Buck O’Brien and the Sox’ famous booster club the Royal Rooters. But the book’s most important character is Fenway itself, and Stout spares no detail of its design, construction and effect on the game. The author’s meticulous approach makes the book a valuable addition to baseball history . . . The author does an excellent job of portraying the differences in the game between that era—when “the owners were the kings and the players lowly serfs”—and today. Throughout, Fenway Park, “a ballpark for the heart and soul,” shines as a beacon for America’s game. Baseball diehards and historians, and of course Red Sox fans, will find much of interest in this paean to one of sport’s most famous venues.” – KIRKUS Reviews

“In his new work, Stout (Red Sox Century) turns back the clock to 1912 to capture the first season the Boston Red Sox played on their now storied home field. The author gives a detailed account of how Fenway was constructed using “reinforced concrete,” an improvement from the wooden ballpark it replaced. Of course, a ballpark is nothing without a team, and Stout weaves the story of the new ballpark into the saga of the Red Sox ownership, players, fans, and the city of Boston. . . Stout’s knowledge of the sport and passion for the game certainly come across in his writing, especially when he is uncovering little known details of this bygone era of baseball. The book is full of fun and informative anecdotes about Fenway’s past and present including the connection between the ballpark and the sinking of Titanic, the origins of the term “Green Monster,” and how the new field with its cliff in left field, its short porch in right, and the bleachers in center affected Sox outfielders Duffy Lewis and Tris Speaker. Finished off with an epilogue that captures the major moments in Fenway history, this work is a well-constructed tribute to Fenway on its upcoming 100th anniversary. – Publisher’s Weekly

for more see www.glennstout.net or join Fenway 1912 on facebook

Nine Months at Ground Zero

2011-09-09T04:13:00.000-07:00

Note: Five years ago, with Charlie Vitchers and Bobby Gray, I wrote Nine Months at Ground Zero, an oral history of the response of the construction workers to the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center. As this anniversary apporaches, their story remains one of honor and resiliance, a testimony to the strength that we draw from others. At a time when so many memories are so painful, their story remains an inspiration.

To Charlie Vitchers, Bobby Gray and other construction workers in New York, the attack on the World Trade Center and subsequent collapse of the Towers was a sucker punch to the gut.

They knew thousands of innocents had been killed, that their city and their country had been attacked. Their outrage did not stop there. Something they had built with their own hands had been taken down. Their work had been destroyed, their legacy ruined, the collective memory of their industry wiped off the map. Not only did almost everybody working in construction in New York know someone who worked at the Trade Center – a neighbor or a cousin, a co-worker or a friend – many had worked there themselves, either when the buildings were first built or later, as other buildings went up in the complex or floors of the Towers were retrofitted for tenants. They took the attacks personally.

The World Trade Center complex were not just two of the largest and best- known structures in the world, they were the signature buildings of the New York construction industry, the epitome of what it could create. Over the course of their construction, which began in 1966, thousands of union tradesmen had worked on the Towers, and their success sparked a new era in New York hi-rise construction. In a city which hadn’t seen its skyline change dramatically in years, after the Towers were built there were suddenly cranes everywhere. Over the next few decades New York’s skyline would take on an entirely new silhouette.

The Towers themselves were so enormous that their construction inspired logistical innovations never before used in New York construction. Each of the 200,000 steel columns, panel and joist was etched and stenciled with a code. None were fabricated on site. Each was a unique piece of an incredibly complicated puzzle. The steel itself was lifted in place by a method developed in Australia, what were known as “Kangaroo cranes,” or “tower cranes,” cranes attached to a tower fixed to the structure, that jacked itself up and rose with the building. Despite their novelty, New York tradesmen had easily adapted and both had since become more or less standard in high-rise construction in New York and elsewhere.

The construction workers who built the Towers carried the experience as a badge of honor – they had built the biggest and the best, succeeding spectacularly, a once in a lifetime opportunity. Since first breaching the New York skyline, the Trade Center was the touchstone against which all other jobs were compared in scale and complexity, still discussed during coffee breaks and over beers after work. As older worker passed away, it was not uncommon to find a line in a newspaper obituary that noted that the deceased had helped build the Towers.

But when the Towers were attacked and then fell, the sense of pride and accomplishment the construction workers felt was cut off at the ground. The buildings were down, and in some strange way, though through no fault of their own, they had failed because what was never meant to fall somehow had. In response, the had an instinctive reaction. Before anyone articulated the need for their skills, thousands of them knew that now another job was calling them out, one that only they knew they could do. The rough logic of their own experience as ironworkers, laborers, carpenters, electricians, crane operators and dozens of other trades told them that just as only they had once built the Towers, they were now the only people in the world equipped for the task ahead. They had the skills, and more importantly, they felt an obligation, a duty. Their response was simple and uncomplicated; anything they had built, they could take down, because before anything else could be built in its place – and they believed it would – they had to erase what had just taken place.

With that realization a new challenge began to take shape. From a pile of rubble so immense that it resisted description, they would restore order. That was the only job that mattered now.

To Read Chapter One, see: http://indiepro.com/glenn/index.php/excerpt-from-nine-months-at-ground-zero/

The Best Day

2011-08-24T06:01:00.000-07:00

You’ve waited a long time.

For as long as you can remember you’ve always thought about what it would be like to be there, in person, not just to see it on TV like you have a hundred times before, because every time you have seen it you’ve stopped and dreamed a little bit.

What would it be like?He has told you about when he his Dad took him and your uncle when they were both kids and how it seemed like it took all day to drive there and how he can’t remember the score anymore or who they played but he remembers popping soda cups with his foot. And then later, when he was young and living in Boston, about how you could wander in almost any time you wanted for just a couple of bucks, and that he went all the time and it wasn’t anything special. Even now, when your grandmother goes, she calls you after and tells you all about it; where she sat and what she saw, what she had to eat and how many times the fat guy in the middle of the row had to get up and down and up and down and how he missed half the game but ate seven hot dogs by her count.

Then one day he tells you – you’re going. All four of you - you, your brother and your mother, too. He knows somebody, and got some good seats, third base side. He’s even taking the day off. He shows you the tickets, lets you hold them and explains what the numbers mean and shows you on a little colored map where you’ll sit. Then he put the tickets back in an envelope and says that’s enough. You tell him not to lose them and he promises he won’t.

You saw the lights from the freeway once and it didn’t seem so big, but now that you think about actually going there, it starts looking bigger and bigger and you pay more attention when you see it on TV. When the camera pans the stands you ask “Have you ever sat there?” and “What about there?” and “Did you ever get a foul ball?” or “Where are the bathrooms?” and “Did you see Babe Ruth?”

He laughs and says you have to pay attention. He never got a foul ball or a home run, but you never know, and that’s why you have to pay attention, so you don’t miss your chance or get hit with a ball. He tells you the bathrooms are under the stands, that Babe Ruth played a long, long time and that he’s old but not that old.

The night before it’s hard to sleep and you stare at the ceiling holding your glove and hear the crowd and think about popcorn and cotton candy and hope it doesn’t rain. Breakfast is ready when you wake up and run downstairs like it’s Christmas, but he doesn’t act excited at all. The sun is shining in the window but he looks outside, shakes his head and says it looks like rain then looks at you from the corner of his eye. You stop chewing but then he winks and laughs.

It’s a long ride and he tells you to try to take a nap but you can’t shut up and ask a hundred times how much longer it’s gonna be. But when you start to get close and get caught in traffic your eyes close and then the next thing you know he’s shaking your foot and asking you if you want to go to the ballgame or not. You snap awake and climb from the car, tilted cap on head, then he stops, reaches back into the car for your glove and tosses it your way saying “You might need that,” before he locks the door.

You all hold hands and with each step the sidewalk gets more crowded and you see people wearing caps and shirts that say “Pedroia” “Martinez” and “Williams.” There are carts selling hats and pennants and sunglasses and peanuts and pretzels, and when he tells you he once had a pretzel cart himself and sold pretzels on the corner you start thinking that could be the greatest job in the world, that or playing shortstop.

You turn a corner and suddenly it is Fenway Park, all red brick and green paint and crowds and sausage smoke and old guys stubbing out cigars and vendors waving programs, and music from somewhere pouring through the sky. He reaches in his pocket, then tilts his head and asks “Did you remember the tickets?” But this time you smile. He’s got them, all four, and you stand close as he fans them out and hands them to the usher and you push through the turnstile first.

You’re there.
The game hasn’t even started and it’s already the best day ever.

Glenn’s next book, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net.

TIME

2011-08-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

[Note: This is an updated version of a column that first appeared in Boston Baseball in August of 2009. I post it here because, well, it's about TIME.]

It is time.

July is the anniversary of the addition of Pumpsie Green to the Red Sox roster in 1959, a move that integrated the Red Sox and marked the end of a shameful legacy. And each year on the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first appearance in the major leagues in 1947 Major League Baseball celebrates the end of the color line in baseball.

During these twelve years baseball played a pivotal role in American society and proved itself worthy of its status as the National Pastime. Robinson’s call-up to the Dodgers in 1947 was controversial and feared and debated, but by the time Green belatedly integrated the Red Sox, integration and the rights of African Americans not only to play major league baseball, but to participate in all facets of society, had gained wide acceptance. While the battle for equality continues to be fought, equal opportunity, as a right, can no longer be questioned.

Sometime in the future baseball will someday commemorate the moment when the first openly gay major league baseball player chooses to reveal himself both to his teammates and the general public. Although there is, thankfully, no “ban,” legal or assumed, against a gay athlete playing major league baseball, there is still considerable social pressure within the game and within society that has thus far prevented a gay major leaguer from “coming out” and, if he chooses, simply to be himself, just like any other major leaguer.

Dating from the very beginning of the game there have always been gay players, and there are undoubtedly gay players on the field at Fenway Park each and every day of the season. The late Glenn Burke of the Dodgers – according to some, the inventor of the “high five” - and Billy Bean of the Tigers, Padres and Dodgers, both came out publicly after retiring as active players, and are perhaps the best known. It is inevitable that an active major league baseball player will one day publicly step out of the closet and into the spotlight. Yet, primarily due to fear, none has yet done so.

Acceptance of homosexuals in much of society is now rapidly becoming the norm. Several years ago a survey conducted by the Tribune newspapers revealed that fully 74% of all major league players believe that having a gay teammate would not be an issue in the clubhouse. Gay marriage is now legal in Massachusetts and in several other states. I suspect that if the players were polled today that number would be closer to 90%. Intolerance of this kind is disappearing.

Just as baseball took the lead in regard to racial integration it is time once again for major league baseball to take action and lead the way toward the acceptance of gay athletes in mainstream professional sports. In regard to its closeted, gay players, it is time for MLB – or perhaps even individual teams, such as the Red Sox, - to be proactive. The time has come for the Commissioner of Baseball and every team and club owner in baseball to prepare for that inevitability and to pronounce, clearly and openly, that baseball will not only tolerate an openly gay player, but will welcome that player – and protect his rights. The game needs to make clear that intolerance or prejudice of any kind, by any member of any major league baseball club or by any spectator in any major league ballpark, will not be tolerated.

More than twenty years after Pumpsie Green integrated the Red Sox, I heard Jim Rice and other African Americans sometimes showered with epithets in the bleachers of Fenway Park. Neither the Red Sox nor their fans did anything to prevent this. Neither, I am embarrassed to admit, did I at the time. Similar harassment of gay athletes simply must not be allowed. Think what you want, but keep your mouth shut.
This is the right thing to do, and a statement to that effect would be of immeasurable assistance to the first few players to have the courage come out. It might even give that first player the nerve to make that leap today. Maybe I am naïve, but I believe that once a player does so, in only a few short years the question of an athlete’s sexual orientation will largely cease to be an issue.

But there is also an even more compelling reason for major league baseball to do this. Every day, on a playground or on a street corner or in a backyard or in a classroom, there is a young gay person who is the object of teasing and taunts, scorn and worse. This young person - he or she – may not have a defender – or a role model – to help he or she withstand those taunts, or to answer such cruelty with the proud confidence to be one’s own self.

Baseball – if it is truly the National Pastime, a game for all people - should step up to the plate.

[Note: It is interesting to note that when this column first appeared, I did not receive withe a single complaint or any response of any kind from either a reader or anyone else. That is both a measure of progress and a measure of how much remains to be done]

Glenn’s next book, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net.

What You Don't Know About Fenway Park

2011-08-10T03:39:00.001-07:00

As a non-fiction writer, there is nothing I enjoy more than taking on a subject that everyone thinks they know everything about, and uncovering new material. In regard to my new book about Fenway Park - arguably the best known sporting venue in the country, and one of the best known in the world - this is once again the case.

Three years ago I set out to write the definitive account of the creation, design, and building of Fenway Park and to allow the reader to experience Fenway Park in its first year, the Red Sox championship season of 1912. A few weeks from now, Fenway 1912 will be published.

In the book I make use of sources that no other purported history of either Fenway Park or the 1912 season or the 1912 World Series has ever utilized. I promise that this book will prove to be a revelation for even the most hard core fan of either the Red Sox or Fenway Park. I believe it makes all previous histories of the park completely obsolete. Some of the new information includes:

-Period architectural drawings of Fenway Park dating from 1912 that have NEVER been used elsewhere or been reproduced. To my knowledge these are the only period drawings known to exist and as far as I have been able to determine I may be about the only person to look at them - and realize what I was seeing, since 1912.

-A detailed construction history of the ballpark. This includes not only a complete and detailed schedule of the construction of the park, clearly outlining what was built when, but a full explication of the construction methods used in the construction of the park, what it was like for workers, and how the way Fenway Park was built impacted not only the 1912 season and but the ballpark you see today.

- A biography of Fenway architect James E. McLaughlin and builder Charles Logue. These two men had a lasting impact on Fenway Park but previous to my book have been little more than names on a page.

- A discussion of the architectural influences that are the reason Fenway Park looks the way it does today. Before this book, the architectural style and influences exhibited in Fenway Park have been mis-identified

- Detailed discussions on how the new ballpark affected the Red Sox and the 1912 World Series, and a dramatic and lively reconstruction of both the season and the Series, including the infamous contest between Joe Wood and Walter Johnson on September 4, 1912, perhaps the greatest pitching matchup in baseball history. Fenway Park impacted every inning of every game played there during 1912, and to fully understand both the 1912 season and the World Series - as well as every subsequent season in Fenway - one must experience that way Fenway Park revealed itself during the course of its inaugural season

- I explain not only why the "Green Monster" exists, but precisely why it was built the way that it was, and why and when the name "Green Monster" came into use. And guess what? Long before the "Green Monster" seats were built, people were watching baseball from atop the wall.

- How changes made to the ballpark over the course of the 1912 season determined the future evolution of Fenway.

- A detailed analysis of the 1912 season, including Joe Wood's remarkable 34-5 pitching campaign, and how two small changes - one to his pitching windup, and one small injury to another player - resulted in one of the greatest season-long pitching performances in baseball history.

- How pitching great Walter Johnson almost became a member of the 1912 Red Sox.

- The true story of the 1912 World Series, how a Red Sox team torn apart by dissension nevertheless prevailed, all due to an assist from Fenway Park.

I tell the story of Fenway Park as a readable, lively, living biography, full of characters and action, not as an academic history. Thirty years ago I moved to Boston because of Fenway Park, and it changed my life. I wrote this book for everyone whose life has been changed by Fenway.

If you read and appreciated Red Sox Century, or if you have ever sat in Fenway Park, this book is for you. I promise that you will never look at Fenway park the same way again.

My Piece of Fenway

2011-08-07T18:56:00.000-07:00

CHIN MUSIC

My Piece of Fenway

By Glenn Stout

I have long contended that one of the reasons Fenway Park is still with us is not because it has been “preserved” or kept static, but because it has been susceptible to change. This is how what was once the left field wall became “the Green Monster”, why we call the right field foul pole “Pesky’s pole,” and why other areas of the park – “canvas alley” for one – have become named and, in a sense, personalized. This, more than anything else, makes Fenway Park special.

It is particularly special to me, and for a reason that goes beyond the fact that the ballpark - not the ballclub - was the reason I moved to Boston in the fall of 1981, a decision that has determined the course of my life as much as any other I have made. One reason that Fenway Park remains so special to me is that each time I am at the park – or see it on television – there is a small feature that I partly claim as my own.

After the 2002 season the Red Sox, finally succumbing to a modicum of common sense under new ownership, built seats atop the Green Monster in left field. Although this was not the first time fans would be able to watch a game from that vantage point, as I have recently uncovered several references that note that fans watched games from atop the wall in 1912, the “Green Monster seats” are the first legitimate seats in this area.

Now, to place as many seats as possible in such a limited space, the Sox built those seats at a pitch far more severe than elsewhere in the park. While seats in the main grandstand are arranged at a “rising pitch” that increases from 15 degrees from the base to 20 degrees at the back of the stands, the Green Monster seats – like many seating areas in new ballparks, are at a much steeper pitch, approaching 45 degrees.

As workers rushed to finish the seats before the start of the season select VIPs were allowed to take in the view and a few photographs of the new seating area began to appear in print. I saw some of these pictures and talked with some of these people.

The first thing everyone said was how great the view was. The second thing they said was that they hoped no one fell onto the field. It was easy to imagine a fan stumbling headlong down the steep aisle stairs and flipping over the front row and then onto the field, or for a fan in the front row to lean over too far reaching for a ball and fall, or else accidently drop something on Manny Ramirez’s head. While none of these scenarios seemed likely, as the recent tragic fall at Texas’s Arlington Stadium demonstrates, such accidents are not impossible.

In my May column in Boston Baseball that year, I wrote that if the Sox didn’t put up a railing the Green Monster could become a gravestone. When I mentioned this to an attorney friend he stated that once the issue had been raised it put the Sox were on notice in regard to a danger “they know of, or should know of.” If they didn’t take action any of these accidents ever took place they were leaving themselves wide open to a lawsuit.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. At about the same time Jack Curry wrote in the New York Times that there was only “an 18-inch ledge separating you from leaning too far for a baseball and becoming a flying object,” and in the same article Larry Lucchino mentioned there was “the possibility of a protective railing being added to the front row.”

Now it could just be a coincidence, but all I know is that lo and behold, a short time after my column was published a solid barricade about eight inches high appeared atop the Green Monster, making it much less likely that any kind of accident would occur.

Call it the “Writer’s Rail, ” but every time I see that barricade on the top of the Green Monster, I feel the same way Johnny Pesky does when he sees the right field foul pole.

A piece of that sucker is mine.

Glenn’s next book, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net.

from Boston Baseball August 2011

There She Goes

2011-08-06T03:50:00.000-07:00

On this day in 1926, Trudy Ederle not only became the first woman to swim the English Channel, but only the sixth person to do so. And oh yeah - she beat the existing men's record by nearly two hours. My book about her, Young Woman and the Sea, is my best to this point in my career, and I've also written about her for the juvenile/YA market in Yes She Can! Women's Sports Pioneers.

Celebrate with a swim, then a good book on the beach.

My Breakfasts with George

2011-07-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

I knew George Kimball through his work for more than thirty years but I met him only three times. It is perhaps some measure of the man that each was unforgettable.

The first time was in the early 1980s, shortly after I moved to Boston after graduating from Bard College. I wasn’t a writer yet – at least I wasn’t published. But I knew I liked poetry and I knew I liked baseball, so each Opening Day I donned an old baseball uniform, parked myself on the sidewalk beneath Fenway Park’s Green Monster and read baseball poetry for two or three hours to the drunks standing in line for the bleachers. The first year a few newspaper reporters looking for local color stumbled upon me so the second year I sent out press releases. George Kimball called me and asked to meet him late one morning at the Eliot Lounge, the legendary Boston marathon bar. I didn’t know what he looked like. “Just ask for me,’ he said. “They know me there.”

I knew Kimball as a writer, both from the Boston Herald and from a story he’d written in 1971 while working for the Boston Phoenix called “Opening Day at Fenway,” which had been re-printed in the fine baseball literary anthology, Baseball I Gave You all the Best Years of My Life, edited by Richard Grossinger and Kevin Kerrane, a source I mined for baseball poetry. The story is more a sketch of characters, about Fat Howie and three cab drivers from Chelsea, and not a game story at all. I figured Kimball might be a kindred spirit.

I walked into the Eliot Lounge for the first time early the next afternoon, a day or two before opening day. I was the only customer and asked the bartender, who I now know was the legendary Tommy Leonard, if he had seen George Kimball. “Not yet,” he said, ‘But he’ll be around.”

As I nursed a beer a figure suddenly loomed nearby, all shoulders and shadow and spoke: “Hi Glenn, I’m George Kimball.”

He was wearing a ratty Army fatigue jacket, boots and a pair of blue jeans, his hair was uncombed and wild. He squinted at me with his one good eye and his face wore something approaching a beard. In short, he looked the way I was trying look. I knew of only two other one-eyed writers and they were both personal; heroes, the poets Robert Creeley and Jim Harrison. I figured I was in good hands.

I was. We talked for the next hour, half an interview and half just a conversation, and Kimball learned I had attended Bard and studied with the prolific poet Robert Kelly. He not only knew Bard, but he knew Kelly. A lifetime before they had both been part of the post-Beat literary scene in New York. As we talked it rapidly became obvious that Kimball had read everything I had and a whole lot more, that he had already lived the kind of life I had only read about, a life full of writing, and writers.

And now he was a sports writer. I couldn’t believe it. After getting out of school with a degree in writing poetry I was unemployable, a security guard and a library aide, but, rather remarkably, I had actually been interviewed twice for jobs as a sportswriter, once at a county weekly in Ohio, and by the Poughkeepsie Journal. Neither had hired me. Yet here was a living example that perhaps those efforts weren’t in vain. Here was someone who, like me, loved sports and literature and, I could tell, was exactly who he was and no one else. It was good to know there was a place for that. And maybe there was a place for me.

He wrote a nice column on me and I read poetry on Opening Day for another seven or eight years. By the time I stopped I had, improbably, become a sports writer for Boston Magazine, and was just beginning my tour of duty as series editor for The Best American Sport Writing and was working on my first book, while working at the Boston Public Library. In a funny way, none of that might have happened had I not started reading baseball poetry outside Fenway Park and been interviewed by George; people remembered the story, and I remembered his example.

I don’t remember meeting George again but we did speak a few times when he called the library for some research help, where I was the defacto go-to-guy for sports reference questions. And on a visit back to Bard once I had run into Robert Kelly and mentioned that I had met Kimball. He had just responded with a smile that told me the memory of their friendship was still real and treasured and told me “Give my love to Brother George.” The next time we spoke, I did.

I met George for the second time a couple years ago. Out of nowhere he sent me an e-mail that he was going to be passing through close to where I live in northwestern Vermont and he wanted to have lunch. I wasn’t going to be around so I had to pass, but a few weeks later he contacted me again. He was on his way to visit his kids, Teddy and Darcy, both of who lived and worked around the Jay Peak ski hill.

I waited for George at a small diner and when he lumbered out of the car, still smoking a cigarette, and I was both happy and sad to see him. Happy to see that he was the same unkempt, distracted wreck of a guy and sad to see that he was so sick. I had known he was ill but it was still a shock to see the shrunken figure of his face and his clothes hanging so loosely.

He just started talking, like we’d talked a hundred times before, and we ordered breakfast. Actually, George ordered twice, a massive pile of pancakes, extra butter, double butter, double toast, and I got it; he knew he was going to die, but damned if he was going to act like he was dying. This was a not a man who was going to go quietly.

Nominally, he wanted to talk about this boxing collection he and John Schulian were putting together, and wanted to know if I thought my editor at Houghton Mifflin might be interested. I gave him her information, but told him it was unlikely, as the book business was bad and anthologies a hard sell even in good times. But mostly I think he just wanted to talk, and as sick as he was he probably needed to take a break from the long drive, and he gave me a copy of Four Kings, his fine book on Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvin Hagler, and I gave him a copy of the latest edition of The Best American Sports Writing, and we talked about books and writing and writers until the coffee was cold and the last of the melted butter had congealed on his plate. I didn’t expect to see him again.

A few months later, however, I heard from him once more, this time an invitation to meet for breakfast again at a Bistro in Burlington. I walked in and didn’t see George, so I asked a staff person if they had a table for “Kimball” and then I heard a familiar voice say “Are you here to meet George?”

Beer in hand, it was Bill Lee, the former Red Sox pitcher and his wife. I knew Bill a little and we started talking about George and how sick he was, but before we got too far, in he came, with several friends and his son and daughter and their partners and before I knew it I was swept up in the entourage sitting at huge table with about twelve other people all talking at once.

I hardly talked to George at all, but that didn’t really matter. He hadn’t wanted anything but was just being nice and wanted me in the mix. I spent most of the next two hours and two Bloody Marys talking to Bill Lee, not about baseball and not as a writer, but like a neighbor about the kind of things people our age who live in Vermont talk about; cutting wood, making syrup, crossing the border, aging parents and dying friends.

I didn’t see George after that, but I heard from him once in a while on Facebook, and I was thrilled when At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing was picked up by the Library of America, and some friends who knew him better than I kept telling me how he was doing, which was not well, physically, but fabulously otherwise. For as his former colleague at the Boston Herald wrote in his terrific appreciation for that paper yesterday * , “George didn’t ‘fight’ cancer, as is the meaningless cliché. He did something better. He ignored it.”

That he did, writing and writing and writing, to the last second of the last round. I’m just happy to have witnessed a small part of that, which was much more than a legacy, but a lasting lesson.

So today I think I’ll read “Opening Day at Fenway” and all about Fat Howie and three cab drivers from Chelsea one more time. And then get to work. There's alot of things I still have to say.

* http://bostonherald.com/sports/other_sports/general/view.bg?articleid=1350253&position=1

How Long Has This Been Going On?

2011-06-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

I've written tweets of ten words, blog posts of fifty to a thousand, articles between 300 and 10,000 words, and books between 20,000 words and 250,000 words. Different genres, different audiences, topics and approaches require different lengths - which isn't even length really. It is time. Write as long as you need the reader's time to tell the story. In regard to books, and in consultation with your editor and according to your contract, you write the book the length it needs to be so when you're done you feel done, with no unanswered questions. Just don't drop a surprise at the end, and dump a book way long or way short on an editor expecting the opposite.

Much the same with chapters - 2,000 words, 15,000 words - write them, as long as they need to be to feel complete and unified. NEVER write a chapter to length just because you're stuck on a number.

The only real regret I have about any book I've written is when I've compromised according to length. As the late great David Halberstam once told a friend of mine "F-'em. It's your book. Your name is on the cover."

I think of chapter breaks like big breaths, where you feel the need to pause, inhale, ponder and move on - and you have to be a reader here, as well as a writer. Be sensitive to when natural transitions occur - an event comes to a close, a conclusion is reached, a character experiences some kind of defining moment, there is a moment of quiet before action, or action before quiet, some contraction in the narrative. Much of it is just learning to listen to your own work.

It helps, when ending a chapter, to find a way to lift it off the page a bit, and cause the reader to reflect a little, just like the end of a long story or magazine piece, where the story turns back on itself a bit, or the way a piece of music echoes earlier themes. Again, if you are just breaking off for the sake of breaking off, don't. And see if a lead for the following chapter comes easily. If it does, you're breaking it at the right place. But if you neither have an end, or a lead, then you simply might not be at the end of the chapter yet, or have already rushed past it. Trust me, it gets easier the more you do it.

It sounds simplistic, but it really helps sometime to scattershoot through your library just reading leads and ends to chapters, or magazine pieces - can help to brainstorm your own. You'll also realize that some writers you may like a great deal use the same strategies over and over. Nothing wrong with that, if it works, but I must admit that ever since I did that to a writer who I had always admired and realized that nearly every story ended with a similar sensory impression, my admiration dropped just a little. So don't abandon your change up and throw fastballs every time.

And use you outline as that - an outline. Maybe I'm the outlier, but I've never worried for a second about abandoning the outline as I write, as long as I make sure I cover the same territory. For the writer the writing process is also a learning process - no matter how much I think I know beforehand, I don't make the connections until the act of writing takes place, and that can cause me to recast the rest of the book entirely. One of the most lasting things I ever wrote came about when I was in the process of telling a small story that I expected to write over quickly, but found first one question that I didn't have an answer to, then another, then another, and all of a sudden not only did I have an entire new chapter, but the info in that chapter informed the remainder of the book and provided a entire logic that wasn't there when I started writing, and that I didn't know was there in my research.

Another reason why you do this.

You Better Be

2011-06-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

[This column first appeared in Boston Baseball, July 2011]

You want to believe. I mean you really, really, really want to believe.

He’s your favorite, and your kids’ favorite. And the favorite of about half the 617. John Henry likes him, too.

On a team with little personality, he has most of it.

He’s the kind of story you root for. A childhood of poverty. A long struggle just to reach obscurity, and then he was released. Came here as insurance. Started out as an afterthought, the fourth option. Then fought his way – hit his way – into the lineup, then worked his way up: seventh, sixth, fifth, and finally fourth, cleanup. From obscurity to stardom, the scrap heap to the All-Star, a real life Matt Christopher story.

Then it got worse, which in a funny way, could make it even better now. The swing got slow. The fastballs got swung through. Then there was that report from 2003 . . . then the press conference, the denial, the excuse – they always have an excuse - and the slide. The Yankee fans jeered, made fun of him just like Sox fans made fun of A-Rod and Clemens. He stumbled and fell. Hard. Even the Sox started greasing the skids, sending out the word: “He’s finished. Done.” Rumor was they were preparing the papers for his release. And then . . .

Boom! Pow! Kr –unch! Back like a comic book character, a super-hero. Just when it seemed impossible, came the resurrection, like he turned back the clock.
A few years ago you wouldn’t have thought twice. You would have believed, totally. Absolutely.

But now . . . part of you just can’t. I mean it’s easy to forget and you stand and cheer each hard swing and home run and bat flip, and the way he brings the hugs out in the dugout still makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and makes your kid smile, and you can’t wait to hear him talk because he’s funny even when he doesn’t try to be. After all these years, he’s still your favorite, still the one, the one who stood and delivered when they needed it most, the biggest reason no one chants “1918” anymore.

Yet every once in a while, maybe late at night when you’re sitting at the computer, you start to scan the stats, and that little question in the back of your mind, the one you keep pushing away and ignoring, well, it starts to whisper and then it starts to yell, and that pimple on your tongue starts to swell and you just can’t ignore it any longer.

How do you explain it? At his age, how can you explain it? How can he be having a season that by some measures might just be not one of his best, but the very best of his career? How does that happen? Who else did that at his age? What can explain it? There is the answer on the tip of your tongue you are afraid of, and then there are the other ones.

You tell yourself he’s healthy, that he was hurt and didn’t tell anyone and that now he’s healthy, so of course he’s back.

And the weight. Of course – that’s it! All that weight. He loves life and got too heavy and that slowed his bat, but now he’s in shape again. Just like the Babe - too many hot dogs.

That contract didn’t help either. Worries over the option probably gnawed at him all the time, kept him up, distracted him, but once he got the contract he could relax again. That makes sense.

Or else it was Manny’s fault, and that now that Manny is gone, everything is right again, that maybe they didn’t get along or he had a hard time adjusting to the way he was being pitched when Manny was on his way out the door. Yeah, that’s it. It was that bastard Manny.

Or else it’s A-Gone. He’s the Cure-All who fixes everything, floats all boats. Makes total sense. Because A-Gone is here, the big guy is back. He gets those pitches again. He’s got a buddy again, an amigo, a guy he can talk hitting with, another lefty, and some protection in the lineup.

That’s what it is. There’s not just one reason, but a lot of reasons. Add them all up and it makes perfect sense. The logic is irrefutable. And now you can turn off the computer and go to sleep.

But you can’t go to sleep. You stare at the ceiling, still awake, wondering.

You better be. You gotta be. You better be.

You better be clean.

Glenn Stout’s next book, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net.

Death of a Ballplayer

2011-06-05T07:26:00.000-07:00

Enjoy them, appreciate them, cheer them or boo them. Just don’t think for a second that you know them, that you have any idea whatsoever whether or not a given player is a “nice guy.” And that is as true for those who sit in the press box as it is for those who sit in the stands.

As I write this another old ballplayer had passed, a hero of my youth who I recall fondly from the scratchy black and white images that danced across our TV screen, and from the Technicolor baseball cards I sorted over and over again on my bedroom floor, memorizing his hobbies and statistics, using them to create a persona. Over the past twenty-four hours I have read tribute after tribute attesting not only to his ability as an athlete, but to his character as a human being. While the dimensions of his ability can be roughly measured by the numbers, there is no similar metric for virtue. I hope he was a nice guy, and have little reason to think otherwise, but I’ve read nothing from anyone who has any special insight into what the man was really like, who spent more than the odd hour or two in his company when he was fully aware that he was in the public view.

If one writes about sports, one is inevitably asked “What’s [insert name here] like? Is he a nice guy?” Although I haven’t met a large number of professional athletes, I have met and spoken to more than a few, ranging from guys like Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski and Phil Rizzuto to Jim Lonborg, Bill Lee, and Rich Gedman, and lesser known stars of bygone eras like Boston College football players Charlie O’Rourke and Lou Montgomery, former Celtic John Mahnken and many other players whose names now reside in the memory of another generation. Although all of them – even mercurial Ted Williams, despite the fact I had hair halfway down my back - were “nice” to me and, as far as I could tell, “good guys.” But each also knew that what he said and did was being written down and recorded.

I have no real idea whether any of these guys were, in fact, either nice or good. There can be such a vast difference between the public persona and the private that we might as well be talking about separate individuals, and I think most of us don’t have to look back very far or very deeply into our own lives to know that this is true. When I was a kid I had close friends who had fathers that I thought were terrific, guys that played ball with us in the backyard and took us places and made me wish my Dad had the time to do all those things with me. Of course at the time, despite the fact that I spent hours and hours and countless sleepovers in their homes, I didn’t know that one was regularly terrorizing his family with physical violence, and the other was raping his own daughter.

I’ve had people who have far more contact than I with professional athletes assure me that the guy I thought was good was in fact “a mute bleeping turd,” and that the guy that was supposed to be a horror show was actually “the best ever.” One friend who has regular contact with a Local Legend has told me at various times that the guy is either a nightmare or an altar boy, and there is no way to tell which guy you are going to get on a given day, or even from one minute to the next. The truth is that we do not know them at all, not ever, not really, no matter how many games we watch or how often we visit the locker room or play golf with them or see them in a restaurant or in a nightclub or visiting a hospital room or a sitting at a charity banquet or even standing in line at the grocery store.

All we know, really, is what we see on the field, whether they can run and hit, field and throw – at least if we’re willing to forget that the whole PED thing has cast even those perceptions and everything else that has happened in this game over the last two decades into doubt. The rest of our feelings toward them are only the pure projections of a fan, the fantasy we sell ourselves because he plays for “us,” tries to beat “them,” and wears the right colored cap. It is not the passing of the player that we mourn, but our younger, more innocent and less cynical selves, the kid who believed that baseball cards were true, and that virtue and talent were one and the same.

According to SportsIllustrated.com “In the capable hands of Stout, [Fenway 1912] promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete.” Glenn’s next book, Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net. This column originally appeared in Boston Baseball.

JUSTICE II

2011-05-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

Let the poor reporting begin.

In the initial report of the disposition of Howard Bryant’s case on Masslive.com, the online news source for the Springfield Republican that covers Western Massachusetts, reporter Fred Contrada, although essentially correct, nevertheless managed to leave an incorrect impression which has since been picked up by numerous other outlets passing off second hand reporting as something more. Contrada accurately reports that Bryant “agreed to serve six months of pretrial probation.” Unfortunately, by failing to define “pretrial probation” a number of subsequent reports and headlines have erroneously stated that Bryant was “sentenced to probation.” That is not the case.

As described under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 276 Section 87, Bryant was not sentenced to probation. He agreed to a very specific form of probation, commonly known in Massachusetts as “pretrial probation.” This is an administrative, negotiated agreement between Bryant and the court. It DOES NOT contain any admission of guilt and the defendant does not give up either his right to a trial or a presumption of innocence. It is not a “plea bargain,” since there is no plea, or acceptance of any kind of “lesser” charge. In essence, the court offers to make a procedural finding that, after a period of six months, will result in the case being dismissed and disappearing entirely unless the defendant violates terms of probation, which in this case means he is charged with a subsequent crime. Such an agreement is usually offered by the prosecution when the facts and evidence do not merit a trial, i.e. the State has no credible case. It is generally accepted by a defendant because, unlike some other procedural outcomes, such as a continuance without a finding (CWOL), which is sometimes offered in weak or inconsequential cases that the State does not wish to bring to trial, by accepting pretrial probation the defendant never pleads guilty or admits to anything about the charges. With a continuance without a finding (CWOL) the defendant still must admit to something on the record. Bryant, by agreeing to pretrial probation, does not. In six months the case, including his record of pretrial probation, disappears entirely from the record, as if he were never charged or arrested.

In the reporting of this case, what should have been the “lede,” (or, for those non-journalists now reading, the major point), was buried, and it has been buried in nearly every other subsequent report. The most significant point was the statement that “A careful review of all of the statements of percipient witnesses that have been collected do not support allegations that Mr. Bryant struck, choked, pinned against a car or committed any other act of violence against Mrs. Bryant,” a statement that repudiates the States’ own witnesses and the police reports of the incident.

In the end, the State concluded that there was no evidence that a crime was committed, and therefore no crime to prosecute. Case closed.

But it takes an open mind – and accurate reporting - to admit that.

JUSTICE

2011-05-27T08:35:00.001-07:00

Earlier this morning my friend and colleague Howard Bryant was exonerated of criminal charges stemming from an incident in late February in Buckland, Massachusetts that resulted in his arrest and being charged with domestic assault and battery, assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest. To be absolutely clear, the statement released earlier today and signed by both Bryant’s attorney and Jeremy C. Bucci, Chief Trial Counsel of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office in Greenfield, Massachusetts, reads in part:

“A careful review of all of the statements of percipient witnesses that have been collected do not support allegations that Mr. Bryant struck, choked, pinned against a car or committed any other act of violence against Mrs. Bryant. [emphasis mine] ”

In other words, the prosecutor’s office admits that there is no evidence that Bryant committed a crime, a level of vindication far stronger than a trial finding of “not guilty.” Similarly, neither is the district attorney prosecuting Bryant for either assault and battery on a police officer or resisting arrest. While the negotiated statement contains the usual pap that allows the district attorney’s office to save face politically, Bryant’s vindication is complete and undeniable. He has not “plea bargained” his way to a lesser charge; he is innocent.

This result – justice in a legal sense – is not a surprise to me. Howard Bryant is my friend. We often speak and he called shortly after his arrest, explaining what happened and proclaiming his complete and total innocence, something I never questioned. Yes, Howard and his wife had a dispute, one that unfortunately took place in public and one which they both regret, but one that involved neither violence nor the threat of violence. That is no crime. If such public disputes were criminal then we are all guilty.

I congratulate both Howard and his wife and now ask a question of all those who concluded that, simply because he was charged, that he was guilty or that “He must have done something.” As of earlier this morning, before the disposition of his case was made public, there were no less than 167,000 references to “Howard Bryant” “ESPN” and “assault” on Google – 55,000 from “News” sources alone. This does not include the thousands of reader comments that attacked Bryant’s character that were posted on news stories that reported on the incident in sources such as the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Masslive.com, ESPN.com and others, or the hours of despicable, vitriol leveled at Bryant from certain Massachusetts-based sports broadcast outlets that were disseminated nationwide through the Internet and cable and satellite television. In combination, this has caused harm to his personal reputation that might well be irreparable.

“How does one regain his or her reputation?” is a question that has no easy answer. ESPN deserves some credit for not only standing behind Bryant from the start and rapidly disseminating today’s legal proceedings through ESPN.com, but that is just the beginning. For all those who publicly jumped to a conclusion of guilt, and, just as significantly, for those who by their silence left the same unmistakable impression, their complicity in that question remains. Whether they choose now to respond with continued cowardice or a measure of public courage and shame will prove telling.

Justice requires a response.

The Four Fenways

2011-05-18T05:16:00.000-07:00

In this the one hundredth season of Fenway Park there is a tendency to see the ballpark as a single entity, a place that is somehow timeless, where a bygone era, while not preserved under glass, has nonetheless been protected, uncorrupted by the crass changes that elsewhere have stripped the game of its history. Not so. While Fenway still occupies the same physical space, it is Fenway Park’s ability to absorb change that has allowed it to remain standing to this day, the ballpark equivalent of Faneuil Hall. While that place survives to this day its origins are similarly buried. Wander its space today and it is impossible to imagine that Faneuil Hall itself started out as little more that a glorified sheep barn.

Fenway Park is a historical artifact and to see it clearly today one needs to examine it like an archaeologist. There are, I believe four Fenways, four distinct eras in the history of this place, four layers that history needs to examine and then peel back and remove to understand why it has survived.

At age one hundred, Fenway Park today – let’s call it Fenway IV - is dominated by everything that is now draped over its surface and essential structure. Never before has Fenway been more utilitarian, supporting all the accoutrements – save comfortable seats - that one now expects in any other modern “retro” ballpark. The ubiquitous and unrelenting barrages of piped in sound and signage, the restaurants, food courts, and pedestrian malls today makes the Fenway experience – apart from the actual contest – more like going to Faneuil Hall than going to a ballgame. Since the Henry/Warner group took over a decade ago, Fenway Park, far from clinging to its past, has instead embraced the future so rapidly that the past has become subservient. It’s most genuine elements, once functional features like that ladder on the left field wall, are now vestigial organs without purpose, footnotes of a history long gone.

It is staggering to me to think that fans of recent vintage have no memory of what I think of as Fenway III, classic Fenway which lasted from the re-construction of 1933/34 until the last decade. Fenway III, which bridged the era of Babe Ruth almost to the present, is the ballpark that I discovered and fell in love with when I first came to Boston in 1981. For more than fifty years Fenway was essentially the same, a quiet, solid, stodgy venue that for the most part no one thought of as very special and which stayed in the background, deferring to the game on the field. Watch footage of any game of this era today and one is struck by the starkness of the place, how barren and spare it appears, as plain and understated as Ned Martin. Not that Fenway remained static during this time period; it did not, but change took place at an almost glacial pace – bullpens in 1940, lights in 1947, etc. Fenway III was the ballpark that fathers took their sons to and then watched as those sons grew to fathers who took their sons to Fenway, a cross-generational experience whose essential nature changed only slightly over the years.

But even this classic version is a corruption of what preceded it. Fenway II existed from September of 1912 until Tom Yawkey bought the team and tore most of old Fenway down. This Fenway, much of which was built over a two-week period in September 1912 to increase the parks’ seating capacity for the 1912 World’s Series, spent the next twenty years in a state of decay, baking and bleaching under the summer sun. By the 1930s portions were condemned, making Fenway Park perhaps the most dangerous building in Boston. Its partial burning in the winter of 1933/34 was a blessing; had it not turned to smoke and ash it simply would have rotted away.

No one alive today remembers Fenway I, the infant ballpark, which lasted just less than a season. Consisting only of a simple concrete grandstand that barely extended past the dugouts, a small covered pavilion and a rectangle of bleachers seats isolated in center field, bound together by only a rough plank fence, Fenway I was almost formless. An outpost on outskirts, it was not shaped by the city. Instead, it was a place the city grew to surround and then a place its people eventually embraced on its own, changed to be sure, but somewhere underneath it all, still at the center of something approaching love.

[Glenn Stout’s next book Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season, will be published in October. To order now, visit www.glennstout.net This essay first appeared in Boston Baseball, May 2011.]

Historical Fenway Facts

2011-05-14T04:52:00.000-07:00

In a book of 416 pages that completely re-writes the early history of Fenway Park, [ that's not just me talking - according to SportsIllustrated.com: “In the capable hands of Stout, it promises to make all other books about Fenway’s construction and first season obsolete.”], a few things end up on the cutting room floor. Since Fenway 1912 won't appear until the fall, here's a tease. And if this stuff didn't make the book, just imagine what did.

For more join Fenway 1912 on Facebook. To pre-order, see www.glennstout.net.
Infield sod was transplanted from the Huntington Avenue Grounds to Fenway Park before the 1912 opener.

When Fenway Park opened on April 20,1912, there were no stands in right field. It served as the teams’ parking lot, holding twelve automobiles.

The flagpole in deep center field was in play when Fenway opened – and 550 feet from home plate.

No one ever played center field more shallow than Sox center fielder Tris Speaker. On bunts, he covered second base.

“Duffy’s Cliff,” the slope in left field names after Duffy Lewis, was diminished in 1926 and removed after the 1933 season.

On April 26, 1912, Boston’s Hugh Bradley became the first man to hit a ball over the left field fence.

On September 7,1914, the Boston Braves played a separate admission doubleheader at Fenway Park before more than 75,000 fans. Between games, shortstop Rabbit Maranville showed off his arm, entertaining fans by pitching while sitting on second base.

The “Miracle” Boston Braves played the 1914 World Series at Fenway Park defeating Philadelphia 3-1 to win in four straight.

George Whiteman’s tumbling catch in left field in the eighth inning of game six of the 1918 World Series preserved a world championship, the Red Sox last until 2004.

On July 5, 1919, Babe Ruth homered over the left field wall for the first time.

In 1922 the City of Boston determined that the centerfield bleachers were unsafe due to the deterioration of the wood foundations that supported them.

On May 8,1926, the left field bleachers burned to the ground – the equivalent of sections 39-33 in today’s Fenway. The were not rebuilt until 1934, although at times temoporary bleachers were erected in this space.

Red Sox outfielder Smead Jolley once made two errors on the same play as the ball rolls between his legs going up and down Duffy’s Cliff.

In the midst of owner Tom Yawkey’s renovation of Fenway Park, the center field bleachers burned on January 5, 1934. Fearing arson, work continued under armed guard.

A two-story construction office stood on the infield during the renovation between the 1933 and 1934 seasons.

In 1934 foundations beneath Fenway Park were strengthened for a proposed second deck.

Temporary bleachers were placed in left field when football was played at Fenway Park. The NFL Redskins (1934-1937), Boston Yanks (1944-1948) and the AFL Patriots (1963-1968). Boston College occasionally played here in the 1940s, as did Boston University in the 1950s.

The all-electric scoreboard, the first in baseball to use red lights for strikes and green for balls, was unveiled in 1934.

Height of wall was increased to 36 feet during 1934 renovations. When the last of Duffy’s Cliff was removed later, it reached its current height – 37 feet.

Fenway was painted “Dartmouth Green,” during the 1934 renovation.

Signs recorded distance to left field wall as 315 feet in 1934, although building plans from the renovation show the distance as 308 feet.

A twenty-three foot screen is built atop the wall in 1936 to protect windows and automobiles on Lansdowne St.

Ted Williams played right field in 1939, his rookie year. He moved to left in 1940.

On April 23, 1939,Ted Williams hit his first home run into the right ield bleachers at Fenway, becoming only the sixth man to do so at the time. The others were Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer, Hank Greenberg, Bill Dickey and Hal Trosky. Williams hit a total of seven home runs into the bleachers in 1939. Babe Ruth never hit any.

After the 1939 season, the bullpens were moved to right field and seats added, cutting the power alley from 402 to 380 feet and the distance down the right field line from 332 to302 feet to help Ted Williams hit more home runs. The press calls it “Williamsburg.”

White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes was the first manager to use the infamous “shift” to stop Ted in Fenway Park on July 23, 1941. He sliced a double down the left field line and Dykes abandons the plan. Cleveland’s Lou Boudreau adopts it five years later.

The BUCK PRINTING sign was here on the left field wall during the 1940s and 1950s.

The Red Sox greatest fan, Lib Dooley, acquired season tickets between the Boston dugout and on deck circle in 1944, which she retained for the next fifty-five years.

Three Negro League players – Marvin Williams, Sam Jethroe and Jackie Robinson – received a tryout in Fenway Park on April 16, 1945.

Ted Williams’ home run off Fred Hutchinson on June 9, 1946 struck Joe Boucher, a construction engineer from Albany sitting in row 37, section 42,in the head, putting a hole in his straw hat. The site is marked by a red seat.

Between games of a doubleheader on July 14,1946, Ted Williams ducked out of the park by way of the scoreboard for ice cream.

Joe DiMaggio played centerfield – wearing a Red Sox uniform after his Yankee uniform is misplaced – in an exhibition game when a team of American League all-stars played the Sox before the 1946 World Series.

The “Green Monster” was created when ads are removed from the left field wall following the 1946 season and it is painted green.

Light towers were installed before the 1947 season and Fenway hosted its first night game on June 13.

On May 17,1947 a seagull once dropped a smelt at the feet St. Louis Brown pitcher Ellis Kinder.

In the first inning of the 1948 playoff game vs. Cleveland, Indian player/manager Lou Boudreau bounced a home run off the top of the wall against Sox pitcher Denny Galehouse, giving Cleveland a 1-0 lead in their eventual 8-3 victory.

On April 30,1952, in his last game before joining the Marines to serve in Korea, Ted Williams hit a home run to right field – his 324th – in what many thought would be his final major league at bat.

On August 7, 1954 Ted Williams spit toward fans behind first and third in an incident known as “the Great Expectoration.”

In May of 1957, Ted Williams used a shotgun to shoot at pigeons from the Red Sox bullpen.

After striking out on September 21,1958, an irate Ted Williams flungs his bat into the stands, striking manager Joe Cronin’s housekeeper, Gladys Heffernan.

Ted William’s final home run in the last at bat of his major league career on September 28, 1960 landed on the canopy shielding pitchers in the right field bullpen.

Frank Malzone made a great catch on the dugout steps to save Earl Wilson’s no-hitter on July 7,1962.

After striking out three Yankees on ten pitches, Sox relief ace Dick “the Monster” Radatz raises threw his hands over his head as he walked off the mound, beginning a tradition he would follow after every subsequent victory or save.

In his first Fenway Park at bat on April 17, 1964, nineteen-year-old Tony Conigliaro homered onto Lansdowne St.

On the final day of the 1965 season, only 487 fans turned out at Fenway Park.

After the Sox clinched a tie for the pennant on the final day of the 1967 season, pitcher Jim Lonborg was mobbed by delirious fans and carried to the dugout. Along the way he loses his undershirt and shoestrings.

Carl Yastrzemski escaped the delirious mob after the Sox clinched the 1967 pennant through the roll-up door on the left field line.

Cardinal Julian Javier broke up Jim Lonborg’s no-hitter with two outs in the eighth inning with a double to the corner in game two of the 1967 World Series.

Tommy Harper received second base after breaking the Red Sox stolen base record with his 53rd theft on September 29,1973.

In the eighth inning of Game Six of the 1975 World Series, pinch-hitter Bernie Carbo tied the game with a line drive home run to center.

In the eleventh inning of Game Six of the 1975 World Series, Dwight Evans made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch of a drive by Joe Morgan.

At 12:34 a.m., October 22, Carlton Fisk hit the most memorable home run in Red Sox history to win Game Six of the 1975 World Series. None who saw it will ever forget.

After the 1975 season, the tin was removed from the left field wall. It was replaced with fiberglass, and the scoreboard was reduced to show only American League scores.

A center field message board was added before the 1976 season.

Bucky Dent earned a new nickname in New England with his three-run pop-fly homer off Mike Torrez in the seventh inning of the Boston-New York playoff game in 1978.

Carl Yastrzemski bounced hit number 3000 to right field on September 12, 1979.

After manager Joe Morgan removes him for a pinch hitter, slugger Jim Rice and Morgan scuffled in the Boston dugout. Morgan announced “I’m the manager of this nine!” and the Sox won nineteen of their next twenty games.

In 1982 and 1983 private suites were added to the grandstand roof.

In 1988 and 1989, the “600 Club” was built and the press box was moved from the grandstand roof to above the 600 Club.

On May 29,1984, the Red Sox retired Joe Cronin’s #4 and Ted Williams #9, mounting the numbers on the facade of the right field roof.

Bobby Doerr’s # 1 was retired on May 21,1988, and Carl Yastrzemski’s # 8 retired on August 6, 1989. For a time, the four retired numbers are arranged 9/4/1/8 – the date the 1918 World Series was scheduled to begin. The order was changed in 1999.

A sliding Tom Brunansky caught Ozzie Guillen’s drive in the right field corner to clinch Boston’s division championship in 1990.

On July 8,1994 vs, Seattle, shortstop John Valentin stabbed a line drive, doubled the runner off second base and tagged the runner coming from first to record an unassisted triple play. Slugger Alex Rodriguez made his major league debut in same game.

Jackie Robinson was honored in every major league park with the retirement of his #42 in 1997, the 50th anniversary of his major league debut.

The Sox retired Carlton Fisk’s #27 on September 4, 2000

In the late 1980s, Sox pitcher Bob Stanley regularly entertained bleacher fans by “sacrificing” beach balls that bounced into the bullpen with a rake.

According to Hall of Fame sportswriter Harold Kaese of the Globe, Ted Williams hit 20 of his 248 Fenway Park home runs to left field.

Initials of Thomas A. Yawkey and Jean R. Yawkey appear in Morse code on the left field wall.

For years, the only sign allowed in Fenway Park was one for the Jimmy Fund.

No one has ever hit a fair ball onto or over the right field roof.

An electric sign touting “City Services” oil was erected in Kenmore Square in 1940. In 1965, it became the famous “Citgo” sign. When the distinctive lights were turned off in the 1979 energy crisis, Sox fans lobbied to have them turned back on and had the sign declared a Boston landmark.

Ted William’s greatest baseball thrill was his home run off Rip Sewell’s “eephus” pitch in the 1946 All-Star game at Fenway Park. Ted was so happy that after rounding first he jumped for joy

When the Red Sox were on the road in the late 1940s and 1950s, Tom Yawkey and his wife Jean often picnicked on the infield and listened to the game on a radio connected to the dugout by extension cords.

Ted Williams hit his first two 1947 home runs in Fenway Park on May 13. Both were hit into the net above the left field wall.

Before one game in the late 1960s, Red Sox outfielder Reggie Smith, known for his cannon arm, wowed teammates by throwing the ball over the left field wall from home plate.

With a comfortable eight-game lead over Baltimore in late August of 1974, a black cat mysteriously appeared on the field crossing in front of the Red Sox dugout. The Orioles then won twenty-right of thirty-four to overtake Boston.

In the ninth inning of the Red Sox 1978 playoff vs. the Yankees, New York outfielder Lou Piniella lost Jerry Remy’s fly ball in the October sun. He blindly stuck out his glove and caught the ball on one hop, preserving the Yankee win and breaking hearts throughout New England.

Before his final game on October 2, 1983, Carl Yastrzemski jogged around Fenway and bid his fans farewell. When he left the field after the game, he signaled the end of his career by handing his hat to a young boy sitting beside the dugout.

Fan tours of Fenway Park began in 1993.

After the Sox clinched the division title on September 20, 1995, Mo Vaughn celebrated on the field atop a Boston Police horse. When asked if he was concerned about seeing his slugger in the saddle, Red Sox CEO John Harrington quipped, “I was worried about the horse.”

On September 22, 1996, Roger Clemens tied his own major league record by striking out twenty Detroit Tigers. He also won his 192nd - and last – game in a Red Sox uniform, tying Cy Young for the club record.

The Red Sox mascot, “Wally” the Green Monster, was introduced on Kids’ Opening Day, April 13,1997, emerging from the score board.

Before the All-Star game on July 13, 1999, Ted Williams rode out on a cart for the first pitch ceremony. Players from both teams surrounded the Sox star and he received the longest ovation in Fenway history.

During one game in 1999 Pedro Martinez was bound by his teammates to a dugout support and his mouth taped closed.

The ladder on the left field wall is the only ladder in play in the major leagues. If a ball strikes the top of the ladder and bounces into the net, it is a ground-rule double.

The three foot-high fence in right field is the lowest in the major leagues.

The center field wall towers seventeen feet above the playing field.

If a ball manages to go through one of the openings in the hand operated scoreboard, either on the fly or bounce, the batter is awarded a ground-rule double.

Ten Cents on the Nest of Snakes

2011-04-12T03:41:00.000-07:00

Weighing in lightly on the nest of snakes debate raging over over Chris Jones's latest posting over at his always worth reading blog, http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/04/absolute-truth.html all I have to say is this:

As writers, I think most of us are motivated by either being for or against something, and that we write either "because of" or "in spite of." I've usually been an "against" and "in spite of" writer, but have recently trended more toward the "for" and "because of," but . . . whatever. The key for all of us is to find the reason to do this, and to keep down the distractions that prevent that from happening, because any time we're not focusing on the work, we're not focusing on the work.

How we reach that place is very personal, and perhaps unknowable, even to ourselves. That, in and of itself, can at times be a distraction, so tred carefully.

The Book and the Plow

2011-04-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

When do you know it is time to write a book?

For any non-fiction writer, that question actually represents two questions. For the writer who has not written a book, the question concerns ambition. For the writer who already has, it is a question of craft. In this case, I’m considering ambition.

Whether he or she will admit it or not, most writers, in any genre, and at every level, from the writer who toils on in secret to the newspaper columnist or the magazine feature writer, wants to write a book. Having people read your work is like giving a performance, but having your work appear in book form is like making a recording. Even the best deadline based journalism can be swallowed up in the undergrowth, but books are trees.

Apart from the obvious – you write a book when you have something to say – and the practical – you write a book when you have a contract to do so - the best reason to write that first book is that it will help you grow as a writer. I believe writing a book is about the best lesson in writing any working writer can have. Writing is, in itself, essentially an act of learning and writing a book takes that to a completely new level, both in terms of what can be learned about a subject and what you learn about writing itself.

The transition for any short-form writer – by “short-form” I mean anyone who generally writes pieces under ten thousand words – into writing book length is dramatic, like going from prose to poetry. The tricks and patterns of writing you can get away with while writing in short-form can trip you up in a book.

I might be more sensitive to this than most people. As series editor of The Best American Sports Writing, I read a great deal of longer feature writing both about sports and about anything else that catches my eye. After doing this for twenty years there are many writers now whose work and style I can recognize within just a few sentences and who have produced significant and lasting work. Yet many of these writers have either not written books or done so with only tepid success. What makes their work so affecting when read in six or eight thousand word bursts four or five times a year often doesn’t work in a book. The style that captivates for eight or ten pages can become redundant and tired when spread across 200 pages, the method of transmission formulaic, and the level of observation predictable. There is a reason so few character actors successfully transition to leading roles – the shtick becomes wearisome – and why leading men and women often seem awkward in small parts. Accustomed to playing a large room, when confined they seem to shrink out of proportion.

This is what can happen to writers who suddenly go from writing eight thousand words to eighty thousand, or to one hundred and eighty thousand. When the writer has to inhabit the consciousness of a reader for days and not just a few minutes or perhaps an hour, that relationship changes. Another metaphor – it’s the difference between a one night stand and a relationship, a date and a life.

Not all writers can make that transition. I had an agent tell me once that he rarely accepted journalists as clients for just this reason.

Writing a book changes the process in ways you cannot foresee. Here’s one example: When writing in shorter forms interview with subjects are common, but an interview of more than several hours are rare. But in a book, given the demands of those many thousands of extra words, you sometime share the opportunity – and the responsibility - to go much farther. On at least three occasions while working on book projects I have ended up interviewing someone for upwards of twenty-five hours over a period of months. In each case I got their basic “story” early on in the process, in the first six or eight hours. But what I found remarkable (and surprising) was that each time, as the interviews continued far beyond the point at which a writer would normally interview a subject for a magazine story, right at the point that I felt there was nothing left to learn, each subject dropped down a line of defense that I hadn’t even known was there and gave me something absolutely essential. I’ve had the same experience while doing research. After spending a year or more accumulating material at a level far beyond what I would do for an article, the transformative information that I really needed finally begins to coalesce

So when do you decide to write the book? Most writers know long before their readers when they’ve stopped growing and are writing the same way over and over. When you begin to be bored with only going so far into a subject and feel you are only driving past it - staying a couple of nights there in a motel, as opposed to actually living there - that’s the time to challenge yourself, before the self-loathing kicks in, before you are sitting there thinking “I really should write a book someday.”

True Story

2011-03-20T03:46:00.000-07:00

Try this one on. I was once in midstream, about a year and a half into writing a book, my first significant, major publisher book, when my editor left and I was reassigned to another editor. Met with him for lunch. I had 150,000 words in my hand, what turned out to be about half the first draft of what later ended up being a 250,000 word book.

Handed it to him. He glanced at it, dropped it on the floor and sniffed, "This is a picture book. I want maybe 20,000 words."

I walked out, stunned. Career done. A year and a half wasted. Started drinking. Kept drinking. Twelve hours later I e-mailed my former editor, and was surprisingly lucid. She called me the next morning, said to hang loose, she was making some calls. The publisher called me an hour later, apologized. Pulled the editor off the project.

The book eventually built my house. But it was one hell of a 24-hours, one I care never to repeat.

That being said, every time I finish a book, I feel like there are no words left in me, nothing with a shred of originality, the most innocuous phrase sounds contrived, the most un-innocuous sounds pretentious.

It takes 6-12 months for me to write long-form again, for the language to refresh. It's like my brain goes dry, and no blood flows through my fingers.

Happy Birthday Fenway Park

2011-02-26T05:48:00.001-08:00

Fenway Park has many birthdays, but one of them took place today, February 26. That's because one hundred years ago today the land upon which Fenway Park sits was acquired at public auction by General Charles Taylor of the Boston Globe Taylors for $120,000 The rough plans that architect James McLaughlin had been working on for more than a year now had to be configured to fit upon a specific building site.

Known as the “Dana Lands,” the property was part of a parcel that had originally been owned by attorney Francis Dana, a native of Charlestown, a leader of the Sons of Liberty, a delegate to the Massachusetts’s Provincial Congress in 1774, a member of the Continental Congress in 1777, and in 1778 a signer of the Articles of Confederation.

I tell this story and many many others you will find nowhere else in my next book due out this fall, the defintive story of Fenway Park, entitled Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season and Fenway's Remarkable First Year

For more see my Fenway 1912 facebook page, or order a copy of Fenway 1912 at www.glennstout.net

Hold It Right There

2011-01-27T04:21:00.001-08:00

Earlier today a friend asked me a question about writing and restraint, which was inspired by a post by Chris Jones on his blog http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/01/words-that-arent-there.html.

I’ve always thought it important to note that “In the beginning was the word…” not “In the beginning was the words…” Now I know that's not the biblical interpretation but it has always seemed to me that, as far a writing goes, that truth and wisdom are best delivered in brevity, and that sometimes, the more words we use, the farther away we move from wisdom. Thumbnail version: Know when to stop.

That’s one of the reasons I think that writers of any stripe should read poetry – it not only provides tangible lessons like economy, sound and rhythm, but it also teaches that the negative space in writing – what’s not there, and the heartbeat of recognition that takes place over the empty space at the end of a line or a phrase - is as important as what is on the page. The way we connect with a piece of writing is how our brain fills in the blanks.

It’s like backing away from a painting rather than standing too close.

OCTOBER'S SAD LEXICON

2010-10-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

After Franklin P. Adams' Baseball's Sad Lexicon, I give you a version for recent Octobers:

These are the saddest of possible words,

“Rivera now pitching the ninth.”

A flurry of fastballs thrown straight that then swerve,

“Rivera now pitching the ninth.”

Ruthlessly turning a comeback to rubble,

With control that is epic and makes the mind boggle,

A pitch that is heavy and nothing but trouble,

“Rivera now pitching the ninth.”

[with apologies to the Twins]

HISTORICALLY BAD

2010-08-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

He’s just not that good. Not anymore.

As I write this Rex Sox pitcher Josh Beckett, arguably the staff ace entering the 2010 season, has started fourteen games and accrued an earned run average of 6.67.
Those startling numbers sent me on a search. And here is what I discovered: In the one hundred and ten year history of this franchise, of all the hundreds and hundreds of Red Sox pitchers that have taken the mound in a given season, guess how many have started as many as fourteen games and ended the season with an ERA higher than Josh Beckett’s 6.67?

Uh…. One – and just barely (more on him later).

Josh Beckett has not just been bad in 2010, he has been historically bad. Unbelievably bad. Mind-bogglingly bad. Hall of Shame bad. Horribly, awfully, painfully, even proctologically bad. I don’t think any pitcher in the history of baseball has ever pitched so much, so poorly, at such a high salary as Josh Beckett has in 2010. For all the wrong reasons it’s a season for the ages.

On the day he was drafted, a reporter for a Florida newspaper asked Beckett about fellow pitchers and Texas natives Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Kerry Wood. Responded Beckett “Yeah, I’m gonna be better than those guys.” At times that seemed possible, even likely.

But that was then. Forget 2003, and the way he beat the Yankees in the World’s Series while pitching for the Marlins, and 2007 when he won twenty and pitched the Red Sox to a championship.

We’re talking NOW, or more accurately, ever since the Red Sox broke their own rule about negotiating a contract during the season. In April Theo Epstein signed Beckett to a contract extension covering 2011 thru 2014 worth $68-million, a deal made before his previous contract, which ran thru this season, had even expired. Think they would like to re-visit that?

Since that time he has been so bad there are, really, no words in the dictionary to describe it. But there are in the Baseball Encyclopedia and on BaseballReference.com.

How bad has Josh Beckett been? Using ERA and a minimum of fourteen starts as a measure, every other pitcher in Red Sox history - with one notable exception - has been NABAB - Not As Bad As Beckett. Matt Young in 1991? Sixteen Starts and a 5.18 ERA, but Not As Bad As Beckett. Danny Darwin in 1994? Thirteen starts and 6.30 - NABAB. Frank Castillo in 2002? NABAB. Ramon Martinez in 2000, Jerry Casale in 1960, Gordon Rhodes in 1935, Frank Heimach in 1926? You can look ‘em up, NABABs all. Even the immortal Joe Harris, who went 2-21 for the 1906 Red Sox, was NABAB – his ERA was a sparkling 3.52, a number Josh Beckett and Theo Epstein would both kill for. And the list goes on and on and on and on.

Somehow this historic achievement has gone unnoticed. In a season best defined by the disabled list it has been easy to overlook Beckett’s expressionless appearances on the mound. Then again, they’ve often been so brief he’s been easy to miss. The fact is even with all the injuries, if Josh Beckett was pitching like an average starting pitcher, rather than a historically bad one, the Red Sox would be making plans for October.

That’s not even the worst part. Because the Sox signed Beckett to an extension before his current contract had expired after putting up one of the worst seasons in Red Sox history, Josh Beckett will rewarded over the next four seasons by becoming the the highest paid pitcher in team history. Which genius thought that was a good idea? The Red Sox can only hope is that Beckett is hurt and his contract is somehow insured, because the only thing worse than a pitcher performing the way Beckett has thus far is a contract that guarantees he’ll be around for another four years no matter how poorly he pitches.

Yet there is still a faint glimmer of hope. Remember, there has been one Red Sox pitcher even worse than Josh Beckett. Like Beckett, he too enjoyed some early success that had everyone whispering “Hall of Fame.” Then one year he went 2-9 in fifteen starts with an ERA of 6.75.

The Sox sent him back to the minor leagues. And two years later he was pitching the way everyone thought Josh Beckett would be pitching this year.

You might remember him, because that guy who was the worst starting pitcher in Red Sox history, 2-9 with a 6.75 ERA in 2008, is now 14-5 with an ERA of 2.36.

His name is Clay Bucholz.

This column appears in the September edition of Boston baseball. Glenn Stout’s Fenway 1912, will appear in 2011. Baseball Heroes, the first title in his juvenile series “Good Sports,” will be available this fall.

Great, But Not Perfect

2010-08-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

This October the late John Updike’s classic New Yorker profile of Ted Williams, “Hub Bids Kid Adieu,” turns fifty years old. Recently reissued in book form Updike’s essay is something of a Gilgamesh of literary baseball writing, right up there with Ernest L. Thayer’s Casey at the Bat and Ring Lardner’s epistolary You Know Me, Al.

Recently, while working on my upcoming book Fenway 1912, I had occasion to take close look Updike’s story. Despite its legitimate and deserving place in baseball’s verbal Hall of Fame, it is not flawless. There are, in fact, several factual issues that a neutral scorekeeper might note as errors in their scorebook, or at last send back to the author for some clarification.

I mention them here not to disparage Updike but to underscore how difficult it is to be one hundred percent accurate, to gauge the veracity of another’s reporting - even a reporter as elegant and thorough as Updike - or to render any scene with absolute precision. History, after all, is not black and white but more often flesh and blood and shades of gray.

In the first paragraph Updike writes that “I, and 10,453 others, had shown up primarily because this was the Red Sox's last home game of the season and therefore the last time in all eternity that their regular left fielder… would play in Boston.” True enough, for Ted did retire afterward and did not accompany the team on its final road trip to New York.

But on the morning of September 28, 1960 these facts were not all that widely known. Ted had said he was going to retire, and on September 26 the Sox had released a statement to that effect, but Ted had “retired” before only to change his mind. Many Sox fans and media members wondered if this retirement was genuine, which might explain the sparse crowd. During the 1954 season Williams said he would retire at the end of the year and did so. But once his divorce was finalized on May 11, 1955, Ted abruptly “unretired, signed a lucrative contract beyond the reach of his settlement, and returned the lineup May 23. That act of selfishness may well have cost the Sox a pennant, for without him the Sox were a pedestrian 15-21 in 1955. Yet after Williams returned the Sox went 65-35 in the next hundred games to draw to within three games of first place as late as September 7 before falling back.

The point is that when most fans went to the park on September 28, 1960, Williams’ retirement was hardly certain, and there is little evidence that those other 10,453 fans - almost 5,000 less than the average that year - attended primarily because of Ted. Otherwise meaningless late season games had drawn similar crowds.

Personally I have always wondered what would have happened had Ted popped up in that last at bat. Would his ego have allowed him to end his career so commonly? Or would he, have gone to New York in search of an exclamation point? Would Updike ‘s chronicle of the pop-up been published, or would he have followed Williams to New York hoping for a better ending? Or if Williams had chosen to play in New York anyway after hitting the home run, (Updike notes he learned of Williams’ decision not to go to New York from the radio on his car ride home) would Updike’s story have such lasting resonance? We will never know. It is a small point, but nevertheless Updike’s statement leaves an impression that is less than complete.

And then there is Updike on Fenway Park. He writes that Fenway’s “right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters.” Today we know that the distance down the left field line was never 315, but somewhat less, but one can hardly fault Updike for believing number painted on the wall. Yet there is some ambiguity in the claim that “its left field is the shortest,” because that was not true down the line, where Yankee Stadium, at 301 feet in 1960, was considerably shorter, as was Memorial Stadium in Baltimore at 309 feet, although the outfield area in both of those ballparks was considerably larger than that of Fenway Park. Somewhat curiously, Updike does not mention height of the wall, but in 1960 there was not the fetish about what we now call “the Green Monster” as there is now. Updike may not have known precisely how high the wall was.

Apart from the alliterative phrase “lyric little bandbox of a ballpark,” I have never much cared for the way Updike describes the rest of Fenway Park, finding it not only forced and arch but imprecise and in some ways misleading. I have no idea what he means by “the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg,” particularly on a day that was dank, dark and dreary, and I suspect few others do either. I have spent hours looking up images on Google in search of a picture that suggests his intent without success. But if Fenway Park reminded Updike of an Easter egg on that gray September day, that’s fine. When I first saw Fenway Park it reminded me of an abandoned warehouse.

I do, however, take issue with his notion that Fenway Park was “a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.” Most subsequent readers, I think, take that as Updike’s way of saying that’s what happens when you try to fit a ball field onto a patch of land whose boundaries were determined by Nature – presumably herds of cows or sheep - whose pathways later evolved into Boston’ streets.

This common interpretation, is, unfortunately, thoroughly incorrect. The plot of land upon which Fenway Park sits was completely undeveloped before the ballpark was built. The parcel was shaped – as it is now – somewhat like a trapezoid, not due to any irregularities of nature, but because some surveyor planned it that way. Before the ballpark was built the weedy, undeveloped lot between Lansdowne, Jersey and Ipswich streets, as empty as the parking lot of the Burlington Mall at four in the morning, was supposed to be cut into five rectangular blocks. A new street - eventually named Van Ness – was laid out to give these proposed new streets right-angled corners.

Neither Nature nor any wandering cow conspired to create Fenway’s celebrated nooks and crannies. They are the result of “Man’s Euclidean determinations” intersecting with Man’s greed and beguiling desire to cram as many seats as possible into the space, and nothing else.

That may not be as elegantly put as Updike’s fifty-year old lyric little bandbox of a box score, but it is, nevertheless, more accurate.

[Note: Several years ago Globe columnist Alex Beam noticed another potential error in the essay, the probable misidentification of Pumpsie Greene as Willie Tasby.]

Fenway 1912 will appear next year, and the twentieth annual edition Glenn Stout’s The Best American Sports Writing, guest edited by Peter Gammons, will appear this fall. This column first appeared in Boston Baseball, August 2010, as "Great, But Not Perfect. Copyright Glenn Stout, 2010.

Last Pitch

2010-06-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

I can still remember the last pitch.

My father was a fan, but not a big fan. No one in my family was, but baseball grabbed me when I was only three or four and never let go. If it was too dark to play ball when my father got home from work I would have a fit, so he installed floodlights in the backyard. Then, no matter how tired he was from working a twelve or fourteen hour day in construction, we could still play ball.

Most of my memories of my father are somehow wrapped around a baseball - playing catch, him taking me to games or watching me pitch. It was the one way we really connected. But in high school I tore my rotator cuff and had to stop playing. We didn’t have as much to talk about after that.

Almost twenty years later my shoulder healed and I joined an adult league, one in Boston and later, another in Worcester County, where I then lived. For three or four years I was in both leagues and played forty, fifty games each summer, usually pitching and playing first or third.

I’d call home every week and for the first time since I was a kid my conversations with my father were wrapped around baseball again. I sent him the ball after I won my first game since I was sixteen years old, and a t-shirt I got for making the league all-star team. I was as proud of each as of any book I’ve ever written, and so was he.

In April of 1996, the week my daughter was born, Pop was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had ignored the symptoms for too long and his doctor told him he had a year to live, give or take a week , and to enjoy the time he had. That July he and my stepmother loaded up the RV and he came out for his final visit.

I had a ballgame, last of the year. I was new to my team and we were not very good and I had not been much help. We were playing a team that had already beaten us once and needed only to beat us again to make the playoffs.

Half our team didn’t even show up, but it was a beautiful summer Saturday morning and Soldier’s Field sparkled like a postcard, dew on the grass glinting in the sun. My dad and stepmother, my wife and baby daughter, my brother, and our neighbors and their kids all sat together in the bleachers, half the crowd.

Before the game our manager muttered “We’re gonna get killed today.” For the first few innings it appeared as if he were right. We played like we did not want to be there and were trailing 5 - 0 in the fourth when I led off with a line drive single. From the bleachers I could hear his voice again. “Alright!”

That’s the only thing my father ever said at a game - “Alright!” I was happy to get a hit and some sloppy baseball netted us a couple runs to make it respectable. But when our pitcher put a few guys on in the bottom of the inning it looked hopeless. My manager waved me over and even though I had pitched in Boston two days before and my arm was still sore and my legs were shot, I took the ball anyway, just like my father had gone into the backyard after working fourteen hours. I was his son. A pop-up, a strikeout and a groundball wrapped around a walk got us out of the inning.

Something happened. We started making impossible plays and improbable hits, rallying against one of the best pitchers in the league. I wiggled through the fifth and sixth, and in the bottom of the inning, down by one with runners on second and third, I bounced a single through the middle and now we led by a run and I needed only three outs for the win. “Alright!”

I had nothing but somehow got two outs and then, with runners on first and second, the batter hit a ground ball down the first base line. I sprinted over to field the ball and end the game.

It felt like someone hit the back of my leg with a ball peen hammer. I went down hard. The batter raced to first on an infield hit, loading the bases, as my hamstring started to hemorrhage.

I tried to stand and fell. I couldn’t throw another pitch.

I saw him sitting in the stands for the last time and I pulled myself up.

Limping to the rubber, using all arm and one leg, I somehow got the count to 3-2. With two outs, a one-run lead, the bases loaded and all the runners moving, I threw the last pitch my father would ever see me throw, a fastball down and away.

Another grounder to my left. I reacted, but I was too late. My first baseman ranged into the hole to make the play.

I lurched toward first, muscle fibers popping with each stride. He flipped the ball ahead of me. I could hear the baserunner coming down the line as the winning run tore around third toward home.

The throw was wide. I stretched out toward first base and reached out with my bare hand. My hamstring exploded and I snatched the throw from the air. My foot, then the runner’s, hit the base and I fell, holding the ball tight in my fist.

“Alright!”

*

That afternoon I sat on my front porch with my father, drinking beer, a bag of ice under my thigh, talking about the game. He told me he was not surprised I had stayed in and that we had won, that I still played the game the way I always had, hard, just like he had taught me.

He meant it. After this one small miracle I wanted to think there would be another, but I knew better. The following spring, one week before my daughter’s first birthday, only a few days before opening day, Pop was gone.

From June 9 thru June 20 - Father’s Day - Major League Baseball will support the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Home Run Challenge. For more information about prostate cancer visit www.prostatecancerfoundation.org and talk with your health professional about prostate cancer testing. Glenn Stout’s next book, Fenway 1912, will appear in 2011.
This column first appeared in Boston Baseball, June 2010.

How To Write Two Million Words…or so

2010-06-03T09:17:00.000-07:00

Several months ago, in his farewell column in ESPN The Magazine, Rick Reilly noted that “My math says this column puts me over one million published words. And that doesn't count books (No. 11 coming up in May), screenplays (two), sonnets, ransom notes and quilts. This is one million too many for many citizens, but the fact remains.”

When I was younger this kind of statement that would send me into deep depression. When one wants to be a writer there is nothing more depressing than having someone quantify what you have not done. I recall being particularly dismayed when I learned that Jack Kerouac had written a million words by the age of thirty. When one has not written anything of merit - or at least published it – one million words seems like, well, one million words, a task so daunting as to be unachievable, like running around the world. One imagines that the writer of a million words must have the discipline of a monk, the typing skills of a graduate of Katie Gibbs, the supple imagination of a jazz musician, the stamina of a marathoner… and either a vow of poverty or a trust fund, because how would it ever be possible to both work and write?

I looked at myself and saw none of those qualities. I liked to have too much fun, laughing and hanging out in bars, and a small nerve problem in my hands made it impossible for me to touch type. The only thing I did every day – beyond the physical necessities - was wake up and read, probably so I would not have to confront the fact that I was not writing very much.

Despite this, in 1986 when I was in my late twenties, after writing in camera for years - mostly poetry - through some kind of dumb luck I finally started writing and publishing non-fiction. In an instant I went from “wanting to be a writer” to “being a writer” and a certain floodgate fell open.

It was not too many years later – I had just turned thirty, hence the accounting - when I sat down and discovered that, rather incredibly, almost accidentally, even I had written a million words. Now this was not a million published words, mind you – there were probably only about 100,000 of those at the time - but if I started in college and counted all the papers I had written and the notebooks I had filled up and scratched over, despite what I saw as my utter lack of discipline, a common imagination, questionable stamina, lack of a trust fund and a regular job that kept me nominally above the poverty line, even I had written a million words.

The realization was liberating beyond measure. Writers were not mysteries, and the act of writing was not some kind of secret sect to which I had no access. It did not entail following a schedule carved in stone, a muse, the ability to work until one fell asleep at the typewriter (a quaint thought…) or the proper pedigree.

No, I realized that most of writing entailed putting my ass in a chair, hitting deadlines and, most important of all, not being intimidated by the process. If I had written a million words by age thirty – and felt that I was just getting started at that – well, writing couldn’t be that hard.* This was something I could do.

I had also started running, and at about this time also realized that running around the world was also achievable as long as I did it in increments and did not let the goal overwhelm the process. For about ten years or so I probably averaged about forty miles a week, which totaled about 20,000 miles and put me on the brink of the running around the world total. And although I no longer run as far or as often, I have still kept it up for more than thirty years and at this point am probably closing in on my second global circumnavigation.

I only bring this up to underscore the point that even while writing a million words one need not stop doing everything else. In fact, I think it helps to do other things, to help turn the act of writing from something so precious that you freeze with anticipation in front of the keyboard into something as normal as brushing your teeth, a part of the daily fabric, not subject to any excuses. At the same time I continued to work full-time until 1993, helped raise my daughter from infancy (and with minimal daycare before school while my wife worked), played nearly 400 games of amateur baseball over nine seasons, learned to skate, ski, and kayak, cut my own wood, built my office, held public office, etc., etc., etc. This does not even include the vast amount of reading I have to do as part of my duties as Series Editor of The Best American Sports Writing. And I won’t even get into the amount of time I’ve spent watching baseball or sitting in bars. I still feel completely undisciplined and think I should be much more productive than I am, but now, after nearly twenty-five years as a professional writer, including the last seventeen on a full time basis, when I add up my published output since 1986, I am closing in one two and a half million words. And that doesn't even include all those poems in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

When I write that, it does not seem possible, yet there it is. And I hope at least one young writer might find some solace in the fact that if a stiff like me could write a couple million words, well, so can you.

So sit down and get cracking. As long as you start now, there is plenty of time.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take a nap.

P.S. And I still cannot touch type. I only use my thumbs, index fingers and, occasionally, middle fingers on each hand. But I do type at the speed I think.

Word Count:

Illustrated Biographies

Ted Williams: 40,000
Joe DiMaggio: 50,000
Jackie Robinson: 40,000

Red Sox Century: 200,000
Yankees Century: 225,000
The Dodgers: 225,000
The Cubs: 225,000

Nine Months at Ground Zero: 110,000

Young Woman and the Sea: 125,000

Fenway 1912: 140,000

Matt Christopher titles (39): 720,000

Good Sports titles (2): 36,000

BASW Forewords (21): 40,000

Misc work for hire books: 100,000

Articles: 100,000

Boston Baseball Columns: 80,000

TOTAL: 2,456,000

*Understand, I am not equating quantity with quality here. Rick Reilly is not Jack Kerouac and neither am I. All we have of Sappho are a few scant fragments, a few thousand words at most, and I would gladly trade my millions for her few. Believe me, I get that. But there was a time when Sappho was probably intimidated by the act of writing as well.

I THINK WE MIGHT KNOW NOW

2010-05-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote this Chin Music column before the start of the season for Boston Baseball. After dropping three to the Orioles... I think we know now. Read on...

This year we’ll finally know.

Although the Henry group purchased the team in 2002, this will be the first year their efforts can truly be assessed on their own, the first time we’ll be able to tell if Theo is truly talented or just a fortunate son, if John Henry is a genius or just rode the wave that lifted all boats for more than two decades, if Larry Lucchino is Geppetto, pulling all the right strings like a master, or Pinochio, or whether Terry Francona is more Bill Carrigan or Butch Hobson.

This year, for the first time, they have a clean slate, and the responsibility for success or failure is theirs alone. For the first few years after they purchased the team, the lineup was still dominated by stars either drafted or acquired by former general manager Dan Duquette, without which this team never would have never won anything. Like every other team in baseball during the era, the roster was enhanced by players either directly tainted by the games’ PED scandal*, such as Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz, or by others as still unnamed but who are nevertheless under suspicion, guys who did nothing either before or after their time with the Red Sox, but who, remarkably, came to Boston, put together one or two years that were completely out of character and then dropped from sight, either never to return or vastly diminished as soon as drug testing was instituted.

Those are two sizable shadows across the recent history of this franchise, so despite two world championships*, some fine draft picks (Papelbon, Pedroia, Lester, Bard, etc.) and savvy acquisitions such as Curt Schilling, there have been, to be honest, an equal number of question marks – those two world championships*, mishandled draft picks or failures like Craig Hansen, and questionable acquisitions like Daisuke Matsusaka, who the Red Sox believed was one of the “best pitchers in the world,” but who recently has not even been the best pitcher in Fort Myers. What is unarguable is that since the Red Sox have been purchased by John Henry they have been able to buy and sell their way out of mistakes (Julio Lugo, Edgar Renteria etc.) just as the Yankees have.

That is what makes this year so intriguing. The Duquette guys are, for the most part, gone, and the few that remain, such as Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield, are relatively insignificant to the fortunes of the 2010 Red Sox – the less we see of each in 2010, the better. And the PED guys are, also, presumably either gone or drug tested into sobriety and relative insignificance – as I write this David Ortiz is hitting .216 in the spring, with an OBP of .293, a slugging percentage of .378 and the most strikeouts on the team – Tug Hulett has more total bases, and might see more at bats. And although we here in Boston seem to be convinced that the Red Sox farm system is without peer, more objective analysts such as Baseball America view the system as distinctly middle of the pack, particularly after the horrible misfortune to befall prospect Ryan Westmoreland.

The Red Sox themselves seem to realize that this year is different, and have responded with a different approach, eschewing the higher priced free agents for lesser luminaries who are supposed better values, preferring defense and pitching over offense, and an overall emphasis on doing more with less. The approach will, of course, be best assessed by win and losses, but as the season grows long and the shadows short, what Theo/John/Larry and Terry et al say about that performance may be even more telling.

When you are winning, you really don’t have to say much of anything, but there are always a million euphemisms for “we suck.” In that respect the words and phrases to look out for are “competing,” “maximum effort” “tip your cap to him,” “marketplace” “the economy” and “evil empire.” If the aforementioned four start using these phrases, particularly in combination, such as “In this economy the marketplace favors the evil empire” or “You’ve got to tip your cap to him, because we’re out there competing and giving maximum effort,” there will be no need either to check the standings or to check the standing of Theo, John Henry, Larry Lucchino or Terry Francona.

Because now we’ll know.

CHIN MUSIC: The Neighborhood of Baseball

2010-04-21T06:20:00.000-07:00

Whether you realize it or not, Red Sox history does not reside in Fenway Park. Red Sox history – at least Red Sox history from about 1901 thru 1980, when newspapers became available electronically – resides at the Boston Public Library, in the vast collection of Massachusetts newspapers on microfilm retained in the Microtext department.

Red Sox history – in fact the entire history of the city and the Commonwealth – are in these newspapers, in papers like the old Boston Post, where Paul Shannon was one of most colorful sportswriters the city has ever seen, in the Daily Record, where Dave “the Colonel” Egan drove Ted Williams batty and pushed for integration before it was popular, and in the Boston Chronicle, where my late, great old friend Doc Kountze covered the athletes the rest of the Boston press did not, African Americans like Malden sprinter Louise Stokes, the first African American woman to make the U.S. Olympic team, and semi-pro pitcher Will Jackman, who threw a submarine knuckleball and might have been as good as Satchel Page. That’s where the history lives, in those thousands of newspapers from every corner of the state.

I know this because when I worked at the Boston Public Library I spent years helping to administer millions of dollars in state and federal funds to film and preserve these collections. And in those collections I found my calling as a writer and author, a career that now spans more than two decades and nearly eighty books of one kind or another that have sold a couple million copies, most of which could not have been written without the resources of the Boston Public Library’s Microtext department.

But times are tough, and as far as the City of Boston is concerned that old building in Copley Square –the one that the city has spent gazillions fixing up over the last twenty years –is a nice place for parties and things like that but all ‘dem books and ‘dat stuff are just for ‘dose eggheads, not regular people from ‘da neighba’hoods, right Mr. Mayor? What about the neighborhood of baseball? Doesn’t our vote count? Libraries and librarians are easy targets – they don’t save lives in dramatic fashion like policemen or firemen, they save one mind at a time in ways that are hard to see but just as important.

But I digress. Red Sox history is being sent in exile. The city wants to close the Microtext Department at the BPL which cares for, services and houses newspapers and other collections on microfilm, the department that literally provides access to the history of not only the Red Sox, but the Bruins, the Patriots, the Boston Marathon, the Boston Garden, Fenway Park, the old Boston Arena, the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Harvard Stadium, Boston College, … you get the idea. The city wants to close the department, move some of the film to the hard to reach City of Boston Archive Center in West Roxbury, disperse the rest to other BPL departments, can the staff, squander decades of institutional knowledge, and use the space they recently spent gazillions renovating for the department, for, oh, I don’t know, weddings or cocktail parties. Once they do that the ability to do the kind of research it takes to write a serious book about Red Sox history becomes almost impossible – having the resources you need in one place, at one time, is invaluable and irreplaceable.

I know this not just from my own experience, but because when I was at the BPL I helped local sports writers like Steve Buckley and national guys like Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford use these resources. I remember one guy in particular I helped – named Halberstam. Won a Pulitzer Prize that helped stop the Vietnam War and wrote a really great book about the Red Sox - Summer of ’49. Ever heard of him?

He could not have written that book without the BPL, and neither could Dan Shaughnessy have written The Curse of the Bambino, Howard Bryant Shut Out, Richard Johnson and I Red Sox Century, Ed Linn Hitter, Leigh Montville The Big Bam or any other author, like Buckley or Bill Nowlin or Bill Reynolds, who have written anything worthwhile about Red Sox history. None of these books – none - could have been done without the newspapers on microfilm at the Boston Public Library. Fenway 1912, which I just finished and comes out next year, would have been impossible.

And here’s the really, really awful part. This is supposed to save the city money. But this department, like much the Library, actually earns back every dime a hundred times over. I am just one of thousands of writers who use or have used the Library, who make special trips to Boston just to use the library and end up spending money on a lot of other things, or have lived in Boston, in part, because the Library was one of the places that make Boston a place worth living. Every book written by any writer on any subject who has used the Library – we’re talking thousands of books that have sold millions and millions of copies, here – pours money right back into city coffers every day of every week.

But if they get rid of the Microtext department and exile and disperse Red Sox history, this won’t happen. All those books still waiting to be written about the Red Sox just won’t get written. The neighborhood of baseball – and the City of Boston – will be poorer for it.

To complain, email, write or call Amy Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library aeryan@bpl.org, or Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Board of Trustees jmcglone@bpl.org, 700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116 617-536-5400, Mayor Thomas Menino,mayor@cityofboston.gov, 1 City Hall Square, Boston, MA 02201-2013 , 617.635.4500, or attend the BPL’s Annual Meeting on Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 8:30am, at the Copley Square Library.

Note: This column will appear in the May 2010 issue of Boston Baseball.

Boston's First Marathon

2010-04-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

An old story, worth telling again:

When Pheidippides ran from the battle of Marathon to bring word of victory to Athens in 490 B.C., completing the world's first running "marathon," he had no idea what he was starting. No wonder, because upon his arrival in Athens, Pheidippides keeled over and died. It took nearly 2400 years before anyone else decided to try to run a similar distance. The result of that effort did not end quite so tragically. It became the Boston Marathon, the world's premier running event.
Later today hundreds of thousands of spectators and tens of thousands if runners, mofficial and not, will converge on Boston to celebrate the 100th running of the Boston Marathon. In the entire history of the race, approximately three hundred thousand men and women have run, jogged, and plodded their way into the city to make the Boston Marathon the most famous run in the athletic world.
But somebody had to be first. One hundred and thirteen years ago, on April 19, 1897, Boston staged its very first marathon. That inaugural race was nearly as memorable as Pheidippides' initial jaunt.
While the marathon initially was revived for the first modern Olympics held in Athens, Greece in 1896, it wasn't until the Boston Athletic Association decided to run a similar race to celebrate the local Patriot's Day holiday that the race captured the imagination of the public. On that cool April morning, seventeen plucky entrants signed on to make the 25-plus mile journey from Ashland, Massachusetts to Boston. Each hoped for a better fate than their Athenian predecessor.
After gathering in Boston, the contestants travelled by train to Ashland for the noon race. Upon their arrival, the B.A.A. held a hearty luncheon for the runners at a local inn, contemporary notions concerning the pre-race diet not yet in evidence. While most of the competitors chatted amiably with one another, six runners from New York sat together and plotted pre-race strategy. Three entrants apparently had second thoughts and failed to show up. A Harvard University student, Dick Grant, weaseled his way in, introduced himself to marathon officials and talked his way into the race as a last minute entrant.
At noon, the fifteen runners strolled to the starting line in front of Metcalf's Mill. Only one of the men, 22-year old lithographer John McDermott of New York's Pastime Athletic Club, had ever run such a distance before. The previous October, he had won a similar race staged along the New York-Connecticut border. Several other entrants were experienced cross-country men, but most were running novices. Reporters commented that some of the men didn't look like they could run twenty-five feet, much less twenty-five miles.
Several hundred curious spectators gathered in front of the old mill to watch the start. Race manager John Graham of the B.A.A. pinned a number on the back of each man's shirt and handed out typewritten directions to Boston. To prevent anyone from wandering off course, 28 members of the bicycle corps of the Massachusetts Militia were prepared to escort the runners along their way and provide much needed refreshment.
At precisely 12:19 p.m., Olympic 100 and 400 meter champion Thomas Burke marked a line in the dust of the road with his foot and solemnly called out each entrant's number. As the runner's edged close to the starting line and jostled each other for position, Burke shouted for the race to begin. The first Boston Marathon was underway.
All fifteen runners immediately broke into an ill-advised sprint. Three men were later reported to be red-faced and wheezing before the pack had travelled one-hundred yards. But after a few moments the pace slowed. At the end of the first mile, all 15 runners still ran together in a tight bunch.
As the athletes settled into a more realistic pace, the field began to stretch out. Along the road to Framingham, about five miles from the start, a pack of four runners broke away. In first place was Harvard's Dick Grant, a crimson ribbon stretched across his chest. On his shoulder, matching him step-by-step was Hamilton Gray of New York. McDermott and another New Yorker, John Kiernan, followed close behind.
Apart from their own fatigue, the runner's first obstacle was the dust kicked up by their bicycle escorts. The lead pack had trouble breathing, a situation similar to one sometimes faced by runners in today's race, who have complained about the exhaust spewed out by police motorcycle escorts and the contingent of press trucks that now pace the race. Fortunately for Grant and the others, a stiff wind at their back helped dissipate the dust and push the runners toward Boston.
Thirty-six minutes into the race, the lead pack dashed through the first check-point in Framingham. Seeing the runners and cyclists zoom past, some holiday spectators decided to celebrate the day by joining the group on the trip to Boston. Close by the runner's heels a long line of horse-drawn wagons, carriages, and even the odd, sputtering motorcycle joined in the impromptu parade. Meanwhile, three entrants decided that running to Framingham was marathon enough, and dropped out.
Battling one another for the lead, Grant and Gray left Framingham and entered the town of Natick. In the city center crowds pressed so close the men were forced to run in single file. But outside of town the throng cleared out and once again Gray and Grant ran side-by-side.
Halfway to Boston, they remained tied for the lead as they approached Wellesley, urged on, as today's runners are, by a retinue of Wellesley College coeds. But encouragement alone, even from the wildly enthusiastic college women, could not fuel Grant for the entire race. Due to his spur-of-the-moment entry, he failed to line up a bicycle escort to supply him with refreshment like the other runners. While the competition sipped water, sucked lemons, and wiped sweat from their faces with wet towels, Grant began to show signs of fatigue. Still, he managed to stay even with Gray.
As the two men pressed through the Wellesley Hills, Gray took note of Grant's struggle and magnanimously offered him his own canteen. Replenished by Gray's touch of sportsmanship, Grant gamely hung on.
As the two shared provisions, John McDermott, in third place, took advantage of both and surged into the lead. Disheartened, the virtuous Gray began to fade.
For the next mile Grant fought to stay with McDermott as growing crowds urged the underdog on. But as the two men charged down a hill just before the village of Newton Lower Falls, Grant's water deficit caught up with him and he began to stumble. He weakly raised his hand and waved at a passing water wagon that sprayed town streets to keep down dust. The carriage stopped, Grant slumped beside it and the driver gave him an unscheduled shower. He stood up, ran a few steps more, then stopped again. Dehydration and blisters forced him from the race.
Now McDermott ran alone. Entering Auburndale he led John Kiernan, in second place, by more than a mile. Gray faded to third, but was soon passed by an unimposing man named Edward Rhell. An utter surprise and running neophyte, Rhell calmly plodded on, never rushing, never looking back, apparently impervious to the physical demands of the race.
In complete control of the race, McDermott had only to conquer his growing fatigue to claim victory. Kiernan slipped even farther back, playing hare to Rhell's determined tortoise. For the remainder of the race, Kiernan intermittently stopped running and walked until Rhell came into view, only to start running again and pull away.
McDermott appeared to be in fine shape as he crested what a later observer dubbed "Heartbreak Hill," but even then the long slope extracted its toll. As McDermott headed downhill, his calves knotted and cramped. Finally, he slowed to a walk. Far behind, Kiernan and Rhell pulled closer.
After walking for several minutes, McDermott resumed running. But after a few hundred yards the cramps returned and he stopped again. His cycle escorts rushed to his side and began frantically rubbing his calves. Again McDermott tried to run, only to stop once more.
This time one of the escorts handed McDermott a flask of brandy. He tilted his head back and took a healthy belt as the escorts pounded their fists into his cramps. The cramps disappeared and McDermott raced toward the Chestnut Hill Reservoir refreshed.
Only a few miles from the finish, over two hours since he left Ashland, McDermott turned down Beacon Street and raced through Brookline. Hundreds cheered him at Coolidge Corner, and for the remainder of the race the sidewalks were filled with crowds urging him onward.
McDermott entered the City of Boston at Kenmore Square. As he turned down Commonwealth Avenue riding an invigorating wave of emotion, several bike escorts sprinted ahead. When they reached the finish line at the Irvington Oval athletic track, just outside Copley Square and only a hundred yards or so from where today's race ends, three thousand anxious spectators roared as they learned of the runner's impending arrival.
Yet one final obstacle remained in McDermott's path. With victory less than a mile away, he raced down Commonwealth Avenue into Boston's Back Bay. But at Massachusetts Avenue, in contrast to the festive holiday crowd, a formal funeral procession solemnly crept by, blocking his way.
Undaunted, McDermott hardly broke stride as pushed through the crowd and into the street, ducking and dashing between carriages. The cortege abruptly came to a halt as he ran past, much to the consternation of two drivers whose brand new electric automobiles stalled and refused to re-start.
McDermott turned right at Exeter Street. As he approached Huntington Avenue he came within view of the crowd at the Oval. At the sight of one lone runner surrounded by every manner of wheeled vehicle, they began to roar.
As McDermott raced into the Oval and began the single lap around the track that marked the end of the race, dozens of spectators left their seats and surged around him, slapping his back and offering congratulations. Now he broke into a sprint, a weary smile on his faced, and circled the track in only forty seconds.
As he crossed the finish line in front of the stands, he fell into the arms of the adoring mob, who lifted him to their shoulders. It was 3:14 in the afternoon, two hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds since he took his first step toward Boston from Ashland. The time bettered the recent Olympic mark by ten seconds and set an unofficial world record.
A few minutes later John Kiernan, then Rhell, and over the next hour, seven other finishers slowly made their way into the Oval. As each man arrived, more and more members of the crowd slowly dispersed, buzzing over McDermott's heroic achievement. For his efforts, he received a B.A.A. shield mounted on oak valued at $35, and his own unique place in marathon history.
Best of all, unlike Pheidippides' tragic run, it did not take another 2347 years for the Boston Marathon to be run again. Today in Boston, thousands of men and women will follow the path first blazed by John McDermott.

TIME AND ORDER OF FINISH
BOSTON MARATHON
APRIL 19, 1897

1. John J. McDermott 2:55:10

2. John J. Kiernan 3:02:02

3. Edward Rhell 3:06:02

4. Hamilton Gray 3:11:37

5. H.D. Eggleston 3:17:50

6. J. Mason 3:31:00

7. W. Ryan 3:41:25

8. Larry Brignolia 4:06:12

9. Harry Leonard 4:08:00

10. A.T. Howe 4:10:00

Competed, but did not finish:

Dick Grant, W.A. Mitchell, E.F. Peete, H.L. Morrill, J.E. Enright

The Real Gods in Red Stockings

2010-03-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked by Boston Magazine to be one of the voter to create a “roster of players who have best embodied the spirit and values of the [Red Sox] organization through the years, players who have truly captured what it means to be a member of the Boston Red Sox,” who exhibit that “unique combination of grit, hustle, charm, and character…[that] make certain guys quintessential Red Sox.” Well, on a historical basis I sort of disagree that there is some kind of “unique combination of grit, hustle, charm, and character…[that] make certain guys quintessential Red Sox.” But there are, I think, still traits that create quintessential Red Sox guys, and I do kind of find them endearing, but perhaps not in the way you envision. And let’s not forget that Red Sox history began in 1901, not 2004. That changes everything, and so have I.

Catcher: As much as I’d like to vote for Lou Criger, the only Red Sox catcher known to be addicted to morphine, Criger had no nickname, and behind the plate Boston has always gone for nickname guys who as soon as you thought they could hit, stopped. Like Birdie (Tebbetts), Hick (Cady), Rough (Carrigan), and Tek (Vari). You get the idea. Although my heart wants to go with Samuel Charles White, who once owned “Sammy” White’s bowling alley in Allston, I can not ignore Richard Leo Gedman, aka “Geddy” on the ubiquitous Red Sox painter’s caps that everyone wore in the ’80s. And who could forget the futility of that Walt Hriniak inspired helicopter swing? Raises my blood pressure just thinking about it.

First base: For the Red Sox? Big…check. Slow… check. One dimensional… check. Recruited to hit home runs over the left field wall… check. The answer is Dick Stuart, “Doctor Strangeglove” the quintessential Red Sox first baseman of the last seventy-five seasons.

Second base: Marty Barrett. The typical Red Sox second baseman hits in Fenway Park, particularly doubles, but nowhere else, and is then discarded and made a non-person by the organization. Barrett was the first in a line forgotten demi-gods that would also include Jody Reed, Jose Offerman, Todd Walker and Mark Bellhorn. There is a seat being saved for Dustin Pedroia in a few more years.

Shortstop: This means a good hit, no field guy, a player who can play shortstop only for the Red Sox. My vote is for Junior Stephens, who bumped Johnny Pesky to third base. Knocked in 159 runs in 1949 and let 159 ground balls through the hole.

Third Base: On style points alone, I’d like to vote for Boston’s own sex addict, Wade Boggs, but I can’t. The best and most important third baseman in Red Sox history is Hall of Famer Jimmie Collins, who changed the way the position as played, served as the teams’ first captain, and helped recruit most of the players that delivered Boston its first world championship in 1903. You can look it up, and most Sox fans should.

Left Field: This is too easy. Ted wins. Good hitter who hated the press, traits he passed on to Yaz and Rice.

Center Field: Dom DiMaggio. Because only in Boston will people still try to convince you that the bespectacled “Little Professor” was better than his brother Joe. But that’s because Bostonians always believe that “ours” is better than “theirs,” as in a “spuckie” versus a “gyro.” And if you have to Google “spuckie,” you’re from somewhere else and not from Boston at all, so take that NY crap outta here, pal...

Right Field: Yeah, I’ll go with Trot Nixon here. Over-rated every second he was in Boston, Nixon nonetheless managed to parlay bad hat hygiene and the utter inability to hit lefties into a ten year career as Boston’s right fielder, during which time he took home, but did not earn, almost thirty million dollars. Think of that. But if he was so good, how com no one misses him? Answer: Because he could not play.

Designated Hitter: A year ago I would have voted for David Ortiz, but now I think he’s as dirty as A-rod or Manny. In which case he fits right in, because most Boston DH’s have been vast disappointments and nothing was more disappointing than learning that Big Papi, like everything else in baseball over the last twenty years, is really a Big Fraud. So on second thought, it's Ortiz after all.

Starting Pitchers: Historically, most Red Sox starters are either total divas or complete characters.

Roger Clemens, but only in his “Possessed Rebel” stage.

Pedro Martinez, the last man in the majors who had his own personal dwarf as a good luck charm. At the turn of the century, this was quite common. Really.

Oil Can Boyd. LOVE the Can. Only Sox pitcher ever honored by the National Geographic Society after his discovery of the ocean off the coast of Cleveland.

Cy Young. Neither a diva not a character, Young once said “Pitchers, like Poets, are born and not made.” My kind of guy. And with Young on the staff, who won 511 games and usually started about 45 games a year, you don’t need a fifth starter.

Relief Pitcher: I have to go with a personal favorite here. Remember Steve Crawford? Pitched from the pen for the Sox in 1986 and 1987. How good was he? Well in 1997 I faced Steve Crawford – who is the same age as I am – at a Red Sox fantasy camp and lined a single to right center. When you give up a hit to a sports writer… well, that makes you the quintessential Red Sox reliever!

Manager: Jimy Williams is the only candidate here, because the typical Red Sox manager has been an inscrutable child of the south who made decisions after consulting either the kabbalah, chicken innards, or, like Joe McCarthy before the 1948 playoff game, a bottle of White Horse scotch. I’m not quite sure what Williams used, but whenever I hear the phrase “manager’s decision” today, I go into spasms and have to take my pills.

PS: The picture shows my brother, seated, with the 2004 Championship trophy, something that meant less to him than anyone else in all New England, becasue he could not care less about baseball, which is one of the many things I like about the guy.

Advice for a Young Writer

2010-03-12T04:12:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest challenges a young writer will ever face is continuing to write without the forced deadline of a school assignment or a job. It is a test that will determine whether you are meant for this or something else. To start, writing for money is probably the last thing you should be thinking about - no one coming out of college is best served by waiting for a writing job to write. And if you do get one, it may be covering select board meetings and/or the paper towel industry. That is fine and well, but just a start.

Becoming a writer is a decision and a practice, not a job. Whatever work you do can feed your decision, for the practice of one task can inform another. Seek out others interested in words so there is a running conversation about writing taking place in your life. At the same time you should be thinking about stories and embarking on reading that school has not supplied - at its best, formal education prepares you to abandon formal education and start learning on your own - now is the time to start. Look at that as an assignment in itself - report, for yourself, on the paths over writers have taken. Trace those paths through reading. Read what the writers you like most have read. When you find yourself interested in any kind of topic, write it, when you think of an idea, write it, when you think of a phrase, write it, hear some dialogue, write it. Carry a notebook with you at all times. Get into the habit - write anything, notes, sketches, descriptions, etc. You need to write until you don't think about writing when you are writing. Study how stories are framed. Share work with friends. Try everything, all genres. Read everything. It all adds up, and you will never be more prepared to sink in neck deep in words than right now. If you put that off you will find it very difficult to return.

It was six years after college before I published a word. The only reason I did or could was that in the interim I kept reading and writing, steeped myself in it, and kept that - not just "a job" - the priority.

It wasn't practical, but nothing about this or any of the arts is. To paraphrase someone wiser than myself, being professional is doing what you should be doing when no one is watching.

Give to Haiti, Get a Book.

2010-01-21T14:20:00.000-08:00

Let’s try to do some good here. I don’t have to tell you what is happening in Haiti and how they are in need of everything, but I was looking around my office the other day and came up with an idea that might give a small measure of help.

Here’s the deal – I have extra copies of some of my books (see list below). In exchange for a donation to the reputable charity of your choice, I’ll send you copy of the book signed by me.

All you have to do is the following:

1) Select a book from the list below.

2) Send me an e-mail to glenntstout@yahoo.com that says “I’ll make a donation in exchange for [NAME OF BOOK]. When I receive and acknowledge your e-mail, the book is now reserved for you. If you want to get more than one book, send an e-mail for each.

3) Pick out the Haiti charity of your choice, such as the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, etc. Write them a check for at least the minimum dollar amount listed next to each book.

4) Address and stamp an envelope to that charity and put the check in the envelope, but DO NOT seal it.

5) Then put that envelope in another envelope, along with your address and send it to me at Glenn Stout, PO BOX 549, Alburgh VT, 05440. DO NOT SEND ME CASH.

6) When I get your letter, I’ll open it, make sure you’ve enclosed a check and stamped envelope to your charity, seal it up and send it off for you, then send your book to you by media mail. No need to include postage

7) That’s all it takes. Yes, you could probably buy them cheaper, but they would not be signed, and that’s not really the point, is it?

Here is a list of the books available and the minimum donation I am asking for.

The Best American Sports Writing 1994, guest edited by Tom Boswell. Paperback. Two copies. $10 each

The Best American Sports Writing 2005, guest edited by Buzz Bissinger. Hardbound. Five copies. $15 each

The Best American Sports Writing 2005, guest edited by Mike Lupica. Hardbound. Two copies available. $15 each

The Best American Sports Writing 2007, guest edited by David Maraniss. Hardbound. Eight copies available. $15 each

The Best American Sports Writing 2008, edited by William Nack. Hardbound. Three copies available. $15 each

Everything They Had: Sports Writing from David Halberstam. Hardbound. One copy. $20 each [no longer available]

The Cubs: The Complete story of Chicago Cubs Baseball. This is a big, beautiful, giant text-heavy illustrated book. Hardbound. Four copies. $40 each

If these sell out maybe I’ll poke through some more boxes and see if I have any others. And if you feel like sending more than what I ask, well, you’ll feel even better and we’ll do more good.

Many thanks.

Great Gift for Young Women

2009-12-03T04:12:00.000-08:00

To answer several recent queries, yes, Young Woman and the Sea is appropriate reading for young women. My own thirteen year old daughter has read the book, and any precocious young reader over the age of eleven or twelve should find the book accessible, as should most high school age girls, particularly those interested in sports. As any reading teacher can tell you, kids read above their level when interested in a topic, and in my experience speaking to young people about this book, young women find the story of Trudy Ederle swimming the English Channel to be inspiring. So go ahead - put it under the tree.

Memory of a Writer

2009-11-27T04:57:00.000-08:00

As close readers of The Best American Sports Writing know, the Guest Editor makes the final call each year. Unless I am asked, I stay out the selection process. That keeps the book from getting stale, but sometimes one gets away. The late Jeff Felshman of the Chicago Reader wrote a story in 1994 called Blind Alley, which was cited in “Notable Sports Writing of 1994.” I went to school with Jeff many years ago, and don't recall whether I had put 2 + 2 together at the time and realized that CR's Jeff Felshman was the same guy I had known in college, although I became aware of it later. It was an empathetic, slice of life account about a group of people who bowl, despite not being able to see.

Earlier this year Jeff Felshman contacted me through some mutual friends on Facebook, and reminded me that I had selected his story on the notable list, but what he really wanted to tell me was that some years ago he had interviewed a someone who had worked with me at the Boston Public Library, and Jeff just wanted me to know that this person had spoken highly of me, a kind gesture he did not need to make, but did, and also the kind that tells you a great deal about someone.

Two days ago Jeff Felshman passed away of a heart attack. This morning, the day after Thanksgiving, I looked up the story in the Reader archives and read it again. Now I wonder how the hell it didn’t make the book. The Best American Sports Writing 1995 was the shortest edition BASW ever published, and now I wish it had included one more story.

So what am I thankful for this season? Among many things, writers like this:

"

...There's been a steady stream to the bar, but even among those who don't drink the scores drop off as the day goes on. The third game is the worst. Diane hasn't struck once since the first. Howard hasn't yelled "Mark it!" in a while, either. Beverly dropped from 104 to 46, around Andre's average. Her partner Jim Regan, the only bowler wearing shades (besides Kai Okada, who can see), rolls at the same time as Andre, who says she can't tell which pins go down "but I can hear a gutter ball pretty well." Regan's roll was his last of the day, and he says it didn't make any difference that Andre was on the line next to him at the same time. Bowling in tandem doesn't bother the blind bowlers.

"It probably bothers the sighted bowlers," Regan points out, "but they haven't said anything."

"Well, they're probably just being polite," Beverly says, "but we should watch out for that."

"If they don't say anything, how are we going to know?" There's such a thing as being polite to a fault. Regan goes on, "It's the old thing where you're sitting in a restaurant with somebody and the waitress asks, 'And what does he want?'"

"What do you mean?"

"It's like you're not there--"

"Oh yes," Beverly laughs, "I know what you mean. My daughter has a good line for that. She says, 'She's blind, not brain dead!' I like that."

"Anyway," Beverly continues, "this game, it's just luck. I'm just waiting for these lying excuses about why things went wrong. I'll hear 'em before the end."

But the end is here. Kai collects the score sheets and reads them off to Virginia, who enters the scores into a hand-held tape recorder. The bowlers gather around the bar to wait for the results. Three couples take over a table to the right of the bar. Mike and Jodi are engaged to be married. Mike, a partial who bowls with a monocular, rolled a 242 in the midwest tournement, and with Jodi is odds-on favorites to win today. Jackie and Howard are swirling their stools, hugging and laughing. Howard's in high spirits. "I've been living with this woman for ten years, and still got no piece of paper. You know why? Because I love her, that's why! We don't need no goddamn piece of paper."

To read the rest of the story, or more of Jeff Felshman, a writer worth remembering, and reading, follow the link to the Reader archives or Jeff's own site.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/blind-alley/Content?oid=884958

www.jeffreyfelshman.com

AUTHOR VISITS TO SCHOOLS

2009-11-21T04:47:00.000-08:00

Over the past decade I've periodically made visits to schools talking about writing and motivating kids to read. There is nothing more gratifying in my line of work that to have a teacher tell you that your books have turned a non-reader into a reader, or inspired someone to study writing. Educators tell me that my presentation is unique in that it reaches students from age eight or nine thru those in high school and that it targets male students as well as females. As some teachers recently wrote me after a visit, "Thank you for emphasizing the importance of reading as well as having goals in life and working hard to achieve them. Our students really enjoyed meeting you... It was great for the students to see a real world connection to what we talk about every day... You have really inspired a great number of our students... thank you for saying ALL the right things to my students."

Next October, the first title in my new juvenile non-fiction sports series, "GOOD SPORTS," will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. After penning thirty-nine titles in the Matt Christopher sports biography series for Little Brown from 1996 thru 2006, I'm ecstatic to be writing for this market again. Each title in the GOOD SPORTS series will profile several athletes, historical and contemporary, highlighting inspirational "life lessons" in their life and career. The first title, Breaking Baseball's Barriers, profiles Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson, Fernando Valenzuela and Ila Borders and explores how individuals have dealt with bigotry and still pursued their dreams.

In support of this new series, I've decided to make school author visits much more regularly. I've recently sought input from educators and made several successful visits. For more information please see my website www.glennstout.net, and click on "Author Visits" on the right side of the page or follow this direct link:

http://www.indiepro.com/glenn/?page_id=58

[Note: the photo is of young Trudy Ederle]

BASW 2010 Guest Editor is...

2009-11-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to announce that the guest editor for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's The Best American Sports Writing 2010, the twentieth annual edition which was first published in 1991, is noted author, baseball authority and occasional guitar hero Peter Gammons. For submission guideline and other information, see www.glennstout.net or The Best American Sports Writing on Facebook.

Tom Yawkey, Race, and the Smoking Gun

2009-11-18T08:22:00.000-08:00

On April 16, 1945 the Red Sox held their infamous tryout of Jackie Robinson. For the next fourteen years - and for some years beyond it - the question of race during the tenure of Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey loomed over the Red Sox franchise as palpably as the Green Monster. While it is undeniable that the Red Sox were the last major league team to integrate, since that time there have always been apologists – both in the press and among Red Sox fans – who have sought somehow to explain away the franchise’s long-standing recalcitrance and failure to put a black ballplayer on the field.

[Glenn's next book, Fenway 1912, the definitive story of the creation and construction of Fenway Park, the 1912 season and World Series, will be available in October 2011. See glennstout.net for more]

History has tended to place the blame squarely upon Yawkey. He was, after all, the man at the top and the one figure in the franchise who could have integrated the Red Sox in an instant, yet he did not. But some have argued, both before and after the Red Sox finally put Pumpsie Green on the field in July of 1959, that not only was Yawkey not bigoted, but that he, in fact, wanted to have African American on the team, and that the failure lay elsewhere, either among the organization’s scouts, or the structure of its southern-based minor league system, or upon others in the organization, from general managers Eddie Collins and Joe Cronin, to manager and general manager Pinky Higgins.

The late Boston Globe sportswriter Will McDonough was among Yawkey’s most staunch defenders and his arguments are representative of those who believe Yawkey bears little responsibility over the issue. In 1986, after the club had fired coach Tommy Harper and Harper filed a successful suit through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, McDonough rushed to defend Yawkey, writing that “They smear the man and his memory with the legacy of Pumpsie Green and Tommy Harper.... I knew Tom Yawkey, the Man to whom they trace all of this alleged racist history. I never thought he was racist. But I wasn't as close to him as Joe Cronin and Dick O'Connell were. These two former Sox general managers knew him as well as anyone in Boston. Over the years, I asked both if Yawkey ever suggested they do anything racist. The answer was no." In 1991, after Globe reporter Steve Fainaru authored a three-part series on race and the Red Sox, McDonough once again distilled the issue question down to a question of who within the organization "was racist," as if that was the only question worth asking. He attacked Fainaru's story and sought the name of a racist who had ever worked in the organization, asking, "Was it late owner Tom Yawkey, or his widow Jean who now controls the organization, was it a series of general managers–Joe Cronin, Pinky Higgins, Dick O'Connell and Lou Gorman? Are we to believe it is the scouting department ...? Once again, no names.... Yawkey was so sensitive to the Jackie Robinson issue and criticism of the Sox' lack of blacks that he wanted them on his team."

A decade later, following the publication of Red Sox Century, a comprehensive survey history of the club this author co-wrote with Richard Johnson that addressed the racial question head on, McDonough again went on the offensive, calling me at home and scoffing at the notion that racism ever played any part in the history of the team or that Tom Yawkey played any role in the fact that the Red Sox waited fourteen years after Robinson integrated baseball to put a black player on the field at Fenway Park. "The only problem the Red Sox have ever had with blacks," he said to this author, "was finding blacks who could play. All right?"

A few years later Howard Bryant’s book Shutout, a comprehensive look at the question, appeared to be final word on the subject. Yet both Bryant and I have continued to hear periodically from those who steadfastly hold to the notion that Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey is blameless and continue to ask for evidence that goes beyond the circumstantial. Most ask essentially the same question. “Where,” I have been asked, in a variety of ways and in a variety of forums that range from letters and e-mails sent directly to me to anonymous message board postings, “is the evidence, the smoking gun, the definitive statement the exposes Tom Yawkey as a racist?” Indeed, Yawkey himself rarely spoke about the matter himself on the record, and, like other club owners at the time, was careful not to leave any written record of his attitude in regard to race. While I have always offered that the evidence, the so-called “smoking gun” was in plain view, on the playing field for every day of the fourteen years between Robinson’s tryout and Green’s appearance, some who still choose to view Tom Yawkey as some kind of benevolent, lovable old coot and defend him as a “man of his times” have clung to the lack of this supposed “evidence” as evidence in itself of both Yawkey’s innocence and that of the Red Sox franchise itself.

Not anymore.

This past week, while researching another topic, I came across an article in the June 28, 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated written by Jack Mann entitled “The Great Wall of Boston.” I am embarrassed to note that the article has somehow escaped me over the twenty years I have spent periodically mining Red Sox history (and, apparently, virtually everyone else, for I have not seen it cited elsewhere in regard to this issue). But now that I have read it I feel I must correct the record: For those who need one, it provides the smoking gun.

Mann, who died in March of 2000, was a staff writer at Sports Illustrated and his article presents an overview of then recent Red Sox history, offering that the main reason the team has failed to compete for a pennant for more than a decade is because of the left field wall, because the Red Sox, as a franchise, have sought to build a team to take advantage of the wall, and as a result have been unable to win on the road. That observation is hardly unique, but Mann, a thorough reporter, entertains other possibilities. He interviewed Yawkey and explored some of these other reasons, such as Yawkey’s misplaced loyalty, which caused him to hang onto favored players for too long and hire old cronies as scouts, many of who simply received checks and did no scouting at all.

But Mann also brought up the question of race to Yawkey, and the owner responded with his most telling- and damning - statement ever.

“One way to win,” wrote Mann of the Red Sox, “is to have the best players. The Red Sox did in 1946, but coincidentally that was the year Jackie Robinson—who had been tried in Fenway Park and found wanting—played his first year in organized (white) baseball. In the parade of Larry Dobys and Roy Campanellas and Elston Howards that followed, the Red Sox brought up the rear. Brooks Lawrence had pitched and won for five years in such pseudo-southern cities as St. Louis and Cincinnati before Pumpsie Green became the Red Sox' first Negro big leaguer in 1959. Writes Mann:

It is easy now for Bostonian critics, seeking a policy man behind such a self-defeating pattern, to point fingers at Mike Higgins, an unreconstructed Texan with classically Confederate views on Negroes, but it is too easy. Higgins, who did not become field manager until 1955 and did not take a desk in the front office until late 1962, could hardly have been the Caucasian in the woodpile.

Then Mann allows Tom Yawkey to weigh in on the subject:

"They blame me,” Yawkey says, ‘and I'm not even a Southerner. I'm from Detroit.” Yawkey remains on his South Carolina fief until May because Boston weather before then is too much for his sensitive sinuses. “I have no feeling against colored people,” he says. “I employ a lot of them in the South. But they are clannish, and when that story got around that we didn't want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club. Actually, we scouted them right along, but we didn't want one because he was a Negro. We wanted a ballplayer."

Read the statement closely, for it tells us everything we need to know.
Yawkey first tries to throw his Southern employees under the bus, by intimating that because he is from Detroit, he is obviously not a racist, and that because they are from the South, they presumably are. But he doesn’t stop there.

He next offers that he has no feelings against African Americans, and as evidence cites the facts that he employs African Americans on his South Carolina estate, a former plantation. But that is hardly the equivalent of putting a ball player on a major league field. After all, in their own way, even slave owners “employed” African Americans.

But then comes the first of two smoking guns: “But they are clannish,” Mann quotes Yawkey as saying of African Americans, “and when that story got around that we didn't want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club.”

No single sentence could be more revealing – or more pathetic. First Yawkey offers that all African Americans share the same characteristics – in this case, being “clannish.” That kind of stereotyping is damning enough, but when he states that “when that story got around that we didn't want Negroes they all decided to sign with some other club,” he is in fantasy land. Yawkey is making the claim that the reason the Red Sox remained white is the fault of the black ballplayers themselves. He is saying nothing less than “African Americans erroneously thought we were racist so therefore they refused to sign with us.”

The notion that an African American ballplayer in the late 1940s and 1950s would turn down an offer to sign with any major league team over any issue, even money, sounded spurious to me, and in a survey of the Negro League history books that I have in my possession, I could find no such accounting. But I wanted to be sure.

I contacted my friend Lawrence Hogan, a Professor of History at Union College in New Jersey, one of the foremost Negro League historians in the country and the author of Shades of Glory, published by National Geographic and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a book which has been referred to as a definitive history of Black baseball in America. In an e-mail I asked him, “Are you aware of any Negro League players, from the time Robinson signed to the late 1950s, who turned down offers from major league teams to remain in the Negro Leagues?” I asked specifically if he had ever heard of such a claim in regard to a player refusing to sign with the Red Sox.

The answer is no. Wrote Hogan, “I have never heard even the slightest suggestion of either thing you mention happening. I am sure there were players good enough to be signed who were not because of the glacial pace of integration. But I can ot imagine any Negro League player turning down an offer, other than on the normal personal grounds of not enough money being offered, or wanting to get on with life in a non-baseball way.”

But that is not all. Upon examination, Yawkey’s final statement - “We scouted them right along, but we didn't want one because he was a Negro. We wanted a ballplayer," might be the most telling statement of all. For if we follow Yawkey’s logic – “We looked for black ballplayers but we wanted talent first and foremost” – then compare it to the fact that from the time of Robinson’s signing through July of 1959 the Red Sox neither put an African player on the major league field who they signed themselves nor traded for one, the conclusion is inescapable: Tom Yawkey and his organization simply did not believe that any African American ballplayer had the talent to play for the Red Sox. This, despite the fact that they were playing on every other team in baseball, and that by 1959 there were dozens and dozens of African Americans winning championships, winning Cy Young awards and MVP awards and playing on All-Star teams throughout the major leagues, players like Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Don Newcombe and many, many, many more. But none, apparently, were good enough for Boston. “We wanted ballplayers,” indeed.

There is your “smoking gun” - in his own words. Decades after they were first uttered, you can still detect the stench.

[Note: I have tried to keep this story contained to the question of Tom Yawkey and the statement cited from Sport Illustrated, rather than go through another full explication of the Red Sox organizations racial history. Further information on that topic can be found in some of the the sources cited below.]

Sources:

Howard Bryant, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston (Boston, 2002)
Lawrence Hogan, e-mail message to Glenn Stout, November 17, 2009
Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson, Red Sox Century (Boston, 2000)
Glenn Stout. “Tryout and Fallout: Race, Jackie Robinson and the Red Sox,” Massachusetts Historical Review, Volume 6, 2004.
Will McDonough, "Ticket Increase at Fenway Shouldn't Raise Fan's Ire," Boston Globe, Dec. 2, 2000 (contains McDonoughs and John Harington’s criticism of Red Sox century and defense of Yawkey).
Will McDonough, "Sox Racist? Says Who? Harper Case No Proof," Boston Globe, Apr. 17, 1986.

This story also appears in its entireity on my website, www.glennstout.net
(Copyright 2009 by Glenn Stout. All rights reserved.)

IN TRUDY'S WAKE

2009-11-05T04:29:00.000-08:00

The Yankees are good, but Trudy was first.

When the New York Yankees celebrate their 27th world championship on Friday with a ticker tape parade, few of the players will realize that they are following in the wake of the reception Trudy Ederle earned in 1926 when she returned to New York after swimming the English Channel.

From Young Woman and the Sea:

"As Trudy stood on the promenade of the Berengaria as it steamed into New York Harbor in mid-morning of August 27, she once again found her self completely taken aback. Since swimming the English Channel only three short weeks before, that was becoming something of a pattern.

She’d never seen anything like it. No one on board the ship ha ever seen anything like it. No one in New York had ever seen anything like it. As the Manhattan skyline came into focus and began to grow tall, the boat was greeted from all directions as vessels of every size and shape came out to meet it - fire boats spraying water high into the air, tugboats, cutters, motor boats, private launches and yachts, all with their sirens tied down wide open, creating the loudest din anyone on the water ever recalled hearing before.

At first Trudy didn’t understand, but as the Berengaria drew closer and Trudy saw banners flying on the boats that said “Welcome home Trudy,” and “Queen of the Seas,” she began to realize it was all for her, every bit of it. A few moments earlier, she’d been asked to go the upper deck. Once she arrived two bi-planes circling the ship dropped flowers overhead, their petals falling like rain all around her, the sky raining flowers.

It was all for her.

The greeting was organized by a man known as “Mr. New York,” Grover Whalen, the city’s official greeter, who liked to refer to himself as the “doorman to the western hemisphere.” In 1919, when Whalen was put in charge of the city’s reception for the Prince and Princess of Wales, he came up with the notion of the ticker tape parade. Although the first few such parades were relatively modest, since then Whalen’s efforts had become ever grander. They culminated in the reception afforded Trudy, and, a year later, Charles Lindbergh. The scene Trudy was watching unfold in New York Harbor was just the beginning.

New York came to a stop. Nothing else mattered. America’s foremost film star, Rudolph Valentino, had died of peritonitis on August 23 and ever since his body had lain in state at Campbell’s Funeral Parlor under 24-hour guard by a phalanx of New York City police officers. But on the day of Trudy’s arrival, the bulk of the guard was transferred to Trudy’s home, and the crowd that had gathered around the funeral home for days suddenly disappeared. Trudy was bigger than any motion picture star.

New York was gaga for Trudy and in the days prior to her arrival Whalen and the New York press, particularly the Daily News, had whipped the city into frenzy. Now that the day arrived Whalen rounded up Trudy’s entire family – forty-two strong including aunts and uncles and cousins – and divvied them up aboard two tugs owned by the city, the Riverside and the official VIP vessel, the Macom. As the Berengaria approached, the Macom made it way alongside the gigantic vessel.

From aboard the Macom Mrs. Ederle spotted her daughters first, standing in an open window on the promenade deck, and began waving her arms back and forth, trying to get her their attention. She did, and Trudy nearly jumped out of the window to reach her. “Mamma,” she cried, “Mamma!” Even amid the din in the harbor, everyone aboard the Macom could hear Trudy’s voice above the tumult.

Trudy wouldn’t have to wait for the big ship to dock. A few minutes later the Macom pulled along side the big ship and Trudy and her entourage came aboard the Macom to be ferried ashore, reunited, at last, with her mother. She left in such a rush that she left all her bags behind and nearly knocked her mother to the ground as they met and hugged, tears streaming down both of their faces, Trudy wearing blue serge coat and a lavender felt hat, clutching her doll, her hair bronze from the summer sun, and her face tanned and healthy.

After the Macom docked at Pier A in the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan, the same place Trudy’s swim for Sandy Hook had begun in virtual anonymity only a few months before, Trudy was hustled through a crowd numbering in the thousands, then into an open car for a procession to City Hall Plaza, but the crowds were so immense the car barely moved as everyone pressed forward to get a glimpse at Trudy. At City Hall Plaza the scene was even wilder, as ten thousand people crowded into the plaza and the surging crowd threatened to turn into a dangerous crush. Trudy and her family were pushed inside by a phalanx of police and the big iron doors of the City Hall closed and locked to prevent hundreds of onlookers from crashing the reception.

Trudy, her family and other VIPS were escorted to the Mayor’s reception room, where New York Mayor Jimmy Walker paid tribute to Trudy. “When history records the greatest crossings, they will speak of Moses crossing the Red Sea, Caesar the Rubicon, and Washington the Delaware, and frankly, your crossing of the English Channel will take place alongside these.”

Trudy hardly had the time to take a breath before she was taken back outside steps for a photo op. The flash of the cameras had barely gone off when the crowd surged, sending people tumbling up the steps, swamping over Trudy. A bulky policeman grabbed Trudy with both arms and lifted her in the air and carried her back inside the building as Mayor Walker called for reinforcements.

At 2:30 p.m. with a gauntlet of police protecting her, Trudy, with Dudley Field Malone at her side, was put into another open car in the midst of a motorcade. As the entourage made the turn from 9th street to Fifth Avenue, torrents of paper fell from the sky as New York witnessed its first, gigantic, no holds barred ticker tape parade. This was no modest celebration that lasted only a few blocks, like that which greeted the Prince of Wales. This celebration lasted all the way uptown, before crowds unlike any the city had ever seen as hundred and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers lined the streets. At times onlookers rushed the car, stopping it in its tracks, rushed at Trudy and knocked her from her feet, backwards into the seat of the car, desperate for souvenirs. The crowd even tore a bracelet from her wrist and grabbed at her coat and hat, before police, mounted and armed with billy clubs, managed to free her.

Trudy stood in the car, her face tilted upward and spinning back and forth as if her eyes alone were not sufficient to see the entire scene, waving a flag, dizzy from the attention, absolutely, totally, and completely overwhelmed. Trudy waved and laughed and cried and looked up in wonder, almost drowning in the attention, knowing that the crowds, later estimated as at least a quarter of a million strong, were cheering for her, but barely able to hear them herself.

The motorcade finally made it way to its destination, Trudy’s home on Amsterdam Avenue, where 4,000 people crammed the single block that contained the Ederle’s home and butcher shop. Trudy’s family decorated the tenement in bunting and American flags, and a huge banner that said “WELCOME HOME TRUDY” hung from the sills. In the front window of the shop was a sort of diorama, an imitation of the English Channel cut from green cardboard, complete with cut-out waves powered by an electric motor that lifted and fell, and a cutout of Trudy, an automaton bobbing though the “water,” her arms fixed in the crawl stroke, a smile frozen on her lips. Along the side was a copy of poem that read “Pop Ederle by cutting meat made for himself a name,/His daughter Trudy by cutting waves won victory and fame./You see her now she fights the seas, and how she puts it over./ Hurrah for her, first of her sex to swim from France to Dover.”

Finally, at last, Trudy’s car pulled up before the house and the police cleared the crowd so she could get out, but before she did a young girl selected by the neighborhood stepped forward, climbed aboard the car, and tried to place placed a gold and white satin crown on Trudy’s head. Trudy didn’t want it, and pleaded, “I’m tired,” but when the little girl looked heartbroken, she finally agreed, and, as the cameras of news photographers flashed over and over again, turning Trudy nearly blind as well as deaf, someone draped a blue sash over her shoulders that read “Queen Gertrude the First.” Almost as quickly as the crown went on, Trudy took it off as the crowd of friends and acquaintances of a lifetime chanted “Trudy, Trudy, Trudy!” over and over and over, suddenly star struck.

Police made a corridor through the crowd and Trudy was hustled inside, Dudley Field Malone pushing her from behind, then Trudy upstairs to her family’s apartment. There, the scene was only somewhat less frenetic as dozens of people were crammed into an apartment that comfortably held only eight or ten people, but now, for the first time in three months, at least she was finally surrounded by people she knew. But when the crowd failed to disperse the police asked her to stand before the window for a while and wave to see if that would satisfy them. For the next hour and a half she periodically pulled the curtains back, and gave a short wave, but no one on the streets below budged. Almost lost in the frenzy was the red roadster, the promise of which had helped Trudy across the Channel. It had actually been waiting for her at the pier in the Battery, gleaming in the sun, but the crowds had been so large that Trudy had not seen it. It was a Buick, precisely the one she wanted, painted fire engine red with a big comfortable rumble seat in back. In exchange for a testimonial from Trudy, Dudley Field Malone had asked the automaker not only for the car, but $50,000. Buick found the price too steep, and offered Malone the car plus only $1000, which he turned down. For a time it appeared that the roadster would have to wait for Pop Ederle to open his own wallet but at the last minute the Daily News stepped in and bought the car for Trudy.

As the crowd finally began to thin out as New York’s finest urged everyone to move along, the roadster seemed to magically appear, parked along the curb on Amsterdam Avenue in front of the Ederle’s building. Dudley Malone had to remind Trudy it was there, asking her “Do you really want that car?”

The question startled Trudy – that’s how crazy things were - she had nearly forgotten the only thing she had hoped for when she swam the Channel. “Yeah,” she responded, sounding far more weary than excited. She went downstairs for a few moments, climbed in the car and sat back, spinning the steering wheel and fiddling with the dashboard, but there were still too many people on the street for her to take the car for a drive, and the crowd made her feel claustrophobic and she fled back upstairs.

For Trudy, it was all running together, the crowds, the parades the gifts and autographs and hand shaking, everything, but it still wasn’t over. She was placed in another motorcade and ushered to a dinner sponsored by the Mayor at the Roosevelt Hotel and made her first and only public statement of the day, speaking for all of twenty seconds. “My dear friends,” she said, “after all that has been said I must be polite and thank the Mayor and Grover Whelan for the wonderful reception that has been given to me. It will be remembered during my whole life. All the kind things that have been done and said have shown such a delightful appreciation of my efforts to make the Channel crossing for the sake of my country’s flag. I love you for it.” After the crowd watched the British Pathe newsreel footage of her swim, Trudy was then whisked off to a show at the Globe Theater featuring the Ziegfeld Follies and finally to the Club Lido where she danced with the Mayor before more cameras. At every stop she had to run a gauntlet as New York came to a standstill wherever she appeared."

They're Off

2009-10-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, October 20, eight swimmers will enter the water at gangway one at Battery Park in New York City and seek to duplicate Trudy Ederle's 1925 swim to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. This 17.5 mile swim - in water that if usually anout 65 degrees F, crossing a busy shipping channel - is a challenge worthy of our admiration. Good luck and safe travels to everyone who is participating.

Here is a brief excerpt from my biography of Trudy, Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, about the swim that inspired Tuesday's event:

"For an hour and a half Trudy gamely slogged along, each stroke of her arm and pull of her hand gained her only a few feet against the current as she slowly cut across Buttermilk Channel between the Battery and Governor’s Island, and then finally clear of the island itself. She was already exhausted but had covered less than two miles and occasionally turned over on her side to relive her muscles of cramping. In mid-harbor the water temperature barely reached sixty degrees. At the break of dawn Sandy Hook was hardly any closer than it had been when she had started.

There was concern aboard the Helys, where Epstein and the others looked at the girl, clearly struggling, with grim faces and spoke to each other in hushed tones. In hushed voices they openly wondered if Trudy should abandon the attempt. There seemed little chance that Trudy, who appeared lethargic and beaten, could succeed, and they didn’t want her confidence to suffer.

Then, as if the struggle jolted her awake, Trudy began picking up her pace, finally fighting the tide rather than allowing herself to be pushed around. As she did, first slowly and then in a rush, the tide turned, the sun lifted in the sky and hit the water. AS the conditions changed, so did Trudy’s mood. Her rate of speed in the water doubled, and then tripled as the Hudson River chased the tide out to sea in a rush and Trudy rode the current back out.

Trudy and the two accompanying vessels stayed close to the Brooklyn shore through the Narrows and then caught a current that sent her out into the deeper water of the shipping channel. Sandy Hook was still out of sight, hidden by morning fog still lingering farther out at seas, but the crew on the Helys directed her way with an onboard compass.

At 10:30 the fog began to lift, first revealing the Highlands, Trudy’s second home, and then, finally, the low beach and dunes of Sandy Hook, a fine white line along the horizon.

Victory was in sight, barely one mile away. But over the last few hours the tide had slowed and then turned slack. Now it began to run again and pushing back against Trudy just as her energy began to fade. The motorboat slowed to keep pace, barely crawling through the water. From her seat on the boat, Meg could see that Trudy was losing ground, and the success that a few moments before had seemed so certain now seemed far off. And no one was doing anything about it.

Meg had enough. She jumped from her seat, cupped her hands around her mouth and called to her sister. “Hey!” she shouted, startling everyone. Meg’s voice cut through the Trudy’s fatigue and the swimmer’s head snapped around. “Get going, lazy bones,” Meg called out. “You’re loafing!” Indignant at the insult, Trudy fixed her sister in her sights.

“Loafing, am I?” she called back. “For that I’ll make it if it kills me!” Then Trudy turned back to the water, put her head down, reached out with her arms and with each stroke pulled the shore closer again, turning inside herself, swimming as if she was doing intervals in the WSA pool, her stroke strong and true. Meg watched with a satisfied smile as Trudy began to put some distance between herself and the Helys. The boat pilot leaned on the throttle and as the Highlands peaked over the horizon Meg exhorted her sister to swim even faster

As the buildings of Fort Hancock, on the northern edge point of the Hook, began to appear, Trudy picked up her pace. The fort commander had been informed in advance of their plans and a small crowd of Trudy’s friends and her family were waiting onshore as she sprinted the final hundred yards before finally reaching the shallows. When her arms hit bottom she popped to her feet and began wading to shore, rubbing her eyes, which were red and raw with irritation from salt water. She had swam for much of the last few hours with her eyes closed, all sounds muffled due to her hearing loss, her arms and legs numb from the cold, yet this had not deterred her or even caused her to slow down.

It was 11:53 am. She had been in the water for seven hours, eleven minutes and 30 seconds, nearly seven minutes faster than the existing record. She had not only succeeded, but she had shattered a record previously held by a man, and done so only one day after she had set a world record in a 150-yard race. As soon as their boat hit the beach several newspaper men dashed off in search of a telephone, to call the story in to the evening papers

After spending a few moments to collect herself, Trudy pronounced herself fit – and hungry. She had neither eaten nor taken any drink during her time in the water. A reporter asked her whether she was tired and she replied “Not much. I could have kept on going if I had to.”

When another made mention of a “second wind,” Trudy shook her head disparagingly. “I’ve heard other swimmers talk about it,” she said, “but I don’t think I have a second wind. I usually feel a little tired during the first mile but after that I am all right.” With that she was escorted to the Fort’s dining room for a meal, and then boarded the boat for the journey back, where she amazed everyone as she alternately sat and stood on deck, chatting away as if she had just returned from swimming practice."

Just a few days later, full of confidence, Trudy left for England to swim the Channel.

[The photo is of Cloak Island, off the southern shore of Isle la Motte on Lake Champlain. I have circumnavigated Isle la Motte by kayak several times, a distance of about 15 miles, and cannot fathom swimming so far.]

That Time Again

2009-10-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

I love it. I hate it.

I love it.

For eleven months of the year I am a fairly reasonable person, outwardly responsible, usually calm and composed, and able to keep things in perspective. Baseball is in my life, but it is not my life, at least not the way it was when I was younger. Nowadays I don’t stay awake staring at the ceiling after a meaningless game in May wondering why someone threw a slider over the plate on an 0-2 count, or took a hanging changeup for strike three with two outs and all the runners moving. I stopped beating myself up over stupid stuff like leaving a game early. If I fall asleep watching and wake up to the infomercials, I’ll turn the TV off and go to bed without checking on the score, and in the morning it is sometimes ten or eleven a.m. before I even think to check the games on the west coast.

When my wife and I receive an invitation to do something, or my daughter has an evening concert at school, I never even consider checking the schedule ahead of time – I’ll miss the game. On long car trips, if someone wants to listen to another station or play a cd instead of listening to the game, I’m fine with that. When the TV in the bedroom goes on the blink, I change the channel and let everyone watch Glee on the good set. I skip past Baseball Tonight, I’ll go a couple days sometimes without checking in on the message boards, and I hardly ever buy the Sunday Globe anymore. Baseball is still out there, I know it, but it is a luxury and an indulgence, not a necessity.

Then the page on the calendar flips over and word at the top says “October.”

Uh-oh.

Goodbye, peace. Hello, anxiety. See you later, common sense. Distraction, my old friend, where you been keeping yourself? The playoffs are here and minute by minute my façade of indifference crumbles. The twenty-fifth man on the roster is more important to my life than anything Barack Obama is going to do. I scour the internet for umpire ball/strike ratios. I forget to let the dogs back in, decide the car can go another month before I fix the muffler, and let God rake the leaves.

Dinners out can wait. We see the neighbors way too often. I never liked the movies that much anyway. Sleep is overrated. So is exercise. Forget supper – I’m running to the corner for a six pack. And some Doritos. And some Tums.

I buy the papers. I get a new TV for the bedroom. I give each of the cats a full can of food whenever they want it. I steal my daughter’s laptop, keep it next to my chair and hit refresh every ten seconds. I agree with everything my wife says. I dig out the lucky hat, the one I wore the last time they… you know, the last time they did the thing that you’ve talked about all summer like it was nothing but that you can’t say out loud now because you’ll jinx it. You know, the best of seven thing, that thing.

I’m a mess. I squeeze the anxiety ball, bite my nails, check my pulse obsessively, eat an aspirin every day, and try to stay hydrated. I watch the post game, and the post, post game, and the press conferences. I read the game threads - ours when we win, theirs when they lose.

I cheer. I cry. I scream. I gloat. I lose my voice. I throw the remote across the room. I jump out of my chair and wake up the neighborhood. I put my fist through the wall. I slump to the floor.

October – I hate it.

I can’t wait.

from Boston Baseball, October 2009. The photo shows the way fans used to have to watch the post-season in pre-TV, pre-radio days.

Glenn Stout will be appearing the Boston Book Festival on October 24. His latest books are Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, and The Best American Sports Writing 2009. Contact Glenn on Facebook, at glennstout.net, or on his blog, http://verbplow.blogspot.com.

Book Group Guide: Read and Discuss

2009-09-18T05:08:00.000-07:00

In response to reader requests, I have created a book group guide for Young Woman and the Sea. It is available on my website, http://www.glennstout.net/ - Simply click on "Book Group Guide" on the right hand column. You may then copy and paste the materials, including discussion topics, into a word document to distribute to your group. I am happy to participate by speaker phone, or answer brief questions by email.

Happy reading.

[The photograph shows Trudy and her sister looking at scrapbooks detailing her career]

LISTEN CLOSELY

2009-09-11T04:18:00.001-07:00

I was recently interviewed about "Young Woman and the Sea" on the National Public Radio program "Here and Now" hosted by Robin Young. You can listen to the interview by clicking the link:

http://www.hereandnow.org/2009/09/young-woman-the-sea/

Earlier this summer, the book received a very positive review from Maureen Corrigan on NPR's "Fresh Air", part of the "Books We Like" series.

And for those who would rather read all about, here is a review from the Seattle Times for both Young Woman and the Sea and another book about Trudy. It begins:

"In August 1926, an 18-year-old New Yorker became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. The moment Trudy Ederle's tired, cold feet reached dry sand and her father wrapped a robe around her with a bear hug, she became the world's first female sport celebrity. So why is her name missing from lists hailing tennis champion Billie Jean King, golfer Babe Didrikson Zaharias and swimmer Janet Evans?

Sports writers Glenn Stout and Tim Dahlberg wondered the same thing, and in their separate books, each author puts the spotlight on Ederle's life and historic crossing. Only Stout succeeds in constructing a story for the ages: "Young Woman & the Sea" has something for everyone."

To read more, click on the link:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2009834313.html

[The photograph is a satellite image of Cape Gris Nez, France, where Trudy began her swim.]

A GOOD DAY

2009-08-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, well, it's a good day. A very good day.

Like most authors I'll fret and worry over reviews, because many reviews, even very good ones, can miss the point of the book, contain errors or give the wrong emphasis. There is nothing one can - or should - do about this, but it can be frustrating.

Then someone gets it, completely and totally. Like right here, in a review from the online site for the Christian Science Monitor:

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/08/27/young-woman-the-sea/

[Note: The image is of the ticker tape parade that greeted Trudy upon her return to New York]

For more reviews and information, see glennstout.net or visit Young Woman and the Sea on facebook.

A TRUE STORY

2009-08-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

You write a book to entertain and, hopefully, inspire. And sometimes it really does.

Yesterday I attended a cookout on Lake Champlain with some friends. One of these friends, Todd, who I don’t know particularly well, had caught a ride to the cookout with my friends Scott and Ali and their family. While he was waiting for them to leave he saw a copy of my book, Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, sitting on a counter – I had given Scott and Ali a copy a few weeks before.

As Todd later told me at the cookout, he recognized the book but until that moment had not been aware that I was its author. You see, a few days before he had been visiting some friends, a woman and her teenage, hearing impaired daughter. The woman, a tri-athlete, had discussed the book with him. She had already purchased it and read it with her daughter – Trudy Ederle was hearing impaired, and her daughter immediately identified with the swimmer.

In this case the subtitle “How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World,” is proving accurate. Inspired by the example of Trudy Ederle, mother and daughter are now in the planning stages to swim the English Channel together.

[Note: I took this photo a few weeks ago on the east shore of Lake Ontario]

Today Is The Day

2009-08-06T04:13:00.000-07:00

This map shows the approximate route Trudy Ederle took when she successfully swam the English Channel.

Eighty three years ago today Trudy Ederle (aka Gertrude Ederle) stepped into the English Channel at Cape Gris Nez on the French coastline. Fourteen and a half hours later, despite a gale, she reached England, swimming the English Channel in only 14H 31M, becoming the first woman to swim the Channel and beating the men’s record by nearly two hours.

Today I’m pleased to announce that my biography of Ederle, Young Woman and the Sea, has been chosen as an “Indie Next List Notable” book for September. Nominated by staffers at Independent bookstores around the country, it is more difficult to make this list than to make a best seller list and ensures the book will be highlighted in independent bookstores all around the country.

But not as difficult as swimming the English Channel.

You may read an excerpt from the Prologue here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18105682/Free-Preview-Young-Woman-and-the-Sea-How-Trudy-Ederle-Conquered-the-English-Channel-and-Inspired-the-World-by-Glenn-Stout

or here:

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/hmh-ems/Young_Woman_and_the_Sea_Prologue.pdf

Op-Ed from The Boston Globe

2009-08-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/04/the_swimsuits_role_in_creating_champions/

Is it the suit, or the swimmer?

This is the question that is currently being asked of Michael Phelps and other world class swimmers today. Precisely how much of their speed in the water is due to their own innate abilities as opposed to the new high-tech swim suits currently in vogue is a question that vexes the swimming community. After all, Michael Phelps seemed once invincible in his Speedo LZR, last years’ hot swim racing fashion. But all of a sudden German swimmer Paul Biedermann, in his new, high tech Arena X-Glide suit, has left Phelps behind.

The ethics of these uber suits is currently the only topic of debate in the swimming world. But, unlike the suits, the debate is not brand new. In fact, in 1926 when Trudy Ederle became the first woman, and only sixth person, to swim the English Channel, beating the existing men’s record by nearly two hours, her success was due, in part, to her innovative swim suit.

The first swimmers of course, wore nothing, and this was more or less the norm until the nineteenth century when English men’s swimming clubs began holding competitions that sometimes included female spectators. As a result, to protect the virtue of these spectators, male swimmers wore one piece singlets, usually made of wool or flannel, and, later of silk. These “unitards” originally stretched from the ankle to the wrist but evolved over time to expose most of the leg and arms.

It was different for women. Repressive morality forced women to wear cumbersome swimming skirts or gowns with bloomers and stockings that covered nearly the entire body and made the act of swimming nearly impossible. Not until the Women’s Swimming Association was created in New York in 1917 and began sponsoring women’s swimming meets did it become acceptable for female athletes to abandon these skirts and wear less restrictive unitards that began above the knee and left the arms completely exposed.

Trudy Ederle worse such a suit in 1925 when she first tried and failed to swim the English Channel. During the journey, which ended halfway across due to both bad weather and the ill effects of something she had consumed, her suit had proven to be problematic. The woolen singlet had caused significant chafing around her arms and over the course of her swim had lost its shape. The neckline had gaped open like the mouth of the basking shark, creating considerable drag on Trudy as she swam through the water using the American crawl.
As she trained in France for a second attempt during the summer of 1926, Trudy and her sister Meg began experimenting with her suit. This time her suit was made of silk, which helped with the chafing, but during training she discovered that the scoop neck still slowed her down.

So Trudy and Meg took matters into their own hands. They removed a skirt from the original suit and with additional material Meg bought in Paris, fashioned a two-piece suit consisting of a brassiere that opened and closed in the front, and a bottom, akin to a pair of tight fitting briefs.
The result worked beautifully. The two piece suit gave her more freedom of movement. The tight fitting top caused comparatively little drag, did not chafe her skin and the clasps on the brassiere even allowed Trudy to make adjustments in the event the material stretched.

Although they did not realize it, some two decades before Louis Reard and Jacques Heim received credit for inventing the bikini, the Ederle sisters already had. Unfortunately, neither Trudy nor her sister realized they had created not only something brand new but something with such commercial potential. They never thought to trademark or patent the design and lost the opportunity to earn untold millions of dollars.

No matter. On August 6, 1926 Trudy entered the English Channel on the French shore and emerged fourteen hours and thirty one minutes later at Kingsdown Beach in England, the first woman to conquer the Channel, a evidence of success for the both the suit and the swimmer. Although she may have lost a fortune on her swim suit, she nevertheless won something far more important; the right for women everywhere to compete as athletes.

Glenn Stout is the author of Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, published last week by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

AUGUST 6 - HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

2009-08-02T04:36:00.000-07:00

On August 6, 1926, Trudy Ederle (aka Gertrude Ederle) became the first woman - and sixth person ever - to swim the English Channel, beating the existing men's record by nearly two hours and proving, once and for all, that women could compete as athletes.

To celebrate the 103rd anniversary of her success, a brief excerpt from my new biography of Ederle, Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, just released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and available everywhere:

[Note: A larger excerpt is available on the books' page on amazon.com, http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/hmh-ems/Young_Woman_and_the_Sea_Prologue.pdf ]

Cape Gris Nez., Aug 6. (By the Associated Press) Gertrude Ederle, the American Swimmer, started at 7:09 o’clock this morning in an attempt to swim the English Channel. The weather conditions when she took her plunge were fine.

“…Please God, help me.” As her head left the air Trudy tried to think of nothing else – nothing important, nothing that mattered, and nothing that didn’t touch her at that instant. Nothing but the water and the air, the sea and the sky, her hands and arms reaching out, her legs kicking, her face turning toward the sky breathing in, then turning, under the water, breathing out.

The start, she knew, was the hardest part. As she plunged into the water and began to swim, her body, swept over by the cold, was still in pieces – her arms felt stiff, each stroke still uncertain, wavering, irregular, and as she kicked her legs she went at first too fast, then too slow, then back and forth, holding them too stiffly, then too relaxed as she tried to find the place where her arms and hands and legs and feet were all one piece, in harmony. She tried to find that special place atop the water and in her mind where she did not feel the cold or the spray or the difference between the air and the water, lightness and dark, day or night. A place where there was no time at all.

In … out… In… out… this was the worst. In shorter swims – one hundred yards, two hundred yards, three hundred, she hardly ever thought of breathing, and never thought of anything but going fast, breathing fast, reaching out and kicking and breathing. Then all she did was pull with her arms and feel the water slip away as she churned her way for a minute or two or three, taking deep breaths and exhaling, one after the other, until she moved through the water like running downhill, so fast that it was over before you started, before she even felt tired, before she even had time to think..."

CHIN MUSIC: One That Got Away

2009-07-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

CHIN MUSIC
One That Got Away
from Boston Baseball
by Glenn Stout

It is one of the most fascinating documents in Red Sox history.

On October 7, 1945 in Chicago, while covering the World Series between the Cubs and the Tigers, Boston Globe baseball writer Harold Kaese sat and chatted for a while with Billy Evans. Little remembered today, Evans had one of the most varied careers in the history of baseball, serving as an umpire, a syndicated newspaper columnist and general manager of the Cleveland Indians from 1928-1936 and the Detroit Tigers from 1947-1951. That was enough to earn him admittance into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973. But it was his job from 1936 to 1941 that caused Kaese to sit with Evans, and, a short time later, type up his notes to save them for posterity, even making some corrections and additions by hand.

Tom Yawkey purchased the Red Sox in 1933, and after an orgy of spending had little to show for it when he invited Evans to his suite at the Ritz in August of 1936. After a dinner of lobster and champagne, he unveiled his plan, offering Evans a job as Red Sox farm director. Evans agreed, and took on the task of building a farm system and, hopefully, a dynasty.

Within a year the Red Sox future was bright, as both Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr were signed from the Pacific Coast League in 1937 after Red Sox GM Eddie Collins confirmed the opinion of lesser Red Sox scouts and signed both young players. One year later, Evans himself spotted another stellar prospect, shortstop Harold “Pee Wee” Reese, playing for Triple-A Louisville, where he hit .277 as a nineteen year old. Although shortstop-manager Joe Cronin was only thirty-one years old, as Evans told Kaese, “E. [Evans] had told Y [Yawkey] to buy him, because Y. wanted a shortstop. Said Cronin could only play 2-3 more years.”

To get rights to Reese, at Evan’s suggestion Yawkey purchased the entire Louisville franchise after the 1938 season for $195,000. To protect his prize, Yawkey then asked Evans to move to Louisville, serve as GM of that franchise and continue to serve as farm director.
Evans did as he was told, but in the spring of 1939, when Cronin got his first look at Reese, he dismissed him roughly, telling Evans “So that’s the guy that’s going to take my place. He’s too small.” Reese, battling illness, then got off to a slow start in 1939. That was enough for Cronin. Evans told Kaese that “Collins had been talking to him [Yawkey],” and suddenly Evans was told to sell Reese – essentially tossing that $195,000 down the drain, because at the time no organization was interested in a sick ballplayer.

Evans was secretly pleased – he still thought Reese has a future in Boston. By June Reese was feeling better and playing the best shortstop in the minor leagues. As Kaese recounted “E. begged Cronin to go see him play, or send scouts. ‘I’m not interested in Reese,” said C. [Cronin].”

That was that, and a short time later Reese was sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers for $35,000 cash and four players. He took over as Dodger shortstop in 1940, made the Hall of Fame in 1984, and became one of the great “what ifs” in Red Sox history.

Evans never forgot. To him, the deal revealed a flaw in the Boston organization. He told Kaese that “C. [Cronin] too impetuous, has too many likes and dislikes, and makes up mind too fast. Y. [Yawkey] also too impulsive. Col. [Collins] nervous and impulse [sic]. RS need stabilizer. Cr. Lacks Patience. Y wants results in a hurry.”

The sale essentially ended Evans career with the Sox. As Cronin inexorably slipped over the next few years, “Cr. belittled players E. Sent up.” But although Evans disagreed with Cronin’s judgment – Cronin thought Ted Williams had an uncorrectable hole in his swing – Evans liked Cronin personally.

Evans lasted two more years on the Boston payroll. Then, on September 6, 1941, Yawkey called Evans and without explanation abruptly fired him. Kaese’s notes tell the rest of the story: “That was all. Rough deal for E [Evans] – fired over the telephone and without reason. Y. [Yawkey] drunk… offered to call up Collins in Boston and fire him, too.”

Although the Red Sox website starts that “There are 14 former Boston Red Sox players and two executives who were inducted into National Baseball Hall of Fame prior to the formation of the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1995. They are automatically enshrined into the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame,” one name is missing from that list.

Billy Evans.

New Reviews

2009-07-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

“You need not care one whit about swimming, women breaking sports barriers or events of the 1920s to be gripped by sportswriter Glenn Stout's fast-paced account of how, in 1926, a partially deaf, 19-year-old New Yorker became the first woman to swim the English Channel… The descriptions of the interaction between Trudy and her crew, Mr. Burgess' plotting of the Z-shape route, the almost hourly press dispatches sent, the hazards Trudy overcame as the storms came, the swells grew and the tide changed earlier than expected are breathtaking.

-The Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/15/first-to-swim-the-english-channel/

“In “Young Woman & The Sea,” his book about Ederle’s life and quest to become the first woman to swim the English Channel, Glenn Stout offers an incredible look at women, sports and the sports industry in the 1920s, while bringing Ederle her due to a new generation... Through a wonderfully crafted story that appeals to both athletes and those drawn to stories of perseverance and adventure, Stout reinvigorates Ederle’s efforts and gives another generation a new source of inspiration.” –The Buffalo News

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/738014.html

Once lost to history, swimmer’s story resurfaces
By Amy Moritz
BUFFALO NEWS BOOK REVIEWER
July 19, 2009,
Before Title IX and the women’s sports revolution of the late 1970s and 1980s, there was the golden age of sports.

In the 1920s, female athletes enjoyed popularity and fame.

And none was more famous in the United States than Gertrude Ederle.

If that name leaves you with a cartoon question mark floating above your head, you’re not alone. As quickly and furiously as Ederle rose to fame, so her name and accomplishments faded.
In “Young Woman & The Sea,” his book about Ederle’s life and quest to become the first woman to swim the English Channel, Glenn Stout offers an incredible look at women, sports and the sports industry in the 1920s, while bringing Ederle her due to a new generation.

Stout’s style is interesting. Not a straightforward biography of Ederle, the book begins by discussing the tragic sinking of a steamship in 1904 that took the lives of more than 1,000 passengers who were on a church outing up the East River to Long Island Sound. Many of those who died, including hundreds of women and children, drowned close to shore in shallow water due to their panic at not knowing how to swim.

This tragedy, which shook New York City, inspired a movement to teach swimming to women and children. It allowed the traditional mores of modesty for women to be loosened in the name of public and personal safety.

Swimming was now not only an appropriate, but an important skill for women to learn.
And that opened the door for Ederle.

Stout spends the first part of the book alternating chapters between the challenge of swimming the English Channel and the storied history of that athletic endurance feat and the childhood of Ederle. The daughter of German immigrants, Trudy was the youngest of three girls. They spent summers at the Highlands, learned how to swim in the open water, then took lessons at the growing Women’s Swimming Association during the winter months.

To understand Ederle’s accomplishment, Stout takes care to describe previous Channel crossings and why crossing the small body of water is so difficult. Swimmers take as much time studying the tides, currents and weather patterns of the mysterious body of water as they do training for the actual swim.

As much as the book is a lesson in endurance history, it also offers a bit of swimming history, as the time frame of Ederle’s lessons coincides with the introduction of the “American crawl,” or freestyle stroke. Previously, the breaststroke was considered the superior form of moving quickly through the water, and the politics of that are discussed, though not thoroughly drawn out, in the book.

For Stout, Ederle’s rise to fame began when she won the Day Cup Race in 1922 at Manhattan Beach. At the age of 15, she was touring the country in swim meets against the best in the world. And not only consistently winning but setting world records.

“Trudy was so good,” Stout writes, “it was almost getting monotonous. . . . Few athletes of any kind and of any gender have ever dominated a sport the way Trudy Ederle did from the fall of 1922 through the summer of 1924 — she held virtually every imaginable women’s world record in swimming at distances that ranged from fifty yards to one mile.”

But with all that success, and all the hype, Ederle failed to produce at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Stout tells the story of how the American women’s swimming team was treated as second-rate by the powers-that-be and its potential effect on Ederle’s performance. She came away with two bronze medals for her individual events and one gold in a relay. She called it the greatest disappointment of her life, and Stout points to that moment as the time when crossing the Channel would become her personal salvation, of sorts.

The story continues to chronicle her decision to swim the Channel, her hunt for a coach and her first failed attempt in 1925, and her desire to try again, this time successfully, in 1926.

Stout’s writing makes him a solid storyteller, with a narrative largely pieced together from newspapers, letters and journals. He re-creates scenes and emotions that might be “historical fiction,” but they are based in solid research and happily glide the reader through the story.
While close to half a million people turned out for her ticker-tape parade in New York City, Ederle’s shyness and some poor business decisions by her father kept her out of the public eye and hence made it easy for her to fade from the public’s mind.

But her legacy, though unheralded, remained intact.

“For even as Trudy was fading from memory, due in large part to her effort, women athletes were becoming ever more commonplace and accepted,” Stout wrote.

Through a wonderfully crafted story that appeals to both athletes and those drawn to stories of perseverance and adventure, Stout reinvigorates Ederle’s efforts and gives another generation a new source of inspiration.

Amy Moritz is a sports writer at The Buffalo News who finds swimming a few hundred meters in Lake Erie challenging enough.

SPLASH!

2009-07-10T07:48:00.000-07:00

The prologue to Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World is now available through amazon at http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/books/hmh-ems/Young_Woman_and_the_Sea_Prologue.pdf

DIVE RIGHT IN

2009-07-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

MORE magazine just picked Young Woman and the Sea, my biography of Trudy Ederle (aka Gertrude Ederle) as one of "25 Summer Books We're Buzzing About." See http://www.more.com/2053/5239-summer-books-we-re-buzzing-about.

And as more people hear about it and the book begins to find its way into stores and becomes available online, the book is also showing up on individual blogs and elsewhere, as it does here http://www.socialworkout.com/2009/06/30/young-woman-and-sea, where the author compares it favorably to "the all time greatest swim-related masterpiece... Haunts of the Black Masseur," by Charles Sprawson.

I'll take that.

The subject in the photo, by the way, is Trudy's trainer when she successfully swam the Channel, Thomas William "Bill" Burgess, the second man ever to swim the Channel.

READ ALL ABOUT IT... FOR FREE... OR FREEMIUM VS. SPEEDIUM

2009-07-09T04:11:00.000-07:00

It seems as if everyone remotely connected with the business of newspapers and magazines or even blogs has an idea about what these publications should do to monetize their internet content, ranging from registration to micropayments to ads posted by logarithm to some updated version of video or pod casting, some scheme that would allow them to remain in business, make money, and, more importantly, preserve the jobs of all the talented journalists that have lost their jobs recently, in part due to the economy, but also because these print products botched their interface with the internet and failed to find a way to make money online. Yesterday, in fact, I heard a lengthy discussion on NPR featuring Chris Anderson of WIRED that discussed precisely this topic. His notion was not new, but he proposed some free content to lure the customer in like Cstco does with their samples giveaways, and then charge for additional cpontent as one moves vertically through the website, ala the Wall Street Journal. He has dubbed this notion “freemium” a word that combines “free” and “premium” but nevertheless sounds like a neighbor of Freedonia.

Eh. While that might work for a precious few providers, as it does for the Wall Street Journal, what of everyone else? As they do say up here in Vermont, “the horse is already out of that barn” almost everywhere, and to mix the metaphor further, who wants to pay for the cow now when the milk has been free? But here’s an idea I haven’t seen anyone try.

In recent weeks my computer has been a little glitchy and slow for some reason, perhaps because of DSL line problems with my ISP provider, perhaps because of the lousy weather – whatever, it’s been slow. It struck me as I was waiting for a site to load the other day that one can make a pretty close correlation to the demise of print not only to the spread of the internet (duh), but even more importantly, to the speed with which the information arrives. I mean, it seems to me that the real trouble with newspaper and magazine circulations really didn’t take place until it was more convenient to read online than it was to read hard copy, and that didn’t take place until the infrastructure that could deliver the internet quickly, through DSL or fiber optic cables or whatever else does that, got really, really fast. I, for one, didn’t take the plunge into reading primary content on the internet until I received DSL service about four years ago. Until then, content sites like newspapers and magazine loaded so slowly on my dial-up connection that it affected my patience and make me insane. So I’d often go out and buy the damn paper rather than have a stroke while waiting.

Light bulb.

We can't wait.

Print has nothing to lose now, so if I were running a newspaper or magazine with a web presence and a struggling print product, I’d control not access to the content, but speed of access to the content. Keep all the content free online as is, but make it S-L-O-W… either slow to load, or slow to navigate from one page to another due to load time or ads. I’m sure there must be some relatively easy software program that can do this, and there may even be a way to prevent copying, like amazon does with its “Look Inside” feature to control unwanted distribution of book content. If a reader really wants to continue to read the site for free, fine, but they’ll have to wait.

But if they want it FAST – like we've become accustomed to receiving everything these days – well, then they have to pay. At this point there are several sites I am absolutely addicted to and/or are necessary for what I do that I read for free every day. If, all of a sudden, (like what’s been happening occasionally by accident), it took me thirty seconds to access each article I wanted to read, or each page, I’d run to the store to buy the hard copy.

But if I had to cough up a small sum – say $5 a month – to access that publication online FAST, I think I’d do that. And if a consortium of publications (like newspapers and magazines) got together and allowed me to select, say, five or eight newspapers from a menu of several hundred publications, I’d pay even more to retain my speed of access, just like I pay more for internet service now to get it fast, than I used to when I was on dial up.

The only thing we’ve been conditioned to pay for online is speed, and that is something newspapers, magazines, and other print providers have failed to realize, and, even worse, take advantage of.

In other words, it ain’t “freemium.” But it just might be “speedium.”

Accept No Imitations

2009-06-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

My book "Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World" will soon be available - I am expecting to receive bound copies this week.

There is another book on Trudy (aka Gertrude Ederle) which is also due to appear soon. But I am happy to say that, at least in the minds of every reviewer thus far (Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, and The Wall Street Journal) "Young Woman and the Sea" has been the clear winner.

In fact, "Young Woman and the Sea" received a coveted "Starred Review" from Publisher's Weekly, which praised the book for its "great storytelling... Stout's moving book recovers the exhilarating story of a young girl who found her true self out in the water and paved the way for women in sports today."

Of the other title, however, the PW reviewer was far less enthusiastic, writing that the "...pedantic prose and workmanlike account of Ederle's breathtaking feat, however, is as joyless as Ederle's swim was triumphant."

So read "Young Woman and the Sea." Accept no imitations.

Michael Jackson and the Sea

2009-06-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

On the one hand you have Marc Sanford and Michael Jackson. And on the other you have Trudy Ederle.

Sanford has ridden his relatively limited notoriety into ignominy. Jackson’s fame, over several agonizing decades, killed him.

And then there is Trudy Ederle (aka Gertrude Ederle), the subject of my new book, Young Woman and the Sea, which will be in bookstores in just a few days.

In the wake of her 1926 record setting swim across the English Channel, in which she became just the sixth person – and first woman – ever to swim the Channel, beating the existing men’s record by nearly two hours, Trudy was the most famous woman in the world. She was far better known than Marc Sanford will ever hope to be, and, briefly, better known than Jackson has ever been.

When she returned to the United States she was nearly crushed by fame. Given the biggest ticker tape parade in New York history at the time, she was arguably America’s first celebrity, and in her first 48 hours back she received a full dose of everything it had to offer.

The result? She lay huddled in a fetal position, paralyzed by the attention.

And although Trudy did go one to cash in on her fame with a vaudeville tour, in the end, wisely and to her credit, eventually she withdrew. She was not cut out for the rigors of celebrityhood and - unlike Sanford or Jackson or Lindsay Lohan or any of dozens of other celebrities - she knew it. Within a decade of her achievement she was nearly forgotten, and she seemed to like it that way, following her remarkable achievement by doing something perhaps even more remarkable – returning to her life, living quietly and privately, unconcerned with the fading cheers, content and certain who she was and what she had done. And that was enough, and something Michael Jackson never, ever knew.

She passed away in 2003, age ninety-eight.

It Ain't Easy Being Green

2009-06-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Last night I slept in my cabin that floats at the edge of a large swamp of several hundred acres on Lake Champlain. I try to stay there every few weeks or so in the summer, where, after kayaking from dusk into darkness, I sit, listen to a baseball game on the radio, and then listen to the sounds of the water and the swamp as I fall asleep.

Last night I heard the muskrats in the swamp, the occasional squawk of a great blue heron disturbed in its roost, the buzzing of mosquitoes at the screen door and the beavers splashing along the lake shore, all sounds I have heard many times before.

But apart from this, it was silent. That has never been the case before. In past years the swamp and the surrounding woodlands have been filled with the sound of frogs, from the spring peepers and wood frogs of the early spring, to the leopard frogs, pickerel frogs, green frogs, bullfrogs, gray tree frogs, western chorus frogs and even their cousins, the American toad (see http://www.nwf.org/frogwatchUSA/frogs_state.cfm?showstate=vt. for both pictures and sound samples). In fact, frogs have always been everywhere here, at least since I first moved to Vermont this week some seven years ago. During some summers it has been impossible to take a step without causing a frog, buried deep in the grass, to leap out of the way, and I leave the mower high to keep from acting as the inadvertent grim reaper of my neighbors. In the same town in which I live there is even a commercial frog collecting company that captures them for biology class, and locals have told me of earning extra money as kids by capturing big bags of frogs.

But this year, almost total silence. The peepers and tree frogs and wood frogs appeared and disappeared just as quickly, and I’ve hardly heard any of the others all. In past years, the waters of the swamp have nearly boiled with tadpoles as they approach maturity, but this year I have hardly seen any at all. And last night in the swamp, apart from a distant, single bull frog calling in vain all alone, nothing.

Amphibians are endangered nearly everywhere and as the journal BioScience tells me:

“Amphibians’ physiology (permeable skin) and complex water-and-land life cycle expose them to more environmental changes than most animals, and though they have survived climate changes before, today's changes are accelerating too rapidly for frogs to keep pace.
Also, frogs’ eggs have no shells, exposing embryos to increased UV-B radiation levels, which can cause harmful mutations. Pollution has contaminated the water frogs thrive in and global climate change is causing higher levels of infectious diseases.”

I am not a scientist and am not quite certain that the low level of frogs this year is due to the factors cited above. It could be some natural, cyclical fluctuation due to weather conditions or other factors. I do know that when the lake and the swamp froze this winter, for example, the water level was much lower than in recent years, and I wonder if the lack of sufficient ice cover caused an abnormally high die-off of hibernating frogs. Similarly, the lake never reached flood stage this spring and some habitats that usually are inundated remained dry. This, too, may have affected the population.

I do know that the silence makes nights in the cabin a bit longer, and more lonely. And that great blue heron may simply have been hungry.

How to Get From Here to There

2009-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

After driving more than 1,500 miles over the last week - to Ohio and back - I’ve thought quite a bit about length and distance. And as the PR machine for Young Woman and the Sea, my bio of Trudy Ederle (aka Gertrude Ederle) , starts to fire up, I’ve recently done a couple of interviews about both the book and about writing which will soon appear. I’ll link to them when they do, but one of the interesting things about doing such interviews is that I occasionally get asked questions about the process of writing, which is something I usually don’t think too much about – until I do.

So I’ve been thinking about length. My experience is rather unique in that I've written poems, columns and non-fiction for both juvenile and adult audiences, and books that range from between 20,000 words and 250,000 words – from one hundred double-spaced typed pages to more than a thousand, for those who think in those terms. Different books, different audiences, topics and approaches require different lengths – but length isn’t the right term, really.

It is time. No matter the subject, I write as long as I need the reader's time to tell the story, so when I am done I feel done, with no unanswered questions or stray cats still roaming around in my brain. A book of several thousands of words needs to feel as finished and complete as a poem of only ten or fifteen words.

It is the same inside the book, with chapters. I’ve written chapters as small as 1,200 words or so and as long as 15,000 or more – whatever it takes to feel that they are complete and unified. I NEVER write a chapter to length just because I’m stuck on a number, although in most books most of my chapters fall within a range similar range.

I think of chapter breaks like big breaths, where you feel the need to pause, inhale, ponder and move on - and you have to be a reader here, as well as a writer. Be sensitive to when natural transitions occur - an event comes to a close, a conclusion is reached, a character experiences some kind of defining moment, there is a moment of quiet before action, or action before quiet, some contraction within the narrative.

Much of it is just learning to listen to your own work. I think it helps, when ending a chapter, to find a way to lift it off the page a bit, and cause the reader to reflect a little, just like the end of a long story or magazine piece, where the story turns back on itself a bit. Again, if you are just breaking off for the sake of breaking off, don't. And see if a lead for the following chapter comes easily. If it does, you're breaking it at the right place. But if you neither have an end, or a lead, then you simply might not be at the end of the chapter yet, or have already rushed past. Trust me, it gets easier the more you do it.

It sounds simplistic, but it really helps sometime to scattershot through your library just reading leads and ends to chapters, or the beginning and ends of magazine pieces, even the beginning and ends of poems. This can help you not only to brain storm your own transitions, but you’ll also realize that some writers you may like a great deal use the same strategies over and over. There is nothing wrong with that, if it works, but I must admit that ever since I did that to a writer who I had always admired and realized that nearly every story ended with a similar sensory impression, my admiration dropped just a little. So don't abandon your change up – try not to repeat yourself.

And use your outline as that - an outline - and not a dictator of length and chapter. Maybe I'm the outlier, but I've never worried for a second about abandoning the outline as I write, as long as I make sure I cover what I have promised to cover. For the writer I think the writing process is also a learning process - no matter how much I think I know beforehand, I don't make the really valuable connections until the act of writing takes place, and that can cause me to recast the rest of the book entirely.

One of the most lasting things I ever wrote came about when I was in the process of telling a small, familiar story that I expected to write quickly, but then I found one question that I didn't have an answer to, then another, then another, and I started looking for answers and all of a sudden not only did I have an entirely new chapter, but the information in that chapter informed the remainder of the book and provided a entire logic that wasn't there when I started writing, and that I didn't know was there in my research the whole time.

That's why you do this.

Getting It Across

2009-06-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

While I generally don’t think writers and actors have that much in common, I do think we share a capacity (or at least a desire) to “inhabit” a subject, in other words to get inside a character and see/feel/think what the character feels. It's a challenge.

In Young Woman and the Sea, my book about Trudy Ederle, (aka Gertrude Ederle) the first woman to swim the English Channel, my biggest fear was that I would be unable to “inhabit” her and translate her experience as a Channel swimmer with authenticity. After all, I am not only not a nineteen year old girl, but - at best - I’m a pedestrian swimmer. What do I know about that experience?

All I could do was all I could do, steep myself in research and use my life experience to try to gain access to her experience, and by that I mean the physical discomfort and mental gymnastics I’ve experienced from a variety of activities – running regularly for more than thirty years, pouring concrete for fourteen hours a day, pitching a baseball, kayaking on Lake Champlain in a wide variety of weather conditions, and other things I’ve done that have required real discipline, focus and physical stamina (like writing a book). That being said, I was still worried I’d get something wrong, and that an experienced open water swimmer would roll his or her eyes and call me on it.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from someone who has read the book, a person who has swum the Channel several times, both in relays and alone. She wrote of the book that, “It is wonderful. You really were able to capture open water swimming and what it is all about.” And then she went on to cite specific examples, scenes from the book that resonated with her own experiences both swimming the Channel and training for it.

Writing a book is a long slog, and that e-mail made me feel like I'd just made it across an English Channel of my own. It is already my favorite review.

ON ORTIZ AND AGE

2009-06-09T06:44:00.000-07:00

How do you know when you’re done? That’s the question.

I was never much of a ballplayer, but after not playing for seventeen years, at age thirty four I re-habbed my torn rotator cuff, got in shape and started playing in some pretty competitive over-30 baseball leagues. Almost every team had a few guys who played division one in college, a few teams had guys who had played minor league ball, and there was even the occasional cup of coffee major league straggler. I did okay against these guys, made the league all-star team three or four times and won more games than I lost for teams that usually lost more than they won

I’ll never forget my first game back, a doubleheader, actually. I thought I was in pretty good shape. I was running about thirty miles a week, spending several hours lifting weights in the gym, and had participated in regular practice for about a month. We played a doubleheader. I pitched a complete game, went something like 5-9 at the plate and walked a couple times, a good day.

And the next morning I could not get out of a chair without pushing myself up with my arms. Or go down the steps more than one at a time.

Fans, sports writers and even the athletes themselves drastically underestimate the physical demands of playing. Fans and sportswriters do so because most of them haven’t really played since they were kids, when baseball was easy, and they have no conception what it is like to play even three or four games a week (which I did when playing in two over-thirty leagues) much less every day, as they do for long stretches in the major leagues, an incredibly grueling schedule. Players themselves even underestimate the physical demands because when you are in the midst of a career, or even a season, it’s hard to see what slips away from one season to another, or even day by day.

Here’s an example. After playing for several years I went out one spring to discover that I could no longer sprint, at least not every fast. Before, I’d always been able to steal bases, take the extra base, and had never grounded into a double play. All of a sudden - gone. Same weight, same workout, but the gear was gone. After being thrown out a half dozen times in our first couple games, I learned to go station-to-station.

After that, a little went every year. I couldn’t stay out late and play the next day without paying the price. If I skipped a pre-hab day at the gym, (building my arm back up between starts by a controlled lifting program) my arm felt it. One year I couldn’t pull the ball anymore. Then I lost most of my power. I went from a guy who threw hard and hit third or fourth to a junkballer who slapped the ball the opposite way. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do about it, and I tried everything. Then the reflexes went, and soon after I got hit in the head by an 85 mph pitch I never saw, and essentially got folded in half by a wicked comebacker that hit me in the side and left a grape-purple bruise the size of a dinner plate, I stopped playing. I was forty-four.

Leaving aside rumors about his age, PED use, and off field activities, all of which might make Ortiz’s decline more pronounced, I think we’re seeing the inexorable and effect of age, what Kerouac called “the forlorn rags of growing old.” There have always been players, particularly power hitter, who seem to lose it fast, often in their early to mid-thirties, guys like Bob Allison and Rocky Colavito, who were both basically done at age 33, and Ortiz’s identical twin, Mo Vaughan. Add an injury or two and the decline can be even more pronounced and instantaneous, particularly if some PED enhancement gets taken away at the same time.

Add it all up, and I think he’s finished. Short of releasing him, over the remainder of his contract the best the Red Sox can hope for, I think, is to platoon Ortiz or use him as a pinch hitter, spotting him against certain pitchers in certain ballparks, and hope that he can be reasonably productive in limited duty.

Because here’s the thing - even when I was in my quick decline, there were those times that the guy on the mound (or when I was pitching, the batter) was battling the same thing I was.

In those situations, I still had a chance. For a moment, I was who I used to be.

The Buzz

2009-06-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

I can almost hear it.

All you can ask for from writing a book is the chance for people to hear about it and read it. The sad fact is that for most books, by the time they are published, the audience is already known, the niche has been defined and it is extraordinarily difficult to break out of that.

It might be different for "YOUNG WOMAN & THE SEA," my biography of Gertrude Ederle, aka Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. A couple of really, really good pre-pub reviews have attracted some attention and given the book a bit of a profile. It was selected as a "Best Summer Read" by the Wall Street Journal, which appears to be attracting even more attention. None of this is bad with the pub date still some weeks off.

Could be it has some "buzz."

The Taint

2009-06-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

"Chin Music" Boston Baseball, June 2009

From Curt Schilling’s blog, 38 Pitches, May 8, 2009:

“For the past 19 years or so I’ve had suspicions, some stronger than others, but to sit here today and say I played on even one team that was totally clean would be denying reality… I played pretty much my entire career in the Steroid Era.”

Those words are pretty damning. Although Schilling goes on to stridently proclaim his own innocence, denying he ever used any PED in any form, and calls the notion that Boston’s two most recent world championships were tainted “a load of crap,” his own admission provides evidence to those who feel otherwise.

As I have written before, I find every championship of the last twenty years, if not tainted, then certainly tarnished. But that is something for each of us to decide how we feel for ourselves, and I respect those who disagree with me on this point.

But the Steroid Era did leave a taint, one that may not diminish the accomplishment of any one team but certainly does leave a stain upon certain individuals.

Make that every individual. No player of the era, clean or not, comes away untarnished, and that includes Schilling. While he may have been the only virgin in the whorehouse, as those around him were putting anything and everything into their systems, Schilling nevertheless benefitted – quite a few of those home runs won him some pretty big ballgames - and for the vast bulk of his career, he kept his suspicions to himself while he accepted the glory – and the championship rings – that might not have been acquired totally on the square. Schilling, like most players, states in effect that so many guys were using it all evens up and even though he had suspicions he never actually saw anyone take anything, and gosh darn it, you just can’t accuse someone because of some darn suspicion.

True enough. But he might as well be wearing one of those “Stop Snitching” t-shirts that were all the rage in gangland a few years ago. Because a person of conviction might have stood up and taken a stand, gone public and proclaimed long and loudly that the game was dirty and something should be done, the personal consequences be damned. Schilling may have ended up a pariah among his peers, but he could have looked himself in the mirror without doing a moral back flip. Yet Schilling, like virtually every other professional ballplayer, stayed silent, took the money, looked the other way and became adept at the same kind of self delusion that allows corruption to flourish in any institution.

At its core, that’s what the Steroid Era represents – corruption. Everyone agreed to go along to get along because the turnstiles were spinning and the contracts were getting bigger and more lucrative every year and fans were so swept up in the spectacle that no price was too high to pay for the privilege of watching. All players who knew better and stayed silent are no better than the residents of any community that look the other way as criminal syndicates or gangs act with impunity. Only no one was going to kill a ballplayer for speaking out – they just wouldn’t get asked to dinner. The corruption of the Steroid Era floated all financial boats. Only a sucker would have turned down that, right?

Those in the front office fare no better. Uber GM’s like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein, and managers like Tony LaRussa, Joe Torre and, yes, Terry Francona are also tarnished. Who is Billy Beane minus Giambi and Tejada, or Joe Torre without Pettitte and Clemens, or LaRussa without Canseco and McGwire?

Epstein and Francona without Manny, that’s who. Simply two more names whose personal success is so inexorably bound up with the Steroid Era that, like Schilling and Manny, it is impossible to measure their accomplishments with any certainty. And that is what, in the end, taints everything and everyone. Ask yourself, would any of these men have succeeded in an era without steroids? We will never, ever know.

And neither will they.

Glenn Stout hopes he won’t have to write about this again, but suspects he may have to. His next book Young Woman & Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, will be published in July. You may contact Glenn at glennstout.net