Stout, Glenn 1958-

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Stout, Glenn 1958-

PERSONAL:

Born September 5, 1958, in Amlin, OH; son of Harold and Anne Martha Stout. Education: Bard College, B.A., 1981; Simmons College, M.S., 1985. Politics: "Progressive."

ADDRESSES:

Home—Alburg, VT. Agent—John Taylor Williams, Hill Barlow Agency, Boston, MA. E-mail—baswed@sover.net.

CAREER:

Writer and librarian. Boston Public Library, Boston, MA, librarian, 1982-93; full-time writer, 1993—. Curry College, guest lecturer; University of New Haven, guest lecturer; visiting scholar, Boston Public Library, 1994. Lecturer on sports history. Guest on television and radio programs, including Hard Copy, The Group, WGBH-TV, Forever Baseball, NESN-TV, Morning Edition, National Public Radio (NPR), and It's Only a Game, WBUR radio. Medford Angels, Boston's Men's Senior Baseball League, pitcher.

MEMBER:

Sports Museum, Society for American Baseball Research.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Casey Award finalist, American Baseball Research, and Notable Book of the Year distinction, New York Times, both for Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures.

WRITINGS:

Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1991.

DiMaggio: An Illustrated Life, photographs selected and edited by Dick Johnson, Walker and Co. (New York, NY), 1995.

Jackie Robinson: Between the Baselines, Woodford Publishing, 1997.

(Editor) The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1999.

(With Richard L. Johnson) Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2000, expanded edition published as Red Sox Century: The Definitive History of Baseball's Most Storied Franchise, 2004.

On the Track with—Jeff Gordon, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2000.

A Century of Boston Sports, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA), 2000.

On the Field with—Derek Jeter, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2000.

On the Court with—Kobe Bryant, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2001.

On the Halfpipe with—Tony Hawk, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2001.

(With Matt Christopher) On the Ice with—Mario Lemieux, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

On the Field with—Venus and Serena Williams, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

On the Field with—Alex Rodriguez, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2002.

(Author of text) Yankees Century: 100 Years of New York Yankees Baseball, photographs selected and by Richard A. Johnson, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2002.

Top of the Heap: A Yankees Collection, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

At the Plate with—Ichiro, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

Impossible Dreams: A Red Sox Collection, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2003.

On the Bike with—Lance Armstrong, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

On the Court with—Shaquille O'Neal, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2003.

(Author of text) The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball, photographs selected and edited by Richard A. Johnson, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004.

On the Court with—Jennifer Capriati, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004.

On the Court with—Yao Ming, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004.

On the Mound with—Curt Schilling, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2004.

Muhammad Ali, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2005.

Babe Ruth, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2005.

Jackie Robinson, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 2006.

(With Charles Vitchers and Robert Gray) Nine Months at Ground Zero: The Story of the Brotherhood of Workers Who Took on a Job like No Other, Scribner (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of more than twenty juvenile sports biographies for the "Matt Christopher Sports Biography Series," Little, Brown (Boston, MA). Series editor, "Best American Sports Writing," Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1991-2000. Producer, The Life and Times of Nuf Ced McGreevey (a biography). Contributor to periodicals, including USA Today's Baseball Weekly, Baseball America, Boston Magazine, New England Sport, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Diehard, Sport-Boston, Cooperstown Review, SABR Review of Books, and the Sporting News. Hold Out (a small press literary magazine), former editor and publisher. Author of monthly column, "Going with the Pitch," Diehard, 1988; author of monthly column, Boston Baseball.

SIDELIGHTS:

Glenn Stout is a journalist, sports historian, and public speaker who often writes, consults, and lectures on topics related to contemporary sports and sports history. Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball, written by Stout and Richard L. Johnson, is a history of Boston's baseball team based on ten years of research into contemporary newspaper accounts of the team's activities. According to Bill Ballou in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, it is "the best book about the Red Sox this correspondent has ever seen, and he has seen virtually all of them."

Among the misconceptions confronted in Red Sox History are the reputations of two of the team's owners. Harry Frazee, the owner who sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees and has since been depicted as a bad businessman because of it, is shown to have made what seemed a good deal at the time. Ruth was still early in his career and showed no signs of the greatness that would later be his. No newspaper article of the time criticized the deal. Owner Tom Yawkey, long a fan favorite, is argued to have been guilty of cronyism. Stout and Johnson also uncovered the possible fixing of World Series games in 1903 and 1912. "The book," according to Katherine A. Powers in the Boston Globe, "is filled with this sort of revisionism, astute and thoroughly backed up, delivering almost 100 years of reassessment." Reviewing Red Sox Century for Booklist, Wes Lukowsky noted that it was "a wondrous book that will enthrall baseball fans of all ages and team affiliations." Similarly, a critic for Publishers Weekly found the book to be "honest, well written, and rigorously researched, which will make it accessible to fans of any ball club."

In Yankees Century: 100 Years of New York Yankees Baseball, Stout and Johnson profile "decade by decade the ups and downs of the most storied franchise in sports," stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Stout again delves exhaustively into the primary record, including newspaper accounts, team documents, and other materials, to assemble a thoroughly detailed, historically accurate portrait of the Yankees as they evolved from a moribund team "without a stadium into the game's dominant dynasty," commented Justin Ewers in U.S. News and World Report. Paul Kaplan, writing in the Library Journal, commented that whether one loves or hates the Yankees, they have been "the premier team" in baseball throughout the last century. "This book does ample justice to their great history," Kaplan stated. Among the contents are more than 250 photographs, selected by Johnson; current essays by writers such as David Halberstam and Ira Berkow; and multiple tables of dates, data, and statistics that "reveal the astounding richness in talent assembled by the Yankees over a century," remarked GraceAnne A. DeCandido in Booklist.

Stout and Johnson explore the diverse and groundbreaking history of a third major league franchise in The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball. The Dodgers, who played on both American coasts (in Brooklyn and Los Angeles), broke the color barrier when the team hired Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to be signed to a major league team. Staffed by a team of eccentrics and distinctive personalities, the team went on to achieve baseball greatness, earning the fabled nickname of the "Boys of Summer," an exciting alternative to the steadfast Yankees. Stout's "lively writing" and Johnson's "exciting, rarely seen images" usher readers "down a memory lane peopled with some of the most famous names in the game," including Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale, and numerous others, noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. The book also includes reprints of contemporary sports journalism as well as numerous tables of data and team statistics. Reviewer Dennis Dodge, writing in Booklist, remarked that the book will be "relished by Dodger fans young and old, and very few others. Fortunately, there are lots of us."

In DiMaggio: An Illustrated Life, Stout and photograph editor Dick Johnson profile in depth Joe DiMaggio, one of baseball's legendary figures. Stout explores DiMaggio's early life and professional career, concluding that he was supremely capable of performing the four essential functions of a professional ballplayer: running, throwing, fielding, and hitting with power. DiMaggio, furthermore, was "grace personified and invariably conducted himself with dignity," noted a Publishers Weekly critic. Stout and Johnson also examine more high profile events in DiMaggio's life, including his marriage to screen icon Marilyn Monroe and the inevitable development of his own celebrity status. In the book, "the photos are comprehensive, and Stout's text benefits from keen research that often corrects errors in the historical record," commented Steve Gietschier in the Sporting News. Gietschier concluded that the book is an "attractive and meticulously prepared package that does its reticent subject justice."

Stout, along with coauthors Charles Vitchers and Robert Gray, turns to a more somber subject than sports in Nine Months at Ground Zero: The Story of the Brotherhood of Workers Who Took on a Job like No Other. The authors document the physically and emotionally grueling task of cleaning up the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Notably, Vitchers and Gray were the ones who originally built the towers, noted Booklist reviewer David Siegfried. In the aftermath of the attacks, without being asked, "they devoted nine months of their lives" and associated personal, financial, and familial hardships to the cleanup effort, Siegfried reported. The authors describe the almost unimaginable scale of the cleanup, involving more than 400 million tons of steel, 600,000 square feet of shattered glass, and the remains of almost 3,000 victims. The authors do not gloss over the conflicts that arose between civilian workers and members of the police and fire departments, who stressed recovery of their colleagues' bodies over those of civilian casualties. However, in the course of the book, Stout, Vitchers, and Gray detail the enormity of the task the workers' faced, the toll it took on them, and the terrible, almost sacred need to preserve and protect the site of the Twin Towers.

Stout once told CA: "I started out writing poetry. Sports was a sidelight."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, November-December, 2002, "Best Sports Book," review of Yankees Century: 100 Years of New York Yankees Baseball, p. 61.

Booklist, May 15, 1999, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, p. 1660; October 15, 2000, Wes Lukowsky, review of Red Sox Century, p. 408; September 1, 2002, GraceAnne A. DeCandido, review of Yankees Century, p. 45; September 1, 2002, Marta Segal Block, review of On the Court with—Venus and Serena Williams, p. 131; September 1, 2003, Wes Lukowsky, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 2003, p. 38; September 1, 2004, Dennis Dodge, review of The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball, p. 52; April 15, 2006, David Siegfried, review of Nine Months at Ground Zero: The Story of the Brotherhood of Workers Who Took on a Job like No Other, p. 25.

Boston Globe, October 8, 2000, Katherine A. Powers, review of Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball.

Boston Magazine, August, 2000, Mark Zanger, review of Red Sox Century, p. 291.

Christian Science Monitor, January 19, 1996, Christopher Bowden, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1995, p. 13; December 15, 1997, Mark Sappenfield, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1997, p. 10.

Fortune, July 19, 1999, Andrew Ferguson, "Hammock Reading Par Excellence," review of The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, p. 42.

Kliatt, September, 2002, Janet Julian, review of Chasing Tiger: The Tiger Woods Reader, p. 34.

Library Journal, December, 1995, Morey Berger, review of DiMaggio: An Illustrated Life, p. 117; February 1, 1997, Morey Berger and Paul Kaplan, review of Jackie Robinson: Between the Baselines, p. 82; June 1, 2002, Steven Silkunas, review of Chasing Tiger, p. 159; August, 2002, Paul Kaplan, review of Yankees Century, p. 107.

New York Times Book Review, April 7, 1991, George F. Will, review of Ted Williams, p. 23; October 6, 2002, Rob Neyer, "Books in Brief: Nonfiction; What Becomes a Legend More?," review of Yankees Century.

Publishers Weekly, September 28, 1992, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1992, p. 72; October 3, 1994, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1994, p. 64; October 30, 1995, review of DiMaggio, p. 52; October 14, 1996, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1996, p. 78; September 14, 1998, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 1998, p. 58; August 28, 2000, review of Red Sox Century, p. 70; July 8, 2002, review of Yankees Century, p. 40; September 22, 2003, review of The Best American Sports Writing, 2003, p. 100; August 23, 2004, review of The Dodgers, p. 49; March 6, 2006, review of Nine Months at Ground Zero, p. 63.

School Library Journal, June, 1996, Fred Amico, review of DiMaggio, p. 170; December, 1999, Robert Saunderson, review of The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, p. 166.

Sporting News, November 27, 1995, Steve Gietschier, review of DiMaggio, p. 8.

Sports Illustrated, June 10, 1991, Ron Fimrite, review of Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures, p. 6; December 11, 1995, Ron Fimrite, review of DiMaggio, p. 87; September 11, 2000, Ron Fimrite, "Books," p. R4.

U.S. News and World Report, September 9, 2002, Justin Ewers, "An American Tale," review of Yankees Century, p. 46.

Worcester Telegram and Gazette, September 3, 2000, Bill Ballou, review of Red Sox Century.