The Best American Sports Writing 2007 [Paperback]

David Maraniss (Editor), Glenn Stout (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2007 | Series: Best American Sports Writing

For fans of sports and just plain great writing, this absorbing collection, featuring twenty-eight of the finest pieces from the past year, has something for everyone. Guest editor David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, has assembled a fresh crop of the people and stories that dominated the sports world in 2006.

Michael Lewis gives a behind-the-scenes look at the legendary football coach Bill Parcells. Bob Hohler delves in the murky waters of modern amateur basketball, where teams blatantly dole out cash to players and shoe companies set their sights on prospects as young as twelve. William Rhoden traces the fate of an unknown filly injured on the racetrack. Jeff MacGregor describes the unforgettable Friars Club roast of boxing's provocative promoter Don King. Daniel Coyle follows a forty-year-old Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete. L. Jon Wertheim tells of a young pro-basketball player who found himself wrestling the shoe bomber Richard Reid to the ground during a transatlantic flight. And Derek Zumsteg provides a hilarious and utterly original in-depth account of the baseball career of Bugs Bunny, “the greatest banned player ever.”

These pieces and many more go beyond the spotlight, revealing the people and issues that make sports so relevant and important to all of us.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps no other genre lends itself to cliché quite as often as sports writing, with its thrilling victories and agonizing defeats, its loss and redemption. Washington Post associate editor Maraniss (author of Clemente), however, avoids the most tired sports writing and unearths some obscure gems in this installment of the Best American series. Robert Huber's rough, stylish profile of John Chaney seethes with the anger of the legendary coach ("Chaney wants to will the world into a righteous place as he kicks your ass. Or at least still have the goddamn chance to!"). Other highlights include Bob Hohler's penetrating examination of the connection between high school basketball and the sneaker business, and Larry Brown's beautifully evocative story of hunting a rare white raccoon-a story written 20 years ago but published for the first time in 2007. Moving beyond "the old baseball, football, hockey, boxing, track and field, tennis tradition," Maraniss also includes stories like William Finnegan's fascinating surfing-technology story "Black Monday," (which originally appeared not in Sports Illustrated, but The New Yorker). The result is a timely, forward-thinking collection that should please fans of just about every sport.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Crackerjack writing from some of the country's best-known sports journalists." (Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (October 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618751165
• ISBN-13: 978-0618751167
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #501,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > Journalism

More About the Author

Glenn Stout is the author, editor or ghostwriter of nearly eighty books, including the groundbreaking Boston Globe bestseller Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway's Remarkable First Year, bestsellers Red Sox Century and Yankees Century, and the critically acclaimed Nine Months at Ground Zero, The Best American Sports Writing, and Young Woman and The Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the Worldand his own award winning juvenile sports biography series - "Good Sports." Glenn is available to make author visits to schools, deliver lectures on the history of Fenway Park and make other speaking engagements.

Born in Ohio and a graduate of Bard College, Glenn is dual citizen of the United States and Canada and lives in Vermont with his family, two cats, one dog and one rabbit on Lake Champlain. Before becoming a writer Glenn did construction work, served as a security guard, a painter, and worked in libraries. Glenn invites his readers to his blog, to join his facebook page for The Best American Sports Writing, or to visit his website, glennstout.net. Educators interested in arranging an "author visit" to their school can find information on Glenn's Good Sports website www.goodsportsbyglennstout or query Glenn directly at [e-mail].

Thanks for reading!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious and too focused on the unusual, July 2, 2009

By 

J. Brehm "Voyager fan (not fanatic)" (Columbus, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Sports Writing 2007 (Paperback)

Most of the books in this series have been excellent. This is the rare exception. I want to read what the title promises -- the best of the previous year's writing. This completely fails to deliver, in what I suspect was an attempt by this editor (who hopefully won't be asked to play this role again) to assemble what amounts to a sideshow of sports largely ignored by the public -- for good reason, as you'll discover by reading. The writing is average at best and the subjects are just not that interesting.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vast array of quality sports writing, July 8, 2008

By 

Mike "Falcon" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best American Sports Writing 2007 (Paperback)

This book takes for you for a loop in that you think that the major sports are going to be covered in baseball, football, basketball and maybe some hockey. The first chapter is actually about racoon hunting and the next one is a satire about Bugs Bunny if he played in an actual baseball game.

In fact here is a list of the additional sports covered in this book:

-High school "futbol"
-High school football
-Former NFL player Jake Scott's wherabouts today
-Mark McGwire in retirement
-The first $100,000 bonus given to a baseball player
-Horseracing
-Don King & boxing
-Olympic skiier Bode Miller
-Cycling
-A woman race-car driver
-Fishing
-Surboarding
-Bill Parcells
-John Cheney
-Red Aurbach
-Shady HS Basketball sneaker company recruiting
-Travel baseball
-Former college football star's life after serious injury
-Pickup basketball games
-Pool
-Former college basketball player's encounter with stopping the shoe bomber
-Iraqi soccer
-Running
-Rodeos
-Turkey hunting


I am giving this book 5 stars to off-set the one-star rating because this book doesn't deserve that low of a rating. Most of the short-stories are from well-respected publications and notable authors. It is hard to read this book straight through because of the variety of the work, but it was a very high quality read.

3.0 out of 5 stars Some very solid, some forgettable, October 11, 2008

By 

T. Burket "tburket" (Potomac, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Best American Sports Writing 2007 (Paperback)

No way is this collection worthy of only one star. There are too many good or better than good stories, as David Maraniss mixed it up to include a lot of different sports. His focus is on the human element, not actual game stories or their immediate aftermath, as they usually are far too ephemeral for a collection, not matter how sharply done.

The challenge for this particular set is that only a few are at all memorable enough to stick with you after completion. Too many are not that interesting or are nothing special or simply didn't appeal to me, such as the one on John Cheney and the odd take on Bugs Bunny.

My favorites were the high school football game that went 73-72, the running Hoyts, surfing technology, the Saturday hoops tradition, and Jake Scott. The surfing was a nice touch, as it was on a subject about which few readers probably have a clue, making it especially fresh and informative.

If you are only interested in a single sport or two, look elsewhere.

3.5 stars