The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Glenn Stout

Overview

The Best American Series®

First, Best, and Best-Selling

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

The Best American Sports Writing 2011 includes

Paul Solotaroff, Sally Jenkins, Wells Tower, John McPhee, David Dobbs, Wright Thompson, P. J. O’Rourke, Selena Roberts, and others

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780547336961
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/04/2011
Series:	Best American Series
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	875,953
Product dimensions:	5.52(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Glenn Stout is a writer, author, and editor, and served as series editor of The Best American Sports Writing, and founding editor of The Year’s Best Sports Writing. He is also the author of Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, Fenway 1912, Nine Months at Ground Zero, and many other award-winning and best-selling books. He also served as a consultant on the Disney+ film adaptation of Young Woman and the Sea. Stout lives in Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

"Sports journalism is in the middle of an identity crisis," writes Leavy (The Last Boy) in the 21st edition of this leading sports anthology. That explains the diverse range of material here, which includes stories about a Canadian hockey school that teaches young players how to fight, the evolution of the Madden NFL video game, as well as reporting about USA Swimming's sex scandal, and a posthumous profile of transgendered Los Angeles Times sports reporter Mike Penner/Christine Daniels. These 29 selections represent the changing face of sports journalism in an era when the Internet instantly delivers scores and highlights, and requires writers to dig deeper for relevant stories. "Long-form sports stories are flourishing in new soil," according to Leavy, who has chosen lengthy pieces from the ESPN and Deadspin web sites. Some stories are only peripherally related to sports, such as Sterry Butcher's "Gentling Cheatgrass" about the art of taming a mustang, Wright Thompson's masterful intertwining of Franklin Lobos's dual life as an aging Chilean soccer star and one of 33 trapped miners in "Above and Beyond," and "Fetch Daddy a Drink," P.J. O'Rourke's ode to hunting dogs. Despite some duds, sports writing is alive and well. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly