Fenway 1912: The Birth of a Ballpark, a Championship Season, and Fenway’s Remarkable First Season (review)

Let’s begin with this assertion: Glenn Stout can flat-out write. I mean, if you’re looking for someone who can consistently put one word after another to form interesting sentences, and one sentence after another to make thought-provoking paragraphs, and one paragraph after another to construct stimulating chapters, Stout’s name has got to be on your short list. But more than this, Stout writes passionate, arresting prose. He thinks, he cajoles, he massages the evidence in ways that are different and unexpected. He brings his readers up short, forcing them to look at the past through his fresh set of eyes. What more could any reader want than to be treated with this sort of respect?

Before this book, Stout’s quartet of remarkable team histories of the Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, and Cubs had assured his rank in baseball’s bibliography. Now this provocative researcher and writer has turned his attention to an off-shoot of one of these projects, the result of which is most unusual, a history of Fenway Park focused on 1912, its inaugural season. In a certain sense, what Stout has produced is two books in one, each enriched by the other. Chronicling one team’s triumphs and travails during a particular season can often prove tedious, but here, as the Red Sox win their third American League pennant and their second World Series, their story is set against the background that is the birth of Fenway. Even those who can’t stand what the postmodern Red Sox have become will be engrossed.

Stout’s ability to see things anew is apparent as early as the introduction where he makes this startling argument: “Fenway has survived not because it has been preserved in the original, but because it has not been preserved, because until quite recently it was never treated as special enough to preserve, and because the club has rarely hesitated to make practical changes to extend its useful life” (xii, italics in original). Defying conventional wisdom like this, writing what amounts to subjective history, is part of Stout’s stock in trade. So, too, are his commitment to contemporary sources, his refusal to engage in hindsight, and his dedication to telling the story as it unfolded.

At the outset, Fenway 1912 appears to be the story of the ballpark, a work of architectural history. Even in the introduction, Stout’s concern is Fenway, not the Red Sox, and in the prologue, he concentrates on Jerome Kelley, the head groundskeeper whose task it was right after the 1911 season to move the infield sod from the Huntington Avenue Grounds to the new park. Nearly the first third of the book has this orientation. True, the reader learns about the change in the club’s ownership that led to remaking the roster, but we learn a lot more about the work of architect James McLaughlin and general contractor Charles Logue. Stout has experience in residential and commercial construction, and he is quite at ease discussing architectural drawings and steel-reinforced concrete in detail. Among the myths he explores is the canard that Fenway’s odd dimensions came about because the park was hemmed in by neighborhood streets.

Once the book gets to Opening Day, its focus changes to the club itself and its exciting journey to the pennant. Not only did the Red Sox have new ownership and a new home in 1912 but they had a new manager, Jake Stahl, and several youngsters who played key roles in their success. Infielder Larry Gardner, moved from second base to third, was twenty-six. All three outfielders—Duffy Lewis, Tris Speaker, and Harry Hooper—were only twenty-four, and pitcher Joe Wood, who won thirty-four games, was but twenty-two. These Red Sox won despite never gelling as a team. The roster was sundered by cliques...