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The Baseball 100 Hardcover – September 28, 2021
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“An instant sports classic.” —New York Post * “Stellar.” —The Wall Street Journal * “A true masterwork…880 pages of sheer baseball bliss.” —BookPage (starred review) * “This is a remarkable achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A magnum opus from acclaimed baseball writer Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100 is an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write. The entire story of baseball rings through a countdown of the 100 greatest players in history, with a foreword by George Will.
Longer than Moby-Dick and nearly as ambitious,The Baseball 100 is a one-of-a-kind work by award-winning sportswriter and lifelong student of the game Joe Posnanski that tells the story of the sport through the remarkable lives of its 100 greatest players. In the book’s introduction, Pulitzer Prize–winning commentator George F. Will marvels, “Posnanski must already have lived more than 200 years. How else could he have acquired such a stock of illuminating facts and entertaining stories about the rich history of this endlessly fascinating sport?”
Baseball’s legends come alive in these pages, which are not merely rankings but vibrant profiles of the game’s all-time greats. Posnanski dives into the biographies of iconic Hall of Famers, unfairly forgotten All-Stars, talents of today, and more. He doesn’t rely just on records and statistics—he lovingly retraces players’ origins, illuminates their characters, and places their accomplishments in the context of baseball’s past and present. Just how good a pitcher is Clayton Kershaw in the twenty-first- century game compared to Greg Maddux dueling with the juiced hitters of the nineties? How do the career and influence of Hank Aaron compare to Babe Ruth’s? Which player in the top ten most deserves to be resurrected from history?
No compendium of baseball’s legendary geniuses could be complete without the players of the segregated Negro Leagues, men whose extraordinary careers were largely overlooked by sportswriters at the time and unjustly lost to history. Posnanski writes about the efforts of former Negro Leaguers to restore sidelined Black athletes to their due honor, and draws upon the deep troves of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and extensive interviews with the likes of Buck O’Neil to illuminate the accomplishments of players such as pitchers Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams; outfielders Oscar Charleston, Monte Irvin, and Cool Papa Bell; first baseman Buck Leonard; shortstop Pop Lloyd; catcher Josh Gibson; and many, many more.
The Baseball 100 treats readers to the whole rich pageant of baseball history in a single volume. Chapter by chapter, Posnanski invites readers to examine common lore with brand-new eyes and learn stories that have long gone unheard. The epic and often emotional reading experience mirrors Posnanski’s personal odyssey to capture the history and glory of baseball like no one else, fueled by his boundless love for the sport.
Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, The Baseball 100 is a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have played it.
- Print length880 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAvid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
- Publication dateSeptember 28, 2021
- Dimensions6.13 x 1.7 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101982180587
- ISBN-13978-1982180584
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From the Publisher
A Q&A with author Joe Posnanski
Can you talk a little bit about how this project came about? For almost a decade, I’d been thinking about the ultimate baseball project, something that would allow me to tell the story of baseball and why it has had such a powerful hold on me and my life. On a different track, I started a countdown of the 100 greatest players, then started another countdown of the 100 greatest players. And then it hit me: Both of these projects — telling baseball’s story and counting down the 100 greatest players — are really the same project, and that’s what led to The Baseball 100.
Have any of your picks or rankings proven controversial to readers? I would say only 99 of the 100 have been controversial. Everybody disagrees about which players are on this list, which players are not on this list, where the players are ranked. But that’s why it’s fun, right?
This book is longer than Moby Dick—what is it about the game of baseball that inspires so much passion in you and so many others?
Baseball is unique in so many ways. It’s the only game where the defense controls the ball. It has a leisurely pace that is different from other games. Its history, as Ken Burns will tell you, runs an almost perfectly parallel track to America’s history. And, I think, it is the sport that best mixes the individual with the team; by that I mean that the batter, the pitcher, even the fielder, all of these people are doing individual things, they can’t rely on anybody else to help them, but all of it is inside a team game.
What is some of the most interesting research you did for the book?
I think and hope there’s interesting research everywhere … I did spend a lot of time on each of the players. But my favorite research involved the Negro Leagues players on this list. I’m hoping that people will really enjoy learning more about Oscar Charleston and Buck Leonard and Bullet Rogan and players they might not know that much about.
You’ve ranked the players here—what do you think is the best baseball team in history?
I’m afraid that you’ll have to wait for The Baseball Team 100.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“I love baseball, I know baseball, and this book is baseball. It’s the whole story of baseball told through the 100 greatest players of all time . . . But what really makes me say, 'Give this to the baseball people in your life,' is that it’s a book that, when you read it, you fall in love with the game all over again. . . . Every sport needs great players, but it also needs great writers, and Joe Posnanski has done something great for the game of baseball with this book.”
—Tony Dokoupil, CBS This Morning
“Stellar . . . Always fun . . . A book for the moment but also for the bookshelf of the future, an old friend that will bring back old times and old arguments again and again. . . . The rankings were all made by Mr. Posnanski, who is contemporary sports writing’s biggest star. He writes with grace and wit, combining an old-time sense of style with the mountains of numbers and factoids and observations that can be found on the internet.”
—Leigh Montville, The Wall Street Journal
“Posnanski knocks it out of the park with this fascinating deep dive into the careers of those he considers baseball’s 100 greatest players. . . . Will surprise even devoted followers of the sport . . . This is a remarkable achievement.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Major League Baseball fans, you just won the lottery. . . . Posnanski presents 880 pages of sheer baseball bliss . . . It’s a true masterwork, and his writing is so good that it’s likely to engross even those who know nothing about the sport.”
—BookPage (starred review)
“Posnanski skillfully weaves statistics into the narrative without spilling into geekdom, and he searches baseball history for his candidate pool while combing the records for just the right datum or quote. . . . Red meat, and mighty tasty at that, for baseball fans with an appreciation for the past and power of the game.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Posnanski offers manna for baseball geeks with his selection of the 100 all-time greatest baseball players, melding the sabermetrics chops of a Bill James with the eloquence and droll humor of a Roger Angell. . . . . Posnanski also nobly, and rightly, casts a wide net, embracing Japanese legends Ichiro Suzuki and Sadaharu Oh, and, more important, long-neglected Negro leagues players, such as Oscar Charleston. . . . Most important, these selections will bring to the mind’s eye of any baseball fan a vision of how singularly great each of these athletes have played—or, in the case of the old-timers, might have played—the game. Recommended.”
—Booklist
“You can quibble with some of Joe Posnanski's judgements. And so what? That's always been part of the fun for baseball fans. And Posnanski on Baseball has always been fun. . . . This book is a baseball feast that can be consumed in small bites or large gulps. Either way, it's a book we fans will return to often. To spark or settle debates, sure. But especially for the endless pleasure of the history of our greatest game as delivered by one of its finest chroniclers.”
—Bob Costas
"Posnanski is an outstanding journalist, arguably the best pure long-form sportswriter in the land."
—Chicago Sun-Times
"Joe Posnanski is a terrific writer."
—Entertainment Weekly
"One of the best sportswriters in America."
—Washington Times
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (September 28, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 880 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1982180587
- ISBN-13 : 978-1982180584
- Item Weight : 2.67 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.7 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #11,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Sports Reference (Books)
- #10 in Baseball Biographies (Books)
- #18 in Baseball (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Joe Posnanski is the New York Times bestselling author of Paterno, The Machine, and The Secret of Golf. He is currently the founder and editor of Joe Blogs at JoePosnanski.com as well as co-host of "The PosCast" podcast with television producer Michael Schur. Joe served as Senior Writer for The Athletic, MLB, NBC Sports, and Sports Illustrated, and co-founder of Passions in America. He was named national Sportswriter of the Year by the Sports Media Hall of Fame and was twice named the best sports columnist in America by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He is a two-time Emmy winner as part of NBC Sports Olympic coverage, and his first book "The Soul of Baseball," won The Casey Award as best baseball book. He was recently honored with the Tony Kubek Award by the National Polish American Sports Hall of Fame, and he was given the Buck O'Neil Award by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. He is the author of six books and has been anthologized widely. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife Margo, daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and standard poodle Westley.
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Then, though there is the ratings. Unlike Bill James who spends most of a chapter, pages and pages defining his tools and process of determining the ratings, this author uses less than one page rattling off a number of terms and then writing the following:
- Mariano Rivera is ranked 91 because of Psalm 91 (the protector psalm),
- Joe DiMaggio is ranked 56 because of 56 consecutive game hitting streak,
- Jackie Robinson is ranked 42 because that is his jersey number.
Robinson and DiMaggio should have been ranked in the top 20 and Mariano Rivera should have been higher. He was the only player to get 100% of the Hall of Fame to vote for him.
And, then there is the three PED players: Alex Rodriquez, Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds. They are all rated in the top 20 and because all of them cheated, they don't belong there. (Barry Bonds is actually ranked 3rd. Wrong.) In the Barry Bonds chapter, the author breaks the review into the people who think that Barry Bonds is great and those that despise him. I belong to neither. These three players belong in the top 100 but definitely not in the top 20.
If you are looking for a objective ranking, I recommend Bill James and after this book I still go by his rankings because they are not subjective or potentially biased like this book. His rankings of the top 10 are:
1. Babe Ruth
2. Honus Wagner
3. Willie Mays
4. Oscar Charleston
5. Ty Cobb
6. Mickey Mantle
7. Ted Williams
8. Walter Johnson
9. Josh Gibson
10. Stan Musial
I recommend this book for baseball history and stories. If you want an objective ranking, I recommend Bill James' books.
I have ever read. I highly recommend.
Top reviews from other countries
His knowledge of baseball is so vast, his ability to tell stories is such an incredible talent and they work in perfect harmony in this book.
Joe has taught me so much about the history of the game through his books and this is no exception. As a jays fan it was great to read about a couple of the guys that played for us as well as many of the guys that played against us. Additionally I learned about the history and stories of the Negro Leagues and their value and importance in telling the story of this great game.
Keep up the great work Joe and thank you for all the stories!