NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Winner of the CASEY Award for Best
Baseball Book of the Year
"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. In the book's introduction, Pulitzer
Prize-winning commentator George F. Will marvels, "Posnanski must
already have lived more than two hundred 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 21st-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. Engrossing, surprising, and heartfelt, it is
a magisterial tribute to the game of baseball and the stars who have
played it.
