Saturday, July 31, 2021

Review: The Baseball 100 (2021)

By Joe Posnanski

Ever hear of "the sweet spot" in sports?

It usually comes up in baseball, although it probably applies to golf too. The sweet spot is that magic place where a ball meets the object perfectly in order to achieve maximum distance. 

With that in mind, let's discuss "The Baseball 100" by Joe Posnanski. 

The idea of discussing baseball's best all-time players is right on his sweet spot. 

When the pandemic arrived in early 2020, Posnanski started to write an article a day about the 100 best baseball players for the Athletic. It obviously required a lot of work, but each article was something of a mini-biography of baseball's greatest names. While it didn't linger on basic information, there were so many stories and rankings and quotes about each player that all 100 of them were a delight to read. Now it's all in one place in book form; there obviously been a little updating since the original version was published.

Posnanski always has come across as a bit of a romantic in his writing, particularly when it comes to the history of the game. He loves the idea that baseball has been played since the middle of the 19th century in one form or another, and therefore has a connecting thread from then until now. Posnanski is realistic enough to know that sometimes there are flaws in our heroes, but he emphasizes the positive for the most part here. It works really well in this format. When Posnanski wrote a book about Joe Paterno at Penn State, the Jerry Sandusky scandal was just breaking and I got the idea that he became uncomfortable with incorporating that aspect of the story within the large concept of Happy Valley.

I know a little something about these lists. In the last few years I've written four of them - Buffalo's sports numbers from 0 to 99, Buffalo's biggest trades, Buffalo's top free-agent signings, and Buffalo's draft choices (by overall pick number from 1 to 100). They aren't easy to do, and Posnanski spent more time on his list than I did in all four combined ... times five. My guess is that he made one very good decision when it came to ranking the players: he didn't take the exact placement all that seriously.

Therefore, Jackie Robinson comes in at No. 42, the only fully retired number in major league baseball. Joe DiMaggio gets No. 56, after his hitting streak. Frank Robinson and Mike Schmidt share No. 20, because they wore that number. No. 19 is skipped, because  the Black Sox scandal was in 1919 and this way the numbers even out at 100. You want to argue that DiMaggio should be higher? Go ahead. Posnanski is too busy coming up with fun information to care too much, and you're missing the overall point. That said, his opinions seem generally on target.

There are only a couple of warnings that come with this book. There are some advance statistics involved, such as ERA+ and WAR. Posnanski does explain what the figures mean at the beginning. I can't say they should get in the way of your enjoyment of the book.

In addition, this is 300,000 words. I read it on a Kindle, and just discovered that it translates to 880 pages. That's a lot of reading, especially if baseball is not one of the most important parts of your life. I think the only longer book I've ever read was "The Power Broker." Maybe you don't want to lug it to the beach. Read it while sitting on your favorite chair or couch instead.  

"The Baseball 100" will tell you about players you don't know, and about players you thought you knew. It does it in a style that will leave you more than interested every step of the way. Aaron Judge would be proud about how this one came off the sweet spot and exited the ballpark.

Five stars

Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)   

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Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Review: Bubbleball (2021)

By Ben Golliver

"What was it like?"

That's one of the basic questions that can be answered by journalism. Reporters can often take readers and viewers to places that usually they would never get to experience, and describe the feelings they had along the way.

Realistically, that's the attraction to Ben Golliver's book, "Bubbleball."

The Washington Post reporter was assigned to cover the NBA's resumption of play, straight through to the playoffs, in 2020. You might remember - no, you do remember - how the pandemic forced the league to come up with a way of finishing the regular season, holding the playoffs, and declaring a champion. 

To do that, the principals had to go to Orlando to spend as many as three months in a bubble. The league went to amazing lengths to make sure that everyone inside of that bubble was safe. Happily, there weren't many slip-ups.

Selected members of the media also were invited to come in to the bubble to cover the games and the news. Golliver, the Post's top NBA reporter, was one of them. Since the price tag was very high and few media outlets were willing to pay hundreds of dollars per day for the right to have access. Golliver didn't have a great deal of company. He lived a rather solitary existence for about three months, from the finish of the regular season through the last game of the playoffs. There's no sign that he ever took a day off along the way, since there wasn't much else to do besides take a walk around the grounds and check his email. Let's hope he ran up a lot of "comp time" for use down the road.

The best part of the book centers on the "what was it like? question, and the hoops he had to jump through (sorry) to do his job. It was all so odd and unique, that it was definitely a good idea to chronicle it in book form. 

The games did go on, as we know now, and they were remarkably smooth. The biggest interruptions, if that's the correct word, came from outside issues as players reacted to stories concerning social justice from outside of the bubble. Otherwise, it seemed easy to focus on the games. Golliver didn't miss a contest after the first round of the playoffs (before that, he couldn't be everywhere). The story lines slowly developed, as they always do in the postseason. The difference was that reporters could see it all from one place, without traveling or television. It was, of course, a unique time.

As for the games, you know how things turned out if you were paying attention. Golliver's focus shifts a bit as the playoffs build toward a climax in the Finals. It's a little difficult for a writer to build suspense in games that were played a year ago. Still, Golliver obviously knows his stuff, and he has some insights for those of us who weren't paying close attention to the league as a whole. 

With luck, we'll never have to go through anything like this again. Put this in the time capsule, then. "Bubbleball" will stand up well as a first-person account of the experience.

Four stars

Learn more about this book from Amazon.com.

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