Joe Posnanski: Lord of Lists

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for king and country
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He has moved around a TON over the past few years. It's really surprising to me.
Guy who has entire foundations of ethical reality and sense of self gets torched when he realizes he's been engaged in hero worship of the enabler of monstrous sexual violence that makes him if not himself a monster, a weak, passive, morally bankrupt individual, has trouble finding a new place in a crazy mixed up world he had not realized was where he lived?



This isn't that weird. It just means he's a thoughtful guy. That can be rough on a person.
 

JimD

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Nov 29, 2001
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There's a glorious new version of the Poscast up with Mike Schur and Brandon McCarthy that features an extended 'Yankee Minute' following their loss in the ALDS. A great listen for Sox fans.

In a likely nod to the (near) future, though, it turns out that it is only 'Part 1', with the second half of the podcast featuring the draft only available on Joe's pay site. Probably just a matter of time before all of his podcasts are behind the paywall.
 

BigPapiLumber Co.

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There's a glorious new version of the Poscast up with Mike Schur and Brandon McCarthy that features an extended 'Yankee Minute' following their loss in the ALDS. A great listen for Sox fans.

In a likely nod to the (near) future, though, it turns out that it is only 'Part 1', with the second half of the podcast featuring the draft only available on Joe's pay site. Probably just a matter of time before all of his podcasts are behind the paywall.
"Some guys really earning their pinstripes" had me in stitches. Great episode!
 

Vandalman

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If you're a Michael Schur fan, he's interviewed on Sarah Spain's That What She Said podcast. He talks about his early years as an SNL writer, starting the Fire Joe Morgan blog and working for network TV. It's a great interview.
 

Vandalman

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His latest podcast, "PosCast Draft: 2nd Annual Holiday Blowout" is one of the funniest podcasts I have ever heard and I'm not even done with it. It's definitely worth checking out.
 

allstonite

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Oct 27, 2010
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It was awesome. Them shitting on Sepinwall's dumb picks was great

Sepinwall "You're all playing checkers and I'm playing chess"
Ken Tremendous "Yeah it's a checkers tournament dude. You were eliminated"
 

Bunt4aTriple

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I think the Skype format was a bit difficult with so many involved. I mean, Nick Offerman was silent for minutes at a time. Last year's was probably better (and totally worth going back to check out). But this one was also great.
 

Vandalman

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I think the Skype format was a bit difficult with so many involved. I mean, Nick Offerman was silent for minutes at a time. Last year's was probably better (and totally worth going back to check out). But this one was also great.
They do have technical (sound) issues when more than three join in.
 

johnmd20

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It was awesome. Them shitting on Sepinwall's dumb picks was great

Sepinwall "You're all playing checkers and I'm playing chess"
Ken Tremendous "Yeah it's a checkers tournament dude. You were eliminated"
The Podcast was a Top 10 for the year. Shur going over the Transiberian Orchestra pick from last year brought me joy. It was a great callback, creating a great moment, on the power of last year's perfect moment. It was a tower of brilliance and comedy. Linda Holmes building an army to use her Christmas characters to fight for world domination was sublime, only to be taken out by the German/English army late round pick, which was perfect.

Truly a remarkable hour and a half. Sepinwall was the only negative. He's a guy who thinks he's funny, and cares so much about it, nobody around him has the heart to tell him he's an unfunny turd. It's pathetic. His Groundhog Day pick was obnoxious. In summary, fuck him, hopefully he's thrown out of the tourney next year, so they can find someone who is actually clever and funny.
 

jungleboy

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Mar 1, 2016
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I listened on a bus today and not only laughed out loud many times but was in tears of laughter a few times, too.

Sepinwall is a villain on the Poscast because of his Yankee fandom. They like to make fun of him as it is and whether it was intentional on his part or not in this episode, he gave them an opportunity to do it some more, so I was fine with that. It seems like someone always has to get slammed by all the others on these holiday drafts - last year it was 'Jetwash' for his TSO pick, this year it was Sepinwall.
 

Vandalman

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Michael Schur mentioned in the latest Poscast that he will be stepping away for a bit to work on his TV show. He also said he will return some time in 2019 with something new.
 

Mugsy's Jock

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Michael Schur mentioned in the latest Poscast that he will be stepping away for a bit to work on his TV show. He also said he will return some time in 2019 with something new.
No disrespect to Joe, but it's just not nearly as good when Shuur's not around.
 

MyDaughterLovesTomGordon

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Jun 26, 2006
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Whelp, it took a looooong time coming, but Joe has made his way to the Athletic.

I can't really think of a journalist who's been more sidetracked by our collapsing media landscape.

Maybe this is a forever home?
 

The Gray Eagle

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Aug 1, 2001
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As someone who was already subscribed to the Athletic, this is great news for me.

I wasn't paying for his blog, but did miss reading him regularly. This makes the Athletic even more undroppable for me.

Until Joe goes somewhere else, at least. :D
 

johnmd20

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Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Good one.

I mean, you are kidding, right? Dude jumps more than Mario.
I love Joe and think he's one of the best writers out there, no matter the topic. I have read his Reds book and I am looking forward to the Houdini book. I am a humongous fan. And following him around has been quite an endeavor. Mario WISHES he had Joe's jumping skills.

Joe is flying over the sewer tubes and crushing the flag pole while Mario is getting eaten by a koopa trooper.
 

Spelunker

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Jul 17, 2005
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As someone who was already subscribed to the Athletic, this is great news for me.

I wasn't paying for his blog, but did miss reading him regularly. This makes the Athletic even more undroppable for me.

Until Joe goes somewhere else, at least. :D
As someone that was subscribed to both his blog *and* The Athletic, this is wonderful.

It pushed my renew date for the latter out a year, and now I only pay for one.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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Sep 12, 2003
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For those of you with The Athletic (and those on the fence) Joe promises to do an updated (4th version) of the top 100 baseball players of all-time. Started this on his blog and was sporadic at best. Now he has a schedule for all 100.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Apr 12, 2001
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For those of you with The Athletic (and those on the fence) Joe promises to do an updated (4th version) of the top 100 baseball players of all-time. Started this on his blog and was sporadic at best. Now he has a schedule for all 100.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Sure he will. And after that he’ll rewrite Paterno and include all the messy stuff.
 

Marceline

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What about his review of the iPad? Still waiting for that one.

All kidding aside, I've been enjoying his recent work at The Athletic as well as in his email newsletter.

I'm expecting the baseball 100 to be good even if it doesn't finish or gets interrupted (which is totally what I expect to happen) - Vegas odds on Joe leaving The Athletic for a new site before this series finishes currently at -120.
 

Vandalman

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The PosCast Holiday Blowout Show, with Nick Offerman, Brandon McCarthy, Alan Sepinwall, Mike Dicenzo, Linda Holmes and Michael Schur, includes a holiday-themed food draft that is the funniest thing I’ve heard since last year’s holiday draft. I do wish they had better sound quality because Nick is often indecipherably quiet and Brandon‘s phone is echo-y. If you’re a fan of Mike’s anti-holiday rants then this is the one to hear.
 

LogansDad

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All of the plaques he wrote for the top ten players currently not eligible were great.
3. Adrián Beltré Pérez
Los Angeles Dodgers—Seattle—Boston—Texas, 1998-2018

A defensive genius at the hot corner, he also clubbed more than 600 doubles and 450 home runs. Brought countless moments of joy to the game. Do not touch his head.
 

The Gray Eagle

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Aug 1, 2001
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Joe's doing another baseball series, this one is called "Letters from Spring Training."
https://theathletic.com/2394789/2021/02/18/letters-from-spring-a-travelogue-from-baseballs-past-and-present/
For the next 30 or so days — weekends off so my family doesn’t leave me — we’re going to try and take a little baseball tour. Thirty teams. Thirty days. Thirty reports. In these hopefully dwindling days of COVID, I’m not going to actually go to the spring training sites. This will be a tour of the mind, a love letter to baseball’s history and future. We’re going to count these essays down from 30 to 1, worst team to best as I see it going into 2021.

The idea, if we get it right, will be to try and get a little closer to the Pirates and Angels, Royals and Brewers, Dodgers and Yankees. I don’t know exactly where this will go; I actually have no idea where it will go. We might talk a little team history. We might pluck out a player from the past who seems worth remembering. We might tell a few stories the way people do around the batting cage. All the while, we’ll try to offer some hope, even to the Baltimore Orioles, who FanGraphs gives a cruelly definitive 0.0% chance of making the playoffs.

What is spring training without hope?
 

brs3

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May 20, 2008
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Thanks for the reminder. Posnanski probably best summarizes my own love of the game with a paragraph in his first post about the Pirates:

I do realize that just being “good at stuff” is a decent plan for becoming a good team, but it has long seemed to me that the best baseball teams have this thing that you might call an identity. I will tell you that this is where some of my more sensible friends in and around baseball abandon me — they put “team identity” in the same bucket as other bits of baseball blarney such as “momentum” and “veteran presence.” And they’re probably right. But I believe.
I'm sure some may say he's folksy or fluff, but this is the kind of stuff that will pull me out of the covid-induced disinterest in baseball.
 

ninjacornelius

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Aug 18, 2005
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I'm sure some may say he's folksy or fluff, but this is the kind of stuff that will pull me out of the covid-induced disinterest in baseball.
This is exactly where I am. I'm not excited about the upcoming season in the slightest. Truth be told, it's been almost a year since I've felt enthusiastic about anything whatsoever. But Posnanski writes about baseball with a joy that I find contagious, so I'm eager to see what he does with this series.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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I've enjoyed the Spring Training series and thought his article on the Sox today accurately summarized my feelings about the 2021 incarnation of the team.

He did shortchange the Sox rotation, ranking them only sixth all time. (Clemens, Pedro, Grove, Cy Young and Tiant); I know some teams have loaded rotations as well, but Clemens, Pedro, Young and Grove are arguably like, four of the seven best pitchers of all-time.