Joe Posnanski: Lord of Lists

thehitcat

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He writes so well anyway but when his daughter is involved, hell it just goes to another level. Also I'm starting to wonder if we were there the same night they were. The King caused Leslie (Burr) to break and laugh during the Reynolds pamphlet. I can't imagine it happens that often. Thanks for the post DS.
 

johnmd20

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He writes so well anyway but when his daughter is involved, hell it just goes to another level. Also I'm starting to wonder if we were there the same night they were. The King caused Leslie (Burr) to break and laugh during the Reynolds pamphlet. I can't imagine it happens that often. Thanks for the post DS.
That happens (the Burr laugh at the King) in every performance.
 

PortlandSoxFan

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Loved that article. I thought I was the only one with a 15 year old girl absolutely obsessed with Hamilton. She bought the bio (and has taken notes while reading it), constantly listens to the soundtrack..just absolutely obsessed. Reading that is exactly how I imagine it would be taking her to see the play.
 

Leather

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Jesus. Right in the feels.

He really knows how to zero in on the bittersweet truths of being a parent.
 

Hagios

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What's more important, that the game be fun to watch? Or that the correct team wins? It's a legitimate question, with no 100% right answer.
To me it's an interesting cultural phenomenon that soccer is unwilling to sacrifice the (relative) flow of the game to replay despite the fact that replays do show that important calls on fouls and offsides are frequently wrong.
In the case of soccer, the tradeoff is not between the flow of the game and making sure the right team wins. I remember suggesting to a buddy of mine who played college soccer that soccer should allow players to substitute into and out of the game. I figured it would increase offense. He explained to me that that's how it works in college soccer and what happens is that you bring on players with fresh legs who run like energizer bunnies and put on enormous pressure. It makes it very hard to sustain a possession with lots of precise passes, so college teams tend to play the long ball (it's also because US Soccer isn't at a high enough level yet). That is also one of the reasons (out of many) why hardcore soccer fans want to see young players go to development academies instead of college.

I think that conversation more than anything else ingrained in my how the dynamics of soccer are than other sports. It's very hard for even elite soccer teams to muster sustained passing attacks and very easy for them to be disrupted. More interruptions into the flow of the game would lead to more defensive pressure and more long ball soccer - leading to the wrong team winning.
 

tbrep

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I wish I could just zap the Paterno stuff from my mind. I would enjoy his excellent writing so much more.
Yeah, that was one of the things I found most amazing about the whole situation. Joe is a parent (and a very insightful one at that), he knew the unfathomable horror those families went through. And yet he defended a man who enabled the abuse of those children.
 

JimD

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I still enjoy Pos's work but I understand those who have difficulty doing so in the wake of the Paterno scandal. Posnanski made a horrible mistake in letting his closeness to the Paterno family cloud his judgement badly. Joe was famously close to Buck O'Neil and so badly wanted to see Paterno in the same hagiographic light, to the point of moving his family to Happy Valley for 18 months to pursue his dream project. When the scandal broke he was for all intents and purposes no better than a family member who refused to believe that sainted old JoePa could have allowed a monster to prey on children right in his midst. On top of that Posnanski was almost certainly cranky and resentful that the book he had planned to be the crowning achievement of his writing career had just turned to ashes overnight.

It's a huge shame, because a man of Joe Posnanski's considerable writing talents could have seized the moment and actually written a far more important book than what he had originally planned, one that would have likely stood a s a worthy crowning achievement of his career. Joe has publicly been an admirer of Robert Caro's seminal biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. He should have appreciated that Caro took nine years to research and write his tome, and perhaps been more willing himself to go back to the drawing board with his Paterno work instead of putting out the embarrassing mishmash that he did.
 

Kenny F'ing Powers

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So...Every great article he writes deserves a Paterno asterisk. Fine. Can we stop bringing it up every 5 posts? We all understand its part of his history at this point.
 

Lou Lucier

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Nov 28, 2005
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That is also one of the reasons (out of many) why hardcore soccer fans want to see young players go to development academies instead of college.
Those “Dirt Dog” Red Sox. The old “Winning Ugly” White Sox. Those dink-and-dunk Patriots that beat the fancy Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl. Those 70s Flyers. The late-80s Pistons.

It doesn’t have to be ballet to be enjoyable.

I’m glad an inferior park-the-bus Virginia men's soccer team beat No. 1 UCLA for the 2014 title. A) Because I hate UCLA. And B) There’s still something to be said for seeing the grinders take down the pretty boys.

NCAA Soccer isn’t supposed to be the EPL or any other top-flight Euro league. NCAA Basketball would struggle to beat a bunch of smelly, hairy Greek pros on a nightly basis. NCAA Football’s No. 1 team would go 0-16 against the NFL’s various division cellar dwellers. NCAA Baseball uses metal bats for Christ’s sake.

It’s college. College is supposed to be about fun.

And a TON of those DA kids do go to college. Because there’s something to be said about getting an education. It’s not all cheesecake and ballet and tiki-taka, my friend.

Whew. Feels good to get that off my chest ...
 
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I'm not sure you understood his point, which was about preparing the skills necessary to play the 'big boy' game at a world-class level. Which is the goal of the players he's talking about - your Jordan Morrises - rather than the 99%+ of college athletes who are there to get some exercise, get laid and get a degree, certainly not in that order.

And it arose out of an argument for the sense and/or sensibility of replay, not some assault on the sanctity of everyone's god-given right to play college sports badly.

Basically, your whole rant is attacking a strawman. I'm glad your chest feels better but I want the few minutes I spent reading your post back.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

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Given that he published this thing fairly quickly after last night's game, it is damn good. I suspect that with more time he could have done better but its still very evocative.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I have to admit, I stopped reading it half way through. I thought that it kinda sucked, to be honest--and I enjoy most, if not all of Posnanski's writings. Maybe I'll give it another go tomorrow.
 

JimD

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For those of you who have ever had a kid play competitive sports, Joe's recent podcast with Pat Forde is a must-listen. Forde has three kids who are all competitive swimmers and two were in the Olympic trials last week. Good stuff.
 

Toe Nash

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Good, except he does the exact same thing he rails against by saying that he believes Spygate was "much worse than we know." Why does he believe this? Does he know more than us? Or did he just buy the narrative without examining facts in the way he talks about the Ortiz drug test?
 

Dahabenzapple2

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all well and good except he doth protest too much about *not* being a Pats fan and his ideas or his "opinion" that Spygate was much worse than it appears if the kind of bull-shit that he's rightly ranting against regarding Brady vis a vis the last 20 months of made up garbage.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Good, except he does the exact same thing he rails against by saying that he believes Spygate was "much worse than we know." Why does he believe this? Does he know more than us? Or did he just buy the narrative without examining facts in the way he talks about the Ortiz drug test?
Honestly the Spygate thing didn't bother me in the slightest. He's entitled to his opinion. He's the first sports writer (IIRC Sally Jenkins isn't strictly a sports writer) to come right out and say Tom Brady did absolutely nothing wrong, and to put it that bluntly.
 

johnmd20

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It is a shame he even brought up Spygate but that is a great column. It's obviously what the DFG thread has maintained for over a year now but it's good to see prominent writers taking up the mantle. That's not a bad thing.

Because the sad fact is, people do think Brady cheated because he's on the Patriots and Patriots cheat and when people get punished, it's always because they did something wrong. It's annoying and that will likely never go away, I don't think. But some columns like Joe's won't hurt.
 

ifmanis5

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Good, except he does the exact same thing he rails against by saying that he believes Spygate was "much worse than we know." Why does he believe this? Does he know more than us? Or did he just buy the narrative without examining facts in the way he talks about the Ortiz drug test?
I agree with this and it annoyed me. Although I did like his take on the Ortiz matter as well and how it reflected opinions that are actually out there by actual people as opposed to the calculated outrage like Shank uses. Overall it was a good column and hope he follows up on it by examining Goodell like his last line suggested.
 

Toe Nash

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Honestly the Spygate thing didn't bother me in the slightest. He's entitled to his opinion. He's the first sports writer (IIRC Sally Jenkins isn't strictly a sports writer) to come right out and say Tom Brady did absolutely nothing wrong, and to put it that bluntly.
It's hypocritical to the extreme.

When you dig into the details of Spygate, it was a minor infraction, but the takeaway many people have is that the Patriots were recording the Rams' practices and that's the only reason they won their first three rings.
When you dig into the details of the Ortiz test, it was supposed to be anonymous and he wasn't given any chance to appeal or even know what he tested for, but the takeaway is that he cheated.
When you dig into the details of Deflategate, the team and especially Brady did nothing, but...

Great for him for being rational on the latter two, but we should expect better. "Belief" is the only thing the NFL has for DFG, either.
 

JimBoSox9

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I had the same initial reaction, but it was two paragraphs in an otherwise full-throated defense of New England teams, from a nationally prominent outsider. Say thank you and move on.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I had the same initial reaction, but it was two paragraphs in an otherwise full-throated defense of New England teams, from a nationally prominent outsider. Say thank you and move on.
Seriously, man. The guy just wrote a 1000-word piece on how not only is Brady completely innocent, but Ortiz is too.

You can't have everything.
 

TheoShmeo

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My guess is that Pos was going for a little objectivity street cred there -- even if not on a conscious level -- and somewhat overstated his views on SpyGate.

But as JMOH and JimBo said, I'm not sure it matters. In a sea of manure on DG, it doesn't suck that talented writers such as Sally Jenkins and Joe Posnoski have shined a little bit of intellectual light on the topic. It will not change the minds of the opportunists and haters out there, and their numbers are enormous, but it might help move some of the less entrenched fans. And even if that's not true, it makes me feel better to know that the sports world has not gone totally mad.
 

Harry Hooper

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Regarding Ortiz, he left out the key point that there's evidence the NYT didn't even have the real list.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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I was at Yankee Stadium this past weekend and there was a guy who sat behind me that screamed, "STEROIDS!" every time Ortiz came to the plate. Every time. I'm not sure he was talking to, but he said, "I'm sorry, it's true and I just have to say it!"

So there you go, perception is truth to a lot of people.