Joe Posnanski's top 100 Baseball Players of All Time

mikeot

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Surprised the MFY fans here aren't loosing their shit over DiMaggio at #56. Then again, maybe it's just Joe being cute with that number.
 

CallYaz

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Appreciate you all bumping this list, have a free weekend and excited to catch up. That Nolan Ryan tease is vintage Joe...

When I first signed up for The Athletic I was skeptical but man have they hit some impressive home runs.
 

jon abbey

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Surprised the MFY fans here aren't loosing their shit over DiMaggio at #56.
He explained it as was posted earlier (he moved him down 10 or 20 spots so that he could be associated with the number he is most famous for), but also I don't care almost at all about historical Yankee stuff.
 

LogansDad

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Burning through a bit over coffee this morning, just finished his write up on Fisk.

Yeah... I'm done for the day. My tear ducts can't take anymore.
 

jungleboy

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As someone said in the comments at The Athletic, Griffey is probably slotted in at 48 because it's double the No. 24 he wore in Seattle.

And to recap, from Joe's newsletter:

See, these aren’t exactly rankings. Yes, there’s a general order, from great to greater to even greater to greatest. But what I’ve been trying to do is not RANK the player. I’ve been trying to connect the player to a number. I know that sounds weird and perhaps stupid, but I really have tried to do this with every player.
 

drbretto

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As someone said in the comments at The Athletic, Griffey is probably slotted in at 48 because it's double the No. 24 he wore in Seattle.

And to recap, from Joe's newsletter:
Ah, my fault. I hadn't really been following. This one just showed up in my Facebook feed and triggered me.
 

ninjacornelius

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The entry on Wade Boggs went up today. I'm a little too young to remember his greatest years, so most of my memories of him are acrimonious (his last year in Boston when he looked thoroughly cooked, his resurgence with the Yankees that I took as a personal offense, him on top of that fucking horse). But reading Pos' post made me appreciate what a special player he was.

And more broadly, that's what I love about this entire series -- Posnanski cuts right to the heart of what makes each of these guys special, and he does so with such affection and enthusiasm that it makes me feel lucky to be a baseball fan.
 

Jim Ed Rice in HOF

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Just got done reading the Boggs one and he does a good job of describing the tough time Boggs had breaking into the lineup but this line bugged me:

But on June 22 against Detroit, in the bottom of the 11th inning with the scored tied 4-4, Boggs did something unthinkable. He hit a walk-off home run. The Red Sox were so thrilled, they put him in the next game. And the next. And the next. He had become a regular for the first time.

And for the next three months, Boggs hit about .400.
Not exactly. Carney Lansford had Boggs blocked at 3B. Boggs wasn't in the starting lineup on the 23rd but he came in once Lansford tried to stretch a triple into an inside the park HR and sprained his ankle. Who knows how much longer the Sox would have left him as a role player.

Signed,

Kid who was at the park that game.
 

stepson_and_toe

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A couple of reasons that Boggs didn't break in sooner than age 24 was that he didn't hit home runs and he wasn't a particularly great fielder. He hit .318/.412/.386/.798 in 2680 PA but he only had 9 HR and his FA was .932. He spent a lot of time working on fielding during the season while he was with Boston and eventually won a couple of Gold Gloves after he left.
 

johnmd20

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That Boggs write up is fantastic. Man, those 80s statistics for Boggs are astounding. I remember Boggs being great and his Strat-O-Matic card was glorious. He was in high demand if you were picking players for an all star league with friends.

But, even then, I didn't appreciate how awesome he was. Obviously, the MVP voters didn't either.
 

Kliq

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That Boggs write up is fantastic. Man, those 80s statistics for Boggs are astounding. I remember Boggs being great and his Strat-O-Matic card was glorious. He was in high demand if you were picking players for an all star league with friends.

But, even then, I didn't appreciate how awesome he was. Obviously, the MVP voters didn't either.
It is kind of strange because things from the 70s and 80s seem to be overrated in almost every other pop culture instance, but baseball players from that era I think are underrated historically. Maybe it is because the golden age of the 50s-60s is so strong and the guys coming in on the heels of that are not as revered, or that the game was pretty balanced so nobody has a lot of record-setting numbers (aside from base stealing). Guys like Boggs, Brett, Schmidt, etc. are generally underrated, but you look at their numbers and they really do blow you away. Look at all that black ink on Schmitty's page:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schmimi01.shtml
 

johnmd20

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It is kind of strange because things from the 70s and 80s seem to be overrated in almost every other pop culture instance, but baseball players from that era I think are underrated historically. Maybe it is because the golden age of the 50s-60s is so strong and the guys coming in on the heels of that are not as revered, or that the game was pretty balanced so nobody has a lot of record-setting numbers (aside from base stealing). Guys like Boggs, Brett, Schmidt, etc. are generally underrated, but you look at their numbers and they really do blow you away. Look at all that black ink on Schmitty's page:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schmimi01.shtml
That's true and those numbers are pretty fine. But Schmidt did win 3 MVPs. Brett won 1 and was in the Top Three 3 other times.

Boggs didn't come close to sniffing a MVP. Even in a world where a generation was underrated, Boggs was the MVP of being underrated.
 

Zedia

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It is kind of strange because things from the 70s and 80s seem to be overrated in almost every other pop culture instance, but baseball players from that era I think are underrated historically. Maybe it is because the golden age of the 50s-60s is so strong and the guys coming in on the heels of that are not as revered, or that the game was pretty balanced so nobody has a lot of record-setting numbers (aside from base stealing). Guys like Boggs, Brett, Schmidt, etc. are generally underrated, but you look at their numbers and they really do blow you away. Look at all that black ink on Schmitty's page:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/schmimi01.shtml
Aren't Schmidt and Brett generally regarded as the best 3Bs ever? Not sure they're underrated (although I was surprised to see Boggs edges out Brett in WAR).

EDIT - I guess Beltre would be the truly underrated one.
 

jon abbey

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Uh oh, will he make it?

“I am exhausted. Yes, it was one thing to talk about how hard it would be to write 100 intensive essays about the 100 greatest baseball players ever … but actually doing it? It’s roughly five times harder than I expected. There are three main reasons for this.

  1. I thought I would be able to lean a lot more on the essays written in previous Baseball 100 attempts. But the truth is that, other than a couple of early ones, I’ve basically been writing these things from scratch.
  2. I thought I would keep the essays to 2,000 words. That’s why I predicted at the start that this thing in total would have roughly the same number of words as Moby Dick. See, Moby Dick has 206,052 words. That’s about what I was expecting to hit with 100 essays. But most of these essays are running at 3,000 words, some of them 4,000 words. And now that I’m getting to the greatest of the great, it’s not like I can cut back.
  3. The pace is more excruciating than I expected. I wrote a bunch of essays before we even got started to give myself a bit of a cushion. But because these run EVERY SINGLE DAY that cushion has withered and withered and now the gap is uncomfortably small. And this is only adding to my panic.
I mean, look, you don’t need to hear my bellyaching. You have your own problems, and they’re undoubtedly more significant than a sportswriter complaining about writing a Christy Mathewson essay. But I’m just being honest. I’m pooped.”
 

Kliq

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I’m sorry, but what a clown. Pos is a talented writer but this shows incredibly bad planning and a lack of commitment.
 

Orel Miraculous

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I’m sorry, but what a clown. Pos is a talented writer but this shows incredibly bad planning and a lack of commitment.
This is a clown comment. Do have any idea what a major undertaking this is? Do you truly understand how demanding 200,000 words in this timeframe is? Honestly, if he successfully writes 100 2-4,000 word pieces in 100 straight days, it will be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in journalism.
 

jon abbey

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Plus all he's doing there is venting in his newsletter, I do think he should stretch it out another couple of weeeks if he needs to but not only is it 200,000 words, almost every essay has been fantastic so far.
 

EvilEmpire

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I can't imagine that fans will be upset, as long as he completes the series.

A little hubris there though, sure. But no big deal.
 

The Gray Eagle

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I can't believe he didn't already have most of them locked down before he started posting these. He set himself up for a lot of crazy deadlines and trouble by not doing that.

This is a long book that he is writing, and he would have been better off waiting a year to get it all right before posting them. But then we would have had to wait a year or however long it would be, instead of reading them now. I'll take the instant gratification, even if he doesn't finish them all in the targeted time frame. And I'll still buy the book when it comes out someday.

I was really hoping Rude Waddell would make the list, not because I think he's one of the 100 best players, but because he was an amazing legend and I'd love to read Joe write a really in-depth story about him. (He did write a blog post about Waddell a few years ago, but that left out or skimmed a lot of great stories.)
 

jon abbey

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I still am sticking to my guess that the point of all of this is to have Bonds and Clemens at #1/#2 to try to help get them elected before their window is up, so in that case he needs to get it done ASAP and really couldn't wait a year.
 

Kliq

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This is a clown comment. Do have any idea what a major undertaking this is? Do you truly understand how demanding 200,000 words in this timeframe is? Honestly, if he successfully writes 100 2-4,000 word pieces in 100 straight days, it will be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in journalism.
I mean, actually I do. I did a similar project in 2016 and understand how much has to be done before the undertaking is even announced. I understand it is a difficult process and requires a lot of commitment, but a professional of Posnanski's caliber and recognition should have been sure he could complete it before it was announced; TBH, he should have had it completely done or close to it when the first entry was published.

By no means do I think Pos is a bad writer, he is much more talented and successful than I can ever dream of becoming, but this shows an incredible lack of foresight and preparation. I guess if most of his fans don't have a problem with him calling it quits or doing it on a delay, than it really isn't an issue that he doesn't finish. It just feels unprofessional.
 

Kliq

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Just out of curiosity, how many words did you end up with @Kliq?

I think "clown" is a bit strong, but it's definitely a self-imposed death march.
I think I ended up at around 180,000 or so. Granted, I did 50 entries and not 100, which is substantially easier because you are not quite bouncing around subject-to-subject as frequently. I wrote about 30-35 entries in Nov./Dec. of 2015, and they came out once a week for the entire year of 2016. I probably finished the entries around March/April, but the point is I had a massive cushion to work with as the year started.

I don't want to compare myself to Pos at all; his entries so far have been terrific and far better than anything I could ever write. Someone asked me if I had any idea how demanding this could be and while I haven't gone through this exact exercise, I did do something similar and understand how much of a grind it was which is why back in Jan. I was very surprised to learn that he didn't have most of the entries done already.

This was a big challenge for him, but I'm not impressed in how he has managed the project. He needed to have most of them written before it even began, and back right when it started people were saying this was a recipe for disaster because people who know Pos seemed to know that he was writing them all on a daily basis, or close to it. It seems short-sighted to just decide to do this in late Dec. and then fly by the seat of your pants until Opening Day. He made this extremely difficult for himself and now appears to be throwing his hands up and saying "Gee, guys this is brutal. Maybe I can't do this." For a guy that has been writing for as long as he has, it is remarkable he could do this to himself. If he only got the idea in late Dec., he should have just sat on it till next year and liberally write them throughout 2020.
 

Merkle's Boner

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I’m sorry, but what a clown. Pos is a talented writer but this shows incredibly bad planning and a lack of commitment.
You’re the clown for comments like that. What Joe is doing is incredible and has been the highlight of this winter for me and many others. Clown, my ass.
 

Kliq

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You’re the clown for comments like that. What Joe is doing is incredible and has been the highlight of this winter for me and many others. Clown, my ass.
Wow guys. I'm not saying that the entries haven't been good, they are great! He is a great writer! I've really enjoyed them!

However, if I was an editor with The Athletic, it is unacceptable for a guy to announce this project and then be very unprepared for it and then possibly bail on it halfway through. Throw in the fact that a lot of people were predicting this would happen when the project was first announced, and yes, it is downright clownish. Maybe he is just kind of venting in his newsletter and he will finish them all on time, and that is fine. However, he seemed really unprepared for how difficult this would be and in the media world, you should follow through on what you promote.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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I am willing to be convinced otherwise...but today is the first time I disagreed with Joe on a player. Not on the ranking, per se, I am on board with how he is doing that part. But is Yogi Berra really one of the top-100 players of all-time? If he put him in there for his stories, then that is OK. Screwing DiMaggio out of 20 or so spots to put him at 56 is totally fine, but calling a player one of the 100 best is a little stretch.

That said... am I wrong about Yogi?
 

Kliq

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I am willing to be convinced otherwise...but today is the first time I disagreed with Joe on a player. Not on the ranking, per se, I am on board with how he is doing that part. But is Yogi Berra really one of the top-100 players of all-time? If he put him in there for his stories, then that is OK. Screwing DiMaggio out of 20 or so spots to put him at 56 is totally fine, but calling a player one of the 100 best is a little stretch.

That said... am I wrong about Yogi?
I feel like anyway you slice it, Yogi has to be one of the five best catchers of all-time even if you include Josh Gibson. So if you want to have the catcher position adequately represented, he probably has to be somewhere on the list. The problem with catchers are that statistics, even modern statistics like WAR, don't do a very good job telling you about their overall impact. Berra was an above-average hitter throughout his career and a strong defensive catcher, maybe even an elite one. He won 3 MVPs and 10 rings. I don't see how you can keep him off the list if you want to have more than 3-4 catchers.
 

jon abbey

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I am willing to be convinced otherwise...but today is the first time I disagreed with Joe on a player. Not on the ranking, per se, I am on board with how he is doing that part. But is Yogi Berra really one of the top-100 players of all-time? If he put him in there for his stories, then that is OK. Screwing DiMaggio out of 20 or so spots to put him at 56 is totally fine, but calling a player one of the 100 best is a little stretch.

That said... am I wrong about Yogi?
I didn't read today's yet and I'm not really a big baseball historian, but he did win three MVPs in five years and was top 7 in the MVP voting seven years in a row, and was top 15 in the MVP voting 12 years in a row, every year from his age 25-36 season, and was in the All-Star game 15 straight seasons.
 

moondog80

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I didn't read today's yet and I'm not really a big baseball historian, but he did win three MVPs in five years and was top 7 in the MVP voting seven years in a row, and was top 15 in the MVP voting 12 years in a row, every year from his age 25-36 season, and was in the All-Star game 15 straight seasons.
Yeah. I'm willing to believe that there was some Yankee bias in All-Star and MVP voting in those days, but Yogi had a 7 year stretch where he averaged an OPS+ of 134. Bill James had him ranked 1st among catchers in his last abstract, ahead of Bench. Even if you want to say that Piazza would bump him if that were done today...Yogi is legit.
 

Tuff Ghost

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I still am sticking to my guess that the point of all of this is to have Bonds and Clemens at #1/#2 to try to help get them elected before their window is up, so in that case he needs to get it done ASAP and really couldn't wait a year.
I am also wondering if he wants it done this year in conjunction with the Negro Leagues Centennial. I could see Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, and Josh Gibson as top of the list candidates. Some of his finest work on the list so far has been spent describing some of the Negro Leagues greats.

This Yogi Berra entry was eye-opening to me because, I must admit, I did not consider the darker side of what I thought were just fun quotes.
In the early years, people mocked Berra for his looks. They mocked him for his awkwardness. They mocked him for his grammar. They mocked him for reading comic books. They mocked him for his size, for the funny way he talked, for the way he would swing at any pitch, for the way his mind worked. They mocked him because they knew how much it hurt.

They mocked him because every punchline was just a little bit funnier with Yogi Berra’s name in it.
 

Tuff Ghost

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Unsurprisingly, Jackie Robinson is entry #42.

I love how Joe puts Robinson's unlikely and amazing achievement in perspective in the following paragraphs:
Then, in 1942, he entered the U.S. Army and didn’t pick up a bat or ball for nearly four years — they wouldn’t let him play baseball at Fort Riley because of the color of his skin.

And so to recap, it’s 1945 and here’s Jackie Robinson. He’s 26. He’s known as a football player. He’d played one season of college baseball and hit .097. He has a bum ankle. He is hyper-aware of his surroundings, of the basic unfairness of the world around him, and has no illusions about things changing. Oh, and also, there’s an unspoken agreement in baseball that no one will sign a black player.
 

Kliq

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Somewhat off-topic, but in Howard Bryant's Hank Aaron biography "The Last Hero" there is a 12 page section on Jackie Robinson and it is incredible. At that point Jackie was on his last legs, but his competitive fire and will to win is so fierce, he comes off like Ty Cobb and not the pacifist that he is sometimes portrayed as.
 

stepson_and_toe

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Unsurprisingly, Jackie Robinson is entry #42.

I love how Joe puts Robinson's unlikely and amazing achievement in perspective in the following paragraphs:
From that paragraph: "Oh, and also, there’s an unspoken agreement in baseball that no one will sign a black player."

Well, they sure did try...passing them off as Spaniards, Cubans, Native Americans, some mulattoes even could pass for white. And in the 19th century, there were actually some major-league players who were black: William Edward White played one game for the Providence Grays (NL) in 1879, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday played for Toledo in the American Association in 1884. The AA and NL played a "World Series" for several years and eventually some of the AA teams joined the NL.
 

jon abbey

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He's done 60 of the 100 now in 60 days. Tom Seaver is #41 today, here is the updated full list:

No. 100: Ichiro Suzuki
No. 99: Mike Mussina
No. 98: Carlos Beltrán
No. 97: Roberto Alomar
No. 96: Larry Walker
No. 95: Tony Gwynn
No. 94: Roy Campanella
No. 93: Ozzie Smith
No. 92: Bullet Rogan
No. 91: Mariano Rivera
No. 90: Max Scherzer
No. 89: Mike Piazza
No. 88: Curt Schilling
No. 87: Charlie Gehringer
No. 86: Gary Carter
No. 85: Sadaharu Oh
No. 84: Cool Papa Bell
No. 83: Phil Niekro
No. 82: Kid Nichols
No. 81: Ferguson Jenkins
No. 80: Carlton Fisk
No. 79: Derek Jeter
No. 78: Clayton Kershaw
No. 77: Miguel Cabrera
No. 76: Willie McCovey
No. 75: Justin Verlander
No. 74: Frank Thomas
No. 73: Brooks Robinson
No. 72: Robin Roberts
No. 71: Bert Blyleven
No. 70: Sandy Koufax
No. 69: Monte Irvin
No. 68: Gaylord Perry
No. 67: Hank Greenberg
No. 66: Robin Yount
No. 65: Ernie Banks
No. 64: Johnny Mize
No. 63: Steve Carlton
No. 62: Smokey Joe Williams
No. 61: Arky Vaughan
No. 60: Pete Rose
No. 59: Reggie Jackson
No. 58: Jeff Bagwell
No. 57: Rod Carew
No. 56: Joe DiMaggio
No. 55: Bob Feller
No. 54: Chipper Jones
No. 53: Buck Leonard
No. 52: Adrián Beltré
No. 51: Al Kaline
No. 50: Nolan Ryan
No. 49: Warren Spahn
No. 48: Ken Griffey Jr.
No. 47: Wade Boggs
No. 46: Eddie Mathews
No. 45: Bob Gibson
No. 44: Cal Ripken Jr.
No. 43: Yogi Berra
No. 42: Jackie Robinson
No. 41: Tom Seaver
 

PC Drunken Friar

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From that paragraph: "Oh, and also, there’s an unspoken agreement in baseball that no one will sign a black player."

Well, they sure did try...passing them off as Spaniards, Cubans, Native Americans, some mulattoes even could pass for white. And in the 19th century, there were actually some major-league players who were black: William Edward White played one game for the Providence Grays (NL) in 1879, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday played for Toledo in the American Association in 1884. The AA and NL played a "World Series" for several years and eventually some of the AA teams joined the NL.
Maybe my reading comprehension is off...but are you suggesting that MLB owners did not collude an keep African-Americans out of the game during Robinson's time and the preceding 5 decades or so?
 

stepson_and_toe

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Maybe my reading comprehension is off...but are you suggesting that MLB owners did not collude an keep African-Americans out of the game during Robinson's time and the preceding 5 decades or so?
I'm saying that there were a few owners, managers, etc., who realized that there were some very good African-American players and tried to find ways to circumvent discrimination. I think it was generally more successful at a minor-league level, though.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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I'm saying that there were a few owners, managers, etc., who realized that there were some very good African-American players and tried to find ways to circumvent discrimination. I think it was generally more successful at a minor-league level, though.
That is quite the hot take. The way you framed your response is that you don't think there was an unspoken agreement to keep African-Americans out of baseball, and that JoePos was wrong to assert that notion.
 

Marceline

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Even if he stopped right now, completing 60 of these in 60 days is really impressive (and even if many of them were pre-written or mostly written).

Maybe we'll even get the iPad review after this.
 

jon abbey

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Even if he stopped right now, completing 60 of these in 60 days is really impressive (and even if many of them were pre-written or mostly written).
He said above (a few posts up) that he has mostly been writing them from scratch:

"I thought I would be able to lean a lot more on the essays written in previous Baseball 100 attempts. But the truth is that, other than a couple of early ones, I’ve basically been writing these things from scratch."
 

Marceline

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He said above (a few posts up) that he has mostly been writing them from scratch:

"I thought I would be able to lean a lot more on the essays written in previous Baseball 100 attempts. But the truth is that, other than a couple of early ones, I’ve basically been writing these things from scratch."
I know he said that, but I'm sure he had at the very least detailed outlines or rough drafts for most of these things.

Not to diminish what he's doing, because this is still a ton of effort regardless and I've been thoroughly enjoying it.
 

jon abbey

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Roberto Clemente at #40 today, one of the best ones yet:

“Roberto Clemente’s game was big in every way. He swung hard and he swung at everything. He ran the bases with a touch of madness, like a man at the brink who has decided there is nothing to lose — no player after World War II hit more triples. He threw to kill — no right fielder since Deadball gunned down as many runners, and only one right fielder since Deadball (his replacement, Dave Parker) threw more balls away.

His game was not quite elegant the way, say, Joe DiMaggio‘s game or Aaron’s game was elegant. There was nothing quiet about it. In full flight, he was a jarring presence, a blur of angles — elbows, knees, shoulders, all of them running off in different directions, an asterisk in motion. In the language of Hollywood, he was not conventionally beautiful. So he merely redefined what beauty meant.”
 

Tuff Ghost

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Yastrzemski is today's subject, at #38.

It was a pretty good read with some entertaining insight into Yaz's initial signing-bonus and his goal to set the record.

And of course, 1967:
Yaz’s 1967 season was incredible in every way. He won the Triple Crown. His 12.5 WAR is the highest for any position player not named Ruth. And most of all, he played at his peak exactly when the Red Sox needed it most; this was the stuff of sorcery. Yastrzemski wasn’t just the MVP of 1967. If you were picking an all-time MVP, you’d probably pick Yaz in ’67.