Listing the top 100 of anything is a bit of a mug’s game, usually more of an argument starter than a curated effort. ‘The Baseball 100’ is no different. How could you rank Gaylord Perry ahead of Robin Roberts, or Fergie Jenkins behind Justin Verlander? How is Joe DiMaggio – Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper, the lament of Mrs. Robinson – ranked just 56? Let’s break out the stats; the records; the ranked WAR; JAWS; for the luvva Pete – what about the steroids?
Joe Posnanski has a unique and clever way of sidestepping that trap. Simply put, he doesn’t care. He’s clear from the beginning that this list is his and only his. You can’t argue with a ranking that the writer clearly articulates why he is where he is, from the historical significance to the statistical record to something more personal; their unique story. Joe DiMaggio isn’t 56 because Posnanski believes there are 55 players better than DiMaggio in baseball history. He’s 56 because no one else can ever own that number in the way Joe does with one of the most untouchable records in sports. Likewise, Jackie Robinson sits at 42 because, no offense to Mo Vaughn and Mariano Riveria, 42 will always represent the man who endured so much to break the deep injustice of segregated baseball.
More than anything though, this is not a book structured around the comparison of stats and achievements. Visiting the Hall of Fame for the first time, I bought a lovely book which had all the inductees at the time; a shot of their plaque next to a write-up of their career. It’s lovely and interesting and was quite the value at the time from their shop. This isn’t that book. This is about the stories of the players; sometimes sprawling over their careers, sometimes a snapshot in time that captures their spirit in a moment, sometimes pages of people and incidents outside of the baseball world that end up connected in a surprising way to the player. This is a meandering tale; the storyteller beside you in the stands or at the bar that takes the long way – lubricated with a beverage of choice – to explain just why the only way to truly appreciate George Brett was to understand the history between him and his father.
The Villains
Posnanski isn’t shy about his truthful approach to many of the great players and is particularly unflinching in his stories about the players whose greatness never translated to their off-field activities. He seeks to be truthful about the complicated nature of people, especially in the case of Ty Cobb, pointing out that while much of his biography is exaggerated and Cobb absolutely did laudable things at odds with his reputation, he was still deeply racist, vicious and capable of causing harm at will.
Curt Schilling: Schilling was as he is now: opinionated, inflexible, thin-skinned, a loudmouth, a knucklehead, a jokester, a troll, a clubhouse politician, a nonstop yapper. “Sometimes,” his Arizona teammate Luis Gonzalez said, “you need to unplug Curt to stop him from talking.” Behind the scenes, teammates offered that sentiment in much more pointed ways. He drove them bonkers. He offended many of them. He was, in the words of more than one, a handful. He was, in the words of more than one, a jerk.
Pete Rose: But, there is another side to it all. With Rose, there are always two sides. How can you hear the story of him sitting in his car and listening to West Coast games without wondering if he was betting on them? How can you talk about his limitless thirst without talking about his troubling off-field life? It’s all part of the same person. And many of the same sportswriters who celebrated him as a god when he played baseball the right way savaged him repeatedly as a charlatan and a villain when he was suspended for gambling, jailed for tax evasion and revealed to be a poor excuse for a husband and father.
Barry Bonds: So for Barry Bonds, we have no choice but to write two stories. It works like so: If you like Bonds — or at least respect him enough to read about his greatness without losing your mind — you only need to read the sections headlined “For Bonds Fans.”
And if you dislike Bonds — or maybe just don’t have any room in your mind for anything but criticism for him — you can stick with the sections headlined “For Bonds Critics.”
If you veer into the wrong section, you do so at your own peril.
That’s just the deal with Barry Lamar Bonds.
The Heroes
Much like with the villains, Posnanski tries to keep an open mind about the heroes, who have been elevated to legendary status like Greek demi-gods for their on-field excellence and lack of off-field controversy. Posnanski sits in an interesting spot for a writer; he supports modern metrics and uses them liberally to make his case for a player, but he’s more interested in the outliers and the stories those tell. This is not due to any kind of ‘fair and balanced’ both-siderism but instead a way to connect with players who have achieved at a level we can’t truly comprehend.
Honus Wagner: Burleigh Grimes told a great story of seeing an older Wagner facing a rookie pitcher. Wagner was a great old player. He hit an astonishing 20 triples at age 38 and 17 triples at age 41. The story goes that near the end, Wagner faced a rookie pitcher with a terrific curveball. The kid threw that curve and Wagner swung and missed so hard that he fell to his knees.
“Watch this,” Grimes said to a teammate. The pitcher, no doubt filled with boldness after making the legend look silly, threw the curve again. Wagner drilled the ball off the wall so hard that Grimes said the wall shook for five minutes.
Henry Aaron: Then Dusty Baker, Aaron’s teammate and friend, smacked a drive and the Dodgers’ left fielder Bill Buckner misplayed the ball. And Aaron kept running. People never really appreciated just how good a baserunner Henry Aaron was, but then again, that’s the point of all this. There were a lot of things about Aaron people never appreciated. He rounded third and he headed for home. There was no throw to the plate. Aaron scored the first run of the game.
It was the 2,063rd run of his career.
And that broke the National League record set by Willie Mays.
Tony Gwynn: Gwynn, as mentioned, was an artist. But he was also a scientist. He was a pioneer in watching video — so much so that his teammates called him “Captain Video.” He was not the first batter to keep notebooks on every pitcher he faced, but his notebooks were spectacularly detailed. After every game, he would go through each pitch he faced (he had absurd recall) and mark them down in a color-coded system. He never forgot. At one point in a conversation, Mike Krukow came up. Gwynn had not faced Krukow in almost 25 years and yet he gave a perfect scouting report of how he would hit Krukow if they faced off again.
The Negro Leagues
Posnanski was the baseball writer for the Kansas City Star early in his career, and not surprising, was drawn into the orbit of Buck O’Neil and the Negro League Hall of Fame. Since then, he’s written extensively on former Negro League stars and they are well represented in the book. As a collector of stories, Posnanski had access to one of the best storytellers the Negro League produced and it is clear in the writing that he absorbed everything he could from O’Neil.
Cool Papa Bell: Here’s another true story: In 1945, when the Kansas City Monarchs signed Jackie Robinson, they played him at shortstop even though his arm was somewhat questionable. When the Dodgers were scouting, they worried about that. It was arranged for Bell to hit some grounders to short and run them out to test the arm. Bell repeatedly beat the throw, which helped convince the Dodgers to play Robinson at second base.
Cool Papa was 42 years old at the time.
Buck Leonard: My favorite ever baseball saying, I think, is this one: “Trying to throw a fastball past him is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster.” There’s something so beautiful about how those words connect, something rhythmic and poetic and wonderful.
Best I can tell, those words have been said about three hitters:
Curt Simmons said them about Henry Aaron.
Bob Feller said them about Ted Williams.
And everybody in and around the Negro Leagues said them about Buck Leonard.
Oscar Charleston: We are left with the same puzzle we began with. How good was Oscar Charleston? He was as good as you want to believe. In 1940, a reporter named Randy Dixon got together a bunch of experts on black baseball — former players, managers, coaches, umpires, sportswriters, fans — and they all just talked about the Negro Leagues. They made some decisions.
And, finally, they determined that Oscar Charleston was “the greatest player, all things considered.”
That seems about right. If only all things had been considered when Charlie played ball.
The challenge with reviewing a book like ‘The Baseball 100’ is that it quickly becomes more about the subject than the story. Taking a look at on-line review sites, most of the negative reviews are based around the ranking of a player or the inclusion or absence of another. Some books live in a specific media eco-system and all ‘top’ anything books are especially so. But it just isn’t really that kind of book. Many of the entries only get to the subject later in the article, charting the story in a roundabout fashion to reach the player.
It is a mistake to treat this book as the place to find more stats and factoids to back up the unique value of a specific player. It’s one to take off the shelf on a rainy afternoon or tuck under the arm on the way to the pub on a weekend and bounce around at random and letting it do what it excels at; tell you a story it wants to in its own unique way.