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Why We Love Baseball
Joe Posnanski
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
#1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Posnanski is back with a masterful ode to the game: a countdown of 50 of the most memorable moments in baseball’s history, to make you fall in love with the sport all over again.
Posnanski writes of major moments that created legends, and of forgotten moments almost lost to time. It's Willie Mays’s catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, and Kirk Gibson’s limping home run; the slickest steals; the biggest bombs; and the most triumphant no-hitters. But these are also moments raw with the humanity of the game, the unheralded heroes, the mesmerizing mistakes drenched in pine tar, and every story, from the immortal to the obscure, is told from a unique perspective. Whether of a real fan who witnessed it, or the pitcher who gave up the home run, the umpire, the coach, the opposing player—these are fresh takes on moments so powerful they almost feel like myth.
Posnanski’s previous book, The Baseball 100, portrayed the heroes and pioneers of the sport, and now, with his trademark wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and acute observations, he gets at the real heart of the game. From nineteenth-century pitchers’ duels to breaking the sport’s color line in the ’40s, all the way to the greatest trick play of the last decade and the slide home that became a meme, Posnanski’s illuminating take allows us to rediscover the sport we love—and thought we knew.
Why We Love Baseball is an epic that ends too soon, a one-of-a-kind love letter to the sport that has us thrilled, torn, inspired, and always wanting more.
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A Message from Joe
Thanks so much for coming. It has been 16 years since my first book, The Soul of Baseball came out. I'll never write a book that means more to me, obviously; It's about my friend, the extraordinary Buck O'Neil. But I say this with all my heart: I feel exactly the same excitement for Why We Love Baseball coming out as I did for Soul. I simply cannot wait for you to read it.
Writing this one was pure joy, from beginning to end. I've loved the experience of writing every one of my books, but this one was different. Why We Love Baseball is, on the surface, a countdown of the 50 most magical moments in baseball history (though as you will see, there are many, many, many more than 50). But, really, it's the story of my love affair — our American love affair — with the game.
Every day of writing this book — every single day — I came across something new, something wild, something wonderful I didn't know about baseball. There are incredibly famous moment in here and there are virtually unknown moments. All of them have something I didn't know before.
The familiar names are in here, of course. Just seeing a few of those names, I suspect, will serve as a time machine and take you to a moment. Jackie Robinson! Willie Mays! Kirk Gibson! Carlton Fisk! Henry Aaron! Babe Ruth! Cal Ripken! Don Larsen! Bobby Thomson! Shohei Ohtani!
And then there are some names that you might not know but will be so happy to meet. Joe Bauman! Ron Necciai! Jackie Mitchell! David Hulse! Yutaka Entatsu!
I don't want to give too much away; my hope is that Why We Love Baseball will surprise and delight you as much as it surprised and delighted me writing it. Oh, and Buck O'Neil's in here too, both his words and, I hope, his spirit. I've never known anyone who loved the game as much as Buck. I could hear his voice guiding me every step of the way.
