Joe Posnanski

OK, so this was pretty cool. I spent Thursday night being the moderator at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum for a discussion on defense. I sat between Ozzie Smith and Frank White. There were quite a few great moments, my favortie being the point near the end of the discussion when Frank and Ozzie each took their turn showing everyone how to turn the double play. Frank explained that it was a simple three-step process, you put your left foot on ... Read More

So, I have had this long Carlos Beltran essay in my head for a while ... I have inserted most of these thoughts into other posts and columns, but I thought that at some point it would be worth putting all of them in one place. And what better time to do it than Michael Rosenberg Week since Michael, long before he was writing fabulous books about Woody and Bo was a diehard New York Mets fan. I realize that is ... Read More

So, here’s what happened: I asked Michael Rosenberg, star writer for the Detroit Free Press, weekly columnist for Fox Sports, and author of the outstanding book War As They Knew It* to do a reverse interview. In this interview, I had him send a long series of answers, and I told him I would provide the questions. I’m not sure how this will come out, but frankly I don’t care, this format is a whole lot easier on the interviewer. From now ... Read More

Here is our second post for Michael Rosenberg Week here at your friendly neighborhood spiderblog.* As a reminder, we have dedicated this week to the release of the magnificent, “War As They Knew It: Woody, Bo, and the Rivalry That Used To Matter Before Michigan Started Losing To Appalachian State/Utah and Ohio State Kept Getting Destroyed in National Title Games” I’m not sure that’s the exact title ... I don’t have the book right in front of me. It’s a terrific book. I ... Read More

This begins “Michael Rosenberg Week” here at the blog in honor of our pal Rosey and his terrific new book “War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest.” It really is a terrific book, though our guy certainly could have gone with a slightly shorter title. (Whatever happened to the short titles anyway? War and Peace. Basketball for Dummies. The Bible). Anyway, the staff of thousands here at the blog recommend this book so ... Read More

I buried this fun little item in my Miscellaneous post the other day: One more Derek Jeter thought. When I talked with Pete Rose. I asked him if he thought Jeter had any chance to catch him on the hit list. I wish I’d had a camera at that moment because the look of pure disgust on Pete’s face was beyond priceless, it was worth more words than every blog post I’ve ever written. He said, “Come on.” I said, “Well, he has about as ... Read More

Things were magical in Kansas City in the spring of 2003. Up was down. Red was green.* Rain fell on sunny days. For a few beautiful weeks, Tony Pena Sr. led the Kansas Royals into first place armed only with a boxful of “Noostros Creemos” T-shirts and the bizarre stuff going round in his mind. *Making a lot like Miami traffic. Looking back, there were actually some very good players on that team, led by Carlos Beltran,* of course. Mike Sweeney could still hit ... Read More

I fully appreciate that I do this blogging thing all wrong. I love and appreciate the Internets, and I want to be on the cutting edge, but truthfully I still think a lot like an old ink-and-newsprint hack, which is why I post really long items and also why, instead of turning the following into about 14 different posts, I am throwing it all out at once like it’s an old-fashioned newspaper notebook. Its just in my blood. Here then are a series ... Read More

In the end, it’s probably self-defeating to play the “If he’s in, then HE should be in” Hall of Fame Game. It’s fun to play, no doubt, and it allows us Frank White fans to unleash all sorts of moral indignation because his career is virtually IDENTICAL to that of Bill Mazeroski*, and yet Maz is in the Hall while Frank never even got close. There’s something unfair about it all. *When I say identical, I mean it’s hard to imagine two players ... Read More

Well, you may have heard, the Pixifoods thing has kind of taken off. I’m not really sure what to say about that. USA Today wrote about it, the New York Times, countless culinary websites, and so on. We made tons of new friends for this blog, and I can only imagine what happened when Paris-trained chefs and foodies from around the country and the world popped on this site only to see a lot of ridiculous and oppressively long posts about Trey ... Read More