Author: Joe Posnanski

There’s a Hilton Smith story that haunts me. Of all the incredible players in the Negro leagues, none fascinates me more than Smith. I tried for a time — with the help of Buck O’Neil — to write a book about him and Satchel Paige. We named our first dog Hilton. Somewhere in my files,…

Joel Sherman is one of the really good baseball guys out there. I readily admit that I disagree with him a lot — and, plainly, he disagrees with me a lot — but it’s fun to disagree with Joel, because I know he’s coming at every argument with passion and energy and honest intentions. He’s…

You probably already know this, but Brilliant Reader Ben Dilday is doing a statistical companion to the Baseball 100. It’s pretty awesome. I’ve been in touch with Ben, and my plan is to start giving him the Baseball 100 entry a couple of days early so that he can do his fun and detailed pieces…

Before we get to our choice — whose place here as 96th-best Major League Baseball player ever will probably thrill you, upset you or (most likely) infuriate you — we have to talk about one of baseball’s most basic concepts: counting. There’s more counting in baseball than there is in any other sport on earth….

Every year on Sept. 11, I’m like every other American. I think about that awful day. I think about the 2,980 people who died, and I think about the countless lives that were shattered, and I think about the ash and the smoke and the falling man. I make sure to take some time to…

Herb Score was my summer. He was the Cleveland baseball announcer of my childhood. From my earliest memories until my teenage years, Herb Score’s voice played in my head more than anyone’s … I still hear it now. I still hear Herb tell us the weather — “It’s a beautiful day for baseball,” was how…

Fifth installment of “Harry Potter Diet” series. We got a new scale. It’s pretty fancy — it’s a Garmin and it supposedly measures all sorts of stuff beyond weight, such as percentage of body fat, water weight, skeletal muscle mass, BMI, cholesterol level, blood pressure, sense of humor, favorite Spice Girl, how many days it’s…

There was so much absurdity and sadness in the U.S. Open final on Saturday. It wasn’t right. A chair umpire who apparently forgot his insignificant place in the grand scheme of things shamefully overshadowed one of the greatest tennis performances we’ve ever seen. That was pretty rotten. Naomi Osaka is a superstar. For two weeks,…

Johan Santana spent much of his childhood trying to stop being left-handed. Think about that for a minute. When Santana was growing up in Tovar — a remote town in the Andes Mountains of Venezuela — he wanted only to be like his father, Jesus. Johan idolized his dad. And Jesus Santana played shortstop on…

There have been, best I can tell, six essential Jewish baseball players. There’s Koufax, of course. Any story about Jewish baseball players — or Jewish athletes in general — will usually begin with the exchange in Airplane, or something like it. Flight attendant: “Would you like something to read?” Woman on plane: “Do you have…