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Why We Love Baseball
- A History in 50 Moments
- Narrated by: Joe Posnanski, Ellen Adair
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's Summary
NEW YORK TIMES bestseller
Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year
National Sports Media Association Sports Book of the Year
An NPR "Book of the Day"
#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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- Written by: Keith Law
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Overall
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What the critics say
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WALL STREET JOURNAL BETSELLER
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Winner of the CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year
Named One of the Best Baseball Books of 2023 by Sports Collectors’ Digest
One of AARP's "Books to Give and Get"
Kirkus' Best Nonfiction Book Out This Week
A Kirkus Most Anticipated Book of the Fall
"Mr. Posnanski is a bit like the guy telling baseball stories at a bar—if that guy is clever, funny, not averse to hyperbole, sentiment or numerology, willing to go to great lengths to track down a fact and possessed of a way with words...if you were that kid who felt a surge of gladness when Baseball Digest turned up in the mailbox, and if the game has continued to hold a place in your heart, well, I’ve got just the book for you." —Wall Street Journal
"Here's the thing about this book... One of the things that happens with sports writers and especially with baseball writers, is that it can get very purple. It can get very romantic. So what I love about this is a potential, like, weakness in sports writing is turned around to be a strength and to be something where you can just allow yourself the sentiment of loving a sport and loving to watch it and kind of this sense that, oh, my God, I love baseball so much. I have choked up multiple times while listening to this book." —Linda Holmes, NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour
“Journalist Posnanski (The Baseball 100) hits it out of the park in this rousing celebration of baseball. With the colorful banter of a play-by-play announcer…Posnanski recounts the '50 most magical baseball moments' from across all levels of the game. This will have readers cheering from their seats.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)