The perfect book for any baseball fan. Posnanki has written a fun and entertaining account of the game by highlighting fifty moments in baseball that make it great. There were many I was not familiar with (even as a fairly dedicated fan) and some I felt were left out (which is inevitable with this type of book). Ultimately, this was highly enjoyable and a must read for anyone who loves the game.

Such an enjoyable read through the history of the game with nuances provided by the author both entertaining and enlightening.

Baseball writing has lost some great ones - to retirement or the great Ebbets Field in the sky - in recent years, from Roger Angell to Thomas Boswell. I don't know if Joe Posnanski is the greatest living baseball writer, but his love letter (more like a collection of Shakespearean sonnets than a single letter) to America's pastime puts him squarely in the conversation, if not leading by a handful of runs heading into the ninth.
"Why We Love Baseball" is an absolute joy to read. It's easy to milk called shots and tales of Jackie Robinson heroism; yet his documentarian instincts deconstruct familiar moments - while often reconstructing them in ways that make you appreciate them even more. Dwelling on own personal favorites can be forgiven between, well, what baseball fan doesn't have players they love irrationally all the way from childhood autograph chases to buying up items in retirement on eBay? And he even finds the romance and humor in moments from the game's Moneyball era.
Baseball is an easy game to love with pitchers nicknamed Catfish, handlebar mustaches, and a nation listening to World Series games on the radio. It's harder in the era of WAR, BABIP, and streaming blackouts. Posnanski's book ties those eras together, and will be cherished by any baseball fan - and might even convert a few non-fans too.

This is the perfect book for baseball lovers young or old. I found myself so intrigued by Posnanski's retelling of famous (or infamous) plays, that I was often searching Youtube after finishing a chapter. As a casual baseball fan, this book included enough personal anecdotes and chances to root for underdogs, that I was fully engaged through the end.

Posnanski is the most engaging baseball writer. His books are like conversations with a friend, if that friend had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball history. But it's more than just knowing his stuff--Posnanski loves his stuff. His passion for baseball, its history, its characters, its impact on our lives is evident on every page.

An exceptionally fun and thoroughly detailed love letter to baseball.

Joe Posnanski, who also wrote The Baseball 100 (a countdown of sorts of the sport’s best players in history), here gives us a survey of 50 things that make baseball wonderful, ranging around in time and content.

I liked the structure of the book as well as the tone, and was impressed with Posnanski’s choices on what to include. There are plenty of excellent in-game moments of course, but also getting recognition are many non game action topics that are worthy subjects in the pantheon of great baseball happenings.

If you’re a big fan of the sport there won’t be many topics here that you know nothing about going in, but I found that in almost every instance, Posnanski gave me a few tidbits that were new to me even if the event was one with which I was already familiar. And because of the way that the content is presented, even those topics which were already intimately familiar to me still felt fun to read about.

The balance of subject matter is notably good, ranging around to cover most teams in a manner that feels democratic, and doing the same with different periods in baseball history.

Even better than The Baseball 100. The stories recounted here range from the hilarious to the unbelievable to the tear-inducing. A must-read for baseball fans, and it might even convert some non-fans.

This book written by a well-loved and well-known personality in the world of sports is a great gift to the baseball fans. However, the way Joe Posnanski writes speaks more to the way of life in different parts of America ensuring the book's appeal not only to the sports lovers. What episodes from the games Joe Posnanski chose to select for the book is also interesting.
Can you call a manly book about manly sports game charming without upsetting anyone? I hope not. But Joe Posnanski is a great storyteller and the charm of his writing voice is what would attract all readers first and foremost IMO.

The last couple of baseball books that I read were interesting and well done, but they were a little on the dense site. I'm not saying it was a chore to go through them, but it did take a little time and concentration to digest.

The antidote to that is a book is something that is a pleasure to race through. I suppose for some, a novel designed to be read on the beach works in that sense. As for me, I'll take a book by Joe Posnanski.

Joe is back with another feel-good crowd-pleaser, "Why We Love Baseball." It's sweet, fun and hard to resist.

This could be called a follow-up to last year's "The Baseball 100." There Posnanski picked his top 100 players in the sport's history, and he made the smart decision not to get bogged down over whether No. 37 was better than No. 36. Instead, he just told stories about baseball and its participants. A lot of trees died in the process of publication of a rather massive volume, but it ranked as the most entertaining book of 2022.

This has something of the same formula. Posnanski has come up with a list of 50 of the best moments in baseball history. It should be mentioned that this isn't just major league baseball. There are some good stories from the minors, amateur, and Japanese ball, for example. Joe once again did his homework, and takes us down some unexpected trails about the events we thought we knew quite well. In other words, almost every "moment" has a fact or detail that will be unknown to the most devoted of fans. That level of research really makes the book work.

But there are more than 50 such moments in the book. Posnanski takes timeout from the countdown to go on some interesting tangents, five at a time. Unlikely homers. Trick plays. Meltdowns. Loud home runs. Barehanded plays. Pitching oddities. Heartstrings. Blunders. Duels. Catches. The final total is 108, which is an interesting number in baseball. It's the number of stitches in a standard baseball for starters. It also marks the number of years in the Cubs' period between World Series wins, and the number of wins compiled by Joe's candidate as the best team ever, the 1975 Reds. (He wrote a book about that team.) I'd be quick to add that the Boston Red Sox won 108 games in 2018. It's shorter than "The Baseball 100," so some forests can breathe a sigh of relief.

Baseball fans probably can come up with the top 20 moments given a little time, and they certainly deserve to be there. But one of the sport's charms is that something can happen out of the blue that's totally wonderful. For example, the Buffalo Bisons played a game against the Worcester Red Sox in the summer that was completely routine for eight innings. Then, in the bottom of the 10th, Luis De Los Santos hit a 3-2 pitch with two out that resulted in a opposite-field, pinch-hit, walkoff, grand slam homer to give the Bisons the victory. Has there every been a moment in a baseball game that checked off more boxes for drama?

"Why We Love Baseball" helps to explain the hold that the game has on many people. They're the target audience for the book, and they'll be delighted to read it.

Great book looking at the history of baseball and providing strong detail/stories about them all. I learned many new things and got a great trip down memory lane with extra knowledge about things i already loved. My one complaint was the random attack on Barry Bonds. Rest of book felt like objective accounts of history and that felt out of place to me. Otherwise a great look back at the history of MLB with a very easy and fun read.

I mean, it's really pretty simple--if you like baseball at all, you MUST get this book! Posnanski is the best baseball writer currently working in my opinion. I enjoyed this even more than his previous book "The Baseball 100." Posnanski counts down the greatest 50 moments in baseball history and awesome stories/insight abound.

In addition to the 50 moments, he also includes a number of delightful detours, which keeps the book from feeling repetitive and allows him to write about interesting subjects that aren't necessarily the "greatest" moments in baseball history.

I've been a baseball fan for a long time, but was amazed that Posnanski unearthed so many details I'd never heard before. Just a blast to read!

Netgalley provided me with a free e-galley in return for this honest review.

Joe Posnanski is a well-known name in baseball, which is what drew me to this book. I had high hopes for it, and I was not disappointed. It was a highly entertaining read, and will be enjoyed by many for its conversational style and wit.