“Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments”
The author:
Joe Posnanski
The publishing info:
Dutton Books/Penguin
400 pages; $29
To be released Sept. 5, 2023
The links:
The publishers website
The authors website
At Bookshop.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At Skylight Books
At Diesel Books
At PagesABookstore.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com
The review in 90 feet or less
We’ve become somewhat addicted to the daily grind of cold-brew coffee and the hot mess that is the “Immaculate Grid.”
God help us, and please keep Jesus Alou waiting in the wings.
It matriculated this summer over to Baseball-Reference.com, and we became more intrigued when the New York Times explained last July it was the “hottest thing in baseball.”
Hotter than Freddie Freeman?
Our participation was an attempt to cultivate more an appreciation for baseball and its history, and our connection to it all.
Results vary.
The exercise insists on coming up with a player from MLB history – and the Baseball-Reference.com databank has more than 23,000 legit to pick from — that satisfies the horizontal and vertical intersection of the three categories. A team logo, a statistical achievement, an award or honor. Nothing yet about handlebar mustaches or wife swapping.
Nine open squares. No margin for error. It’s bound to knock you on your axis.
This challenge of one’s faulty memory (go ahead and cheat a little only if you must to confirm Tom Seaver really did play for both the White Sox and Red Sox) draws its name from the rare feat of when a pitcher records three straight strike outs to complete an inning with the minimum of nine pitches. Its active Wikipedia page notes that it has happened 114 times in MLB history. Far more rare than a no-hitter (322 since 1876). A bit more common than a perfect game (24).
Sandy Koufax, with four no-hitters and one perfect game, also lays claim to three immaculate innings. Because of course he did. Yet that only ties him with Chris Sale and Max Scherzer, who continue to pitch in an era where batters aren’t embarrassed by taking called strikes if the pitch isn’t near their analytic hot zone.
Short sidetrack: “Immaculate Inning” is a term used in baseball for only the last 20-something years. So when rookie reliever Sloppy Thurston of the Chicago White Sox did it against the Philadelphia Athletics in the top of the 12th inning on Aug. 22, 1923 – whiffing the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 hitters in the lineup, Beauty McGowan, Chick Galloway and Sammy Hale – it’s likely no one even thought twice about it. In the 13th, Thurston got a little sloppy and gave up a go-ahead single to Frank Welch, so he was squeezed with the loss at Comiskey Park, 3-2.
The more we do this gridstuff, the more we’ve realized our brain doesn’t think of baseball history in this way. It most often leaves us twisted and tormented, feeling inadequate and we didn’t pay attention enough during Fantasy League drafts.
The Immaculate Grid is not a chapter Joe Posnanski chooses to include in this new book.
Perhaps it someday will be considered another way to sweet on baseball and its mystical ways. It probably came along too for this publication deadline, but we doubt he’d be apt to include it in a future update, based on what he has written about it on his daily Substack column, JoeBlogs.
On his July 27 post, he lamented:
“Some days I love IG. Some days, when I’m getting a terrible headache trying to think about who played for the Rockies or Rays, I kind of hate it. Sometimes my strategy is just to pick the most obvious players and get through. Some days I try to go as obscure as I can go and shoot for the lowest rarity score. I feel way too much pressure playing it. Who needs that?”
Many of us do, apparently.
A rarity score, FWIW, is taking this to the next level of brain cramping. It’s what the Baseball Mensa shoots for – pulling a player’s name from a dark hole who fits the answer in the most obscure way possible. For example, to satisfy the category of someone who once played for the Dodgers and Angels, the most common choices might be … let’s say … (think real hard) …
Albert Pujols … Andy Messersmith … Don Sutton … Fernando Valenzuela … Bill Singer …Frank Robinson … Tommy John .. .Zack Greinke … Hoyt Wilhelm …
Baseball-Reference.com can actually aggregate its data and pull up a list. Which means, if you cheat and look at it, you can lower your rarity score by instead picking …
Jack Fimple … Barry Lyons … Jim Leyritz … Shea Hillenbrand … Noah Syndergaard!
It seems to be why the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, who can’t get enough satisfaction having two books on the game still be among the most popular buys in recent years, posts his results daily on Twitter. It’s not so much to boast about how he really came up with another low rarity score again. It seems to show that, if you really want to work at it, this thing can be harnessed … for good?
You’d think at some point, our SABR friend Jon Leonoudakis might even figure out a way to incorporate this game part of his BasebALZ program, to use baseball’s history and help those with fading memory and forms of dementia reconnect. The SABR friends are standing by.
Maybe … just maybe.
If there is a way for Posnanski to keep at it with the Immaculate Grid, our hope is there will be more love and appreciation, and he will figure out a way to pass it onto us. Maybe the key for him will be that one moment when there’s the intersection of “C” for Cleveland and “SF” for San Francisco, and Posnanski assuredly drops in the name Duane Kuiper.
Continue reading “Day 30 of 2023 baseball books: ‘Why we love Joe Posnanski’ should be the real title … or along those immaculate lines of thinking”
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