Top stories published by Joe Blogs in 2013

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Top Stories published by Joe Blogs in 2013

2013

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Dec 8, 2013

№92: :Old Hoss Radbourn

Before he became an irascible Tweeter, Charles Radbourn was an irascible and overwhelming 19th century pitcher who won more than 300 games in his career and, most famously, 59 in one year. In doing this list, I find it is even harder to judge 19th Century players than it is to judge…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 11, 2013

№87: Nolan Ryan

Do you remember Richard Ben Cramer’s magical lead in his incomparable story on Ted Williams? The lead was simply this: “Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those.”

Nolan Ryan, in his own way, tried for something even bigger than best ever. He might have…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 31, 2013

№69: Sadaharu Oh

Our story begins not with the great man himself but with a different baseball player you probably don’t know named Hiroshi Arakawa. He was a small man, barely 5-foot-4, and he had a little paunch and suspect speed and almost no natural power. He loved baseball, though. He especially loved the art…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 3, 2013

№99: Cool Papa Bell

We will never get all the statistics because the Negro Leagues wasn’t about numbers. The Negro Leagues were about surviving against titanic odds. It’s hard to capture now the challenges of building baseball leagues for African American and dark-skinned Latin baseball players in the 1920s and…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 28, 2013

№70: Duke Snider

There’s a fun Twilight Zone episode where a degenerate gambler dies and enters his own afterlife. He awakens in a beautiful hotel, surrounded by gorgeous women and with an unlimited amount of money to spend however he likes. He is puzzled by this — he knows that he lived a rotten life, and he’s…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 26, 2013

№72: Willie McCovey

Does fear matter in baseball? Every now and again, a personality comes along who transcends the standard emotions of the game. They stand out. People struggle for precise words to describe these players; they usually come up with imprecise and unsatisfying descriptions like “gamer” or…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 23, 2013

№73: Arky Vaughan

Somewhere in my files, I have this dead project I once worked on. The idea was to break up the players in the Hall of Fame into different ranks. That’s not original, I realize, except that these levels had almost nothing to do with how good the player was, how many home runs he hit, how many…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 14, 2013

№83: Gaylord Perry

After Gaylord Perry finally retired — he pitched in the Majors until he was 44 — he became the first baseball coach at Limestone College in South Carolina. There was some unexpected stress involved. Many of this players were still learning the basic rules. He said that he once had a hitter who…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 10, 2013

№90: Mark McGwire

So, I’m finding, I’m writing two kinds of essays for this 100 greatest baseball players project. The first kind of essay tells the story of the player, what made him special, what made him fun, what made him unforgettable. In the second kind of essay, I spend most of the time explaining WHY I…

MLB.com/blogs in Joe Blogs

Dec 22, 2013

№74: Hank Greenberg

You probably know that the 1920s and 1930s marked a huge public spike in antisemitism in America. Between 1900 and 1924, with hostility toward Jews growing around the world, more than two million Jewish immigrants poured into America. The backlash was forceful. Immigration was cut way back…

2012

2014

These were the top 10 stories published by Joe Blogs in 2013. You can also dive into monthly archives for 2013 by using the calendar at the top of this page.

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