Non­fic­tion

Why We Love Base­ball: A His­to­ry in 50 Moments

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2021

Why We Love Base­ball is a love let­ter to base­ball, a fresh and heart­felt look at the game’s great­est moments and how they con­tin­ue to grab at our hearts. Whether it’s Willie Mays’ over-the-shoul­der catch, Babe Ruth’s called shot, Shohei Ohtani’s exploits as both a pitch­er and a hit­ter, or Josh Gib­son or Sandy Koufax’s per­fect game, these time­less and mag­i­cal moments take us to the heart of why we love base­ball after almost 150 years.

The con­nec­tion between Jews and base­ball is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong. When Joe Pos­nan­ski’s father came to the Unit­ed States from Israel just before Joe was born, his father made cer­tain to learn base­ball so that he could teach it to his old­est son. When Joe’s moth­er saw that her son was a base­ball nut, she helped him col­lect base­ball cards (while ask­ing if Boog Pow­ell was a gantse mach­er). This is a com­mon sto­ry. Base­ball has always drawn Jew­ish atten­tion, whether it was play­ers like Hank Green­berg and Sandy Koufax, broad­cast­ers like Mel Allen, Gary Cohen, and Al Michaels, writ­ers like Roger Kahn, Lawrence Rit­ter and Don­ald Honig, exec­u­tives like Theo Epstein and Bud Selig. The Jew­ish love of base­ball is pow­er­ful and enduring.

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