OK, I guess it’s a federal law that all newsletters, reviewers, music services, television shows, Facebook pages, and businesses of every kind have to do a recap of 2025. I’d prefer not to. I’m looking forward to 2026 and some new ideas.
But laws are laws. Here are five 2025 posts you liked:
It took me way, way, way too long … but this piece, where I count down my 100 greatest baseball players of 2025 and put a dumb but wonderful baseball card fact next to each player — No. 84: Dylan Cease wears No. 84 because of the 84 asanas in yoga (fact placed next to cartoon of ballplayer in full uniform performing Tadasana, the Mountain Pose) — was probably my favorite in 2025. I just love dumb baseball card facts. Love them. I can spend hours looking through the backs of old baseball cards and just reading the absurd facts they found for each player.
By the way, there’s a whole baseball card chapter in BIG FAN, the book Mike Schur and I wrote about what it means to be a fan of stuff. It comes out May 19. You can preorder now, and you can get a special signed copy in various places, particularly our good friend Joseph-Beth Booksellers. I believe I’ve already signed 5,000-plus books. And miles to go before I sleep.
I was in Cooperstown watching that incredible Game 7 of the World Series. It felt like the perfect place to be.
I’m hoping to write some more NBA this year … maybe a little hockey too. We’ll see how it goes.
In the end, ESPN and MLB came to some sort of new arrangement, with ESPN losing Sunday Night Baseball and the Home Run Derby and whatnot, but now they’re running the MLB package? Or something? Fans didn’t win, that’s for sure. No matter the deal going forward, MLB’s decision to give ESPN an opt-out clause was a spectacular own goal and proof that while people may view Rob Manfred as an unsentimental and hard-edged businessman who doesn’t love baseball, well, he’s not that good at business either.
I tried a lot of stuff to make JoeBlogs better in 2025. Some of it worked, I think. And much of it, bluntly, did not. One of the things I tried was “The Batting Order,” where every week I would do a series of nine stories, and I would lead off the whole thing with a Batting Card that looked like so:
The idea seemed sound when I came up with it, and Kathleen and I put a lot of effort into it. But you know, Bruce Springsteen put a lot of effort into “Outlaw Pete” too — sometimes stuff just doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.
This particular Batting Order had what was probably my favorite rabbit hole of the year — I tried to chase down the origin story of a Willie Mays signed business card that a friend gave me. Whenever you find a story that has a Century One agent, a professional bowler, and Willie Mays, I mean, you follow that story all the way to the end!
And with that … a year ends, and a new one begins. Thank you for being a JoeBlogs reader. I’ve got some plans already in the works for 2026, and I’m sure you do too, and in the meantime, I wish for all of your favorite teams to win, for all of your most hated teams to lose and for all of your favorite players to go 5-for-5, throw five touchdown passes, score five goals, and put up a quintuple double.
Forty days until pitchers and catchers report, and here’s your daily splash of joy — Why You Love Baseball:
Brilliant Reader Dan: “The reaction of a kid when they pass through the concourse, come out of that concrete tunnel, and see a field for the first time.”
If you want to email why you love baseball — photos, drawings, poems, and all else welcome — here’s the address.
