Bob Costas on The Baseball 100

Last night, I got this totally unsolicited review of The Baseball 100 from Bob Costas. Seriously. He just sent it to me. Those of you who have heard my Bob Costas story will know just how much this means to me. And those of you who have not heard it … maybe I’ll tell it again while on the road with The Baseball 100. You can remind me:

You can quibble with some of Joe Posnanski's judgements. And so what? That's always been part of the fun for baseball fans. And Posnanski on Baseball has always been fun.

The fascination with telling details, quirks, coincidences and historical connections. The appreciation of the romantic and the ridiculous. The parsing of the numbers balanced by the understanding there are individuals and moments mere facts can never fully capture. All rendered in pleasing prose filled with nifty turns of phrase. And then there is this — who else has the energy and devotion to both his subject and his craft to churn out more than 800 pages of baseball history, each page as fresh and joyful as the one before and the one to follow?

Almost no one will read The Baseball 100 straight through. Jump around. Find your favorites. And discover those largely lost to history. Joe gives them their due. This book is a baseball feast that can be consumed in small bites or large gulps. Either way, it's a book we fans will return to often. To spark or settle debates, sure. But especially for the endless pleasure of the history of our greatest game as delivered by one of its finest chroniclers.

Pretty good, huh? That guy Costas has a way with words. I’m overwhelmed.

Bob would want me to tell you that you can preorder the book from Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Books-A-Million, Wal-Mart or directly from Simon & Schuster.

You could also go to your favorite independent bookstore — like Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh or Powell’s in Portland or Parnassus Books in Nashville or, well, I could go all day, I love so many bookstores around the country.

You can still preorder a signed book from my good friends at Rainy Day Books.

Oh, and the bookplate deal is still going. In case you missed that, here’s how it works: If you preorder the book from anywhere, you can go to this preorder page, fill out your name, address and proof of purchase, and, voila, you will get an autographed bookplate to put in the book and an invitation to an exclusive virtual event with a very special guest.