Your "I Pounded Poz" story reminded me of the days when Bill James had a fantasy baseball game and, one season, I won the coveted, "I Beat Bill James at his Own Game" T-shirt.
I'd love a countdown of Joe's favorite players (or just people) to interview. Not best performers who he has interviewed, but just fun (and informative) to talk to. I'd assume Priest Holmes would be near the top of the list, just before or just after Rulon Gardner with Tom Glavine in the top 50 too.
Joe is too nice to do it, but I'd welcome the other end of the list as well. The old unnamed BBWAA member who insultingly told Joe to decamp from his seat in old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, the named (but I've forgotten) aging tennis star who was famously frosty so much that Joe asked no questions ...
For countdowns, separate ones for best football, basketball, hockey, tennis books. And for baseball, best books by category: Fiction, Biography, Memoir, History, General Non-Fiction.
Loved the baseball movie countdown. I would love to see a countdown of the best football, basketball, hockey, golf, etc. movies. Some of those won’t be a list of 75, but the top however many for those sports would be a lot of fun over the next several months.
Joe! Can you do an Sal Stewart and JJ comparison in the ROY race in the NL? WAR gives it to JJ but Sal is having an impressive traditional season. 30 HR/100 RBi’s.
The Houston team that Joe Morgan played for in 1965 was the Astros. It was the year the Astrodome opened, and their first season playing under that name rather than Colts or Colt .45s.
How about football movies for the next countdown? You’ve got goofy ones like The Waterboy and The Replacements and serious ones like Brian’s song and my personal favorite, North Dallas Forty.
I must admit, I wasn't very familiar with Donie Bush. But for a Dead Ball era shortstop, he had a really nice career.
40.2 career bWAR, 44th all-time in JAWS among shortstops. For comparison's sake, that places him just ahead of Hanley Ramirez, Omar Vizquel, and Dave Concepción. I see a couple commenters saying he couldn't hit—he had a 91 career OPS+, and a 96 OPS+ for the first decade of his career. Fine for a shortstop.
He later managed several MLB teams, co-owned two minor league clubs, was president of Cleveland's MLB team for nearly 30 years, and finally was a scout for the Red Sox.
Bush was discussed a bit here a few days back when one of the Brilliant Readers suggested that until the SABR / Moneyball explosion, players who walked were never valued. Bush was one of the counter-examples.
I'm guessing from your post that you are aware of the biography written by a SABR member that is linked in his Baseball-Reference page. If not, it is an informative read: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Donie-Bush/
ALoTO is a family favorite … definite Lori Petty crush back in the day … “Madonna can play” … your early days at AC (which I’ll share with my two kids in college) … McGonigle’s rookie season … it’s all great stuff. But my main takeaway from this? OMG I FORGOT JUST HOW GREAT MIKE TROUT WAS RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE.
bWAR aside, of the 189 players who have enough at bats to be eligible, McGonigle is 24th in average. 87% of the 189 are batting below .280. The 24 batters counting from the bottom up are all batting less than .230. At the present time there are only 8 hitters above .300. Maybe I'm wrong but that seems like a unusually low number. If it is lower than normal, then I think what McGonigle has done is even more extraordinary.
8 batters above .300 is both very unusual historically and basically the new normal. There were 7 in all of 2025 as well as 2024. In 2023, there were a whopping 9 such hitters.
On Sesame Street they'd have a little word or picture association segment called "Which of These Is Not Like the Other?". Donie Bush was a good field no hit shortstop for the Tigers in the Ty Cobb era. How he ever landed on a list with Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe Jackson, Albert Pujols, Mike Trout etc.is a total mystery to me.
A no-hit SS for his career, yes (91 OPS+) but he did provide some offense that year (115), mostly based on a .380 OBP and league-leading 88 walks. With the glove, he led the league in SS assists (567), but also in errors (71!).
It just seems to me looking at his stats for that year that it's not a top ten age 21 season regardless of what the bWAR formula says. It certainly appears to be an anomaly, an outlier, not a true representation of what Bush contributed, or failed to contribute to his team, and proof one has look deeper and not blindly accept what bWAR spits out.
In what way do you see Bush's bWAR as an outlier and non-representative of what he otherwise did for the Tigers that season? It was largely in-line with his career as he had three other seasons of 5 or greater bWAR, numbers that would be expected from a plot of a career without an outlier season. It was his best hitting season, with a 115 OPS+ and studies show that defense peaks young, so you'd expect his WAR to be at his highest. Prorate his next year to the same PAs and he would have been at about 6 WAR to go along with his marginally worse hitting (109 OPS+).
Looking at other SS of the era ... Joe Tinker had a different hitting profile, but was roughly similar offensively with a 96 career OPS+. In Tinker's best (full) hitting season of 1908 two years before Bush's he had a 118 OPS+ essentially the same as Bush's 115. Tinker, that year, had 7.9 bWAR. Dave Bancroft, Rabbit Maranville, ... the seasonal WAR totals are in line with what Bush did.
I guess my take is that if you told me only that a player was in the top 3 in his league in OBA, first in runs scored, and played a better than average SS, I most certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn he had 6.5 WAR or feel that 6.5 WAR over valued his contributions.
His 53 steals also placed him in the top 3 in the league.
The part of his stat line that always amazes me is his sacrifice bunts. He had 52 that season, one of four years where he was at or above 40. Teams don't bunt that much, let alone individual players.
Defensive stats in the pre Pitch by Pitch years where they are all based on adjustments to the old standby of Range Factor have obvious problems. Estimating chances rather than having pretty good (albeit not perfect) knowledge is of course the biggie.
But that isn't significantly different for Donie Bush than it is for Tom Brunansky. Bruno's year on the BBRef list JoeP posts is driven in part by a batting average that was modestly better than his norms and, by far, the best defensive numbers of his career. His RField, at 21 runs, is nearly 2x his next best season. Could that be real? Could that be fluky numbers where his team's LHP allowed more opposite field flies than estimated? No way to know.
I'm not particularly a hockey fan, but having the winning team circling the rink holding up the Stanley Cup is near the top of the list. Then having the individual players get to take it home (and to bars and strip clubs and kiddie birthday parties and ...) may be even better.
Maybe one of the Brilliant Readers can help me. I have a CD that is about 30 years old from a Minneapolis singer-songwriter named Scott Marrs. It includes a song called The Cheap Seats, a retelling of Casey at the Bat from the POV of a father making sacrifices to take his kids to watch the game. I can't find it on-line anywhere.
Better than his Go Cubs Go? Yeah, probably. Definitely better than When the Cubs Go Marching In. But in addition to being a great song writer (City of New Orleans, You Never Even Called Me By My Name, etc.) he was a real baseball fan.
Goodman was going to sing the National Anthem before one of the 1984 NLCS games. But his unfortunate death meant that one of his close friends, Jimmy Buffett who covered a bunch of Goodman songs, did instead.
Please count down the best sports books.
Your "I Pounded Poz" story reminded me of the days when Bill James had a fantasy baseball game and, one season, I won the coveted, "I Beat Bill James at his Own Game" T-shirt.
I'd love a countdown of Joe's favorite players (or just people) to interview. Not best performers who he has interviewed, but just fun (and informative) to talk to. I'd assume Priest Holmes would be near the top of the list, just before or just after Rulon Gardner with Tom Glavine in the top 50 too.
Joe is too nice to do it, but I'd welcome the other end of the list as well. The old unnamed BBWAA member who insultingly told Joe to decamp from his seat in old Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, the named (but I've forgotten) aging tennis star who was famously frosty so much that Joe asked no questions ...
For countdowns, separate ones for best football, basketball, hockey, tennis books. And for baseball, best books by category: Fiction, Biography, Memoir, History, General Non-Fiction.
Loved the baseball movie countdown. I would love to see a countdown of the best football, basketball, hockey, golf, etc. movies. Some of those won’t be a list of 75, but the top however many for those sports would be a lot of fun over the next several months.
Joe! Can you do an Sal Stewart and JJ comparison in the ROY race in the NL? WAR gives it to JJ but Sal is having an impressive traditional season. 30 HR/100 RBi’s.
The Houston team that Joe Morgan played for in 1965 was the Astros. It was the year the Astrodome opened, and their first season playing under that name rather than Colts or Colt .45s.
How about football movies for the next countdown? You’ve got goofy ones like The Waterboy and The Replacements and serious ones like Brian’s song and my personal favorite, North Dallas Forty.
Good call, I liked North Dallas Forty a lot!
I must admit, I wasn't very familiar with Donie Bush. But for a Dead Ball era shortstop, he had a really nice career.
40.2 career bWAR, 44th all-time in JAWS among shortstops. For comparison's sake, that places him just ahead of Hanley Ramirez, Omar Vizquel, and Dave Concepción. I see a couple commenters saying he couldn't hit—he had a 91 career OPS+, and a 96 OPS+ for the first decade of his career. Fine for a shortstop.
He later managed several MLB teams, co-owned two minor league clubs, was president of Cleveland's MLB team for nearly 30 years, and finally was a scout for the Red Sox.
Bush was discussed a bit here a few days back when one of the Brilliant Readers suggested that until the SABR / Moneyball explosion, players who walked were never valued. Bush was one of the counter-examples.
I'm guessing from your post that you are aware of the biography written by a SABR member that is linked in his Baseball-Reference page. If not, it is an informative read: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Donie-Bush/
ALoTO is a family favorite … definite Lori Petty crush back in the day … “Madonna can play” … your early days at AC (which I’ll share with my two kids in college) … McGonigle’s rookie season … it’s all great stuff. But my main takeaway from this? OMG I FORGOT JUST HOW GREAT MIKE TROUT WAS RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE.
bWAR aside, of the 189 players who have enough at bats to be eligible, McGonigle is 24th in average. 87% of the 189 are batting below .280. The 24 batters counting from the bottom up are all batting less than .230. At the present time there are only 8 hitters above .300. Maybe I'm wrong but that seems like a unusually low number. If it is lower than normal, then I think what McGonigle has done is even more extraordinary.
8 batters above .300 is both very unusual historically and basically the new normal. There were 7 in all of 2025 as well as 2024. In 2023, there were a whopping 9 such hitters.
On Sesame Street they'd have a little word or picture association segment called "Which of These Is Not Like the Other?". Donie Bush was a good field no hit shortstop for the Tigers in the Ty Cobb era. How he ever landed on a list with Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe Jackson, Albert Pujols, Mike Trout etc.is a total mystery to me.
A no-hit SS for his career, yes (91 OPS+) but he did provide some offense that year (115), mostly based on a .380 OBP and league-leading 88 walks. With the glove, he led the league in SS assists (567), but also in errors (71!).
It just seems to me looking at his stats for that year that it's not a top ten age 21 season regardless of what the bWAR formula says. It certainly appears to be an anomaly, an outlier, not a true representation of what Bush contributed, or failed to contribute to his team, and proof one has look deeper and not blindly accept what bWAR spits out.
In what way do you see Bush's bWAR as an outlier and non-representative of what he otherwise did for the Tigers that season? It was largely in-line with his career as he had three other seasons of 5 or greater bWAR, numbers that would be expected from a plot of a career without an outlier season. It was his best hitting season, with a 115 OPS+ and studies show that defense peaks young, so you'd expect his WAR to be at his highest. Prorate his next year to the same PAs and he would have been at about 6 WAR to go along with his marginally worse hitting (109 OPS+).
Looking at other SS of the era ... Joe Tinker had a different hitting profile, but was roughly similar offensively with a 96 career OPS+. In Tinker's best (full) hitting season of 1908 two years before Bush's he had a 118 OPS+ essentially the same as Bush's 115. Tinker, that year, had 7.9 bWAR. Dave Bancroft, Rabbit Maranville, ... the seasonal WAR totals are in line with what Bush did.
I guess my take is that if you told me only that a player was in the top 3 in his league in OBA, first in runs scored, and played a better than average SS, I most certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn he had 6.5 WAR or feel that 6.5 WAR over valued his contributions.
His 53 steals also placed him in the top 3 in the league.
The part of his stat line that always amazes me is his sacrifice bunts. He had 52 that season, one of four years where he was at or above 40. Teams don't bunt that much, let alone individual players.
My hunch is that defensive data from the days before radio existed probably aren't the most reliable.
Defensive stats in the pre Pitch by Pitch years where they are all based on adjustments to the old standby of Range Factor have obvious problems. Estimating chances rather than having pretty good (albeit not perfect) knowledge is of course the biggie.
But that isn't significantly different for Donie Bush than it is for Tom Brunansky. Bruno's year on the BBRef list JoeP posts is driven in part by a batting average that was modestly better than his norms and, by far, the best defensive numbers of his career. His RField, at 21 runs, is nearly 2x his next best season. Could that be real? Could that be fluky numbers where his team's LHP allowed more opposite field flies than estimated? No way to know.
For a countdown, something that probably Joe and his friends are the only people who could put it together: Best Sports Traditions.
The green jacket at The Masters... The Olympic Torch Relay... the Seventh Inning Stretch....
Won't be easy to decide which one is 'better' than another, but it would be fun to hear what people think of them.
I'm not particularly a hockey fan, but having the winning team circling the rink holding up the Stanley Cup is near the top of the list. Then having the individual players get to take it home (and to bars and strip clubs and kiddie birthday parties and ...) may be even better.
How about a countdown of the best baseball songs ever?
I'll let everybody else nominate the obvious ones. I'm going to start by nominating "Van Lingle Mungo" by Dave Frishberg and "Smokey Joe" by Phil Cole
Underrated: Todd Snider's "America Favorite Pastime." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2SPjcKM4M
"Dock Ellis didn't think he was pitching that day / Back in 1970 ..."
Classic: "Did you See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?" No clue who recorded it first, but I am fond of the Count Bassie version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-7Ac2LVVYU
Better known: Bob Dylan's "Catfish"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eql7x6AYTM4
"Lazy stadium night / Catfish on the mound / "strike three," the umpire said / Batter have to go back and sit down."
Maybe one of the Brilliant Readers can help me. I have a CD that is about 30 years old from a Minneapolis singer-songwriter named Scott Marrs. It includes a song called The Cheap Seats, a retelling of Casey at the Bat from the POV of a father making sacrifices to take his kids to watch the game. I can't find it on-line anywhere.
"A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request," by Steve Goodman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk
Better than his Go Cubs Go? Yeah, probably. Definitely better than When the Cubs Go Marching In. But in addition to being a great song writer (City of New Orleans, You Never Even Called Me By My Name, etc.) he was a real baseball fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxZVuBzFVyI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZplzurG_qcM&list=RDZplzurG_qcM&start_radio=1
Goodman was going to sing the National Anthem before one of the 1984 NLCS games. But his unfortunate death meant that one of his close friends, Jimmy Buffett who covered a bunch of Goodman songs, did instead.
As long as "Centerfield" is dead last, it would be at least a cromulent list.
Astros were the Astros in Joe Morgan’s 1965 season, not the Colt 45s.
I came here to say this. Minor point, but '65 was indeed their first season as the Astros.
Wait til Joe finds out about Sal Stewart.