The Most Fun Players on Each MLB Team
A celebration of the guys who make baseball a little bit more entertaining each day.
Today’s splash of joy — favorite baseball cards:
From Brilliant Reader Charles: 1994 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice Cal Ripken Jr #240
Pitch: an inner circle hall of famer, a graceful shortstop and a powerful hitter, but instead of an action shot, I want to stage a dugout photo op where he holds the newest phone technology so he appears to be a C-villain, and he’ll have a gold chain too
Response: no notes
From Brilliant Reader Nathan: Joe Kerrigan, Expos, Topps 1977
I was a huge baseball fan growing up , and I collected baseball cards. So, of course, my little sister collected them too. But she knew pretty much nothing about the game. So while I sorted my cards by team, by position, and so on, she sorted them by things like “biggest smile.” And the winner was this Joe Kerrigan card, which I still think of fondly today.
From Brilliant Reader Seth: Pee Wee Reese, Dodgers, Topps 1958
I’m 21. In three weeks, I’ll be moving from New York to Los Angeles. I’m chasing a dream. I’m absolutely petrified.
Aaron, my big brother, hands me a graduation present. A 1958 Topps Pee Wee Reese.
“He made the move. So can you.”
Suddenly, I’m not so scared.
Before we get to today’s huge hit — the most fun baseball player on every team — a few quick announcements.
— Our book BIG FAN is now available wherever you get books — Bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. — and it’s such a joy for us to be out there talking about. The energy has been absolutely amazing. We just found out that BIG FAN is 22nd on the USA Today Best Seller List, which is bonkers because that list includes ALL books — fiction, non-fiction, kids books, paperbacks, hardcovers, the whole gamut.
And we don’t even have “Dragons” in the title.
Mike and I are going to be on Seth Meyers on June 10 and CBS Mornings on June 13, and by then, we’ll need to find a trimmed-down version of the Mookie story. It’s my favorite story in the book, I think, and it’s been a huge hit on the road — especially for longtime fans — but I think it ran like 15 minutes in St. Louis. That’s like my “I Really Didn’t Need That Stew” story (also in the book!). Maybe I should travel the country and tell stories like Mark Twain.
I think Mike and I might record the full Mookie story just for you, JoeBlogs readers.
I do want to share this comment from Brilliant Reader Tom on BlueSky because it so matches our hopes for what reading BIG FAN will be like:
Started reading Big Fan today. Every couple paragraphs there's something else that I think will be my favorite moment of the book (Dean Martin! Random Hiaasen reference! Fatuous Owls!). Then I got to the Pickleball chapter, which is absolutely the best thing Joe has ever written (ok probably not, but it IS my favorite thing Joe has written). And so many miles to go.
— Our older daughter, Elizabeth, is now running the JoeBlogs store, and she’s added some fun summer clothes and maybe my favorite item in the store, the Grilli Grill Apron, which celebrates Steve and Jason Grilli’s combined 82 big league saves. We think (we’re not sure, but we think) that Steve Grilli has purchased one. Anyway: Perfect for Father’s Day!
— I don’t want to jump the gun and start talking too much about my next book, Fifty Seasons, which doesn’t come out until February. But it’s already out there for sale, and I’m doing the edits and rewrite on it now, and I think (and hope) that when I’m done, it might just be the best baseball book I’ve written.
It’s a countdown of the fifty most magical individual seasons in baseball history, and it’s also a fresh look at some of the greatest players in baseball history, and it’s also a bit of a personal journey through baseball. I have wrestled so hard with this one because I want it to go to places that the Baseball 100 and Why We Love Baseball didn’t go. We’ll talk plenty about it going forward — we have a cover reveal coming, we’ll announce a cool preorder campaign, and all that. But just so you don’t worry, yeah, Mark Fidrych’s 1976 season is definitely one of the fifty.
Now, for The Clubhouse, I use the Fun Score formula to determine the most fun player on every team in baseball this year, based on the first two months of the season. It’s long and meandering, just like JoeBlogs posts should be.
The Clubhouse is where we go a little deeper. If you’re in The Clubhouse, the door is open! If you’d like to join, we would (of course) love to have you:
