Author: Joe Posnanski

Four Lessons From The Game of Football for Your DaughterBy Gunther Cunningham If you are going to play, ATTACK. There is a fine line between greatness and failure. Don’t worry about mistakes. All games are full of them. Remember, the winner is the one who made the adjustments at halftime. Enjoy the game and always…

I became a “sportswriter” — with heavy quote marks around that word — during basketball season in the winter of 1986. I was a sophomore in college, I had just turned 19 and to say I was entirely clueless would be to understate things. For my first story for The Charlotte Observer — a Charlotte…

There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t think about my dear friend Ken Burger — and today I was thinking about his classic invention, “Fire a Friend Day.” That special sports holiday, which happens across the country every year, is commemorated by sports decision-makers who, in order to save their own jobs,…

Mario Mendoza never hit .200 over a season. That might be a little bit surprising when you consider that his name is so deeply connected to that specific batting average of .200. But there’s a lot that’s interesting about the Mendoza Line, one of the most famous and fascinating ideas in sports (and a little…

Phil Niekro went to bed on Oct. 5, 1985 conflicted and unsure about what he would do the next day. His Yankees had just lost to Toronto 5-1, and that essentially ended New York’s season. They had entered this final three-game series trailing the Blue Jays by three games in the American League East. A…

When I was growing up, it was widely understood that the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. That was one of those things people said all the time, often in conversations that had nothing at all to do with baseball. “Hey, so what do you think of this Abscam thing?” “Dunno. But man,…

Gary Carter is one of more than a dozen baseball players who was nicknamed “Kid.” This does not include more specialized versions of the nickname, such as The K Kid (Clayton Kershaw), the Say Hey Kid (Willie Mays), Kid Natural (Ryne Sandberg), the Big Kid (Bryce Harper), the Good Kid (Lou Boudreau), Billy the Kid…

I was in love with a television commercial once. It was one of those MasterCard Priceless commercials where the narrator would say something like, “A jar of peanut butter, $2.49.” … “A jar of jelly, $1.99.” … “A loaf of bread, $2.29.” … “A peanut butter and jelly sandwich: priceless.” In this commercial, a father…

There was just something substantial about Hondo — heck, even the nickname was substantial. John Havlicek was called “Hondo” by his childhood friends in Martins Ferry, Ohio, (like Phil Niekro) because even as a kid he reminded them of the John Wayne character in the movie. He was just like that, solid, admirable. When people…

My old boss and friend Mark Tomasik put up a fascinating statistic on Tuesday. Mark is one of the biggest Cardinals fans I know, and I realize that he saw the stat from a Cardinals perspective. Still … OK, few baseball stats make my jaw drop anymore. This one did. Yadi Molina has as many…