It's a great read, but the guy who called it the best essay in the sport's history on r/baseball was wrong.
What would you say the best essay in Baseball's history is? I love reading these types of things.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/hub_fans_bid_kid_adieu_article.shtml As someone who has studied Ted Williams to the extent of near-madness, this essay perfectly captured what I consider damn near the greatest moment of his career. Ted Williams was a legend, the greatest hitter of all time, a war hero, and Boston's fans and media treated him like shit for twenty years. If he had acknowledged the cheers on that cold day in Boston it would have been an admission of defeat. And he never did, nor was there even the slightest chance he would. It's the perfect baseball story.Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn't tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted "We want Ted" for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.
For a more modern answer, this has always been a favorite. Anything from Joe Posnanski. Roger Angell, another great, though an oldie. Bill James' early work essentially invented and popularized sabermetrics, though none of it stands out on literary merit per se. And then of course this. The list goes on and on. I don't know. Baseball is a game of people, and moments, and history and wonderment. Giamatti captures only part of the story: heartbreak.
Still somewhat active, though.Roger Angell, another great, though an oldie.