Update: Since this blog was written, Joe Posnanski — like many bloggers — has shifted platforms one or more times. The first link in the post takes you to his current Substack page, where you can also find a link to his sports writing at The Athletic. Some of his posts will now be behind paywalls, while others are no longer archived. It is the nature of the digital platform beast, so reader beware.

On my way home from work this evening, I decided to open my iPad to Joe Posnanski’s blog and just read and read until the train pulled up at the Silver Spring station.  Thirty-five minutes of bliss.

Why?

Perhaps I wanted to think about something besides work.  As my colleague Allie said yesterday, “It has been a very long short week.”

Perhaps I am really getting sick of this endless string of days with temperatures in the single digits and wind chills below zero. (I vote for this as the real reason.  I don’t mind cold, but enough already!)

Perhaps it is my first step in 2014 in my own personal baseball preseason, a topic I’ve written on before.

Or perhaps I just needed my regular fix of Joe.  What’s not to love in a blog with the subtitle of “Curiously long post about baseball, Springsteen, infomercials and anything else that comes to mind.”

If you don’t know Joe Posnanski, you haven’t looked over to the right in my “Baseball Online” links and clicked on his name. Posnanski’s own site includes the following from his very clever “About Joe” section:

Posnanski was Senior Writer at Sports on Earth, a joint venture of USA Today and MLB Advanced media. He was Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated from 2009 to 2012. The last year he was named National Sportswriter of the Year (by the Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame). He also was named Best Sportswriter at the Blogs With Balls 4 Conference, earning him a muppet that looks like him. This is easily Posnanski’s daughters’ favorite award. The Baseball Bloggers Association named him their inaugural best online writer and renamed the award “The Joe Posnanski Award,” another fantastic honor though not quite a Muppet that looks like him.

It also tells about his life’s luck in living near losing teams:

Joe grew up in Cleveland, where he spent the bulk of his time rooting for losing teams. He and his family lived in Kansas City for 15 years, where he spent the bulk of his time writing about losing teams. Joe, his wife Margo and their two daughters Elizabeth and Katie now live in Charlotte, N.C., where they are in close proximity to losing teams.

This is clearly a guy who understands that there is more to life (and sports) than winning. I want to share a few of the gems from Joe’s recent columns.  If you get tired of the baseball columns, go all the way to the bottom to read my favorite of the ones I read tonight, which has nothing to do with sports.

Postgame is a very thoughtful blog about Richard Sherman’s recent postgame rant in the NFC Championship game last Sunday.  The more I read about Sherman, the more I like him.

Brooks Robinson, part of Joe’s series of the 100 greatest baseball players of all time.  This is Joe’s praise for defensive genius. (NOTE: Link no longer works)

The 60 Minutes Report, in which Joe describes everyone’s general “a pox on all their houses” reaction to the A-Rod, Tony Bosch, Bud Selig, MLB, CBS News mess that was the recent 60 Minutes report on A-Rod and PEDs.

Hall of Fame Recap, which is Joe’s take – in a post only die-hard baseball fans could love – about the mess that is the Hall of Fame voting process, even though they did get the Greg Maddux/Tom Glavine vote right.

And finally…my favorite Joe post of the ones I read this evening.  The “Greatest Commercial Ever” post, which is titled You don’t have to be lonely.  The commercial is for FarmersOnly.com – a dating site for country folk who are single.  Joe’s post begins by explaining why You don’t have to be lonely is the greatest commercial ever.

That is the commercial for the Farmer’s Only dating site, and it’s so brilliant — so utterly dazzling — that, like a great novel, I’m constantly finding something new and unexpectedly luminous in it. What I think makes the Farmer’s Only commercial even better than legends of the past…is that it hits an extraordinary high point, then somehow hits another higher point, then hits yet another even higher point and then finally, when you believe that the volume is all the way to 10 and there’s no place left to go, goes one higher.

I read the post on the train, then watched the video when I arrived home.  Both are hilarious and – at least to Joe’s mind – the commercial itself is true genius.  You be the judge:

Thank you Joe.  You made my night.

More to come…

DJB