Top of the Order: 25 Writers Pick Their Favorite Baseball Player of All Time

by Sean Manning (Editor), W.P. Kinsella (Foreword)

There have been many anthologies devoted to our national pastime’s greatest players, but here, at last, is one dedicated to those, for reasons far more personal than stats-based, we call our favorites. In Top of the Order twenty-five of today’s premier sports journalists, cultural critics, novelists, and humorists (as well as a couple of former major leaguers) deliver memorable, never-before-published odes to their favorite players, past or present. By turns uplifting, woeful, and hilarious, these essays define what it means to be beset by that strange, incurable condition known as baseball fandom.

Rickey Henderson / Steve Almond --
Tom Seaver / Pat Jordan --
Brooks Robinson / Laura Lippman --
Lou Gehrig / Jonathan Eig --
Pedro Martinez / Seth Mnookin --
Albert Pujols / Buzz Bissinger --
Steve Dembowski / Jim Bouton --
Kirby Puckett / Craig Finn --
Dave Kingman / Christopher Sorrentino --
Neifi Perez / King Kaufman --
Roger Clemens / Whitney Pastorek --
Tony Horton / Scott Raab --
Jeff Kent / John Albert --
Jackie Robinson / Roger Kahn --
Victor Felipe Pellot Pové (Power) / Esmeralda Santiago --
Michael Jordan / Sean Manning --
Garry Maddox / Doug Glanville --
Yutaka Euatsu / Robert Whiting --
Garry Templeton / Jeff Pearlman --
Crash Davis / Carrie Rickey --
Greg Maddux / Neal Pollack --
Bobby Murcer / Stefan Fatsis --
Mookie Wilson / Michael Ian Black --
Jim Rice / Matt Taibbi --
Mariano Rivera / Darin Strauss

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Essays, Anthologies

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Jasen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Random library find that features an array of great writers writing about a wild mix of ball players for a bunch of unexpected angles. Really great use of anthology form!

“But if I had to a favorite....the man who floats to the top is the one who best encompasses my belief that baseball is a sport of connections, of coincidence, of eerie, spiritual, all-consuming synchronicity. I focus more on the rhythms than the individuals, more on the fill season than the specific game, more on how things affect me than the statistical bottom line...And the way I know this is because Roger Clemens is the only baseball player ever to break my heart.” P.89 by Whitney Pastorek on Roger Clemens

“ One of the worst parts of being a devoted fan of any crappy team, in any sport, is the sense that you’re truly only rooting for the laundry, that the players in the uniform bearing the name of the your town don’t care half as much as you do. Nor should day. They may be men playing a boys game, but they’re also men at work at a job are defined by its negative difficulty. Their every act is literally numbered, and those numbers – hand, and a fan’s eyes, the players themselves – our public property. Ultimately, though, they owe us nothing beyond their best effort.” P.101 by Scott Raab on Tony Horton

“This is where sport comes in. It’s order to life’s chaos, perpetual youth and vigor to life’s aging and infirmity. It’s diversion, distraction, escape.” P.131-132 by Sean Manning on Michael Jordan

“It’s wish fulfillment; we can better face the PowerPoint presentations and stale danishes of our workaday lives when we imagine ourselves pitching in the bottom of the ninth of Game Seven. There’s nothing ‘carpe didn’t about most of our existences. But when you see people giving the lie to human imperfection, you feel a little part of that, too.” P.207 by Darin Strauss on Mariano Rivera

[Michael Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is not the book I envisioned when I picked it up. Even though I knew it was about why each player was a writers personal favorite ball player. It was way more personal then I was expecting.

Yet with that said, I really enjoyed the book and the stories each told.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super uneven set of essays. Some great ones (the Rickey Henderson was my fave), but also some duds. I wish I could curate a different version, matching writers to players. Alas, that's not in my purview just yet.

[Gordon Kwok · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book for baseball fans. Essentially it is sportswriters being asked to write a brief article about their favorite player and why. Highly recommended for any baseball fan!

[Gerard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun book, really liked even just reading the names of players that had been selected. Some of the writers were just not my style though.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mixed bag that I ended up not finishing. One would have to care more about baseball or less about writing

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whitney Pastorek identifies Roger Clemons as her favorite player, for the simple reason that he was the only baseball player to ever break her heart. That, to me, is a perfect capsule description of the power that we bestow on our favorite players - people we may never meet, but who we choose as proxy receptacles for our hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

This book is a wonderful exploration of the ephermeral reasons that people decide on a 'favorite' player, and the absolute dedication that our favorites inspire.

The best thing about this book is the way it includes more than just the usual suspects (Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson) and veers into a lot of highly personal and smaller market choices (Craig Finn on Kirby Puckett is especially good, and Buzz Bissinger makes a great case for the Great Pujols). Not all the essays are created equal (Fatsis could have cut the Murcur piece by half and it would still be overdone, and Carrie Rickey should perhaps have reconsidered her contribution on Crash Davis in favor of a non-fictional ball player), but most are a great combination of personal reminscience and impassioned stats defense. They cover some well trod territory (Why is Brooks Robinson the best?) but also divert into the way losing clubs turn out hometown heroes, how being great at just one thing (Steve Dembowski getting hit by pitches) is sometimes enough, and how fathers pass down that deep and abiding love of baseball to their children.

Reading this book feels a lot like sitting around a bar with other true fans, swapping stories about the players you've loved the most. In other words, a great way to pass the time until the next game starts.

[Tom Choi · Rating 3 out of 5]

For anyone who grew up following baseball, the legends of the sport are like distant family members, each with his own story of greatness. "Top of the Order" is comprised of writers reminiscing about their favorite players. You have your usual icons of lore (Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Tom Seaver) but it's the unlikely left-of-center entries that makes this book truly special. Take for instance former SI writer Jeff Pearlman writing about how Garry Templeton's bad-assed personality allowed the author to think differently and stand out from his white surburan inanity. Or Michael Ian Black confessing his own episode of prejudice during a harmless encounter with Mookie Blaylock. And there's Robert Whiting account of the colorful and bizarre career of the great Japanese pitcher Yutaka Enatsu whose story could have been only played by Toshiro Mifune.


Baseball is that rare modern sport that somehow retained its old flair for legends, tall-tales, and outsized historical dramas of the "old world." We may live in a more resourceful world that is steeped in a fact-based reality but as this collection suggests, we are all still in need of stories of personalities that are bigger, bolder, funnier, and, ironically, wiser than what our prudent and skeptical age may offer us.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not all of the essays in this anthology are to my liking, it is always interesting to read which ball players another person likes and why. My favorite of these is the one by Jim Bouton, by far, but there are many I liked. Jonathan Eig's essay on Lou Gehrig has inspired me to get and read his book on Gehrig; Roger Kahn on Jackie Robinson is an affecting remembrance of a friendship and a good effort at retrieving the reality of a black leader who has been sentimentalized and memorialized into a kind of self-congratulatory symbol of how good we are as compared to the generation before Jackie. Read this book, find your own favorite ball player.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great essays from two of baseball's best reporters, Buzz Bissiner (an ode to Pujols) and Roger Kahn (Jackie Robinson). While somewhat predictable selections, Bissinger and Kahn are certified power hitters in this sub-genre with a considerable following.

Given the range of reasons for each writer's selection, the collection serves a reminder of the multitude of reasons to make baseball a pleasurable diversion.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very pleasant set of 25 essays of various writers about their favorite baseball players. They ranged from snarky to nostalgic to poignant. Johanthan Eig on Gehrig was a particular favorite, but of the 25, I really enjoyed about 20 of them. Unfortunately, it is a collection of essays, so the ones I didn't enjoy (mostly ones that were too narcissistic or snarky) kept it from being five star. But there is a lot of good writing in this book!

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 2 out of 5]

25 essays of varying quality, but some of the best--pieces on Jim Rice, Neifi Perez, Yutaka Enatsu, Steve Dembowski, Bobby Murcer, and Dave Kingman--are well worth your time. The entire book is rather short and perhaps not worthy of a purchase; I read it in less than two hours at a local Borders. Also: Michael Ian Black's Mookie Wilson anecdote is distressingly bad and completely out of place.

[Tad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pat Jordan (Tom Seaver) and Jonathan Eig (Lou Gehrig) blew my doors off with their essays. Others so far are strong, some less so. So it's an uneven compilation...but Jordan and Eig are stupendous. Also, Jim Bouton's essay on Steve Dembowski, who was 5-foot-4 but hit .375 with a .730 on-base percentage as a college senior, was outstanding.

[Leslie Zampetti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the essays in Top of the Order are truly enlightening and entertaining, but most are just okay. Baseballs fans would do better to pick up Glanville's recent book or another of the excellent baseball memoirs available.

[Tim Wendel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies can be a bear to pull together, but Sean Manning does a masterfully job here.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed them all but loved Jim Bouton's piece on Steve Dembowski & Kinsella's forward.