Baseball's 100: A personal ranking of the best players in baseball history

by Maury Allen

Veteran New York area baseball writer offers his list of baseball's 100 best players ever, complete with a short profile, & a full page. bw photo of each. Also lists runner-ups, best managers, ballparks, general managers etc. BW photos.

Genres: Baseball

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the new book The Baseball 100 prompted me to pull this volume from 1982 off my shelves. This is a more typical baseball ranking book than Posnanski’s. Each of the 100 player entries includes a picture and a 2-1/2 page article that is fairly formulaic, including a paragraph about their early life, an anecdote that is symbolic of their career, and a narrative of their accomplishments. There are a few interesting quirks in the book. Allen arbitrarily excludes Negro League players, as well as players who played at all before 1900 (so no Cy Young or Honus Wagner!) It is also interesting to see the players he has included as all-time greats who were still in mid-career in 1982, who for one reason or another, while great ball players, did not pan out to be hall-of-famers and who would not be included in a list of 100 all-time greats in 2022 (Steve Garvey, Fred Lynn, Dave Parker). This is an interesting snapshot from 40 years ago of one writer’s perspective on baseball’s all-time greats. But it’s not as engrossing as Posnanski’s later entry.