Mr. Book thanks Dutton for providing an advance copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed are Mr. Book’s own.
Mr. Book just finished Fifty Seasons: Stories of the Baseball Years That Echo, by Joe Posnanski. Dutton will publish the book on February 2, 2027. Mr. Book finished reading this on November 9, 2026.
This was Mr. Book’s sixth Posnanski book. Four of the previous five got an A+ and the other got a B. So expectations for this one were pretty high.
Posnanski gets the business of ranking the 100 greatest seasons ever out of the way in the prologue. Then he gets to the list that gives the book its title, the 50 seasons that still echo through baseball history. That gives him room to go beyond the major leagues. There are seasons from high school, college, the minors and women’s baseball. He also mixes in 18 chapters called “I Think Now of a Baseball Story,” which give him room to tell even more stories along the way.
Two of Mr. Book’s favorite chapters came back to back. In the first, Bill Veeck wants to replace Lou Boudreau as Cleveland’s manager and nearly trades him when Boudreau refuses to give up the job. Cleveland fans made their feelings clear, and Boudreau stayed to lead the team to the 1948 championship as its shortstop and manager. The next chapter is about Ron Guidry’s 1978 season, but some of the best material comes from 1976. After a rough outing against Boston, Guidry went 47 days without pitching in a game for Billy Martin. He spent that time talking pitching with Dick Tidrow and Sparky Lyle. Mr. Book knew what Guidry did in 1978 and enjoyed reading about what happened in that bullpen two years earlier.
The George Brett chapter was another highlight. What Mr. Book enjoyed most was the insight into Brett himself. Posnanski shows how much Brett feared failure and how much his father’s approval mattered to him. That made Brett’s reaction to the chase for .400 especially interesting. As his average slipped, he worried that people would say he choked. The chapter gave Mr. Book a better understanding of what it was like to be George Brett in 1980.
The Old Hoss Radbourn chapter had one of Mr. Book’s favorite stories in the book. When Radbourn was accused of gambling, his excuse was that he’d been drunk. It worked. He stayed on the team. Mr. Book also particularly enjoyed the chapters on Jackie Robinson and Roger Maris, and the way Posnanski used Mark McGwire’s 1998 season to tell a much longer story about the history of the home run.
Mr. Book gave Fifty Seasons an A+ and inducted it into the Hall of Fame.
Goodreads and NetGalley use a five-star rating system. On Mr. Book’s scale, an A or A+ earns five stars, a B+ earns four, a B earns three, a C earns two, and a D or F earns one.
This review appears at NetGalley, Goodreads, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews and Mr. Baseball History’s Substack.
