What makes Joe Posnanski a good columnist?

I'm still kicking myself for bitching out when I shared a media center with Posnanski last year. We have a mutual friend, we both grew up rooting for the Browns...it was a gimme.

But my journalism groupiness made me freak out until he was gone. Dammit.

 

ijag - remember, it's better to have shared a media center with posnanski than to have never shared a media center at all.

 

One "good turn" deserves another.

 

Pos could easily do what Whitlock does if there was a need. Whitlock could never dream of being the kind of writer Posnanski is.

 

Damn solid point, though I do think it's difficult.

What I like about Poz is that he's and everyday guy. He seems like he could be your next-door neighbor. I've never talked to to him, but covered a few games where he was at and he seems like a down to earth guy, and he writes that way.
Poz doesn't need a soapbox to stand on because he doesn't yell in his columns. He just tells a great story that makes you want to keep reading. He writes like a normal guy and he comes across as normal instead of making himself some mighty columnist. Some of his stuff that stands out the most to me is when he talks about his childhood in a column or blog and relates a situation about Cleveland sports in his childhood to present day Kansas City.
Poz' memory is insane, especially with baseball. He could be writing a column from a Royals game and compare a play or player to something that happened in the Negro Leagues or in the 70s just as easily as a play that happened the previous night.
One thing that this thread reminded me is he rights about obscure stuff at times, but then he will come back with something everyone can relate to. An example of this is he wrote something in a column about how his kids constantly sing the Shawnee Mission Kia car dealership jingle and related it to sports. I hadn't heard the jingle, but when I moved to KC a few month later for a summer, I heard the commercial all the time and it did get stuck in my head, just as Poz said it would.
Finally, as other have mentioned, he makes a 30-40 inch column/feature read like a a story half its size (unlike this post).

 

Said it before and will say it again. Posnanski and Whitlock benefit from each other.
Joe's great at writing baseball and Jason is absolutely horrible. Joe can't offer a really strong football opinion, and Jason will tell you exactly what the truth is and why.
Funny thing is, Jason's voice would be just one of many shouting in New York and Joe would be so different you would kind of hear his softer voice anyway.
That said, as good as they are in the same section in Kansas City, imagine how good it would be if they were together in Chicago.
And if the Tribune ever makes it happen, I want my cut.

 

Take reader comments with a grain of salt, but here's an interesting one on JoPo's column about Bill Self today:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, another BORING JoPo article. Well, at least he didn't write about his trip to London or that he's homeless while in a Plaza Hotel. But hey at least he has all his clones saying he's the second coming of Jesus. ...

JoPo has a wealth of fans who love his sappy prose but I am not one of his clones. His style is reminiscent of the grade school teacher you had who gave everyone A?s no matter how many wrong answers the dumb kid sitting next to you wrote down. JoPo writes like even the dumb kids in sports are honor-roll worthy. In his world there are no bad guys, at least none who he might run into in a locker room or at a party. ... JoPo?s columns run on forever and I rarely bother to take the entire trip.

 

Jim Rome checking in, apparently.

 

That one reader comment pops up on many of Joe's columns. I believe, although can't confirm, it was taken from Greg Hall, who used to write for the KC Star and now writes for......I have no idea.

 

OK, makes sense. There was a reference to a Greg Hall that I cut out because it didn't make any sense to me. That explains it.

 

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2008/04/28/roses-and-bosses/

This is better than probably anything you will read in a newspaper today. And it probably only took him 20 minutes.

 

just saw this jeremy. i meant that i didn't think it was very difficult to understand why he's a great columnist, not to be able to write like him.