While we wait for baseball to return, Joe Posnanski will count down his top 60 moments in baseball history — think of it as a companion piece to The Baseball 100 — with a series of essays on the most memorable, remarkable and joyous scenes of the game. This project will not contain more words than “Moby Dick,” but we hope you enjoy it.



Slaughter’s Mad DashOct. 15, 1946



We begin our series of baseball’s greatest moments with Enos Slaughter, who would have turned 104 years old on the day this essay was published, April 27. Slaughter was the player Pete Rose wanted to be, or, even more to the point, he was the player that Pete Rose’s father wanted his son to be. Slaughter was relentless. He was ruthless. It’s hard to fully capture the sheer brazenness of his game. You know that Rose thing when he ran to first base on a walk? Slaughter invented that. “He was a hustler,” the sports columnist Darrell...