"Hall Of Nearly Great" Celebrates Forgotten Players, Available Now

A few months ago, you might have heard me tell you about a book project that Sky Kalkman and I were raising money for via Kickstarter. The project was funded, and now, a few months later, that book is out. As of July 18, The Hall of Nearly Great has been available to the public, at hallofnearlygreat.com.

There are 43 essays written by 42 authors, and that roster was handpicked by Sky and myself, composed of many of our favorite baseball (and otherwise) writers out there on the Internet. Many of SB Nation's own are included, such as Rob Neyer, Grant Brisbee, and Jon Bois, as well as many from outside the walls of this network, like Joe Posnanski, Will Leitch, Sam Miller, Jonah Keri, Craig Calcaterra, and many, many more. I'm not even the lone Over the Monster contributor in there, as Matthew Kory writes up Norm Cash in his essay, and old friend Cee Angi takes on Kenny Lofton.

It's only in e-book form, but we have you covered whether you own an e-reader or not. There's a Kindle-specific version, a general e-reader one, and a PDF as well, in case you want to read it on a tablet, desktop, or laptop. All three are included in one bundle, so you don't need to worry about collecting them all later on if you do get an e-reader, either: the entire 43-essay book, roughly 400 pages were it written on dead trees, is just $12.

There's plenty of Red Sox-centric attention in this compilation, too. I tackle Bret Saberhagen's career and tenure with Boston in one of my own chapters, but Luis Tiant, Dwight Evans, and Ellis Burks also get their own spotlight, as do part-time Sox like David Cone and Frank Viola.

If that's not enough for you, we have an excerpt over at Deadspin -- a chapter in its entirety. You can also listen to NESN's podcast from Wednesday, in which I talked to NESN Nation's Dan Duquette about the origins of the project, and the final product. A little later on Thursday, there will be another excerpt live at The Classical, an outlet that contributed three wonderful essays to our effort.

If you have any questions about the project, don't hesitate to ask me, either here or at marcnormandin@gmail.com. I hope you take the time to check it out, and, if you do, I hope you enjoy reading some of my favorites as much as I did.