Throwback Thursday (aka links dump), Dec. 24, 2015

I know most of you have more pressing things to do today, you procrastinators, you. But here’s something for when you take a break.

♦ Like the Bookshelf, DiamondHoggers has a podcast segment. This episode features Rob Miech, author of the 2012 release, The Last Natural: Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever. Miech updated the book the following year as Phenom: The Making of Bryce Harper. (Entertainment Weekly picked up on Harper’s infamous “clown question” statement here.)

♦ The peripatetic Allen Barra published “How Baseball Jargon Became Nonsense” in The Atlantic in 2012.

♦ Phillip Bump asks the question”how many players on the Xs are actually an X?” in this piece from The Classical, using this information as his criteria:

The team’s name must be interpreted as literally as possible.
The application of the name to the player must be as accurate as possible.
The count must use the team’s 40-man roster (as of May 29, 2012) because minor leaguers are fun.
I may break any and all of these rules if it amuses me.

♦ Singer/actor Stevenn (not a typo for a change) Beck waxes something about Johan Santan’s no-hitter for the New York Mets.

♦ Here’s a review I did for Bookreporter.com on Lefty: An American Odyssey, by his daughter Vernona Gomez and Lawrence Goldstone.

♦ Here’s a review I didn’t do (That Hardball Times’ Chris Jaffe did) on Ozzie’s School of Management: Lessons from the Dugout, the Clubhouse, and the Doghouse.

♦ Maggie Lawrence, one of my favorite baseball artists, contributed this piece on why the sport is her muse on MLBReports.com.

♦ Mark Ahrens wrote this profile on Christy Walsh, perhaps the first sports agent, for BooksonBaseball. Would love to read Walsh’s memoir, Adios to Ghosts (hint, hint), which is long out of print and seemingly even on he used book market. Meanwhile I’m still waiting for this one to come down in price.

♦ Forbes published this Q&A with Matthew Cerone, founder of Metsblog.

♦ Finally, a piece I contributed to the Huffington Post asking the burning question, “If the Yankees Are Such a Class Organization, Why Do They Cheat?”