Throwback Thursday (aka massive links dump, continued)

Since I posted the first of these on a Thursday, which is known on social media as a time of reflection, I thought to make it a regular thing under this rubric. These are kind of fun; it’s like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get. (Actually, I never understood that famous quote from Forrest Gump. If it’s a box of chocolate covered cherries, don’t you know exactly what you’re going to get?)

On the one hand, I’m happy to report that I’m catching up / running out of these old links (some are no longer “with us”). On the other hand, it’s been cool reminiscing.

I highly recommend Pocket as a way to hold onto links you come that you want to keep. Unlike bookmarks, Pocket keeps the entire page and makes it relative easy for you to find stuff you “pocketed.” I have keepers going back six years — more than 5,000 links — and I’ve decided it’s time to start cleaning house so here are some submitted for your amusement, perusal, and education. Some are not current, but in a sense, they’re timeless. They’re presented in reverse order (oldest first).

Very cool: You can read a digital copy of Stories of the Base Ball Field: The National Game’s Great Exponents and Their Methods, originally published in 1890, on the archives.org website.
Shirley Povich was one of my favorites, not the least of which was due to the fact that he was a straight-shooter who believed in fairness. He was also an observant Jew in an industry that, although well-represented, was not especially so. And, of course, he was a damn good writer. So I took great pleasure when the University of Maryland announced the establishment of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. I’m cheating a bit here, because the original link from 2011 making the announcement is no longer valid. So sue me.
John Thorn, the official historian for Major League Baseball (and co-author of the newly re-released The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics) posted this column about the history of stats int he national pastime following his participation in a 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston.
I wish PunditTracker updated its site more often, but given that its purpose, at least when it comes to sports, is to see which “experts” were correct in their preseason predictions… This isn’t just baseball here, so you’ll have to scroll a bit.

“They” say if you want to learn a foreign language you should read a lot of books for kids. Given that advice, here’s an Amazon search for baseball books in French.
From the Artifacts Collector site, this Baseball Card Collecting 101 – Q&A With Ben Henry.
An interview from Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter site with Rob Fleder, former executive editor of Sports Illustrated, on his collection Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team. (And here’s my interview with Fleder.)
Not the AAGPBBL, but the Japanese version of the professional game for women, as reported in The New York Times in March 2012.
An appreciation from the Baseball: Past and Present site on “Phil Rizzuto: Great Player, Better Broadcaster“
James Bailey posted this commentary on “Why phony ratings matter” on his site