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).

In honor of Alex Irvine, who was a winner on Jeopardy recently, I’m offering his short story “Agent Provocateur.” which appeared on StrangeHorizons.com in 2002. It’s a speculative piece about Moe Berg that is especially relevant since ESPN will release Spyball, a 30 for 30 short on the mysterious Berg, in the immediate future.
Don’t know how this sabermetric stat hasn’t caught on by now.
Because we’re getting close to the Midsummer Classic, why not this list of specialized all-stars?
And because we’re deep in soccer World Cup mode, this piece by Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin, about “What Baseball Does to the Soul,” excerpted from Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team, edited by Rob Fleder, which appeared as an opinion piece in the March 30,2012 issue of The New York Times.
Baseball and the Marx Brothers? What could be better?
It’s rare to find a meta-piece about baseball books, so I’m glad this one — “Downtown Library’s Baseball Treasure” — is still available.
Is the premise for this 2012 article from The New Republic — “Why Baseball is the Best—And Least Exploitative—American Sport” — still true (if it ever was)?
Another timely coincidence: This interview with Zack Hample — who caught of Alex Rodriguez’s home run/3,000th hit — appeared on WBUR’s Here And Now program in 2012. Care to guess what the topic was?
Another nostalgic piece — this one about the old Yankees’ star Tony Lazzeri — appeared on the SFist site in 2012.
Since the Mets are so disappointing lately, this piece about Jimmy “Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game” Breslin by Richard Sandomir, sports media writer for The New York Times, is uncomfortably apt.
Finally, another list: the 13 “best” baseball books, this one from The Daily Beast in April 2012. Although I might consider these among the best, there’s definitely one which I would not include. Can you guess which?