Editor’s note: Due to scheduling changes that will take effect next week, future link posts will be an occasional Monday feature.

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• I wouldn’t typically devote a bullet point to a past post from this blog, but something interesting happened in our back pages this week. A couple months ago, Joe Guzzardi wrote about his prep school friendship with Joe DiMaggio Jr. This caught the attention of a woman who said she was Joey D’s ex-wife. She left the most recent comment. It always interests me when we draw notice from friends and family members of the people we write about.
• Cyril Morong analyzes Albert Pujols’ slow start (a .750 OPS being slow for him, granted, which is still better than every starter on the Oakland Athletics.)
• Otis Anderson writes about the need for San Francisco Giants fans to have a talk with their inner Jeff Goldblum in the wake of Buster Posey’s disastrous injury.
• SB Nation pokes fun at the New York Daily News for suggesting Jose Bautista might have used steroids.
• Joe Posnanski wrote a guest piece for the Kansas City Star on Paul Splittorff who died of cancer Wednesday at 64. Posnanski wrote of Splittorff, “He did not talk about his declining health. He did not talk about the cancer that was ravaging his body. People will say that is because Splitt was an intensely private man, and that is so. But I think there was something else too. Paul did not want any favors, and he did not want special treatment, and he did not want to live anywhere but in the moment.” Good stuff. Would if I could do that more often.
• Forbes.com includes Jim Thome among a handful of locks for the Hall of Fame. Seriously? Steroid speculation aside (and expect it for any slugger from the past 15 years), Thome seems like a poor man’s version of the recently-departed Harmon Killebrew who needed five ballots to get into the Hall of Fame. My two cents: Expect Thome to need at least a few more go-rounds with the writers before he comes close to Cooperstown.

Editor’s note: I’ve been running this Friday feature for a few months now, and it’s lagging. Thus, I’m issuing an open question: What would make this feature better? Would it be better to do away with this post and go back to having standard features on Fridays? Please feel free leave suggestions in the comment section here or send me an email. Thanks.

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• The day after US forces killed Osama Bin Laden, Josh Wilker wrote of a firefighter named Stephen Siller who was killed on September 11. Wilker framed the post around a 1977 George Brett card, since Siller once, as someone else put it, “drove straight to Kansas City for George Brett’s last game, drove straight back, went to work.” The piece is only loosely about baseball, but as is generally the case, Wilker’s a good enough writer to make it work.
• David Nathan published the first installment of a 10-part series on the 10 most quotable players in baseball history. His #10: Dizzy Dean. My quick-take suggestion for the remaining nine: Satchel Paige, Casey Stengel, Yogi Berra, Nick Swisher, Rickey Henderson, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Bob Uecker, and Jim Bouton.
• Cool vintage SI piece linked to on Baseball Think Factory this week: a 1986 conversation on hitting between Williams, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, and Peter Gammons.
• Why Roger Maris belongs in the Hall of Fame
• In the Shameless Self-Promotion Department. Monday’s post here inspired something on NBC Sports. Hugely flattered. My ego’s doing a victory lap around my apartment complex as we speak.
  

• Joe Posnanski offers a great look on players who may have put together solid cases for Cooperstown but were Not Famous Enough. I like the idea in general of alternate Hall of Fames, be it the Baseball Reliquary, Hall of Merit or a Hall of limited Fame that I proposed last year.
• Lots of people, fans or not, probably know the story of the 1919 World Series, how eight members of the Chicago White Sox lost on purpose in exchange for gambling money. Less known may be the fact that it possibly wasn’t the only Series thrown, and that gambling influence was rife in baseball between 1900 and 1920. Now, grand jury testimony has been found from 1920, given by one of Black Sox, pitcher Eddie Cicottte that suggests they got the idea from the losing team in the 1918 World Series, Chicago Cubs.
• Rory Paap, who has contributed articles here and is a man about the baseball blogosphere has an April 17 piece for the Hardball Times about Tim Lincecum’s evolving repertoire, particularly a new slider grip Matt Cain taught him.
• Behind the Beard: A Hair Raising Look at Baseball’s Changing Face. Title pretty much says it all, with the post featuring pictures dating back to the 1880s and a YouTube video of Roy Campanella in a 1950 shaving commercial. On a side note, this blog is generally fantastic, with lots of well-written content. I have no idea how this guy does it.
• Fangraphs post on the lack of women employed by Major League Baseball. The author notes that a post done on this subject a month ago was, “I think, the most-commented on post in the history of Fangraphs,” with the majority of the comments being shallow and sexist. This new post has already gotten, as of this writing, 285 comments in a day.

• I saw a link to this article– Barry Bonds Is An Asshole. But His Conviction Is Pointless.– and thought it was some random blogger going for shock. It’s actually a Village Voice piece with an interesting question: Why should the federal government try a baseball player for allegedly lying about using steroids which weren’t illegal or banned by baseball at the time? Moreover, why is it perjury for someone to lie about something that wasn’t a crime? I don’t know if I agree, since Bonds’ alleged perjury came in testimony before a grand jury investigating BALCO and any lies he told could have hindered that, but it’s an interesting question nonetheless.
• Speaking of Barry, Rob Neyer thinks it’s “likely” he’ll get in the Hall of Fame– through the writers, too, not just the Veterans Committee route which has seemed like the only one for any player accused of using steroids.
• World War II baseball blogger Gary Bedingfield has undertaken a cool project. Acknowledging that most of the minor league ballplayers who died in that war never appeared on a baseball card, Gary has created an Ultimate Sacrifice Baseball Card Set for his site.
• Another great post from Josh Wilker, this one on the underrated Amos Otis, who was ranked by Bill James as the 22nd greatest center fielder of all time and apparently used a bat with “enough cork and superballs in there to blow away anything.”
• Joe Posnanski writes a post relating Manny Ramirez, the Hall of Fame, and former president Lyndon Johnson which, he writes, “gives you a pretty good idea about how my ridiculous mind works and why I didn’t get many dates as a young man.” Yes, but I say a little esoteric knowledge in history never hurt anyone, speaking as someone who spent part of Thursday evening reading an excerpt of The Selling of the President while in the bathroom. I’ll find a way to tie Richard Nixon into an upcoming post.
• I grew up in Sacramento, have long been a Kings fan (in bad times and good and bad again), and have resigned myself to the strong possibility my team could be moving to Anaheim next year. Team ownership has until Monday to file relocation papers, and if it goes through, the Kings have already played their last game in Sacramento, and I’ll have to contemplate the bleak prospect of becoming a Warriors fan. It’s nice to see my hometown get some words of support from, of all places, a Yankees blog.

• Good news for fans of Cal baseball. It looks like the program will be continuing beyond this season.
• Manny Ramirez is retiring, the federal government’s perjury case against Barry Bonds has gone to the jury, and baseball’s Steroid Era takes another sad turn. On a side note, next Tuesday’s edition of Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? will be on Manny. I’ll do one before too long on Barry, as well.
• Rob Neyer offers a look at what Manny’s departure could mean for his final team, the Tampa Bay Rays. Short answer: It’s not good.
• With all of Nick Swisher’s struggles in recent years (read: most, if not all of his career, though I like the guy from having covered him in the minors) it would seem like apt advice to tell him to break a leg. This can’t be what was meant, though.
• Regular contributor Rory Paap writes of the Giants’ bullpen and something called Shutdowns and Meltdowns in a post for Bay City Ball of the ESPN Sweet Spot Network. Rory does a good job absorbing obscure metrics and told me recently they’re not hard to pick up, somewhat intuitive really. Whatever you say, dude (I’m amazed I have a basic grasp of OPS+ and WAR.)
• Adam Morris suggests Jim Palmer might have been the most overrated pitcher of all-time. My vote’s Catfish Hunter, Rube Waddell, or Dizzy Dean.
• Non-baseball link: It’s Masters time which means we get some golf-themed blog fare this week from Joe Posnanski, who began his newspaper career two decades ago as a young reporter in Augusta. I interviewed Posnanski back in September, and in a portion I didn’t include in the transcript I posted, he told me he once met legendary sportswriter Jim Murray in the press tent there.

Editor’s note: Before I provide this week’s links, there are a few things to say. First, I apologize for missing this link post last week. I have gotten behind in my writing schedule and will work to ensure I don’t miss posts in the future. In that vein, this week’s edition of “Any player/Any era” should go live sometime Saturday. Thanks, and enjoy the links.

• It’s been an awesome week for Joe Posnanski who, since Saturday, has written a fantastic rebuttal to some idiocy, come out with a massive Sports Illustrated piece on the 32 best players for 2011, and been named Sportswriter of the Year by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (I definitely voted for him.) The BBA is planning to name the award after Posnanski starting next year– I’ll be honored if I ever win anything named for Poz.
• One of my favorite baseball writers, Josh Wilker offers a starting lineup of his favorite authors. Good to see Anton Chekhov and Denis Johnson in there, though I’m surprised Wilker didn’t include Tobias Wolff, who he said helped influence his 2010 memoir, Cardboard Gods. Wolff bats third and capably handles third base on my team. I’ll provide a full lineup for Monday.
• Rory Paap offers a breakdown on Tim Lincecum’s Opening Day Velocity.
• Last June, I wrote about an obscure Negro League and semi-pro great named John Donaldson. One of the people I interviewed for the post, a scout named John Klima has written a far more expansive feature about Donaldson for Yahoo.com which, as we speak, has gotten over 700 comments. It’s good to see Donaldson getting some much-deserved mass exposure, and Klima offers an impressive amount of detail, as always.
• Pretty sure this is an April Fool’s joke

Many apologies for this week’s link post being late. Here is some stuff worth reading:

• The series Bill Miller and I are doing on good players for bad teams continues. I wrote the latest installment, on Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Philadelphia Phillies of the 1910s (link should be active at some point Saturday) and Bill wrote last week about Graig Nettles, who I never realized played a few early years with the Cleveland Indians.
• Speaking of Bill, he wrote an open letter to controversial, former New York Times writer and current blogger Murray Chass and got a response. The exchange is worth checking out.
• Something I’ve been meaning to mention: I’ve started doing a podcast. Fellow SABR member Paul Hirsch and I are doing a show each Sunday for Seamheads.com called “Baseball by the Bay.” The show runs 7-7:30 p.m. PST though it can be listened to anytime here. We mostly focus on the Giants and A’s, though we’ll be comparing all-time Bay Area lineups this week and discussing the pending demise of Cal’s baseball program. At some point, we’ll start having guests, too.
• Joe Posnanski writes about players who went through a season without an intentional walk. Who’d have thought it would include Roger Maris when he hit 61 home runs in 1961 or Alex Rodriguez?
• Interesting anecdote from a new Babe Ruth biography: Apparently the idea of a designated hitter was proposed in 1930, under the name Ten-Man Baseball, a full 43 years before Ron Blomberg became baseball’s first DH.
• Standing Tall: Slim Love’s Rise from Bar Room to Big Leagues. I’m pretty much always impressed at the caliber of writing and research from this blogger and his original, quirky, historical topics, speaking as someone who generally aims for that here.

• On a serious note, to anyone who hasn’t seen it, there was an 8.9 earthquake in Japan and tsunami warnings and advisories are in effect for the West Coast. Here is a map of the effected areas.

Baseball articles worth reading:

• Library of Congress receives recordings of about 10,000 baseball games from 1957 to 1979. A friend and I were talking the other day about how good of a sport baseball is on the radio. I prefer it there over television. The person who recorded these games must have felt similarly.
• My friend Rory Paap offers Best. Link. Ever. For Giants fans, at least.
• The fear of unorthodoxy: a new model of player development
• One more reason I love Josh Wilker: References to would-be hippie communes and post-collegiate angst in a season preview for the Brewers.

• The series Bill Miller and I have been doing on great players on bad teams lives on at his new space. I wrote today’s installment, and it’s on Jimmie Foxx and the 1935 Philadelphia Athletics.
• There’s a longish, excellent piece in the new spring issue of The American Scholar on famed newspaper writer Ring Lardner and why he quit covering baseball after the 1919 World Series. It’s a great story for anyone who’d like a comprehensive look at baseball’s labor history, though I’d argue that Lardner abandoning the game for other subject matter wasn’t unprecedented. Heywood Broun did it later, Westbrook Pegler as well, and to some extent Damon Runyon, the only person I know of to cover a World Series and write a Broadway musical (Guys and Dolls.)
• Can John Thorn Finally Erase Abner Doubleday? The thought here: no, sadly. A fan, and particularly a baseball commissioner, must be willfully ignorant to still proclaim Civil War hero Doubleday as the founder of the baseball. Why does the game still need a creation myth in the 21st century? What is wrong with the very well-documented truth?
• The untold story by a 90-plus-year-old former ballplayer who caught Jackie Robinson’s ill-fated tryout for the Boston Red Sox in 1945. Part of being a baseball writer or historian is knowing there are so many of these stories out there that never get properly documented and die with the players involved. I’ll give a tip of my non-existent hat (since I rarely wear them) to the writer who contacted this player ahead of his death this last year.

We’re going to do things a little different this week. Generally, I provide a brief intro and then link to some posts. My first link, however, requires some back story.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Daniel Greenia, a reader, occasional commenter, and voter in my project to find the 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame. Daniel told me J.T. Snow wouldn’t be on this year’s Cooperstown ballot despite last playing in 2006 because he signed a ceremonial one-day contract with the Giants in September 2008. In a post for BaseballThinkFactory.org, Daniel offered more details, and while Snow isn’t a serious Hall of Fame candidate now and won’t be whenever he’s on the ballot, what Daniel said bears mention here.

Daniel wrote:

For Snow himself there is a downside to his final bow. He actually last played in a MLB game for Boston on 6/18/06. Normally this would allow him to appear on the HOF ballot in 2012, the upcoming election. However, because his appearance in 2008 is technically a Game, the Hall of Fame has indicated that Snow cannot appear on the ballot until 2014. This decision seems a little at odds with Rule 3.C of the BBWAA Election Rules which says: “Player shall have ceased to be an active player in the Major Leagues at least five (5) calendar years preceding the election….” Snow didn’t try to work himself into game shape in 2008; his intent was never to actually be an “active player”, but to be honored in a Giants uniform.

Rule 10.20 is actually inconsistent with another rule. Rule 10.23(c) tells us that Snow’s Game in 2008 is not sufficient to continue a consecutive-game playing streak. For that he would actually have to play a half-inning on defense or complete a time at bat. Well, why not use that same rule to define what constitutes a continuation of a career? Add this sentence to Rule 3.C of the election rules: Unless a player plays at least one-half inning on defense or completes a time at bat, in the regular season or the post-season, he will not be considered to be an active player in that season for purposes of HOF eligibility.

I also suggest that MLB should modify Rule 10.20 and credit a player with a Game played only if they are in the game when something happens. I think that precipitating a pitching change or some other managerial move by your announced presence does not constitute “being in the game when something happens.” A Game played should be credited when a player is in the game and on the field when either 1) one pitch is thrown, 2) one fielding chance occurs, or 3) a base is gained.

Makes me wonder who else could be effect under current rules….

Other good stuff:

• Colleague and friend Bill Miller made his debut at MLBBlogBuzz.com.
• Josh Wilker writes of John Stearns, calling him the best football player ever primarily identified as a baseball player. My vote’s Brian Jordan, Deion Sanders’ partner in the Atlanta Falcons secondary in the early 1990s. Jordan quit the NFL at 26 in 1991 and spent another 15 years in baseball, earning All Star recognition in 1999.
• In one of my favorite episodes of The Office, Dwight Schrute gets a concussion crashing his car while racing to save his boss, Michael Scott. The typically neurotic and authoritarian Dwight goes through the rest of the workday in a near-catatonic stupor before being finally taken to the hospital. Now imagine a player trying to get through a baseball season this way.
• No, Brian Wilson, no