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https://www.mlb.com/news/whitey-ford-asks-about-own-obituary

by tosh • 6 years ago

35 14 6 years ago

Rebelgecko• 6 years ago

It's always interesting to me when you see an obituary whose author died before their work was published. A reminder that we don't know when our time will come.

shock• 6 years ago

After reading the article, I dont understand why it is on the front page of HN.

wccrawford2• 6 years ago

Because "of interest to hackers" gets defended as "some hackers might like it, even though it's completely unrelated to being a hacker of any definition."

Yes, some hackers undoubtedly watch sports, but that doesn't mean that sports is "of interest to hackers".

eitland2• 6 years ago

Because "of interest to hackers" gets defended as "some hackers might like it,

Generally (not talking about this particular article) I'm fairly certain a similar interpretation was recently defended by dang.

And I'd add: I was happy to see dang chime in on that one. Too often have I seen extremely important and interesting topics flagged of the front page by what I imagine is users who hasn't read the guidelines carefully enough.

kevinmchugh• 6 years ago

The piece is more about media practices than about sports

kwhitefoot• 6 years ago

I'm not interested in sport in the slightest, and baseball even less. Whitey Ford was unknown to me until I read the article yet it still interested and moved me. But then I don't consider myself to be a hacker in the modern colloquial sense, just a career software developer and electronics engineer hacking at things to make them better.

Anyway, just because the title reads Hacker News doesn't mean that only hackers (of any type) read it any more than The New York Times or London Times are only read by residents of those cities.

tosh• 6 years ago

One aspect of the story (for me) is about speculative execution and a system inquiring about a part of itself (?)

But that's just one angle that might have spoken to me. A more vague explanation for my motivation to submit is that I had the feeling the article might resonate with others here and yield interesting comments, which it did.

wombatmobile• 6 years ago

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

— Mark Twain

ppod• 6 years ago

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is headed for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged — the same house, the same people — and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse order of events, his very bones had disintegrated.

--- Vladimir Nabokov

chris_st• 6 years ago

"You don't have to worry about death -- it won't happen in your lifetime." -- Raymond Smullyan

rjkennedy98• 6 years ago

Whitey Ford pitched in the low 80s. Wow. That really puts things in perspective. I don't think you could make the major leagues pitching in the low 80s today. By comparison, the starting velocity for the Rays rotation is in 96 mph. Most bullpens now throw out pitcher after pitcher that can touch 95+. It really makes you wonder if most of the currently players would be considered all time greats if they played in the 50s.

jaquers• 6 years ago

Probably. However you could make the argument that many of today's players wouldn't have had access to the sports medicine that is available today. Slow-mo analysis of pitching motion plus modern advances in understanding of biology, plus the expertise of the former greats.

Also, it's not _all_ about the fast ball. There are a good amount of pitchers who throw high-eighties/low-nineties - the difference is the amount of deceptive movement they are able to put on the ball as well as being able to locate and change speeds - both things that Whitey Ford was good at. He was also notorious for spitballs at the end of his career, something you don't get away with nowadays.

Did You Write Mine?

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