Did You Write Mine?

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

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

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".

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.

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.