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What if, Babe? A review of Harry Turtledove’s “The House that George Built”
Nowhere do the seemingly mutually exclusive entertainments of sport and science-fiction come closer than in that simple musing question “what if…?”
In sport, the question is often lamentably formed of second-guessing the decision of manager, general manager, umpire or player. To wit:
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The (E)X(ley)-Files: Reviewing “The Unnatural”
Obviously aliens: Josh Exley…
Those familiar with the exploits of super-secret government agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully can recall that scripts mostly consisted of a load of unlikely lines and in-references poorly delivered by the principals. “The Unnatural” is happily at least half an exception here, a standalone episode with the presence of Mulder and Scully kept to a minimum via means of a frame-story device; David Duchovny directed this one and actually incorporates some nice visual touches linking the two eras of the story.
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Rangers vs. Giants World Series: The future is here
Well, welcome to the future: the San Francisco Giants (!) and Texas Rangers (!!!!) will meet in the 2010 World Series, thereby giving the first World Series title ever to one of these entities, snapping a half-century long deprivation of such, and eliminating the possibility of using either squad to represent far-flung o-so-strange science-fiction futures.
Like the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates to which BuckBokai devoted an earlier entry, the Giants and Rangers are seeking to break historically notable runs of futility. In fact, the vanquished team in 2010 goes home with the second-longest active run of World Series futility. Reads the all-time list:
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Pittsburgh Pirates’ 1960 win: A science-fictional notion
From the Synchronicity Department comes a neat little tidbit from Robert Sheckley’s Immortality Inc. (You know, the book they totally warped to make the awesomely weird Freejack.)
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Random thought re: Roger Clemens busted
So ESPN is reporting that the New York Times is reporting that Roger Clemens will reportedly be “indicted on charges of making false statements to Congress about his use of performance-enhancing drugs,” i.e., let’s face it, anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.
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Bobby Thomson, of the Shot Heard Round the World, dies at 86
Bobby Thomson, that unwitting creator of a million zillion what-if stories both published and unpublished, that subject of prose and poetry, that metaphorical slayer of poor Ralph Branca, died today at his home in Savannah, Georgia. He was 86.
Thomson played Major League Baseball for 15 years mostly with the New York Giants, going for a .270 lifetime batting average, three All-Star bids and 263 home runs plus one Shot Heard Round The World.
In its mundane three-dimensional existence on the baseball field, Thomson’s famous shot was “merely” the culmination of 154 games of war in a baseball for National League supremacy among New York City boroughs: Brooklyn vs. Manhattan. In an extra playoff game – actually, the third extra game in a best-of-three series, actually, and don’t remind Bud Selig or we’ll have another round of MLB playoffs – Thomson’s walk-off homer against the Dodgers’ Ralph Branca gave the Giants the pennant. Or, as the man said:
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What If Baseball: 1961 New York Yankees vs. 1978 Boston Red Sox
In currently going through the entire Star Trek: Deep Space Nine run, BuckBokai recently got a good excuse to spend some time at his second-favorite website, the most excellent WhatIfSports.com.
The inspiration was founded in a thought-provoking notion about 24th-century hologram technology from the fourth-season episode “For the Cause.” Jake Sisko brings baseball-loving dad Benjamin a gift of a holosuite program featuring a showdown between the 1961 New York Yankees and the 1978 Boston Red Sox.
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Eight all-time great baseball teams of the future
With the second half of the Major League Baseball season starting, BuckBokai would like to take a few minutes to honor those great teams of the future, those nines whose excellence expands beyond the standard rules of the spacetime continuum far enough to earn them a reputation years before their time.
Those sports fans who can’t stand hearing anything about that game they’ve TiVoed but haven’t watched yet had better not click through for more – there are Biff Tannen-sized spoilers aplenty here.
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