FiveThirtyEight launches podcast series about under-appreciated sports personalities

FiveThirtyEight has launched a new documentary podcast series to celebrate athletes, coaches, and other sports personalities who weren’t quite as appreciated in their day as they should have been. Dubbed “Ahead of Their Time,” the five-part audio series will use modern analytics (of course) to show how under-appreciated these people truly were.

Senior sportswriter Neil Paine hosts the series, which premiered Thursday and will continue to do for the next four Thursdays with new episodes. The podcast will be available on FiveThirtyEight’s “Hot Takedown” feed.

Here’s a rundown of the episodes:

The Shift: Conquering Ted Williams (live now)
People were using analytics before they realized they were using analytics. This episode digs into how the defensive shift returned to baseball after a 70-year hiatus to stymie Ted Williams and become a heated point of contention for the sport.

From Russia (to Winnipeg) with Love (Oct. 20)
“The story of Mike “Russian Studies PHD” Smith, the NHL’s Russian revolution and how one team in rural Canada changed North American hockey forever.”

English Soccer’s Snake Oil Salesman (Oct. 27)
“How one man pioneered analytics in soccer, invented the long ball style and helped ruin the English national team for a generation.”

Lending a Hand (Nov. 3)
“The story of Peaches Bartkowicz and Chris Evert, the two women who pioneered the two-handed backhand in tennis, but whose careers went in very different directions.”

The Cunningham Conundrum (Nov. 10)
“This is the story of an NFL player with unlimited potential who never found his true element, and what modern analytics tells us about Randall Cunningham’s underappreciated brilliance.”

[ESPN]