{"id":9147,"date":"2021-09-25T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9147"},"modified":"2021-09-25T15:14:37","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T19:14:37","slug":"stick-to-baseball-9-24-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/25\/stick-to-baseball-9-24-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Stick to baseball, 9\/24\/21."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For subscribers to the Athletic, I named my <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3AxoM0H\">Prospect of the Year<\/a> for 2021, going through a number of the top candidates this year (and there were too many to include), and two weeks ago I profiled <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3DKj5hI\">Austin Riley&#8217;s transformation<\/a> from a low-OBP hitter with exploitable holes to a downballot MVP candidate. I also held a <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3u68DwI\" target=\"_blank\">Klawchat<\/a> on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spoke to Joe Posnanski on <a href=\"https:\/\/theathletic.com\/podcast\/168-the-keith-law-show\/?episode=75\">my podcast<\/a> this week, talking about his new book, <em>The Baseball 100<\/em>, which comes out on Tuesday. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9781982180584\">buy it here<\/a>. And you can subscribe to my podcast on <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AppleKlawPod\">iTunes<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/SpotKlawPod\">Spotify<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over at Paste, I ranked the <a href=\"https:\/\/klaw.me\/3Cu5pWS\">ten best games that are currently out of print<\/a>, and my Gen Con wrapup should be up today or maybe on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I sent out a new edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyletter.com\/keithlaw\">my free email newsletter<\/a> this week. And, as the holidays approach, I&#8217;ll remind you all every week that I have two books out, <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062942739\"><em>The Inside Game<\/em><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/2960\/9780062490230\"><em>Smart Baseball<\/em><\/a>, that would make great gifts for the readers (especially baseball fans) on your lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Longreads first: The <em>Guardian<\/em> looks at how outside investors bought into Appalachian coal companies, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/sep\/14\/wall-street-coal-country-hedge-funds-coal-mining-appalachia-west-virginia\">bled them dry, wiped out pensions, and poisoned the local water supplies<\/a>.<\/li><li>Jelani Cobb <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2021\/09\/20\/the-man-behind-critical-race-theory\">profiles Derrick Bell<\/a>, one of the \u2026 of critical race theory, for the <em>New Yorker<\/em>.<\/li><li>Why did Comedy Central give Charlamagne tha God, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/comedy\/charlamagne-tha-god\/comedy-central-charlamagne-tha-god\/\">a rapist who said on air that he drugged women and raped them<\/a>, his own late night show? Because he&#8217;s friends with the network&#8217;s president. He also has made anti-Semitic comments and peddles conspiracy theories, although that&#8217;s secondary here.<\/li><li>Tim Grierson looked back <a href=\"https:\/\/melmagazine.com\/en-us\/story\/metallica-nothing-else-matters\">on Metallica&#8217;s &#8220;Nothing Else Matters&#8221;<\/a> and the black album as a whole.<\/li><li>Tucker Carlson is overtly preaching white supremacy on his show by <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2021\/09\/carlson-blows-up-murdochs-white-supremacy-denial-on-air.html\">espousing the &#8220;great replacement&#8221; conspiracy<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2021\/09\/carlson-blows-up-murdochs-white-supremacy-denial-on-air.html\"> theory<\/a>, first delineated by French white nationalist writer Renaud Camus.<\/li><li>The Biden administration has declassified a number of documents related to the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, including one FBI report detailing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/long-secret-fbi-report-reveals-new-connections-between-9-11-hijackers-and-saudi-religious-officials-in-u-s\">links between the hijackers and Saudi religious authorities within the U.S<\/a>.<\/li><li>At the University of Iowa, faculty members can&#8217;t even ask students to wear masks, let alone require it. Isaac Chotiner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/q-and-a\/teaching-without-mask-and-vaccine-mandates\">interviewed Prof. Silvia Secchi<\/a> at that university about the dystopian hellscape in which she works.<\/li><li>Here&#8217;s a shocker: The so-called studies that claimed to show a reduction in mortality from COVID-19 after ivermectin use? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-021-01535-y\">They&#8217;re junk<\/a>. The main one had faked data. The second most-prominent one&#8217;s authors won&#8217;t give anyone else their data.<\/li><li>Dr. Jen Gunter explains why <a href=\"https:\/\/vajenda.substack.com\/p\/the-pandemics-worst-woman-dr-christiane\">&#8220;Dr.&#8221; Christiane Northrup is the pandemic&#8217;s worst woman<\/a>, a grifter who pushes pseudoscience and vaccine misinformation.<\/li><li>As if wellness influencers weren&#8217;t already a scourge on society, now they&#8217;re <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2021\/09\/12\/wellness-influencers-vaccine-misinformation\/\">taking the anti-vaccine movement mainstream<\/a>.<\/li><li>Alaska has joined Idaho and parts of Montana in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2021\/sep\/24\/alaska-covid-coronavirus-rations-care-hospitals\">rationing hospital care<\/a> due to COVID-19 patients flooding ICUs. This was preventable, if any of those states, which all have Republican governors and Republican control of both houses of their legislatures, had taken evidence-based steps to stop the pandemic, but they didn&#8217;t.<\/li><li>Two Black men in Minneapolis wrote an editorial on how they&#8217;ve helped <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/09\/08\/were-interrupting-violence-minneapolis-one-lawn-chair-time\/\">reduce violence in their communities simply by sitting down<\/a>.<\/li><li>Video: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av\/science-environment-58587691\">A man with 40 compost bins<\/a>. My wife said I can&#8217;t do this.<\/li><li>Dr. Nadia Chaudhri is dying of ovarian cancer at age 44, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/montreal\/neuroscientist-nadia-chaudhri-1.6168406\">her inspirational, life-affirming tweets<\/a> have earned her a devoted following even as she documents the ravages of the disease.<\/li><li><em>L&#8217;\u00c9v\u00e9nement<\/em>, a French film about abortion, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/entertainment-arts-58533531\">won the top prize in Venice<\/a>.<\/li><li>The Canadian alt-right site The Post Millennial is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailydot.com\/debug\/advertisers-sever-ties-andy-ngo-website\/\">losing advertisers because it employs the grifter Andy Ngo<\/a>. Ngo has enjoyed close ties with groups like the Proud Boys and encouraged followers to dox his critics.<\/li><li>In key battleground states, corporate PAC money goes <a href=\"https:\/\/popular.info\/p\/in-key-states-corporate-donations\">overwhelmingly to anti-abortion legislators<\/a>.<\/li><li>The finance chairman of the Nevada Republican Party is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/dyvbzw\/major-trump-backer-is-hosting-a-huge-qanon-conference-in-las-vegas\">hosting a major QAnon conference at his hotel<\/a>.<\/li><li>The BBC talks to people <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-57369349\">who&#8217;ve lost close family members<\/a> to the QAnon hoax.<\/li><li>Mark Appel&#8217;s twitter thread on <a href=\"https:\/\/threader.app\/thread\/1438883101795553284\">lessons he&#8217;s learned from his experiences from high school to his current comeback<\/a> is well worth reading.<\/li><li>The <em>Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em> is refusing to call these election recount shams &#8220;audits.&#8221; The <em>Washington Post<\/em>&#8216;s Margaret Sullivan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/media\/audit-pennsylvania-gop-inquirer-media\/2021\/09\/13\/660f0462-14b8-11ec-a5e5-ceecb895922f_story.html\">explains why<\/a>.<\/li><li>Board game news: Flatout Games, one of the publishers behind Calico and Cascadia, now has a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/flatoutgames\/verdant\">Kickstarter up for a new game, Verdant<\/a>.<\/li><li>Jeff Bergren, owner of the publisher\/game store chain The Gaming Goat, was kicked out of Gen Con last week, and now GAMA, the organizer of the gaming con Origins, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheGAMAOnline\/status\/1441187971395305479?s=20\">has banned him and his company from the event<\/a>. Bergren has a history of harassing other members of the community, and a recent Kickstarter for one of his company&#8217;s games included the white power &#8216;ok&#8217; symbol in one of the images.<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For subscribers to the Athletic, I named my Prospect of the Year for 2021, going through a number of the top candidates this year (and there were too many to include), and two weeks ago I profiled Austin Riley&#8217;s transformation from a low-OBP hitter with exploitable holes to a downballot MVP candidate. I also held [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1083,1257,1162,190,961,971,1116,907,870,306,807],"class_list":["post-9147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-board-game-news","tag-canada","tag-coronavirus","tag-links","tag-longreads","tag-metoo","tag-minnesota","tag-social-media","tag-stick-to-baseball","tag-tv","tag-vaccines","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9147"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9149,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9147\/revisions\/9149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}