Shaggin' Flies with Ben and Zach Zach is joined for a special solo session with Howard Megdal (@howardmegdal) of Baseball Prospectus, The IX, and the Next for a lovely ninety-minute conversation about women's sports, Bard College, the Mets, New Jersey, and plenty more baseball.  --- 3 – Working in politics, but then not 5 – Mouse! 7 – The Next [https://www.thenexthoops.com/] and The IX [https://www.theixsports.com/] 10 – A nearly half-hour tangent about the wonderfulness of women's sports and the criminality of their underfunding 31 – Name and Image Likeness 33 – Loving sports at Bard College 35 – Sending angry emails to KenPom 37:30 – Leon Botstein does have a Wikipedia 40:30 – Campaigning the backup center for D3 player of the year 42 – Why baseball? 47 – Basketball is a shot, baseball is an IV 49 – The Baseball Talmud! 52 – Coolest games ever: 2015 World Series, David Cone, and Johan Santana 58 – Alex Bregman and flawed replay 1:02 – Analytics talk 1:06 – Cat! 1:07 – The enemy is certainty 1:09 – Order of Operations trifecta! 1:14 – The consistency of toothpaste as it hits the teeth 1:15 – A conversation with Abraham 1:17 – No ghosts, but Justin Turner is unexplained 1:20 – The Full Count * Howard's Book Recommendation: Katherine Heiny [https://katherineheiny.com/] * Howard's Food Recommendation: South Jersey Pretzel [https://www.sjpretzel.com/] * Howard's Movies/TV Recommendation: The Third Man [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/] * Howard's Music Recommendation: Bria Skonberg [https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ahtSggrsy1v2oJuKfmzGm]; Veronica Swift; [https://open.spotify.com/artist/0YyqJ4bcQqxXdsdpgQPwtl] Emmet Cohen [https://open.spotify.com/artist/3kyGmsyTEpjopA521SSlLT]; Good Jazz and Good Food (in general) * Howard's Miscellaneous Recommendation: Flannel pants Get PL+ and join our community!: https://pitcherlist.com/plus [https://pitcherlist.com/plus] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices]