Around The Horn

• Slate magazine has a charming piece by a guy who received an autograph back from a journeyman Major League ballplayer fifteen years after writing to him as a kid. I gather I'm a couple of years older than this guy, and I never received one so late, but his description of writing to ballplayers for autographs precisely and eerily describes my own experiences as a 13-year-old.

• I guess Slate is where to go for baseball coverage these days. They also have an outstanding analysis from Seth Mnookin on the abject stupidity of this year's free agent deals.

• Doug Wilson has written the most enjoyable and insightful series of posts I've read all year in response to atheist Sam Harris' best-seller Letter to a Christian Nation. I've got a lot of problems with Wilson on a lot of things, but this series is just an absolute treat. It's so good, I'm even assigning it to my kids to read. The posts are in chronological order, so you'll want to begin at the bottom and work your way up. I don't think I've read anything on the web in 2006 that I would recommend more highly.

• An old St. Louis acquaintance (and former coworker of my wife's) has been elected to the writer's wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Rick Hummel has covered the Cardinals for almost 30 years. It doesn't get much cooler than that, and baseball people everywhere will agree that "the Commish" deserves the trip to Cooperstown.

• The reliably funny Ann Coulter disagrees with Iraq study group's recommendation that we launch "Operation Surrender." She also comes out in favor of "waterboarding" terrorists for information:

  In point of fact, we strap people to wooden boards and make them feel like they're drowning all the time in this country. Mostly at theme parks like Six Flags.

• Having been on vacation, I missed some of the furor surrounding Keith Ellison's choosing to be sworn into Congress by placing his hand on a Koran. If you haven't digested it yet (and I haven't), here again is Dennis Prager's controversial--but typically thoughtful--argument against allowing Ellison to do so.