Via Deadspin and The Fanhouse, Dodgers Broadcaster Steve Lyons would like his homeowner’s insurance to pay for a little accident…that time a couple years back when he grabbed that woman’s wrist and demanded she show him her boobs, and then got sued. It was an Act of God, I’m tellin’ ya! But seriously, what would Vin Scully say? (Interesting aside: his official bio includes the line, “He has earned national notoriety as a staple of Fox Sports’ coverage of Major League Baseball from 1996-2006, where he earned an Emmy Award and two additional Emmy nominations during his tenure with the network.” I’m not sure “notoriety” was quite the word they wanted right there, but it certainly seems appropriate now.)

Over at Salon, King Kaufman has an interesting meditation on the no-hitter—why it’s superior to other athletic achievements and why he tries to jinx them at every opportunity.

DBacksBuzz notes that Randy Johnson did not fare well in his start for the AAA Tucson Sidewinders last night. ExtraBases notes that Bartolo Colon was strong in yesterday’s AAA Pawtucket Red Sox opener.

BlessYouBoys on Detroit’s April stupor.

DodgerThoughts defends bloggers against—guess who?—Murray Chass. The blog’s author, Jon Weisman, followed the New York Times columnist on Charlie Steiner’s XM talk show yesterday. Chass, predictably, used his airtime to rail against bloggers. Weisman gave a thoughtful, measured response, thus demonstrating that bloggers = more thoughtful, measured than Murray Chass. In his post, Weisman also notes that despite the knock that bloggers live in their parents’ basements, the only time when he’s actually moved back in with his parents was during his two-year stint as a beat reporter. (Hat tip to BrewCrewBall, where I read it first.)

And finally, Beyond the Box Score had a bunch of good tidbits yesterday (Bill James on Fenway’s left field, the first of many Joe Torre managing miscues, and what PETA would like to call the new Nationals ballpark (hint: it’s not Furmeat Field).

Among certain of my friends, the phenomenon of “Sarah’s Angry Emails” is not unknown. Something sets me off (usually involving politics, sports, ex-boyfriends, feminism, a particular downstairs neighbor, or some combination thereof) and before I can stop myself, I’ve seized my keyboard and pounded out a single-spaced screed. This happened recently in regard to a post I wrote that got picked up by Deadspin (always interesting, the folks that wander over here from Deadspin). Only instead of Sarah’s Angry Email, it was Sarah’s Angry Blog Comment, and instead of going only to an ex-boyfriend/my e-mail drafts folder/the spam filter of one of these columnists, it ended up on the Interwebs for all to see.

Though the ranting began because of a particularly limp Bob Ryan column, the weakness rampant throughout sports journalism had actually been a topic of discussion between Nick and myself for some time. (And of course, it’s been a frequent topic on UmpBump is well, thanks to the likes of Murray Chass, Jay Mariotti and other MSM folks and their questionable writings or uninspiring broadcasts.) So after a recent spate of emailing between us, Nick and I decided what the heck, let’s post this private conversation and open it up for public comment.

Read the rest of this entry »

With all the fun news coming out over the past couple of days, I’ve decided to channel my inner Buster Olney and post some links. In an incredibly haphazard manner.

· Have we really reached a point in our discussions concerning Barry Bonds where columnists can create a completely fictional scenario based upon the imagination of the writer of a Wesley Snipes movie and call it an article? If so, we all should just go home. NEXT UP: If aliens invade San Francisco on the Fourth of July, would Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum save Barry Bonds?

· “When you start with the threats and the guns, that can get out of control” – Gary Sheffield

· Who is less likable - A.J. Pierzynski or this guy?

· I wasn’t surprised to hear that Jonny Gomes was demoted to AAA. Nor was I surprised to hear he threw a fit and reportedly “punctuated his argument by throwing the fan mail that was stacked in his box”. I WAS surprised to hear that Jonny Gomes had fans.

· Little known fact: The Washington Nationals have won 12 of their last 17 games, which does me no favors in my quest to make a convincing argument that the National League isn’t that bad. Especially considering that 2 of those 5 losses came against the Orioles.

· I know this is a little late, but I am currently awaiting word as to whether or not Murray Chass and Nate Silver will go toe-to-toe in a “Buried Alive” wrestling match. My money’s on Chass – how do you kill the undead?

I’ve never liked Murray Chass.

Admittedly, I’ve only read about eight columns by Chass in my lifetime, but there is a good reason for this, and it has to do with the first sentence of this post. Basically, I avoid reading his writing for fear that it will endumben me and make me write fake words like “endumben.”

In every column by Chass that I’ve ever read (yes, all eight), he has hoisted himself up on to some high horse or other, from which height he could look down his nose at all of us lowly peons and proclaim to us his wisdoms from on high.

Sometimes he is standing on multiple high horses at once, like some sort of crazy circus act. As he did this week in his latest column in the New York Times, which proclaimed the all the baseball-related topics he thinks should never be mentioned again.

The final item on Chass’ list of “Things I don’t want to read or hear about anymore” is “Statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics.”

In what ESPN.com contributer Keith Law called an “unintentional satire of dinosaur journalism,” Chass went on to say:

I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.

To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense. For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out. I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.

Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.

I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that’s their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

People play baseball. Numbers don’t.

I don’t get what Chass’ point is. He seems to be saying that VORP is bad simply because he and his collegues don’t know what it is, and therefore it somehow undermines his enjoyment of the game.

This has to be one of the most moronic passages ever penned by a writer at the New York Times (and there are plenty of other contenders). Or by a sportswriter who is in the Baseball Hall of Fame for that matter (elected by the Veterans Committee, perhaps?).

I mean seriously, to viciously slam an an entire community of devoted baseball fans just because they use a stat you don’t know about and admit you can’t even be bothered to look up?

And finally, Chass goes on to imply that baseball is about “people” and not about “numbers.” As if baseball hasn’t been the most stats obsessed sport in America for 150 years now.

Inventing new stats is exciting and fun and has been going on since the days of Henry Chadwick. If Murray Chass doesn’t like VORP, nobody is going to make him use it in his columns, but he shouldn’t try to impose his Luddism on the rest of the baseball world by trying to stop other people from using it.

And the fact is that nobody is going to stop using VORP just because Murray Chass says so. Baseball Prospectus is a business, so the folks over there were very civil in their response. But fortunately, I’m just a lowly blogger, and I don’t have to be, so I’ll just say it: Murray Chass is a Hall of Fame idiot.