I’m popping open the virtual champagne this afternoon, as word has come forth from on high that four more Internet writers have been added to the ranks of the BBWAA. (Maybe now that they’re starting to embrace the Interwebs, they can fix their hideous website.) The newbs are ESPN’s Keith Law and Rob Neyer, who were unaccountably snubbed last year, and Will Carroll and Christina Kahrl of Baseball Prospectus. This last has been in an especially bright spirits because she’s one of my faves and, hey, she’s a chick! I think that makes…what, six or seven? You go, extreme minority of girls! I think, if I squint, I can see a tiny speck on the horizon that might just be a future where I don’t feel morally obligated to rip everything the BBWAA does.

Somewhere, Murray Chass is gnashing his teeth and no doubt making an angry phone call.

So after all the speculation and theorizing about whether MurrayChass.com is a real site written by the real Murray Chass, who used to write for the real New York Times, Sarah finally had the brilliantly simple idea of just calling up the real Murray Chass and seeing what he would say.

Wisely mentioning that she writes for the Boston Metro and glossing over the fact that she also considers herself a blogger (preferring instead to refer to “websites,” which, after all, UmpBump is), Sarah said she had heard some internet chatter that the site was a clever hoax, that she’d been discussing it with some colleagues, and that in the end she figured she’d better go to the horse’s mouth.

Chass was very intrigued as to why people thought the site might be fake and peppered Sarah with questions about that, while not giving away any information. In the end, since Sarah works for a newspaper (“something that’s actually printed on paper,”) and since she actually called him (he did acknowledge receiving “some emails” asking the same question) he said he would confirm that it was really his site.

So in the end, UmpBump’s suspicions turned out to be untrue. But you know what they say in journalism: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

First, New York Times columnist Murray Chass took the buyout.

Then he started a blog, except he isn’t calling it a blog, even though it clearly is a blog (Wordpress is blogging software, after all).

The Big Lead was all over this story. Deadspin covered it too.

But we at Umpbump were a bit skeptical.

Sure, the site’s url is murraychass.com. But anybody could buy that url. There’s no guarantee that Murray Chass is in anyway associated with the website that bears his name.

The screed on the site’s “about” page is almost too intentionally-unintentionally-hilariously Chass-like to be true. Yet, if the blog is a fake, why hasn’t Chass stepped forward to say so?

We did a little digging through the site’s CSS code and found a name, Ryan, and an email address. Jackpot!

Alejandro emailed Ryan and asked if Murray Chass was really behind murraychass.com. Here’s what Ryan wrote back:

Alejandro,

I cannot comment on your inquiry. However, I’d be more than happy to let you know you should direct your question(s) to comments@murraychass.com for a more official response.

Thank you,

Ryan

We directed our inquiry to the email address Ryan suggested. A few days went by. And then this – a post on murraychass.com asking if “the folks at umpbump (do) not have anything better to do but wonder about the author of this site?”. Ouch.

The post concludes with this cryptic line:

Perhaps by now the umpbump guys have figured it out for themselves; they should be able to figure it out. If they haven‘t, though, they will have to wonder for a while longer.

We’re still wondering.

We’re wondering why Ryan promised to answer our question, but never did?

We’re wondering if Murray Chass even knows there’s a website out there that bears his name?

We’re wondering what it will take to get to the bottom of this mystery?

But one thing we’re sure of: we won’t rest until we know who is behind murraychass.com.

Stay tuned.

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, alas, 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 provocations 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.