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.

It’s really too bad. I love Bill Simmons. He’s funny. He’s to the point. And his Sports Guy blog is so delightfully long and rambling. Plus, he gives hope to bloggers everywhere that one day, you too may be plucked from obscurity by ESPN and get paid to do what you already do for free.

But in this column from last year which ESPN has just resurfaced, he’s not really that funny. And not really to the point. I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now.

He gets off to a decent start:

Normally, I enjoy the week the Baseball Hall of Fame inductees are announced. Not this year. With Mark McGwire’s inclusion on the 2007 ballot, we have officially entered the Let’s Blackball the Potential-Steroids-Guy Era.

Some writers won’t vote for McGwire because he probably used steroids — keep in mind there’s never been proof that he did, other than a visible bottle of andro and those 135 pounds of muscle he added from 1990 to 2002 — which would be fine if they weren’t so pious about it.

135 lbs of muscle? Pretty funny. Okay. Pious? Yeah, fair point. What else you got, Sports Guy?

Not content with simply dismissing McGwire’s candidacy and moving on, they need to climb on their high horses and rip the guy to shreds. Of course, many of them would appear on any radio or TV show for 50 bucks and a free sandwich. We’re supposed to believe they would refuse the chance to take a drug that would enable them to do their job twice as well and make 10 times as much money? Yeah, right.

Totally valid. In fact, 50 bucks is what the Metro pays me per column (sandwich not included). Unfortunately, this may be the last valid point Simmons makes in this column, so take a minute to savor it. Go on. I’ll wait.

Ready?

Read the rest of this entry »

FYI, Sarah will be live blogging tonight’s game. That means you can look forward to at least three but probably more of the following things:

1. Sarah making a desperate plea for the return of Gabe Kapler to the Sox.

2. Sarah making a desperate plea for the return of Gabe Kapler’s cute baseball babies (who are probably annoying baseball adolescents by now).

3. Sarah referencing her dating history in an attempt to explain a close play at second.

4. Sarah writing something that will be stolen by Dan Shaughnessy for use in an upcoming column.

5. Sarah plugging her Boston Metro column about a million times.

So tune in!

So the Matsuzaka deal is taking up half the front page of the Boston Globe today. I start to read, and then flip to the sports pages to finish the story. And what do I see there, but Dan Shaughnessy’s column.

Shaughnessy is a controversial figure in the Boston sports world. He’s been writing for the Globe for a million years. He’s written some bestselling books. And when I was growing up, I totally idolized him. Now I don’t know if he changed, or if I did, but in recent years his writing seems to have gotten a whole lot more negative. The conventional wisdom is that Shaughnessy never met a player he didn’t want to rip (except Ortiz and Varitek, and even then I’m sure he’d do it if he thought he could without an angry mob picking him up and throwing him in the Charles); he himself accounts for about a third of the negativity in Boston’s famously ornery baseball media, with another third going to WEEI and the remainder divided amongst the Herald columnists. But while Dan used to be quite popular in Beantown, his vitriol has turned him into something of a lightning rod.

And today, he sinks to a new low: ripping off lowly Metro columnist Sarah Green. Honestly, Dan. I know sports journalism isn’t known for ingenuity, but “PR advice for new Red Sox player” was my idea first. As in, eight whole days ago.

What new and original ideas are you going to come up with next? Ballplayers’ bad facial hair? Yeesh.