What he did correctly point out is that the players themselves have only a vague idea about it, and that neither they nor their ball club care a thing about it. There are far better ways of judging players’ defensive aptitude.</blockquote

Except your second point isn't a conclusion based on the first. Jeff Francouer thinks OBP isn't important because it wasn't on the Turner Field scoreboard (it was). Donovan McNabb didn't know there were tie games in regular season football even though he was involved in the previous one.

Also, that column was about as useful to baseball knowledge as a blank piece of paper. Hackey sportswriting, tired stats jokes, complete misunderstanding of the subject matter. It's almost as if CHB wrote it himself.

However his disdain, as with Murray Chass’, for anyone born after 1960 or for those who have a desire to dig deeper into the numbers sickens me.

C’mon. Analysing UZR’s functionality wasn’t Gasper’s intent nor is it his job to provide a tutorial on statistical methodology. There are plenty of other sources for that. What he did correctly point out is that the players themselves have only a vague idea about it, and that neither they nor their ball club care a thing about it. There are far better ways of judging players’ defensive aptitude.

First, I always considered Joe D a bigger prick…

Second, in that era, shooting pigeons off the scoreboard would have been considered a public service by all, save a few pigeons. Times have changed, the boozing and carousing by the Mantle/Ford/Martin gang cited earlier would not have raised many male eyebrows then, and, indeed, baseball fans were aware of the activity, they just had to wait a while for updates. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if Michael Vick had been discovered dog-fighting, the color of skin might have gotten him in trouble in places, but not his activity, per se. Many things just weren’t as newsworthy then as in today’s PC world…

I worded the phrase awkwardly. I should have written “I stand by my observation that there’s also a lot of garbage online being written by untalented people who happen to have an FTP client.”

You just have to be selective in choosing sources. I stand by my observation that there’s also a lot of garbage online

You can say this about any medium of information. Books, newspapers, TV news shows…

and untalented people who happen to have an FTP client writing it. Yet some of those people manage to get credentialed and thereby make everyone’s job more difficult

Not sure what you are referring to with the FTP comment. Adding in “writing” makes me think the word does not mean what you think it means. And who’s become credentialed via their online writing? Craig was invited to a few Indian’s games, but he sat in a designated area for bloggers. Many aren’t in the press box unless they were reporters who now solely publish online. Regardless, yes, many are terrible and make other’s jobs difficult. CHB is a prime culprit.

Los Angeles has two of those types with Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers. They are like flies; just here to irritate people. I quit reading them awhile ago and instantly turn the radio when they are invited on some alleged sports talk show.

Apparently, I was a lot more careful in writing my post than you were in reading it. I clearly made the point that the internet was indeed a vast and valuable resource for information, and has become the source of more of my news than traditional media. You just have to be selective in choosing sources. I stand by my observation that there’s also a lot of garbage online and untalented people who happen to have an FTP client writing it. Yet some of those people manage to get credentialed and thereby make everyone’s job more difficult.

There are none of us who believe anything like this. This is a really silly straw man argument for people who don’t want to be bothered to try to understand things.

No different from the days when the new media considered the personal lives of presidents and politicians “off the record” and, for the most part no one’s business. It wasn’t news and it wasn’t anyone’s business. Likewise, the sports media were interested only in what happened during the game and reported only the players’ athletic performances. Whether they were fighting a battle with alcoholism or had a girlfriend in every town had nothing to do with that.

Is it your view, having learned a lot about the personal lives of Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford, for instance, their greatness as ballplayers is diminished? Or that they’re unworthy of the Hall of Fame?

Well, yes and no. It’s true that personal relationships between writers and the athletes they covered happened from time to time … some of them were close friendships that lasted all their lives. Today, of course, for better or worse, “the media” considers every aspect of a player’s personal and professional life appropriate material for a column or article. Naturally the athletes are more circumspect in allowing a writer to get close, or to be open and honest in an interview, especially since scheduled media access is normally mandated by the leagues.

The rise of the internet means that there are more sources of information for those that choose to be informed.

Yes, no question the internet is a great and vast source of information for those who seek it and, importantly, who are selective in picking their sources. I’m one of the many at the point where more information comes to me from the internet than from traditional media. But it’s also true that there’s a lot of dreck out there online and a whole lot of morons writing it. Yet, it seems, there are still many of you who believe that if it’s on the internet, it must be true and valuable.

The rise of the internet means that there are more sources of information for those that choose to be informed. That means that people do not accept that Shank is a knowledgeable source solely because the Globe prints his rubbish in the paper. He does not like that. That is his problem with the internet.