...but is anyone else suspicious that Dan Shaughnessy's latest unprovoked attack on the dreaded statnerd baseball fan was done with a cynical eye toward:
A)knowing the comment would be picked up and commented on by blogs like Shysterball (which, incidentally, is far better written and much more incisive than anything the CHB has offered in years), which would lead to...
B)lots and lots of clickthroughs to the original article, thus boosting the CHB's hit numbers?
Side note - at what point did "stat nerd who lives in his parents' basement" replace "fantasy baseball nerd who lives in his parents' basement" as the insult du jour for analytically-minded baseball fans? The effect is the same either way, a lame ad hominem designed to provoke enraged responses over the name-calling, as opposed to rational debate over baseball (which, frankly, is the one thing a guy like Shaughnessy doesn't actually want).
Oh, and Jim Rice's Hall of Fame candicacy? I'm a firm believer that the Hall of Fame needs to take into account the mythology of baseball as well as the numbers, but the myth of Jim Rice doesn't extend too far south of Meriden, Connecticut. Rice was a very good hitter who had Coors Field-sized home-road splits, played poor-to-mediocre defense, and had fewer home runs than Dale Murphy. A suspicious man would think that the rampaging advocacy on Rice's behalf by the Boston media is by way of a belated apology for the way in which he was treated during his playing days, or maybe just the after-effects of the nostalgic glow affecting all things Red Sox these days. I'd rather see Rock, Hawk, and Murph in the Hall first, in that order.
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