BBWAA Afraid of Internet Bullies?

I pay very, very, little attention to Murray Chass. I’m assured by many that he was once a serious baseball writer who thought deep thoughts and so on and so forth, but in any event those days are long passed. Today he’s a curmudgeon, or at least he plays one on the internet, who more or less comes off as though he’s doing it just for the sake of being a curmudgeon. In fact, Chass doesn’t even inspire me to insult his thought process, writing style, or anything really because I honestly can’t tell if he believes what he writes or if he’s just carved out a particular niche in the internet market. I mean, the guy’s main schtick at this point is operating a blog he insists isn’t actually a blog, referring to his posts as columns as if to pretend he’s still writing for the New York Times, and getting red faced outraged anytime someone calls him a blogger. Even though he publishes on a blog. So yeah, that says everything you need to know about Murray Chass.

But every now and then he is good for a laugh, and today is one of those times:

So Felix Hernandez, as expected, won the American League Cy Young award, and he won it handily. I don’t have a problem with Hernandez. I think he is the best pitcher in the league, and I think he should have won the award last year.

My problem is with Hernandez winning the award with 13 wins. I am not alone in that view. Four writers voted for David Price (19 wins) and three voted for CC Sabathia (21).

Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune voted for Price because, he said, Hernandez’s 13 wins didn’t merit the award and Price was a dominant pitcher in his own right.

Speaking of the one-sided outcome of the vote, Rogers added, “I wonder how much of it was bullying on the Internet. There were a lot of columns written in September saying no one should be stupid enough not to vote for Felix. Maybe that’s what happened, but I hope not.”

(click “view full post” to read more)

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.

View the original article here