Very provocative post thrown down by a blog called Cool Ball, which titled its inaugural  offering “Why The Hardball Times Sucks. Pt. 1″ and set off a flurry of negative response when it was posted at Baseball Think Factory. I have to admit, first time through, I breezed through the beginning, started skimming when it inserted some band names, and haphazardly wrote it off.

But something drew me back to the Cool Ball post and I gave it a closer read with a clear mind, ironically  I sometimes undertake a similar process  when I try to read a Hardball Times piece post-haste. The eye reads things on a computer screen much differently than it would in a book. I think we all know that by now.

The Hardball Times is the infrared to Joe Morgan’s ultraviolet: two who-gives-a-shit invisible wavelengths on opposite sides of the relevant spectrum of baseball commentary that no one should be forced to acknowledge until they really fuck something up. Here’s the deal: while Joe Morgan does, indeed, deserve to be called out for all the head-scratchingly retarded shit he mouth-deficates all over his television broadcasts, that doesn’t at all mean that we have to applaud (or even condone) the works of extreme overcompensation ejaculated unto the internet by the crowd of twice-divorced DeVry University graduates with TI-83’s for dicks over at The Hardball Times.

Funny enough, the first time I read this post I assumed the author was talking about The Hardball Times and the Web site Fire Joe Morgan  – pitting the two against one another, calling them both out for being “above it all.” I didn’t really agree, but mostly because I see Fire Joe Morgan as being an extension of The Hardball Times. I’ve always assumed the writer is a fan of THT, if not more than a fan.

I should say right here I’ve spent entire afternoons nearly in tears while reading Fire Joe Morgan. I also generally like The Hardball Times, which I link to  here on our site fairly regularly. That said, I do have some issues with both, which I’ll get to later.

Later, because Cool Ball isn’t calling out Fire Joe Morgan. He’s talking about the real Joe Morgan, who is arguably no longer Joe Morgan in the eyes of any of us.

An analogy: Billy Beane, Michael Lewis, and all the other major players involved in popularizing the “Moneyball” -style sabermetric approach to front-office baseball management are the dude’s that invented the guitar. First Joe Morgan goes out and start some vapid piece-of-shit band like 30 Seconds to Mars, or Fallout Boy, or any other mascara-wearing fucktroup of 30 year-old men that sing to 16-year-olds about how fucking sweet it is to drive hybrid cars and get forearm tattoos and shit. And Billy’s all like “Nawh, brah. You wrote that shit on a $15 Casio and friendster took a dump on your lyrics. This is a guitar. (presents guitar) Its got chords and scales, and fairly objective, quantifiable measures of music theory and craftsmanship. It will allow you to at least plant the flowers of melody in your pile of emo-as-fuck lyric feces ” Joe Morgan ignores him. Keeps going. And makes millions.

I think this is pretty clever. I know of both the bands he’s referencing, but I’ve heard neither because I live in Korea and don’t have that kind of thing force fed to me via ESPN or NFL game outros. I like the “friendster took a dump on your lyrics” part.

What we have here is an allegory saying that Joe Morgan is an idiot making millions with a bad, old, stale formula. But lets remember that formula because it’s the same formula I’m going to talk about when I make my point at the end, which, I think is a better and bigger point than what Cool Ball is doing here.

The formula is bad announcing, right? Or  bad media, in  general.  In it we have FJM mainstays Tim McCarver, columnist Bill Plaschke, and, say, David Eckstien once he retires and becomes an announcer in 2012. Oh, and lets not forget the most important ingredient of the formula, the Bozo the Clown of bad media — Harry Carrey.

Meanwhile Chris Jaffe, Sal Baxamusa, and the rest of the calculator-scrotumed douche bags over at The Hardball Times recognize Morgan’s ignorance and begin working on what they believe is a heady, intellectual response to the trite and hollow oozings of the Joe Morgan/Fallout Boy’s fuck-you-mom-and-dad emo catastrophe. They want something more. Something, smart, intelligent, skilled. Something with hour-long, behind-the-back, six-necked, rip-dick guitar solos. So they start some shitty band like Dream Theater that shreds its way to notoriety with a 10-album (9-song) dump of a discography that in its 740 minutes of playback time lacks a single true melody. Billy approaches the group. “You guys just took it too far. I mean OBP’s OK, but WxROP… Jesus you missed the point.” The Hardball Times didn’t hear him on account of the shredding.

Sorry folks, but this is kind of funny. I don’t think The Hardball Times was started as a response to Joe Morgan and his undying popularity (which never really existed in the first place). But the writer is clearly accusing The Hardball Times of taking some of the fun out of the game. Is this kind of criticism warranted? Possibly, but THT has a wider spectrum than Cool Ball is willing to admit.  There is some irreverent humor on THT — the occasional comic, the recent pieces about quirky baseball rules, the obscure historical flashbacks, and others.

However,  let me  be the first to admit there are certain stories in THT that I find quite alienating. This occasionally comes off in some of the writing, which I think in lieu of style or voice, sometimes attempts to rise to the level of certainty a cold, hard number often dictates. But more often I’m alienated by the statistics themselves. Like most Americans I had no time for science and math when I was growing up. Why? Well, I loved baseball and writing. I sometimes regret that now, which probably explains why I married a chemical engineer who doesn’t speak English as her first language.

But there is a problem here than extends beyond my bad math. Statistics, or Sabermetrics, as they should be called here  if only to  differentiate, are a trend in baseball. Now, this could be a rock-and-roll kind of trend that changes form yet  remains part of our culture so long as it exists. Time will tell. But it’s a trend, not because it’s necessarily new, but because the average fan is beginning to embrace it. Take a look around, obviously the writers at The Hardball Times aren’t the only people into this. If you know what Ballhype(like Digg or Yardbarker) is, go over there and see what the general reaction to any THT stat story is. Overwhelmingly positive. Do all people actually read and comprehend these stories? My guess is no, and I doubt even the writers of these stories would disagree with me on that point.

People are arming themselves with this stuff, and they’re using it to say they know baseball better than the next guy as a means of  finding a better orgasm. Some of them are using it intelligently and expanding upon it in wonderful ways that help us better understand the game of baseball, and others are using it to stroke their egos.

This is why I think the Cold Ball post is important and not to be disregarded and brushed off as I did the first time I read it and as nearly everyone who commented on Baseball Think Factory did. This guy is feeling alienated by The Hardball Times. He has a point. Why?

Because in the perfect Fire Joe Morgan universe Joe Morgan is indeed fired. And while I’d be the first to admit I sometimes wish Tim McCarver and Bill Plaschke would disappear, I’m sure as hell not going to condemn Harry Carrey for being one of the greatest and most lovable clowns the game has ever seen.

Baseball is not a perfect game, nor will it ever be. If it were the ‘07 Red Sox would win every World Series from now, and a team like the one that won two years ago would never win again. It won’t happen that way. Baseball can’t be perfectly played and it cannot be perfectly analysed — much like life itself. Is this not why we love baseball in the first place?

Of course it is, and that’s why people need to check themselves next time before assailing someone for evaluating a pitcher by pitching wins, or  if they have the gall to suggest that emotion plays a role in a players performance. Not only  do you sound arrogant, you’re disrespecting the generations of  baseball fans before you that felt pretty strongly about these things.  You’re also alienating those that are still around.    

Look, even Cool Ball is a little scared. He’s starting the argument with Billy Beane and shielding  himself with OBP. Read the post again, and think about what  it’s  really saying. There’s a lot more here to be discussed.