The Futility Infielder

Sons of Sam Horn moderator Eric/Lanternjaw has apologized to David Pinto of Baseball Musings over the "unethical" charges in the comments to the original Schilling/Neyer thread. I don't agree with everything else he has to say within his series of posts there, but I'm glad to see that he apologized because really, I've got better things to do than continue an angry debate. No more bacon fat will be thrown on this particular fire by me, so if you're waiting for another snappy comeback from Red Sox Nation's Public Enemy #211,918, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

From where I sit, the root of all of this is a simple turf war, and it comes from a clash of two cultures. The Sons of Sam Horn is a members-only, moderator-driven site in which the great majority of the people use pseudonyms rather than their real names and expect a what's-said-here-stays-here manner of dealing with their content, despite the fact that it's publicly viewable to members and non-members alike. The blogosphere as typified by Baseball Musings, Bronx Banter, this site and the great majority of the ones linked at left is full of public sites run by individuals who use their real names, whose content is interconnected, and where properly-attributed direct quotation is not just the norm, it is encouraged as a means of discourse and cross-promotion of sites.

Both models are common on the Internet, and which one appeals to you is generally a matter of taste, not which hat you're wearing. Nobody has to choose one or the other any more than they should have to choose beer or tacos, stats or scouting. I honestly don't have a problem with the SoSH model, though it's not my particular cup of tea. I'd rather wade through a dozen blogs a day and even the Ackbar-and-Piazza-laden posts at Baseball Primer in search of interesting and intelligent baseball conversation, because I don't particularly care if somebody goes off-topic and takes a discussion in an entirely different direction. By this I don't mean to imply that there's not interesting or intelligent baseball conversation at SoSH; there's plenty of that there, and if I'm going to apolgize for anything in this whole fray, it's for suggesting that I would rather see SoSH destroyed or closed to public viewing. So on that matter, I am sorry.

When the two cultures clash, the results are, as we've seen, quite ugly. It's much easier to go on the offensive when you don't have a name, an email address, and a body of work to stand behind, but then that's what happens when one starts lobbing rotten eggs at an army spoiling for a fight, and I honestly expected even less courtesy in this one than I've received. The Red Sox Nationalists who've posted their comments here and elsewhere have likely decided that I'm an idiot, a bandwagoneer, and the anti-christ rolled into one. To attempt to convince them otherwise would be utter futility, the opposite of "preaching to the choir." They're predisposed to dislike what I have to say, whether or not I'm attacking them, and now that I've said what I've said, I'm beyond redemption in their eyes.

None of that has prevented me from sleeping either of the past two nights.

But as I've said, I don't have much interest in carrying this debate further, as the merits of it are too colored by partisanship on both sides. Writing angry isn't fun, which is why I turned to baseball from politics in the first place. Other elements of my body of work -- statistical analysis, news analysis, original research, first-person perspective, humor, etc. -- have (I hope) far more to contribute to the broad spectrum of freely-available baseball content on the Internet than my Howard Beale side does. So I'm going to move on back to writing about the things I enjoy; those of you who want to accompany me on that journey are welcome to do so, and those of you spoiling for a continued fight are encouraged to look elsewhere.

Just for the record, I do hope that Curt Schilling continues to patronize SoSH, that the results remain in public view, and that some kind of balance between respecting his wishes and remaining true to the spirit of the medium can be struck. Regardless of who we're rooting for, I hope that some bridge across these two disparate but equally passionate cultures can be built, and that everybody can act in good faith from here on. You will get nothing less from me on that front.