Of Superbikes And Food Metaphors: FJM's Greatest Hits

A sports blog's success is usually measured by page views or unique visitors — these odd, mysterious numbers that merely serve as advertiser bait, but are woefully inaccurate in revealing overall quality. The true measure of a successful sports blog, like most other creative endeavors done for the right reasons, is the devotion of its audience. Under that rubric, Fire Joe Morgan is a gold-shitting kajillionaire of success.

More than 50 people submitted their favorite FJM posts. Some were short, one sentence FJMisms. Some offered links and some listed their favorite posts accompanied by FJM-style commentary underneath. (Unfortunately, these submissions were not that clever so they'll be left out. No need to embarrass anyone.)

But reader Sherrie V. probably said it best though:" How do you choose among so many examples of brilliance? (OMFG!)"

Indeed. I gave it a shot anyway. After the jump, some of your favorite FJM posts of all time.

Victoria J. nominates "Meditations on Jeter":

Most people know him as the late character actor Michael Jeter's little brother, but to me he'll always be the only baseball player whose tears cure malaria in whales. There's been a lot of talk about Jeter in the last few days. Men who deal with numbers have declared him overrated, almost to the point that many are now saying he's underrated. This discussion bores me. How can you overrate or underrate a glorious sunset? A sunset just is. That's Jeter.

Jay G. nominates "12 Minutes of Hell With Colin Cowherd":

Let's play a nerd-game, Colin. Which is to say, let's "think" with our "brains." What if Horace Grant retired, and then didn't make it into the HOF, and then revealed, in a tell-all book and several appearances on like "I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here!" and the like, that he, Horace, was a huge meth dealer in the NBA for 17 years and that the NBA has a massive meth problem. I just don't think that he would be inducted into the Basketball HOF. CC has two arguments — Canseco is famous so he should be in, and anyone who dominates or is "relevant" should be in. Ironically, he then says "infamous is infamous," which only serves to remind us that what Canseco is, in fact, in retrospect, is "infamous." Which is why his "fame" is not exactly what the HOF is looking for in terms of permanent membership.

Clyde R. nominates "Everyone Ready?":

Something new in the Joe-vs.-"Moneyball" war just occurred to me: Joe has not considered the idea that the book contains analysis by people other than its author. In other words, if Billy Beane were the author of the book and not its primary subject — and those of you diehard Joe-vs.-"Moneyball" war fans will no doubt remember several interviews with Joe where he did indeed think that was the case — would he read it then? Beane played on the field. He satisfies Joe's insane demand that only former players can "teach" us anything. Jeremy Brown, Jason Giambi, Scott Hatteberg — nearly all of the book's subjects played the game. So this ridiculous line of thought on Joe's part is actually more meaningless than I previously believed, because Joe doesn't even know enough about the book to understand that it is not just Michael Lewis pontificating about baseball. It is actual players discussing the game Joe loves and refuses to learn about. I thus would like to invite someone, next Tuesday, to make this point in a question to Joe, and then we'll start some real fireworks, by gum.

Sherrie V. nominates the "Joe Chat Marathon" from July 27th:

Here are things that could tarnish Barry Bonds's reputation, at this point:

1. Committing double murder of Tom Brokaw and Dame Judi Dench
2. Defecting to Afghanistan, joining Taliban, leading Afghan baseball team to Gold medal over American team in Beijing
3. Running high-end dog fighting ring where the dog fights take place on Princess Diana's grave
4. Inventing time travel but instead of traveling back in time to kill Hitler using it to go back to 1989 in order to start taking steroids earlier than he originally did

Things that will not make a motherfletching dent in Barry Bonds's reputation:

1. Being labeled a "hired gun" by playing for the Yankees

"Head Bee Guy" nominated "Pags":

In the pantheon of smugly ignorant acronym use, this takes the cake. LLBean is a terrible "nerdy acronym" joke for many reasons: like, that it's not an acronym. And that it appears in an article attacking Billy Beane, which gives one the impression the author is too dumb to think of two different things at the same time. FYI is boring. SOB is a term not heard much by people under fifty. And the whole thing — the collection of five acronyms; two real, three unfunny and fake — is referred to as a "system of analysis." Pags, seriously bro, if you had any idea how sophisticated their actual systems of analysis were...dude. Bro. Your effing head would explode.

Jesse A. nominated "It's Cool":

I just want to announce here on this blog, that if any baseball analyst of any kind tells me that "you really have to watch Jason Bartlett play every day to understand how much he means to this team," and that same analyst is found drowned at the bottom of my hot tub the next morning, and I am found standing upon that corpse, in the hot tub, wearing my trunks and a hoodie and just relaxing and smoking a joint, and maybe ordering a pizza or something, and instructing the delivery guy to come in through the gate because I'm in the back standing on a body in my hot tub — if all of that happens, I would really appreciate if someone could meet me outside, by my hot tub, and float me a few dollars for the pizza, because I will be in no mood to get off of that corpse, or get out of the hot tub for that matter, and plus I will probably have forgotten to bring some money out to the hot tub with me.

Reader Nicholas E. nominated "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuce":

If you could go back in time and take Nap Lajoie into a room after Rube Waddell K'd him on three pitches and show him a glowing box with a video replay of the at bat, he would call you a demon, slit your throat, tear out his eyes, and generally freak the fuck out. It's a different game, these days.

David V.(and, oh, 12 others) nominated "Honestly One Of The Weirdest Things I've Ever Read":

Sorry — so, the complaint here is that baseball fans talk about baseball too much? Maybe that's because baseball exists and is interesting. Unlike — to give one example off the top of my head that I just like pulled out of nowhere as a thing that neither exists nor is interesting — superbike racing.

I can think of two reasons superbike fans don't go to sports bars, drink beers, and talk loudly about superbike racing:

1. There are only two superbike racing fans in the entire world, and finding a bar exactly halfway between Pittsburgh and Manitoba is tough.

2. If you went to a sports bar and talked loudly about superbike racing, the other people in the bar, who are probably talking about actual, real sports that actually exist and about which people care, would tell you to shut the fuck up.

Send an email to A.J. Daulerio, the author of this post, at ajd@deadspin.com.

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