From The NY Times:

But last week’s news trickling out of the endless investigation of Barry Bonds has caused me to feel something for him I never thought possible: sympathy. And beyond just sympathy, outrage over what has turned from a prosecution into a venomous persecution of someone who, no offense to the pastime purists, is just a baseball player. And I am beginning to think that federal authorities in charge of the pending criminal case against him for perjury have exactly the same attitude many sports fans do — we don’t like Barry Bonds, and since we don’t like him, let’s teach him a lesson he won’t forget. Let’s ruin him, which the federal government is fond of doing in all too many instances.

Just for the record, Barry Bonds is not an axe murderer. He is not a rapist or a child molester ...

And on we go. Buzz is billed as a "guest columnist" with the piece, which amuses me for some reason. Can you imagine Buzz as a guest at your place? Complaining about the TV shows you watch, criticizing your kids, upbraiding your dog for not fetching his glasses ...

Sympathy For The Slugger [New York Times]

Now, in an interview with OnTheDL, it almost sounds like Buzz just wants to rewrite history, going as far to even sound somewhat honored to be inducted into the Deadspin Hall of Fame. It's amazing what thousands of angry avatars calling somebody a frog-face can do to a man's spirit.

*****

Tonight, party like it's Monday, because it still feels like one.

Tomorrow, it's hump day already, so get your humpin' pants ironed.

And, of course, thank you for your continued support of DeadSkeets.

Buzz Bissinger Interview [OnTheDL]

Buzz Bissinger. Final tally: 83.3 percent.

I congratulate Buzz on this honor. I do hope he signs his name, from now on, as "Buzz DHOF '08," like the ballplayers do.

(Plaque by the engaged Jim Cooke.)

It begins in the usual grandiose, Buzz fashion: overwrought emotion about the beauty of the game, the magnificent simplicity of Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, the subtle nuances that make baseball, in its purist form, an event comparable to kissing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on peyote, apparently.

It's an enjoyable read, that appeared to be humming along quite nicely until it takes a screeching, hard left. It turns out, Buzz's untarnished enjoyment of The Game was rudely side-tracked thanks to a bizarre dust-up with stadium security officials that ended with him bloody and in handcuffs. Over a camera.:

An argument ensued, and I openly admit it got heated. An N.C.A.A. official in an orange shirt was called over. He had one of those little faces born in contempt, and he wasn’t happy. He curtly told me to take my camera bag back to my car. I told him I didn’t have a car since I was staying at a hotel on the Iowa side of the Missouri River and had gotten to the games by shuttle. He told me to go back to the hotel. I told him I would miss most of the game if I had go back to the hotel, not to mention the fact I was there with my sons. More heated argument ensued. More security officials arrived, excitedly smelling the scent of action. Camera alert! Camera alert! More argument. One of them got into my face. I got into his face. He pushed into my body. I pushed into his body.

I do not recommend this.

Roughly half a dozen security officials tackled me and threw me face first into the concrete, causing an ugly gash on my leg and a silver dollar-sized bruise on my arm. My glasses broke. One put me in a chokehold while another handcuffed me, all of it occurring in front of my three sons. They were traumatized. I was traumatized. Over a camera. At a sporting event, a college sporting event that likes to think of itself as the ultimate family affair.

Even before the infamous Costas Now showdown, Bissinger's temper and argumentative nature were already quite legendary. When the man believes in something, he'll fight for it with spittle and brimstone, not bending or relenting to any attempts at a reasonable compromise. (Just ask Ken Griffey, Jr., or plenty of other radio hosts and editors who've been on the opposite end of Buzz's wrath.) Although it appears he completely had every right to protest the stupidity of an odd and inconsistent rule NCAA security officials tried to enforce, only a handful of writers would've reacted as defensively. Actually, only a handful of people would've probably reacted the same way, especially in front of their children. And given Buzz's past tirades — although none of them are mentioned in this piece to give it its proper context — you could also make the argument that, in some way, even though none of us were there to see it firsthand, he may have actually deserved this. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, though, this time.

Takedown at the Ballgame [NY Times]

Sketch: Thee Jim Cooke University

I'm really not sure that many people care about this anymore, but AJ saw it last night, sent me some mocking text messages and asked if I'd write about it. So, to answer all your nonexistent questions:

Whose idea was this?
Costas'. He called me late last week and asked if I'd be down with it. I said sure, why not. This came 30 seconds before Bob crowed about how much he had helped my career, a claim I found specious, and said so. I'm not sure he listened. Anyway. Bob just said, "You should sit next to Buzz during the show, and drink beer together, and I'll make a joke about how baseball can bring anyone together." I happen to agree with this sentiment 100 percent, and, whatever, free beer.

Buzz was OK with this?
He was, though, when I contacted him beforehand about it over email, he wanted to do something overly complicated, like hold up a sign that said "I still think you're full of shit" or something. This might have been funny, but needlessly difficult for a cameo that would last about five seconds.

So how was Buzz? Did you guys talk during the show?
He was nice, actually. We're not gonna be best pals or anything, but I think he recognizes the PR value of putting this whole thing to bed and, frankly, so do I. During the show, we talked about:

a: The wretchedness of the hot dogs. (Honestly, those things had to have been four days old.)
b: Whether Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. (Both of us say no.)
c: How much of an idiot I would be if I spilled my beer on Bob Gibson, who was sitting on the other side of me. (And complimented my hat.)

Honestly, though, it was just a fun little stunt; it's hard to make too large of a deal out of anything so silly when Willie Mays and Hank Aaron are in the room.

Anybody there dumb?
Steve Hirdt is a numbers guy for people who don't like numbers. Or logic. Or sentient thought.

In the words of Gabe Roth, "Can I go? Is this over?"
Please do.

So here's the first question we've been dying to ask you, because we think you might be the only one who can answer it. You and we have been on television before, but never to the extent of exposure as there was on "Costas Now." We went to a baseball game in Milwaukee five days afterwards, and the beer guy recognized us from the show. (And asked for a high five. It's very difficult to high five a man when you're both holding bottles of beer.) We're not sure we like having so many people getting their introduction to us through that show, and we suspect you feel the same way. Do people recognize you from the show now? Has anyone said anything to you? Do you fear that a lifetime of work could be in danger of being boiled down to "that guy from HBO?"

Yes, tons of people have talked to me about my Costas appearance. They don't say much, just sort of chuckle as if to say, "What the Hell was with you that night?'" I did fear that a lifetime of work would be boiled down to that appearance. But in recent weeks, more people have agreed me than disagreed with me, although the general consensus is that there was a more artful way to express myself, which there was. My apology to you stands; you should not have been treated that way. Ironically perhaps, ever since the appearance, job offers have poured in. Only in America I guess...

I have also made a point to respond to as many people as I can who sent me emails, as long as they were relatively reasonable. And the answers back in general were kind and supportive of my past work, which made me feel a helluva lot better. At least one person I had never met kept staring me, said he had seen me somewhere. I mentioned Costas and he just said, "Yeah, that was it!" Then I quickly changed the subject.

I still don't like the snarkiness of Deadspin. I still have a problem with tons of blogs because they are malicious and horribly written (there is more to writing than just sitting in front of a keyboard and putting down whatever pops in your head). The Deadspin posts are at least short and cleverly designed to elicit posts. As you and I both know, it is the comments that elicit the posts. They do go hand in hand. And most of the posts on Deadspin are stupid, sexually sophomoric and basically indulge in an unfunny game of who-can-top-this to be the most profane and inane. But I have also found blogs that are filled with good information, in particular those dedicated to a single subject. So the wide net I cast on the show was misplaced.

We don't want to get back into the whole "debate" AGAIN, but some points probably need to be addressed. Honestly, we tend to agree with Dan Steinberg of The Washington Post, who wrote: "Bissinger's delivery was marvelously entertaining, but that the crux of his argument made less sense than Emmitt Smith on mescaline." We've never felt you had anything to apologize for; everybody has the right to their viewpoint, and to express it however they feel. That doesn't make anything you said any more correct.

Anyway, we've gone on too long here. Those were two thoughts we had. We're fully aware, by the way, that after this is published, both of us are going to be called drooling douche morons by the majority of commenters. We're OK with that. Are you?

I guess what I think of you, without knowing you at all except that you're from Mattoon, which isn't your fault, is that you are smart and clever and seething with ambition. You are also very nice in person with the use of "sir" and other Limbaughisms. But there's another side of you. You say sweet things about Three Nights in August to me in an email, only to have previously ridiculed it in your blog. That to me suggests duplicity and the horoscope I get daily online sums it up nicely: "Watch out for someone who compliments you to your face, then talks about you behind your back; this one's not to be trusted!." So I guess that's what I think of you. Smart, savvy, played the Costas battle like a PR genius, and slightly two-faced (by the way, what was your publisher doing there? To offer muscle in case of attack? I think even I could take David Hirshey down…) In others words you make me nervous, one of these people whose ambition may well ultimately consume him.

(Ed. Note: At this point in the conversation, before our official response back, we had to interject with:

And then we moved on with the interview, still a little confused, but unbowed. Back to Buzz now.)

You created a blog that has become enormously popular, and anybody who creates anything that becomes enormously popular deserves high credit. You hit the cultural zeitgeist. But you also have it down pat. Your posts are just snarky enough to get people going (yes, there is an occasional exception where you are sincere about something), but the general tone of Deadspin is one of mockery and ridicule. A.J. Daulerio does the same thing. So does Big Daddy. The irony is that you are all very good writers, and I hope that when you go to New York, you don't fall into the easy journalistic trap of taking gratuitous cheap shots. Like saying somebody has the face of a frog, which is how the New York Observer described me after the Battle of Costas (at least they didn't say I was smaller than Danny DeVito…) And maybe I do look like a frog. Who the fuck really cares? It isn't a clever description anyway. Lazy….

We are simply never going to come to common ground on the issue of comments versus posts. I sincerely believe that the comments do guide the posts, and the whole tone of Deadspin sets up posts that are with virtually no exception a collection of one-liners that are malicious, stupid, profane, sexually pathetic, and I will agree with you here, about a hundred times nastier than the posts themselves. But still, you and the other commentators set the tone, in effect giving people a license to kill under the cowardly cloak of anonymity. I have said several times that I behaved like the worst kind of blogger on Costas, but with one major difference—I did not hide behind some silly-sounding pseudonym. People knew exactly who I was. And the apology I made to you was sincere—you should never have been treated that way. With me, what you see is what you get. I have exploded before. I have exploded afterwards. I will explode again.

As for people in general today being nasty, mocking, and reveling in the troubles of others, no disagreement there. It is the age in which we live and in particular the age in which your generation lives. I am not sure how this started. But there is no doubt that the Internet, and sites such as Deadspin, contribute to it because anybody can say anything they want. And in sports in particular, those who comment almost inevitably resort to the lowest common denominator. They may think they are funny. They may think they are clever. But I have news for them—they are not. And that is not generational on my part: most of the people who comment on your site are just moronic, indulging in some badly-played game of can-you-top-this. As for Ed Rendell, yes he was occasionally crass in the book I wrote, A Prayer for the City. Yes, he could be irreverent as mayor of Philadelphia. Yes, he dropped F-bombs. But he was also a million times funnier and cleverer than any single comment I have read on your site. He also has dedicated his life to public service. He doesn't hide behind some pseudonym. And Rendell's one-liners represented about .005 percent of what was a serious book about the plight of urban America that took me five and a half years (if you don't believe me, ask your colleague Daulerio). And those crass comments were not some series of Henny Youngman non-sequiturs. They were made in the context of trying to run a city with massive problems.

Should you stop commenting? Of course not. You have a right to say whatever you want, and, as I said earlier, you write with a smooth and deft glibness. You clearly have talent, and I will be curious to see if that talent blossoms into something truly special. But if all of a sudden Deadspin became utterly serious in its treatment of sports, dropped the snarky tone and the little bitch-slaps, I am convinced that the comments would slowly disappear. There would be no outlet for idiocy anymore because disciples would get quickly bored with the sudden sobriety. Your traffic would drop, which would mean your revenues would drop. Which is why, despite the recent LA Times article and all sorts of sports bloggers saying they have suddenly discovered the religion of responsibility, nothing is going to change. I may not like it, and I can and do try to ignore it, but people want an outlet to vent their venom. All they need is a little push in the right direction, and sites such as yours give them that push. Because we live in venomous times. And maybe we always have lived in venomous times, and the Internet has just given greater voice to that than ever.

PRESS PASSES:

First off, I have met Roger Angell once, and it was in the press box at Yankee Stadium during the 2003 Yankee-Cardinal series, and the only way he got in there was with a press press. What he does with the press press is that he uses it to report. The issue of the press press is that it provides a writer with access. How the writer utilizes the access is of course up to the writer. I don't think the world of sports writing is insular. I think the world of sports writing is all too often lazy, so I agree with you to the extent that for all the access these guys and a handful of women get, they don't do much with it. But take the work of Mark Bowden when he covered the Philadelphia Eagles for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Creative. Smart. Well-written. Interviewed everybody under the sun. Worked his ass off. Really took you inside the game. Now Mark is one of the great journalists in the country (he wrote Black Hawk Down) so maybe he is the exception. There are few out there like him who have covered sports, maybe no one. But he made full use of the access he got, access he never would have gotten without a press pass, so once again, the access is crucial—if you have a reporter who knows how to use it and isn't afraid of working. Are the number of reporters willing to do that in the world of sports becoming less and less? You bet. And that's a shame for all of us.

But this notion bloggers have that access will somehow co-opt them, and they have a better vantage point by watching the game in their living rooms or their dens or their bedrooms or their darkened closets, is just junk. Bloggers need to get out like everyone else: any one of them could have gone down to Odessa and reported out Friday Night Lights. That's what they should be thinking about—getting out there—because the motivation of most bloggers is to be discovered. If we live in an age of venom, we also live in the age of the American Idol syndrome where everybody is convinced there is a star within them just waiting for the right opportunity. But if they don't get out of their tiny little worlds, if they don't learn how to report and write and observe and utilize details, they should just cease what they are doing and stop cluttering up the broadband airwaves. Basically Will, they all want to be you and get recognized by the mainstream and then join it. But the truth is, few of them have anywhere near the talent that you have.

Well, thanks, we guess. And to make it clear: David Hirshey was there because he distracts people with his mustache.

Gawker still hasn't named our successor. Do you have any interest?

I am not sure how to proceed here. I have had my shot to answer your questions and now you have had your shot to respond, so I don't think responding to your responses is right or necessary. It does become beating a dead horse into the ground. I don't find your answers annoying. We just disagree on a lot of fundamental things. Obviously, the biggest is that sports should not be treated with seriousness. I think Friday Night Lights proves the point of just how serious sports is in our culture. I think the point you do make, that there are too many articles in the print media that are cliched melodramatic tearjearkers that we have read a million times before, is well-taken. I don't like bloggers in general, but too many sportswriters just never get up off their butts and truly delve into subjects. And what comes out is tired autopilot journalese. I also firmly believe that most bloggers, regardless of whether they do it part-time or not, are dying to be discovered like you were.

In answer to your questions:

1. The only regret I have about the HBO appearance was the way I treated you. Yes, I have subsequently seen a lot more sports blogs than I did before the show and I found some good ones. But the vast majority are not only sophomoric and excruciatingly boring but in general terribly written, going on ad infinitum. That isn't writing. That is just vomiting on the page, and when I write the first draft of something, that is exactly what I do. So I have a suggestion for bloggers — write whatever you want to, put it away for at least an hour, then cut whatever you wrote in half. It is basically what I do. I also have an editor who makes a tremendous difference. Even bloggers need editors. As for the fallout from the Costas appearance, the first two weeks were hell. But since then, many people have rallied to my defense.

2. New York did not make a mistake in hiring you. Our writing styles are vastly different, but there is a smoothness and sense of humor to your writing that is attractive, if still too somewhat glib, and your experience with New York may rid you of the glibness. I know [New York Editor-In-Chief] Adam Moss and he doesn't make mistakes in hiring.

3. Costas and I did work on a book together in the 1990s, but it was never published. The book was sold as an autobiography of Bob, but he just wasn't ready to do it. So the manuscript was rejected, and Bob instead wrote a book solely confined to baseball that I did not participate in. We are friends (as many people who appeared on the show are). We speak, and I told him during the course of one conversation that I hated blogs, probably because of the way I had been treated by various of them (not yours actually but Fire Joe Morgan, which I actually like, and Will Carroll). Of course I asked for it by saying in Three Nights that sabermetricians don't love the game of baseball. That set their hair on fire. So did a theory I posed (I emphasize theory) that young pitchers get hurt because they don't pitch enough in the minors. It was four paragraphs in a 7,000-word piece about Kerry Wood for Play, and Wood himself agreed with the theory. What they really hated was that one of my sources was Tony La Russa, whose performance over the past four years, including this one, makes Billy Beane look like a Little League GM. Bob, by the way, was much more reasoned about blogs than I was, because he is more reasoned.

4. I think Braylon Edwards is still in shock. Clearly the happiest men in America are Bill Simmons and Joe Posnanski, who had the sense not to appear.

And no, I have no interest in being your successor, although it's always flattering to be asked, which of course I haven't.

Well, OK, that was fun. Kind of.

That's fine. I truly do think you can thrive at New York. It's a great mag and Adam is a genius. Don't lose your voice because it is distinctive. Just let it grow a little bit.

Yeah, thanks.

The premise of the story, as far as we can understand it: After Buzz Bissinger's tirade — if that's what it can be called — against us on "Costas Now" a couple of months ago, the sports blogs collectively decided that they needed to clean up their act, lest they upset the intelligentsia's delicate sensibilities. (Or, to put it another way, "piss the shit out of them." As an example.) We were not aware of this collective, or this decision. Perhaps we missed the memo, or fell asleep during the meeting.

Or perhaps we just aren't flapping to-and-fro in whatever imagined zeitgeist wind we might have guessed existed. Here's a quote from McIntryre:

"Two years ago, I would have run with [the Kobe affair story]," said Jason McIntyre, owner and operator of the Big Lead. "But as the blogs get bigger, you have to be careful about what you say . . . you can't go with the first rumor you hear."

Wait ... Jason .. you used to run with the first rumor you heard? But seriously: If you have a vision for a site, don't you have to just follow through with it? Why would you change your vision for a site just because more people are reading it? Archives don't go away, you know; the stuff you wrote two years ago is still hanging around. (Believe you us, we know.) If something is worthwhile to post if you're getting 10 readers a day, shouldn't you stand behind it if you have a million readers a day? Changing what you do because you've become more popular is exactly why Bill Plaschke and Rick Reilly have declined so dramatically. Isn't that what this is all supposed to be against?

," said the guy whose site requires you to click through to read the whole post now.

But here's the real piece de resistance.

"The initial reaction was 'Buzz is a lunatic,' " McIntyre said. "After that, people calmed down, listened to what he said and thought, 'You know, maybe we should clean up our act a little bit.' "

OK, really now. We agree wholeheartedly with Dan Steinberg, whose brilliant vivisection of Bissinger's "points" was summed up by, "Bissinger's delivery was marvelously entertaining, but that the crux of his argument made less sense than Emmitt Smith on mescaline." We agree: We've never had an issue with the way Bissinger handled himself on the show; the man has a right to his beliefs, and hey, his screaming just played into our hands anyway. That doesn't change the fact that his "argument" was incoherent and, for a writer we've always respected, shockingly wrong-headed. We have literally not met a single sports blogger who said, "Well, jeez, the screaming man on television made me re-evaluate what I do. Perhaps I should apply for that editorial assistant position I'd been hearing about." Jason must know an entirely different set of sports bloggers than we do. Maybe they're all on Yardbarker.

Listen: We understand. It's nice to imagine a need for a "bridge" between blogs and "MSM," the one who can tell Los Angeles Times reporters looking for a "new" angle exactly what they wanted to hear. That, don't worry folks, we're "the nice bloggers," we're the ones who "get it." We're hardly of the belief McIntyre is the worst offender in this; far from it. But is that what the point of all this has been? To "grow up?" The best sports blogs are based in truth and passion, and, yeah, sometimes that truth and passion come out in profane bursts, and sometimes they involve quarterbacks doing beer bongs. So freaking what? Did Buzz Bissinger really convince people there was something wrong with that? Or was everyone just faking in the first place?

(Oh, and Mike Florio and Daulerio, also quoted in the story, don't get a free pass here either; If Daulerio was quoted correctly — and he says he wasn't, so we should extend Florio and McIntyre, who addresses the piece here, the same courtesy — he seems to forget that the best sports blogs — including, we'd like to believe, this one — have always had a "journalistic element." Daulerio is as good a journalist as this site has ever had; we have to assume he was either misquoted or temporarily went into toxic shock right before the interview. And Florio says, "It's almost like the difference between Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby. Can you still be funny without cursing?" Hey, Mike, to paraphrase: Why don't you have a jello pop and shut the fuck up? If we're really claiming that the future of sports blogs being like Bill Cosby is somehow a good thing, well, shit, we must be getting out at the right time.)

This is not a polemic against McIntyre, who's a fine guy and does good work over there, or anyone in specific. Everybody's got their own viewpoint, and should express it. (And McIntyre, Florio, everybody, they all express it well.) But, jeez: We have one week left with this shit, and we're seeing this fake storyline emerge — independent of that Times story — that sports blogs should strive for credibility, or mainstream recognition, or to make Bob Costas proud or something. Sports blogs are whatever the hell you want them to be. This is why they are so fun. If everyone's supposed to pat themselves on the back for becoming "respectable," well, shit, what's the point? We're proud of the work we've done here. Some of it has been stupid and juvenile; some of it has at least attempted to be intelligent; some of it has been masturbatory. If you liked it, awesome, we were glad to have you. If you didn't, there are tons of other options. But trying to strive for some sort of mythical "acceptance" is not only pointless — it's never gonna happen, no matter how much you might try to position yourself for it — it's not being honest to the only people who count: The people who take time out of their boring work day to come hang out on your site. It becomes about you, and how you're "positioned," rather than just a bunch of people coming together and talking about things they all care about.

This is to say, sports bloggers of the future: Who cares what Bob Costas or Buzz Bissinger or David Wharton think of you? Why should you care? Just take care of your own business, figure out what you do best, pray everyone just stays out of your way and then start ripping shit up. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

Wild Times For Sports Blogs May Be Coming To An End [Los Angeles Times]

“The younger generation likes the snarky tone,” says Bissinger. “They like the gossip, they like the juice. I don’t think they really appreciate good writing and reporting, and those, to me, are precious arts. . . . It’s all some interactive gangbang.”

The next time Buzz does a Google search for "interactive gangbang" he's going to be wondering what's become of the regular Katja Kassin links.

Now will somebody please pass the e-lube?

Never before has the schism between the traditional grizzled sportswriter and the rad dope hip funky fresh blogger been so beautifully realized. We had no idea we were all Poochie; we are one outrageous dude!

Seriously: We have to mount that on our wall somewhere. With a week left as editor as this here site, we couldn't possibly be more proud to have that illustration as our lasting legacy. It was all worth it.

Bad Sports [The Boston Phoenix]
Buzz Bissinger Is Great At Apologizing [Fire Joe Morgan]

That's not true, of course; Bissinger has a lifetime of work to stand behind, and Calipari is a smooth car salesman college basketball coach. But Calipari surely had similar concerns to what Bissinger had about blogs, but he asked questions, waited for a response, listened and asked followup questions. It's pretty simple.

If there's anything we can take out of yesterday — other than the outpouring of positive emails we received; we were very touched, though a few began to take the tone of condolences, as if something bad had happened to us, like a relative was ill or something — it's that two things that would have benefited both sides in this debate were destroyed on Tuesday night. (We made this point to Mr. Sandomir for his story today, but it didn't make the cut, probably because it, you know, was relevant.)

We think that Bissinger could benefit from a legitimate look at sports blogs: The bad, the good, the hilarious, the grotesque, all of it. Clearly, this was not something that had happened before the program Tuesday. And we also think many sports blogs could benefit from reading Bissinger's books, which, on the whole, are well-researched, well-considered and thoughtfully (if, sometimes, a bit purple-y) written. This could be good for everyone. Unfortunately, after Tuesday's show, neither of those will ever, ever happen.

And now, we're probably ready to let all this go. We knew it had grown out of hand yesterday when we saw a blog yesterday that didn't care about sports, or journalism, or anything else, just simply post the video with the headline: "Old Man Going Crazy." We do hope that's not the takeaway from all this ... but we have our fears.

We'll start off today with a few housekeeping items: As flattering and jarring as it was to hear Bob Costas pronounce my name correctly on last night's "Costas Now", I cannot take credit for the piece he quoted and attributed to me. No, that Rick Reilly story Costas was grousing about was written by Big Daddy Drew — or, sorry "Big Daddy Balls." I was being scolded by proxy. Either way, I was honored to be associated with such a tremendous column, but he should be given all the credit.

Also, I'd feel like I was being remiss if I didn't point this out. Last week when Will found out that he would be appearing on the panel with Buzz Bissinger, it was obvious that any kind of "Town Hall" discussion last night's "Costas Now" intended to be was not going to exist. Obviously, Bissinger has an uncanny ability to be a mean-spirited dick when he's fired up about something. However, as we vividly saw last night, his mania tires out and succumbs to the inevitable comedown. It was during that comedown that Bissinger eerily changed from frothing lunatic to old, wistful writer, openly worried that Will Leitch, the floppy-haired kid sitting next to him, who is personally responsible for giving the world essays about Rich Garces' tits and photos of drunk athletes, would one day supplant anything he's ever done in his life. Bissinger is also a wonderful writer, who has the ability to channel all of that scatterbrained, passionate energy and transform it into something fantastic. That will never go away.

One more thing: Hopefully, last night's train wreck will finally put an end to this whole sports media/mainstream media battle against the sports blogging community. This has always been, in my opinion, a completely rudderless debate from both sides: These are two entirely seperate media. Bloggers are not putting newspaper columnists (or print media) out of business — bad newspapering is. These two worlds don't have to co-exist and were never intended to be that way. To me, blogging and internet writing, by and large, is rooted in comedy and opinion. That's it. One doesn't invalidate the other.

I originally turned to writing on the web almost 10 years ago because, as a struggling journalist desperately trying to break into mainstream media, I had no other outlet to develop a voice, a style, or an opinion on anything through my various jobs that my crappy Communications/English double-major from La Salle University afforded me. As much as I'd hoped that covering the local zoning board meetings or the municipal bond market would be pave the way for me to one day write for publications with a larger audience, it was not going to happen. I had to squash my own grapes, so to speak, and, thankfully, all of that hard, unpaid work done on my free time outside of those other jobs finally gave me some opportunities (and paychecks) I don't feel any guilt about whatsoever. And going this route certainly doesn't make me (or anyone else) unqualified to have an audience or earn a living this way.

Alright, enough — let's go do what we do best.

It was an odd thing, really, to read the emails that flooded in, to see people (kindly, sure) ask us if we were OK. We're fine. We were not the person on that panel to be pitied. What more can one do when a man is disturbed than to show him compassion and not sink to his level. (It felt odd to be considered the uncivil person on the panel.) And hey, we get it: The simplest, most obvious emotion that comes when we are faced with what we do not understand is fear, followed quickly by rage. We're not sure what happened to Mr. Bissinger, but, honestly, we're kind of worried about him. And, as people who own all of his books, we say that legitimately; we want him to write more of them.

It was clear from the get-go, from the very first, "I bet you don't know who W.C. Heinz is," that this was not going to be a roundtable exchange of ideas. (Poor Braylon Edwards, honestly. He must be completely bewildered this morning.) It was obvious that Bissinger had been building up to this for a long time, those dark nights wondering what the kids were searching online, those terrifying moments when the world seemed to be spasming out of his control ... they all built up to this. We had seen him backstage, and introduced ourselves. He was, as Jimi Hendrix was famously described, a live wire with too much current running through it. We could see it coming; anyone paying attention couldn't have missed it.

We suppose we could have punched him in the nose or something, called him an asshole, said he was a piece of shit. It might have made for more riveting television; we are certain Costas wouldn't have minded. But that would have been counterproductive. When you see someone flailing desperately at someone, something, anything, there's nothing more to do than sit there, bemused and bewildered, amazed at what was happening, just like everyone else was. We cannot imagine any reasonable human being watching that display and saying, "doggone it, that raving man has a point!" The only way to win a battle like that is to let the audience take in what is happening, and trust them to respond accordingly.

Sure: We would have loved to have made all the points about blogs that we've made countless times before, trot them all out again, in front of a national audience. Had we that opportunity, we surely would have taken advantage of it. But we felt, in a way, the point was made for us. Watching this talented man spin himself into a typhoon of imploding bluster showed the fear, showed the anger, showed the futility of it all. We sat back and watched, and hoped nobody got hurt, just liked you. Honestly: We really hope he's OK. A fight would have done no one any good, least of all him.

We have to take a flight to Los Angeles on Wednesday morning and, as luck would have it, be gone all day today. (Daulerio will be taking over the site until Thursday. We hope he ignores Costas' bizarre misconception and doesn't just post grotesque comments all day, because, you know, that's what bloggers do.) We'll be back Thursday, doing what we do, trying to bring you a little distraction for another workaday. We are not mad at Bissinger, or Costas. We just watched a man immolate on national television. To have piled on the carnage would have been discourteous. The future is obvious to anyone even slightly interested in looking. We just stand aside, as he, as they, watch the light shrink, then fade, then vanish.

(Photo via AOL Fanhouse)

This is fine, of course. That time we knocked our head on the toilet back in 1993 lead us to come up with the concept of the flux capacitor, which inspired our invention of the Interwebs; so, you know, we're not just whistlin' Dixie here. We do know that Costas has mixed feelings (at best) about the series of tubes, Braylon Edwards is an outstanding wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns and Buzz ... well, Buzz has some thoughts about blogs.

Blogs especially, Bissinger says, "disgrace the written word. No one sweats over a sentence anymore, no one really cares if a sentence has good grammar or bad grammar. No one really cares if it has the right or wrong word. Blogs are all about opinion, all about getting in your face, and the fact that people love them says they're really not interested in facts, not interested in beautiful writing; they're just interested in having our own opinions certified.

"With the Internet, there's too much information out there, and we've become a very mindless country. I don't know how else to say it: We really revel in ignorance and disinformation."

So, yeah: This'll be fun. (For the record, we own — and love — every one of Bissinger's books and agree that David Eckstein is scrappy.)

We have no idea how this is gonna go down, but we will do our best to talk slow, make eye contact and try really hard not to embarrass everybody. Godspeed.

In the preface to his book — essentially about the mind of Cards manager Tony LaRussa — Bissinger calls out Moneyball and Baseball Prospectus acolytes, saying "they have a very bloodless, anti-human, antiseptic view of the game of baseball." Those "anti-humans" happen to be the very type of people who write about baseball on the Web, so, as you can imagine, Bissinger isn't a huge Technorati search these days. (He even called stat guys "nerds" once, which, as you can tell from the picture — with Tim McGraw and Faith Hill! — is a designation with which he is likely quite familiar.)

But credit to Cardnilly: He doesn't let the Bill James of the world off lightly either.

What I really think it boils down to this: the writing style of a lot of the sabr-guys (and gals) is sometimes high-handed, imperious, sarcastic and condescending. It challenges received wisdom, and it does so in a cutting, superior tone. ... So when Buzz complains about the "bloodless, anti-human, antiseptic view" of the stathead crowd, he s clearly overstating his case. But folks like Bill James and the BPro staff can make it easy for that charge to seem plausible with their writing style.

Buzz Hearts Albert [Cardnilly]
Fire Joe Morgan [Blogspot]
Three Nights In August [Amazon]