Hello again, dear reader. No doubt some of you are curious as to why I’ve been shirking my Yard Work duties for the past handful of months. As ombudsman for this storied institution, it is essential for me to retain a modicum of objectivity. Too much time spent in the trenches dulls the senses, turn slight gradations of color into indistinguishable blotches of grey. Objectivity is lost. If this weren’t the case – if, indeed, all work and no play made Jacks good worker drones – then most 9-to-5ers wouldn’t be given vacations, evenings or weekends off. Perspective and distance is good for the mind and the soul. You, of course, are invited to disagree. During my editorial tenure with the New York Times, a watchdog website took me to task for what was seen as an ill-timed vacation. Such people need to mind their paragraph and anchor tags and ask themselves why I am in the position to take leave of the Grey Lady while they are left in front of a monitor, grousing and griping at my good fortune.

My job isn’t to make sure the trains run on time; I merely note their arrival and departure, and muse on such things. Far be it from me to use my position within this organization to unfairly lobby against an institution or individual outside my purview. Having said that, someone at Sports Illustrated must have a taste for delectible hallucinogens matched only by their poor judgement and lust for hyperbole. I’m talking specifically about SI writer Richard Deitsch, and his online Media Circus column dated October 20th. In this column, Deitsch sings the praises of a baseball-focused weblog called Fire Joe Morgan. For the sake of expediency, I will from this point forward refer to this blog by its less exhaustive appelation, FJM. Deitsch describes the weblog thusly:

Created last April by a pair of Los Angeles-based comedy writers, the Fire Joe Morgan blog has made inroads among a small band of hardcore baseball fans. But what separates FJM from your average Fire (Fill In The Coach You Hate Here).com site is the quality of its writing: snarky and sharp, occasionally mean-spirited, often hilarious.

Deitsch also uses the occasion to remark on the wonder of the blog phenomenon: “FJM is symbolic of how the web has given everyone a voice. The blogosphere can shape public dialogue and FJM’s posts have ended up on other baseball message boards. Two national baseball writers told me they have heard of the site.” Indeed, the impact of the weblog on public discourse is a wonder for someone that just learned how to turn on their iMac. Suffice it to say that writing about the phenomenon that is weblogging in late 2005 is best left to small newspapers based in flyover states and nth world countries, places where the Internet and its varied wonders seem like the stuff of science fiction digests. Awe-struck social commentary of this shallow nature should not be associated with a semi-respected bastion of sports journalism like Sports Illustrated. Unless Rick Reilly is the author – in that case, feel free to drop trou, Ricky. Nowhere to go but up, right?

I shudder to use scare quotes, but using the word “writers” to describe the purveyors of the unhinged vitriol permeating FJM without qualifying it with some lyrical asterisk would do folks with actual writerly talent a grave disservice. The fish FJM posters aim at are in a barrel already chockfull of buckshot. In addition to attacking Joe Morgan, they gang-tackle bloviating gum-flappers and key-bangers such as John Kruk, Tim McCarver, Bill Simmons, and Skip Bayless, as well as lesser lights plying their trade for Fox Sports and MSNBC. Unable or unwilling to develop a distinct writerly voice from which to compose their ruminations on the national pastime, the pseudonymous FJM cabal settles for viciously attacking those whose opinions are deemed to be inferior to their own. The typical post on FJM contains text from the article / online chat in question, and comments from the author of the post, disparaging what the offending target has said. Take this snippet from a Joe Morgan chat:

JOE MORGAN: Replay would not have helped. I saw the replay over and over and you could say it was inconclusive although I believe he caught the ball.

FIRE JOE MORGAN: You could say it was inconclusive, but you would be wrong.

JM: I don’t believe replay should be in baseball. You would really be messing with the history of the game. Bad calls are part of the game.

FJM: Segregation used to be part of the game. Don’t mess with history, Joe.

JM: When would you use replay? On a close play at first in the fifth? Only in the late innings? A play in the fifth is just as important as a play in the ninth.

FJM: Well, a committee would propose several ideas. Perhaps only on home run calls. Perhaps coaches could get a limited number of challenges a game like in the NFL. No one’s suggesting replay for balls and strikes.

JM: I’m not a fan of replays.

FJM: I can tell. You’re also not a fan of the concept of change.

Oh, the laughter to be had! Clearly the comic timing offered in this brief morsel of prose is the stuff that fuels the best brain-addled drivel television sitcoms have to offer. Ever since the sports hoi polloi took to using Q-Tips, attacking Joe Morgan has become a tradition. Come the All-Star Break of every baseball season, there is a bevy of articles and essays bemoaning and critiquing Morgan’s nationally-broadcast ill-informed rhetoric. For such perennial assaults to remain a worthy endeavor, they must be executed with delicacy and poise. Otherwise, such oneupsmanship comes off as pointless pedantic ranting. The example from the aforementioned weblog is proof. FJM’s mean-spirited line-by-line rebuttal reminds me of nothing less than gormless playground taunting, wherein timeless bon mots like “I know you are, but what am I?” and “I’m rubber, you’re glue” are bandied back and forth like badminton shuttlecocks between children far from the age of consent, reason, and unsupervised bathroom usage. Why resort to such base tactics as subtlety and nuance when you can pulverize watermelons with a carnival-sized sledgehammer?

In the interests of ombudsmanship, let me point out that by granting his subjects anonymity, Richard Deitsch risks traipsing down the same journalistic rabbit hole as New York Times reporter Judith Miller. By shielding “Dak” and “Ken Tremendous” from the slings and arrows of objective criticism, Deitsch frees them from accountability for their vituperative mudslinging. The current zeitgeist of American letters does not look fondly upon spurious allegations such as those leveled against Morgan and his peers by FJM. Indeed, the specter of impartiality and journalistic credibility is called into question by FJM’s work, which, in the absence of full exposure, smacks of agenda. The question that ought to be raised at this point is why Deitsch insists on protecting his sources.

Here is another example where stating the obvious seems to qualify as “sharp” and “hilarious” commentary:

MICHAEL VENTRE (MSNBC): In the American League Championship Series against the Angels, they got an unheard-of four straight complete games from Mark Buehrle, Jon Garland, Freddy Garcia and Jose Contreras. When four starting pitchers all achieve such a high standard together in consecutive starts, it means something is going on. It means the dispensing of filthy stuff and winning are contagious.

FIRE JOE MORGAN: Really? That’s what it means? Conclusively? How about: all of these guys have been good solid pitchers all year, and they happened to all pitch well against a mediocre offensive team in consecutive games? They combined for nine complete games during the regular season, so while it’s impressive that they strung together four in a row (in fact, it’s pretty crazy that that happened), it’s by no means proof of some awesome contagious winning disease sweeping the team.

Would that the humor supposedly informing this unleavened nonsense infect me like some “awesome contagious … disease.” Instead, I find myself reaching for the Ipecac in a vain attempt to void the nauseating torpor that reading FJM has inspired. If this anonymous masturbatory mollycoddling is truly seen as “funny,” then please let me wallow in a misery and sadness the likes of which even Dostoyevsky could not hope to ever envision. Fire Joe Morgan is nothing more that mullet-headed cronyism at its basest and most foul.

But never let it be said that I am playing favorites. In Monday’s Yard Work post by Diamondbacks bench coach Jay Bell, the word “anyway” is misspelled in the second paragraph. Disgraceful. Give that editorial intern forty lashes with a wet noodle. And give me his mulligatawny.

Daniel Okrent is the author of Nine Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game and the former Public Editor of The New York Times.