Famous Pitcher Retires; Columnist Makes Ass of Self

Mariotti recently blogged about Curt Schilling's retirement and HOF worthiness. One loudmouthed fuckhead writing about another- you can imagine how that ended up.

This is where I have the chance to be a bigger man than Curt Schilling.

You are "bigger," in this sense of the word, than very few people. And you don't usually (or ever) take an opportunity to establish yourself as such.

This is where I ignore his jerk quotient -- clubhouse politician, Capitol Hill steroids waffler, attention moth, blogging fool --

Two sentences in, the irony is already pouring in furiously.

and state unequivocally that he belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Some writers hold grudges when confronted with voting decisions about prickly players, forgetting that our responsibility is to history and not our tattered feelings.

Hold on, read that again several times.

Some writers hold grudges Some writers hold grudges Some writers hold grudges Some writers hold grudges Some writers hold grudges

Yes indeedy, Jay. Some writers most definitely do hold grudges. (Of course, Jay's situation with the "Blizzard" has nothing to do with voting, so maybe he would say that his above statement about Schilling is really not that ironic. I just really like the idea of Jay trying to take the high ground when it comes to holding a grudge of any kind.)

Me? I see through the blowhard and look inside the heart.

If only this blog's writers could do the same!

Seems the annoyances that made him such a drama queen also were the traits that made him such a dominant S.O.B. when it most mattered on the mound.

If only being a complete and total idiot similarly made one a great writer.

The leper aspect of Schilling only grew worse in his championship years. He began hearing criticism that he was too self-absorbed and pompous, and he lashed back by ripping media. He has called me names. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe is the "Curly-Haired Boyfriend." But anyone who disliked Schilling was forced to acknowledge his brilliance.

This is what I like to call "laying it on thick." Although, at the same time, Jay's praise here makes me wonder if maybe he is actually a little aware of the similarities between himself and Schilling.

No pitcher was more dominant at the start of this decade.

This is the part of the post where I actually make some sports arguments- Schilling was pretty much amazing in 2001 and 2002, but during that time he wasn't even the most dominant pitcher on his own team. That honor would go to the man CHart once called "the ugliest man in professional sports" to that man's hideous face.

No pitcher has had better control since 1900, demonstrated by his best-ever strikeout/walk ratio of 4.38 among those with 1,500 innings or more.

Again, he had phenomenal control. But that's not really the right stat to evaluate it- that's speaks to a combination of great control and the ability to strike dudes out. I'm pretty sure BB/9 is a better evaluator of pure control. And while Schilling was pretty great, there are many modern era pitchers, some of them awesome (Christy Matthewson, Greg Maddux), some of them shitty (Bob Tewksbury, Carlos Silva [who once threw 188 innings in a season and issued 9 fucking walks!]) who were better.

"The Red Sox were perfect for him, because he likes the big stage, the history of the game," Epstein said. "He likes to be the center of attention."

Sometimes, we loathed him for it. Why did he use baseball as a platform to endorse political candidates?

Why do you use your job as a national sports columnist to consistently level embarrassingly inept personal attacks at a guy most people outside of Chicago don't really care about? Life is full of mysteries.

And then Jay, showing all the effort of a high school student who's desperately trying to make his English paper get to the teacher's page length assignment, quotes a full two paragraphs straight from Schilling's blog. No commentary, just straight copy and paste. And then the article ends. And so does my post. I've heard some complaints recently that my posts aren't as good as they used to be. If that's the case, which it probably isn't because my posts have always sucked, it's probably due to me trying too hard to be really mean and over-the-top angry about the crap I'm writing about. So I'm going to try to dial it down a couple notches for a little while. Instead of ending this with something like "Jay Mariotti is worse than [thing that is a really bad]," I'll just say "I did not enjoy reading this article very much!" Here's to turning over a new leaf.