Ed Hardiman Baited Me Like A Month Ago And I Never Noticed

My apologies, Ed. Here's the trashpile of Ed's phony definitions of "slobbermetric" statistics.

Next to the top of the column, FOXSports leaves a link entitled "report this", so I obviously did.

Are you sure you want to report this content as inappropriate? FOXSports.com staff will investigate this content and deal with it as our Terms of Service dictate.

OK.

Optional: Please explain what the inappropriate content is,
or where it is on the page:

In this space I wrote....

"Dear FOXSports.com,

Ed Hardiman only wrote this column so he could appear on Fire Jay Mariotti, an excellent blog that makes fun of several "professional" writers that write for your site. He should be banned from ever having access to a medium that exposes his writing to thousands of people, because his complete lack of humor and intelligence causes neurons to explode. For the safety of the general public, his writing must be hidden from the view of all persons.

You really can't find the inappropriate content? Seriously? The entire thing is inappropriate and should be e-incinerated.

Sincerely,

-pnoles"

On the plus side, Ed, you had to look up the definition of all those stats you made fun of. My mission is accomplished.

We're Getting Lazy

Or is "efficient" the word I'm looking for? You'll see what I mean. We haven't bitched about Ed Hardiman and his Foxsports.com blog The Fowl Line (Why did he use the animal spelling? Why does he get paid for being a shitty writer? The world is full of mysteries.) for a while so I decided to stop in and see what kind of crap he was writing about. Turned out his most recent column was one evaluating this year's newly eligible baseball Hall of Fame candidates. It was pretty inoffensive. There were a couple bad jokes, like

Tom Lampkin, banjo-hitting catcher, Fowl Line says: Lampkin? Lampkan’t.

and

Lee Stevens, a 1st sacker with a .254 career average and 144 potatoes way better than my numbers, rock-solid mediocre. Fowl Line says: Give us a call when the Kintetsu Buffaloes induct you in their HOF, cause Cooperstown isn’t quite ready for you yet.

As well as a pretty flagrant grammatical error, for what it's worth.

Hipólito Pichardo, rhymes with Ricky Ricardo. There is a baseball hell it’s called the KC Royals, seven-years of a ten-year career spent there will not get you HOF numbers. Fowl Line says: When pig’s fly he still won’t get in.

Yes. When pig is fly. Or is that pig, possessing fly? I am basically a 6th grade English teacher.

But let's get to the main point of this post. The one place Ed really actually crossed the line was with his evaluation of one Timothy Raines.

Tim Raines, Rock! Rock! Four guys have stolen 800 bases, Raines, Rickey Henderson, Lou Brock and Ty Cobb. Two are in and the other two will be. Not even a close call. Fowl Line says: Hell yes.

This is where the laziness and/or efficiency of FireJay comes into play. Is Tim Raines really a no-brainer 1st ballot guy for the Hall? Well, let me just refer you to my colleague Dan-Bob, who wrote this amazing piece probably well before any of you nine faithful readers even know we existed. So it's basically new! I think he handles the subject very gracefully.

And just like that, my work here is finished. I really need to half-ass my way through more posts and just link you guys to old stuff we did months ago that no one has seen. That would make my life down here in the basement much easier. There's only so much time in the day to blog in between eating Pop-Tarts, shooting spiders with old Nerf guns, and playing Sega Genesis.

The Long-Awaited Sequel to $%*# the Heck!

Courtesy of your friend and mine, Ed Hardiman

I lied. Ed Hardiman is not my friend. He is a douche. He is a douche that should have all of his writings e-burned. He should have made like that mysterious 3rd sibling on Family Matters and disappeared into the pornography business after several seasons of providing absolutely no value to anyone. But no, he writes on. And therefore, so do I. I apologize, but this post is a little outdated (let's pretend the World Series hasn't happened yet! shhhhh).

Look the simple fact is nobody really knows who will win the World Series though the bookies pretty much say it will be the Red Sox faster than you can say Yorvit Torrealba.

Because the bookies have absolutely no interest in preventing their gamblers from making abnormal returns on their bets, I'm going to assume that their belief was completely arbitrary.

While slobbering SABR devotees are busy rounding up archaic theorems and equations to hyper-complicate the observable we can dispense with all that twaddle by pointing out when you call inaccurate predictions "over or under performance" you've essentially found a harder way to avoid admitting you were flat out wrong.

I'm starting to think Hardiman is aware of this blog somehow. He fixed his problem of spelling it "SABER", and I remember deriding him for that when he said some really stupid things about sabermetrics.

Spot on again, Ed. Over and under performance are completely illegitimate concepts, because there is absolutely no luck whatsoever in determining where a ball lands when someone swings a bat at a very fast speed trying to hit a ball traveling at a very fast speed, often with unexpected movement.

Nope here at the Fowl Line we use the soundest of all predictors, SWAG. Scientific Wild BLEEP Guessing is the bedrock of advancement in all fields of human endeavor. Considered only slightly less accurate than currency flipping, SWAG allows us to synthesize all the available data into an actionable conclusion.

I can only assume that the "A" stands for "Ass". Shouldn't it be hyphenated to "Wild", or like, attached to the end of it a la "wildass" or something? You know what, fuck it. No benefit of the doubt. It's tied to "guessing". Ed is describing a new thing called "Ass-Guessing". Wild Ass Guessing.....just doesn't click, does it?

What happens next, I have no answer for. It makes less sense than anything I've ever read in my life.

Take for example milk. At some point somebody asked the question, what would happen if we BLEEP ed on one of those udders? Their dumb as a bag of flint arrowheads buddy ended up getting gored by a bull after filling his mouth with warm milk. The bull of course was the 1st example of "cannot be determined from evidence given" which is a whole other blog.

Anyone want to try to decipher that? Anyone?

The World Series comes down to one simple question. Can a team playing at sea level beat a team that doesn't? Thanks to the All Star game we can answer that question in the affirmative. Yep, that useless as a third pinkie exercise in mid-season dullness provides us with all the information we need to have a 50% chance of being correct. The Red Sox will prevail by winning four games and the Rockies will win slightly less. This of course doesn't preclude the Rockies from winning the Series.

There are two options here.

1) Ed is being serious, and really feels like the winner of the All-Star Game has a bearing on the World Series. If this is the case, he's excited to announce that if we take it into consideration, we now have a 50% chance of being correct, or the same as just flipping a coin.
2) (more likely) Ed is joking about the All-Star Game being important, and claiming that using it we can have a 50% chance of being right, or no improvement over a random guess. Wasn't there some sort of big deal about the All-Star Game starting to count for something at some point in recent years?

That's the beauty of SWAG it leaves loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. Plus you can run other SWAG simulations like; who has the most foreign born players, the Red Sox have 9, the Rockies 7. Or you can do it by coolest name and there the Rockies Yorvit Torrealba edges Daisuke Matsuzaka by a hair.

Now I'm positive that Ed has no clue the All-Star game affects the World Series. He just compared it to picking a favorite by counting foreign-born players. Also Daisuke Matsuzaka has a better name than Torrealba.

There's also a SWAG cuisine angle you could use, unfortunately Rocky Mountain Oysters will never be as tasty as Boston's Oyster House Clam Chowder. You could go by mascots, the Rockies mascot is a dinosaur named "Dinger" while Boston's mascot is the cryogenically frozen head of Ted Williams, once again its advantage Sox…

Is there a SWAG Team OPS+/ERA+ angle or SWAG league-translated record angle or SWAG Pythagenport record angle we could use? I mean clearly, like those other methods, we're just ass-guessing here, and wildly so. I just like them better because they sound outrageously cool. There's no way to actually pick a favorite.

No matter how you slice it SWAG will get you to as a good a guess as any other system.

It will get you just as good a guess as:

1) Sleeping
2) Eating a Hamburger
3) Watching that episode of Home Improvement where the boys have to stay overnight at Al's house.
4) Playing a pickup basketball game.
5) Reading Lord of the Flies

Things it will not get you just as good a guess as:

1) Knowing one random stat about a player on either team
or
2) Vaguely paying attention to the game of baseball. My mother, who in November is still rooting for the Chicago Cubs to lose baseball games they aren't even playing, could tell you that the Red Sox were favored. People who hate baseball, and don't pay attention to it at all knew.

So drop the slide rules, break out an ice cold Bladderweiser® and enjoy the Series. I'll be covering the game from the press box and you know what? When the Series is over I'll mumble to myself, "I knew it all along…"

Nope. Fuck you. I sat through the World Series recalculating the odds on my computer of each team winning it all after every pitch. I ate prunes and listened to "White and Nerdy" on repeat thanks to YouTube during the games. It was one of the saddest times of my life seeing that 99.99834% chance for the Red Sox turn to 100%.

Ed Hardiman Needs to Drink a Bottle of Antifreeze

Again, as I've announced before, there's no way that Jay Mariotti is my least favorite writer. It's this guy, Ed. Ed is a man who pretty much sits at his computer trying to be funny about twice a week and fails miserably (not that his idiot commenters ever take note -- I bet he filters them). Here he draws up a hilarious passage about The Gipper being exhumed!

The Associated Press reports Notre Dame legend George Gipp was exhumed yesterday. Gipp, famous for inspiring Knute Rockne to coin the phrase "Win one for the Gipper" and launching Ronald Reagan on the road to the Presidency, was driven to the South Bend campus of Notre Dame where he gave a rousing speech exhorting the one-win Fighting Irish to win at least two.

While several players admitted they didn't know who George Gipp was an equal number admitted they didn't know who Ronald Reagan was either. George Weiss admitted bringing in the corpse of a former player was a desperate act but, "...The only other dead legend, Knute Rockne, was booked solid until 2010."

HAHAHHAHAHAHA! Notre Dame athletes are stupid! What a fucking retarded school, they'll just let in ANYONE if they can play football! Those MORONS don't even know who Ronald Reagan is!

But seriously, can anyone tell me if there has been any pressure on Notre Dame to lower academic admission standards in an effort to admit better football players? Has this ever been an issue before? No? Cool. Didn't think so. What a school full of retards.

Gipp gained 2,341 yards on the ground for the Fighting Irish over 3 seasons before succumbing to strep throat weeks before being named Notre Dame's 1st All American in 1920. His deathbed declaration to Knute Rockne might be the best ever given, even if its apocryphal;

"I've got to go, Rock. It's all right. I'm not afraid. Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys — tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, Rock. But I'll know about it, and I'll be happy."

Bob, an offensive lineman, had this to say "Yeah, um it was hard to tell what he was saying and at one point his head fell off and rolled around on the floor but it was inspirational, though I think ending the speech "Win one for the Swiffer" or something like that was kind of confusing..."

How can you possibly accuse anyone else of being stupid? I think you have the IQ of a grapefruit. And just for future reference, if you want to say college football players are stupid, try not to confuse "it's" and "its" or forget commas before quotations.

When Father Ted McGuiness-Stout was asked if bringing the dead back to life conformed to the theological mission of the school he angrily retorted "Go to @#$% you Protestant @#$%."

ZOMG priests swearing!

Wendy a perky cheerleader, or nubile enthusiasm generator as Don, the school information assistant hastily pointed out, said Gipp was "Dreamy." She later admitted she "...liked older guys cause they're way more mature and Gipp was really old." so old in fact, "...he lived in a box under the ground." After being asked if she knew what "being dead" meant she admitted it sounded a lot like what happened when her pet cat Fluffy went away forever when she was in the 2nd grade.

And those Notre Dame cheerleaders! What stereotypical ignoramuses! They're trim blonde girls with huge tits who just sleep around constantly and once performed sexual favors for the admissions dude just so they could get into the fucking school! Nothing but flies inside their heads! Hell, they don't even know what "dead" means! Isn't Notre Dame some sort of community college?

The overall impact of this desperate measure won't be known until this coming weekend. As for Gipp he plans to remain dead and has no immediate plans, though ESPN has offered him a reality show called "Fourth and Dead with George Gipp."

Wow. "Fourth and Dead?" That's the best fucking play on words you could come up with?

I have to be up early tomorrow. Now I'm too pissed off to sleep.

To recap: Jay Mariotti is someone I want to yell at a lot and just explain to him how dumb and wrong he is about everything. Ed Hardiman is someone I want to hit with a crowbar.

ZOMG HIS NAME IS MILTON BRADLEY!!!

Headline from Ed Hardiman of The Daily Fowl:

"Parker Brothers Signed to Replace Milton Bradley

LOLLERSKATES! Another great joke, Ed.

He's apparently funny enough to have Gene Shalit commenting on his posts.....

Well Ed, Milton always seems to be playing the 'TROUBLE' game, and then he's 'SORRY. He's up and down like 'CHUTES and LADDERS', which tends to make up his game in 'LIFE'. I don't care 'TIDDLEY WINKS' about Milton. He should get a 'CLUE'.

You Know That Uncle or Weird Cousin in the Family That Makes Bad Jokes All the Time?

Well, in the Hardiman family, that would be Ed. This time, he numbered his dumbass attempts at humor. He's fast becoming my most despised sportswriter, even if he isn't the stupidest.

Face it ASU is the fork you can't pull out. Yep, you take the L from a community college there is no BCS Championship, no way no how. Consequently we found an easy way to tell Michigan from Appalachian State University so you can recognize how big a loss this is.

Believe it or not, this is actually going to be less funny than David Letterman's Top Ten. Tell me when this is done how the hell he got positive comments saying how funny he was. It reminds me of that time Jeff Pearlman got positive feedback for the Rickey Henderson article. I swear that people who read these things have serious disorders.

#01…ASU wears shoebox's Michigan wears cleats

HAHHAHAHA! What a STUPID, POOR, DIVISION II SCHOOL! WAHAHAHHAHAHHA!

On a side note, I don't point out grammar and shit too often, but shoebox's? Really? No comma, no period? Whatever. I'm not here.

#02…Michigan’s footballs are made from pigskin, ASU uses the actual pig.

What dumbasses....they're handing off, passing, punting, and kicking an actual farm animal. Can you believe that guys? Guys?

::chirp::chirp::

#03…ASU’s uniforms are made from used peanut sacks, Michigan’s match.

Logic would denote that if the peanut sacks are matching (how different could they be???), then this is invalid.

#04…Michigan flies a chartered jet to away games, ASU lets Granny sit in the rocking chair on top of the team Ford Model T.

I can't even comment on this effectively. Is this supposed to be a joke that makes sense? Like, I see what you're going for....the whole Michigan - normal/Appalachian State - poor thing. But Ford Model T? Like you're trying to say that Appalachian State is old and unevolved and for some reason puts 80-year-old women on top of their cars? (Michigan is way older than Appalachian State) Anyone not cool with giving this joke a grade of "F"? Didn't think so.

#05…Lloyd Carr is the coach of Michigan, the coach of ASU is also their daddy and brother.

Ha-yuk......a backwoodsman/inbreeding joke. Lovely. Appalachian State University is not located in West Virginia, Ed.

#06…ASU cheerleaders have most of their teeth Michigan’s have all of their teeth.

I'm pretending that Ed has been reading this out loud, on stage, live on Broadway, in front of thousands of people. Right about now, the crowd is out of tomatoes/other stereotypical things to throw (where do they get tomatoes anyway?) and searching for the sharpest things they have to chuck them at the stage in hopes that one of his eyes would be gouged out. This is one of the least creative jokes of all time, and for some reason idiots are applauding this shit. I'll quote some comments, just for fun (there's literally like no negative feedback, I swear).

LMAO and still can't stop laughing! Ed you are a FUNNY LITTLE NEWSPAPER DUCK!

ed...you kill me...this is getting printed and put on the fridge. the highest of compliments, my fowl feathered freak.

Ahh Ed, you crack me up man... good stuff.

To reiterate....this is being said about someone who just made a run-of-the-mill "rural people don't have teeth" joke.

Back to the crap......

#07…Michigan sings “Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue!” ASU sings “Pa Got The Still Workin’ Again!”

Oh HAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA! Because they're RURAL. This totally isn't repetitive or anything. I wonder why people don't make these jokes about West Virginia University or something. Oh yeah. They aren't funny.

#08…Michigan games are broadcast on a satellite TV network, ASU broadcasts don’t reach the other side of the mountain.

Nothing really to say here except that this isn't really anything resembling a joke.

#09…Michigan players eat thick juicy steaks ASU players are happy to have vittles that didn’t die on a highway.

::sigh:: NEXT!

#10 Appalachian State University is 1-0, Michigan is 0-1!!!

Heyooooooooo! I was a bit scared that all of that wasn't going anywhere, but that super-awesome punchline reassured me that there was actually a point to all of that repetitive bullshit. Well done Ed. Those Appalachian State guys might be rural, toothless, and poor, but THAT DIDN'T MATTER ON SATURDAY DID IT??? You really drove the point home there.

Oooh here's one! Ed Hardiman may be a douche, stupid, douchey, unfunny, repetitive, and a douche, but the bottom line is foxsports.com still lets him write! I think I'll go ahead and write myself a "10 ways to tell the difference between Ed Hardiman and someone with a sense of humor", along the same lines.

Hardiman Strikes Again

For those of you who don't remember Ed Hardiman, he's the guy who wrote an article which, if not the worst and dumbest article to appear here, is definitely on the top 5.

Now he's back again, with another stupid attempt to be hilarious.

His article is about the Jose Offerman incident.

This is the part of the story that never gets picked up by the wire services. Offerman held a press conference in the lobby of the Lucky Deuces Motor Lodge where he's staying.

EH: Jose you attacked two people with a baseball bat and yet I can't help wondering what you were thinking when you hit the home run in the first inning?

JO: I am presumed innocent until proven guilty in America so I'm glad you're focusing on the one thing we can agree on, I did hit the home run and I was thinking of giving thanks to my personal savior and...

EH: Sorry to interrupt, but are you denying this is you in the picture swinging the bat?

JO: I'm saying this is a typical rush to judgement by the media when all the facts, which I might add indicate my innocence, come out they will exonerate me of all these allegations.

EH: So an imposter came up to bat wearing your jersey who looks exactly like you and he charged the mound?

JO: Something like that, I'm not at liberty to discuss the details on the advice of my attorneys. Next question from someone else please.

(Long silence)

EH: Jose I'm the only reporter present can we continue?

JO: We can as long as you print I'm innocent until proven guilty.

EH: Fair enough. Can you discuss how this imposter managed to elude police?

JO: I would imagine anyone good enough to fool a stadium full of people, players and cameras is good enough to fool the police and get away afterwards.

EH: So you're?

JO: A victim of circumstances.

EH: Thanks Jose, good luck on your comeback.

JO: Its not a comeback its an exciting opportunity to market my baseball skills to a different demographic.

Jose Offerman, innocent until proven guilty or crazed bat wielding maniac? Its just another American tale. There are no second acts just the twilight of a career flickering for a couple of hundred fans, a handful of shelled peanuts and for one brief second as the crowd cheers and the ball clears the fence, the dream doesn't seem so far away...

Where the hell did all this come from?

Okay Ed. This MIGHT be funny if Mr. Offerman was pleading "not guilty" or was acting like it wasn't his fault or something. I did a Google search for "Jose Offerman innocent until proven guilty" and this is the first (and pretty much only) relevant hit. I literally looked all over Google and YouTube for some sort of Offerman speech making some sort of wild, ridiculous claim, and there is none. What are you trying to make fun of here? Even if this is some sort of vague reference to Michael Vick, that's a total stretch. Where in the world did you get the ridiculously unwitty, stupid, and awful premise for this fake interview?

I'm imagining you sitting in your chair, smoking a cigar like that retarded looking duck (or whatever your foxsports.com icon is) trying to find a way to be funny about this incident. You're thinking with your pea brain (we determined it was the exact size of a pea in the "Slobbermetrics" post) for like 11 hours, and finally decide "Ooh! I know! Let's pretend that Jose Offerman is mentally insane and that he's acting like he didn't really charge the mound in front of thousands of people and hit people with a baseball bat! Eddie boy, you genius!"

Quit vomiting nonsense already.

Slobbermetrics

This is handsdown one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It was pointed out on Fire Joe Morgan, where Ken Tremendous decided against making an entry on it. It pisses me off way too much to not write about it though. Take it away, Ed Hardiman.

Slobbermetrics, How Bill James and Math Nearly Destroyed Baseball

Oh don't you count out slobbermetricians by using that word "nearly".....they're only gaining momentum in this war! They're still well on their way to destroying baseball! More and more of them are deviously acquiring jobs working for baseball teams because ::gasp:: baseball team front offices want smart people to help make their teams better! They say that every time someone mentions a player's RC27, a drop of magic leaves the great sport of baseball forever. Before 2009, I predict that slobbermetricians will simulate all baseball games by having computers spit out random numbers from PECOTA projections to determine the outcome of each at-bat. Who else agrees?

Sabermetrics, is the Scientology of baseball. It all started in a tiny, airless, room, where the guy who got picked last in Little League, perfected his revenge. This handy guide will help clear up the wildest misconceptions spread by this extremely annoying and exceedingly irrelevant cult.

Not fair! I doubt Bill James was that nerd picked last in Little League. He was, however, the last man picked from Kansas to join the army in the Vietnam War. He majored in traditionally calculator-nerd oriented English and Economics (presumably being homeschooled by his mother). And not all nerds sucked in Little League. Even I, the nerdiest of nerds was a first round Little League draft pick when I was 12 (woohoo! claim to fame, baby!). And my team was 13-5 that year, so suck on that, Ed.

Definition.
Sabermetrics is also known as, long winded pointless dissertation, insufferable boors with calculators, or guys with pocket protectors.

I can only conclude from this that you think "sabermetrics" are people rather than statistical measurements.

If you're like me, you don't need to know the equation for cracking oil to figure out you got a batch of bad gas in your car.

This has everything to do with baseball.

Or live near the Devil Rays or Royals, to realize beauty might be skin deep but bad goes all the way through.

This is not a sentence. It's too bad you don't buy into wonky English-sentence-making formulas, as I do.

Here's my absolute favorite example of recent memory of how conventional statistics and wisdom can be deceiving, and how sabermetrics can enlighten people to a player's true value.

Player X, in 2006, hit .260, but also had 29 HR and 103 RBI. Pretty valuable guy, right?

What if I told you that Player X is Jeff Francoeur, and that his grotesque .293 OBP hurts his value to the point where he has not only a poor .246 EqA, but also a -1.0 VORP? This means that the Braves would actually have been a little better off calling up a typical AAA corner outfielder to hit for Francoeur. Are you really going to dismiss important information like that as nonsense?

Ah who am I kidding, you probably think "Jeff Francoeur" is some sort of 17th century explorer trying to strike gold for France.

Humor.

Sabermites believe they have a sense of humor. Sadly, it can only be expressed mathmatically.

When Carl Everett's position in Baseball Prospectus 2007 was listed as "Nuisance" rather than "DH", and "Strom Thurmond" and "Harriet the Galapagos Tortoise" were listed as PECOTA comparables for Julio Franco, I deeply wondered what type of mathematical equations had led them to those jokes.

Reality.
Using pseudo-algebraic conclusions to describe the infinite intangibles of great baseball is like using cement to describe Mozart. Abstract baseball minutia stacked like pancakes doesn't get around the real consistent opinion voiced by those who watch baseball daily and this churns the guts of Sabermites.

I'd like to see cement write one of Mozart's symphonies accurate to within 4-5 notes.

Math is largely used to weed out using "intangibles" as an explanation for why a baseball player is effective. "Intangibles" tell you nothing. Numbers can explain why the White Sox didn't get the job done in 2006 and are a bad team now(it has nothing to do with losing Aaron Rowand's intensity!), or why a team as bad as the Cardinals from last year was able to win a World Series (it has nothing to do with the fire burning in David Eckstein's heart!). If you don't like information, you can go back in time and make pencils out of 100% lead and construct buildings with astronomical amounts of asbestos, if that makes you happy.

Also, the term "Slobbermetricians" is preferable to "Sabermites". It's more funnierest. And you're right, I bet they've never been to a baseball game, or like baseball, or even been outside. They just need SOMETHING to calculate (lucky thing someone started putting stats on computers!) during the lunch hour of their home school session.

Initialize.
Acronyms sow maximum confusion. Sabermites concoct bewildering thickets of initials around feeble wild BLEEP guessing. EqA's are as likely to stick a homemade shank in VORP's as they are to end up drunk at Bill James annual Christmas party where King Herod's win shares always make trading for the baby Jesus look silly.

We now need to seek a new way to quickly and accurately use the terms "NASA", "FCC", and "IRS" in casual conversation, because these sow maximum confusion.

I guess people just take a wild guess when they determine that Adam Dunn's EqA has been above average in recent seasons despite low batting averages. Random, really. It was equally possible for Slobbermetricians to determine Neifi Perez is very valuable.

Bill James' Christmas parties sound like a rockin good time.

Equate.

Never allow anyone near the prime equation of sabermetrics, A+B=Shut the Hell Up. This is sports for math club members.

Let A = "Ed" and let B = "Hardiman". HAH! I have a sense of humor that can only be expressed mathematically!

Gross Tonnage.

The complicated formula for "Hey that guy just bunted the runner to second..." would fill this entire page. SABER stat-bot hysteria amply illustrates the "Star Trek Factor," now that Kirk's too fat to worship, Sabermites invented an arcane statistical abstract to replace dialectic Klingon arguments that made their life worth living...

The formula for "Hey that guy just bunted the runner to second" is either "1-3 (sac)", "2-3 (sac)", "3-4 (sac)" or "5-3 (sac)". So you'd probably have to use like 150 pt font and type sideways.

Strength of Nattering (SON).

Sabermite's tirelessly redefine everything in SABER-speak, until, the non-SABER person drops from exhaustion or retreats to a sport like ice curling.

Dude, is that apostrophe supposed to be there? This entire thing has been syntactically and gramatically a mess. You put as much effort into proofreading things you publish as you did to understand exactly what the study of sabermetrics is. For example, the acronym is "SABR" not "SABER".

I think I'll dedicate the rest of my life to finding a way to sabermetrically analyze ice curling. Thanks for tipping me off to a possible escape route.

Value.

According to SABER dogma, a single just isn't worth a double. Take that Ty Cobb, you BLEEP because 75% of your hits aren't all that and a bag of SABER chips.

What....the....fuck?

Did I miss something here? Slobbermetricians think singles aren't good beacuse they aren't doubles? Is that what they work on all day in their parents' basements?

Uh oh, you used "75%" in this part. Careful. 75% is a number. You just researched something, and determined that about 3/4 of Cobb's hits were singles. The inner slobbermetrician is showing in you Hardiman! Careful, before you start using facts REGULARLY! Oh man, scary thought, you're going nerd, you can't help but give in......

Slide Rule

Its not, never slide head first, its never attend a game of baseball without a slide rule, so you'll have something to look at.

Always carry one, right next to my abacus and my TI-89 calculator.

Despite not even saying anything in this article, you managed to contradict yourself, because to think a Slobbermite (drooling insect?) would ever waste his time outside, at a baseball game, is ridiculous.

Worship the Stat Gods

Barry Bonds is a perfect example, the thought of losing all those succulent steroid drenched numbers sends the average Sabermite into a slobbery, mad dog, frenzy. They would rather chew off the non-math lobe of their brain than let go, or admit, that Barry might indeed be full of nincompoop

Another valid point. Slobbermetricalicians have never heard of steroids (though if they ever want to get a date, they might need to take them to bulk up a tad!), and drool regularly when they hear about Barry Bonds's .609 OBP in 2004, like a dog trained to listen for a bell before being fed.

What Can You Do?

I know the answer to every problem is "sing a song" but if organizing a world wide series of concerts is beyond your grasp, try these simple SABER killing phrases:

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
Albert Einstein

I challenge you, Ed, to find a slobbermedical statistic that is useless and tells you nothing about a player's performance.

"The last time I checked baseball is best played on a field and not on a calculator."

Last time I checked, articles are best written when you have a clue as to what the fuck you're bashing as opposed to wildly making claims about something being stupid. For example, right now, I am bashing an arrogant, uninformed, trashhole of a writer who probably looked up the acronyms of several sabermetric stats, heard them used in conversation, decided he was too stupid to figure out what significance they might hold, so instead tried to make fun of them to cover up the fact that his pea-brain couldn't muster up the energy to learn something more about a topic that it's supposedly his job to write about. Am I close, Ed? Am I close? Are you sure that "Ed Hardiman" isn't a pseudonym for Bruce Jenkins or Joe Morgan?

"People who count don't."

Fine. Let the education system stop at preschool so that counting is never taught to anyone. You've clearly established yourself as a person who believes learning anything new isn't worth your time.