Defensive Indifference

I love Old Hickory, I do, but he’s sounding more like Murray Chass by the day. Let’s start with his chat today for Boston.com:

Will Jim Rice finally make it into the Hall of Fame?

Peter Gammons: I don’t think so. I voted for him, but it’s been interesting that there have been people like Rob Neyer who are so obsessed with degrading Rice’s career. The fact that he retired as early as he did clearly has cost him because of the 382 home runs. But for him to be in the top 5 in MVP balloting 6 times in 12 years, to me, speaks more about his career than the fact that his career OPS is the same as Ellis Burks.

Wow. I’m surprised at the direct broadside at his ESPN colleague Rob Neyer. FTR, Neyer isn’t even close to “obsessed” with keeping Rice out of the Hall — how much influence can he have anyway when the voting institution itself has tried so clearly, especially this year, to discredit and disassociate itself from Neyer — but that’s not even the worst part. We’re supposed to ignore Rice’s (relatively speaking) mediocre numbers because the sportswriters thought he was worthy of the BBWAA’s MVP voting. Whaaaa? This is the same group of people that gave Justin Morneau the MVP over Derek Jeter last year and Jimmy Rollins the MVP over like 10 other NL players, including his more valuable teammate at second base, this year. These clowns screw the major awards up EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. And the way they voted like three decades ago, when they were probably a dumber group than they are now, is supposed to help Jim Rice’s case?

STRANGELY AROUSING UPDATE: Apparently UmpBump.com, another baseball blog in the ’sphizzere, which I can honestly say I’d never visited until this evening, had similar thoughts to me and even penned them a few hours before I did. I think this is like that time Kepler and Newton invented Calculus silmutaneously, except way more socially important. To read the same things that I think again, go here.

Look, Rice is a borderline case, but there is a case to be made. It just shouldn’t have anything to do with f***in’ BBWAA voting. It should have more to do with stuff like OPS (and OPS+ and WARP and VORP and Win Shares).

Anyway, this isn’t the only swipe Gammons has taken at sabermetricians recently. From the Commissioner’s Oct. 29 column on ESPN.com:

Fine, Rodriguez is opting out of his contract. But anyone who respected baseball would not have tried to grab the stage from the World Series — if winning were a priority. Want to know about winners? Pedroia gave up his scholarship at Arizona State to free up money to sign a much-needed pitcher, so when the Sun Devils reached the College World Series, coaches and players had “DP” on their caps in honor of their leader who never got to Omaha. The sabermetrics guys in their garages never understand these things.

It only took Gammons two leaps of logic to trash stat geeks everywhere. Garages? Is Dan Shaugnessy ghostwriting for him now? Bloggers and geeks love basements or garages. Did you hear? Anyway, this is all pretty disheartening to me. Gammons is losing his fastball as far as I can tell, and along with that, apparently, comes rambling about skateboarders on his damn lawn and stuff. The worst part is that Gammons has always been pretty friendly and open-minded to the sabermetric community. He reads Bill James and Baseball Prospectus and he was one of the first writers to regularly cite statistics like OPS. Murray Chass has always been an insufferable d’bag. Et tu Gammo?