What I Hate About Baseball Blogs

The Houston Chronicle sports writers all blog. Now Alyson's got a blog too. I don't have any gripes about these bloggers, since they're professionals who generally have something to say that's worth reading. It's the so-called fans who post opinions that are annoying - the ones who:
-Berate the reporters for bothering to write about players they deem as losers (or worse).
-Declare the season dead on arrival before the position players have even reported to Spring Training.
- Feel sorry for themselves for having to live through what promises to be a totally frustrating season.

I stopped reading comment postings in the Chronicle last season, because so many of them were on the verge of abusive. There were some interesting and insightful ones mixed in too, but they'd often be buried in mean-spirited griping about the players, coaches, owners -- and other fans. I still read the online articles and blogs, but just skipped the comment feedback.

This year, the Astros.com site has been bitten by the Web 2.0 bug - now all the articles have comments, and the cranks and complainers have taken center stage. I wasn't going to add to the problem by commenting on the comments, but I couldn't stand it. After "commenter" (a big whiner) bashed various aspects of the team, and then posted: It's going to be a really long season of futility," I felt compelled to respond:

Wow, it really WILL be a long season if we all have to listen to you guys whine about the team every day! I bet on June 1, 2005, when you opened your newspaper and saw that tombstone, you were all nodding like bobbleheads. Not me - I still believed they were going to the World Series. I'd rather be a loony and still be cheering than be gloomy all season. And the position players haven't even showed up yet! As a Fan in Exile, I'm totally dependent on electronic media like Astros.com and mlb.tv to follow my team during the regular season. One of the things I've always liked about reading Astros.com is the way that Alyson Footer can write up a less-than-perfect game with both angst and humor, and can report realistically when things are down without being whiny. I'm not sure that the inclusion of these wah-wah-wah complaints is an improvement...I can't wait to get to Kissimmee!

That quickly got me tagged as a "loony" who needed to read the newspaper and be "realistic," to which I replied:

Commenter - Alas, when I open my newspaper (Washington Post), I won't see more than the occasional one-liner discussng the Astros and the daily boxscore! If i wanted to live in the past, I'd remember the Astros (Colts) in the 60's, when I first became a big fan - despite them! I'm an engineer, and a Sabermetrician-wannabee, so I understand about looking at facts and figures. I also know that it's virtually impossible to accurately predict the performance of extremely complex systems, let alone the relative performance as compared to other extremely complex systems. If that weren't the case, we could just run computer models, with the gazillions of baseball stats, and declare a winner -- why bother with the season? If you want to be "realistic" (pessimistic) so that you don't risk being disappointed later, that's cool. But it's also cool to be moved to tears every year at the first glimpse of the field in Osceola Park, to hope for the unexpected, and to enjoy the ride.

After that a couple of people jumped on the bandwagon and agreed: What's the point of being a fan if you're so "realistic" (i.e., pessimistic) that you already dread the losing season that hasn't yet started?

Alyson Footer kicked off her new blog with news from Spring Training, her Kissimmee restaurant recommendations, and reminders to bring sun block. The comments so far have been friendly, but I suspect that once the season starts and the Astros lose a few games, the gripers and complainers will predominate.

I suppose that it's fairly hypocritical of me to criticize baseball blogs, while writing in one. It's probably even more hypocritical to criticize baseball blogs comment posters, and then to quote my Astros.com postings in my own baseball blog. But on the other hand, since I'm the only person who reads this blog, I can say whatever I want without anyone posting any complaints.