Leo Note: This is a guest post (first ever!) about the Jeff Pearlman piece that went up on CNN.com the other day. Both Jon and I know the two “online haters” Pearlman is talking about, and Jon wanted to write about it. His blog is about Rutgers sports and it didn’t really fit, so I offered to put it up here for him.
Knowing how this all went down, I felt myself that Pearlman’s piece was a bit disingenuous. Having spoken to both Andy and Matt they didn’t really apologize meekly as he claims, and Pearlman also fails to mention that he found them ranting by doing a namesearch on Twitter (not through replies to his handle) rather than direct contact.
Andy wrote up his side of the story today, which you can read here at his blog, Inside Mr Met’s Head.
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SI.com columnist Jeff Pearlman is receiving a lot of kudos from around the media today for a new piece he wrote for CNN.com.
Tracking down my online haters
Matthew is a college student from a small suburban town in Missouri. He loves the Kansas City Chiefs and spending Sundays in front of the TV watching football.
Recently, in response to something I wrote on my blog about Jeff Bagwell and the Baseball Hall of Fame, Matt tweeted me a couple of times.
The words were snarky and snide and rude. His final message, however, left an extra special impression: “I got caught up in the anonymity of the internet. I’m sorry and here is a legit post with my criticisms.” Upon opening the pasted link, I was greeted by a nasty pornographic image that would make Sasha Grey vomit into the nearest trash can.
The gist of the column is that Pearlman boldly confronted his online critics, shattering their veil of anonymity and showing them their place, before retreating into a self-congratulatory pat on the back and token call to ramp down the rhetoric. Of course those nerds sitting in their basement hurling insults in the dark would back down at the slightest hint of confrontation. This narrative of a wordsmith conquering internet mudslinging through the sheer civility and gumption could not possibly provide better catnip for journalists (writers who I respect a lot, like Keith Law and Rob Neyer, had favorable reactions). What actually happened to provoke the outbursts in question is a fair bit more complicated than Pearlman lets on.
This story goes back to late December, when Pearlman wrote a series of blog posts decrying Jeff Bagwell’s candidacy for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Here’s a sampling of how it all started off.
Joe blames some of us (and I’m among the us) for speculating that Jeff Bagwell cheating by using PED? Well, what the hell are we supposed to think? A. Have you seen the photographs of a young Jeff Bagwell, first as a prospect in the Boston system, then with the Astros as a pup? He looks, perhaps not coincidentally, like a young Jason Giambi; like a young Barry Bonds; like a young Sammy Sosa; like a young Bret Boone. I know … I know—people gain weight as they get older. And, hey, he lifted! And used natural, over-the-counter supplements! And … enough. I’ve heard enough. Seriously, look at the guy as an in-his-prime Astro. Dude looks like Randy (Macho Man) Savage. And while I can already hear the “Just because he had muscles atop muscles doesn’t mean anything” argument brewing, well, it does—in the context of a sport overrun by cheaters—mean something. In fact, it means a lot.
Pearlman’s argument boils down to the assertion that, in the absence of any direct evidence of Bagwell’s alleged PED usage, he will go ahead and assume Bagwell doped anyway because of circumstantial evidence. Fine writers and bloggers like Joe Posnanski have already done a wonderful job in addressing this argument, so there’s little point in rehashing and lifting their points here, but I think this reasoning is ridiculous to a fault. Not to the point where I would hurl insults, but if I regularly wrote about baseball I probably would have penned my own lengthy rebuttal.
After these posts started to garner a negative response, Jeff Pearlman started searching for his name on Twitter, which is how he first came in contact with one (distant) friend of mine quoted in the piece, who tweeted “jeff pearlman is a fucking retard” (a comment which was not directed at Pearlman’s account). While uncouth, I understand the impulse to take him to account, having ripped Selena Roberts earlier in the week for engaging in the same practice of hurling allegations without any thing resembling solid evidence.
Partial contrition or not, Jeff Pearlman comes out of this story looking worse for the wear, displaying far too thin a skin; especially when compared to the criticism that he regularly levels towards athletes in his work. His critics should not have crossed the line into incivility, and absolutely should not have tricked him into looking at a disgusting internet meme. However at the same time, it’s important to remember that Pearlman’s tormentors did not have a public forum until he gave them one.
They aren’t the professional journalists using media platforms for disparaging a player’s personal reputation. Before ripping these ne’re-do-wells too harshly, step back and consider which side is actually caused the most direct harm to concepts like civility or fairness. Jeff Pearlman is the real villain here, for helping to foster a poisonous discourse in the first place without regard for the same decency he now demands. If Pearlman really wants to strike a blow for intelligent discussion, then he should formally make his case and provide any solid evidence for his claims, or retract them and apologize to Bagwell.
