I love this passage from Matt Welch in his critique of the LA sports media and the way they treated ex-Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta:
Reading Plaschke, you'd be convinced that DePodesta's only baseball knowledge came from playing computer games in his underwear. "[J.D. Drew] was the double sixes in Paul DePodesta's giant game of Strat-O-Matic, the scroll wheel on his baseball iPod," [Bill} Plaschke mused on June 24 (yes, he actually writes like this). "He was the ideal player for those who study the sport at a keyboard and play it in a basement."Actually, DePodesta played baseball in college. Plaschke? He wrote for his campus newspaper.
The worst part isn't that the columnists' complaints about DePodesta are wrong, it's that they're often right. (Or at least, that I agree with them.) The young GM was painfully lacking in people-management skills and made a bunch of questionable moves. But if Southern Californians want an intelligent discussion of these issues, one where the truth matters more than either clumsy insults about "spreadsheets" or smooching Tommy Lasorda's behind, they know where to go: the Web. Maybe that's why Plaschke hates the Internet so much: People there are doing his job, only better.
And you an bet that this critique extends far beyond baseball.
