I Can't Sniff My Soul!

So Thom Loverro maybe did but probably didn't take me up on my offer to get a nice blogfight going to kick off the Washington Times' new blog. We, those of us who can't "get a sniff of the greatness that was Frank Robinson," whatever the hell that means, can't criticize Frank because he's baseball royalty. Which is kind of funny, because Thommy spends the first half of the post basically talking about what a pain in the ass Frank's been. He held a grudge against the Reds for longer than I've been alive and is working on a similarly lengthy sulk with the Orioles. But no, he still deserves whatever job he wants AND is immune from criticism because, hey, 586 homers is about 586 more than any of us ever hit. Sniff the greatness!

Needham's response is entirely adequate, covering the absurdity of Loverro's baseball royalty=immunity from criticism position, the shallowness of his evaluation of Frank as a manager, and the bizarreness of Thom's theologically-based evaluation of Frank's detractors. That was my favorite part: Loverro falls into the trap of the hack sports columnist and can't help but tack a snappy one-line paragraph. The problem, though, is that he's really angry or (almost certainly) kind of drunk, and it comes out just weird and inappropriate.

So if you feel the need to ridicule Frank Robinson, you might want to check your soul. It's missing.

Oh yeah? Well, you . . . wait a minute, my soul? I guess I'm glad he didn't call me a child molester or something, but come on, man. We're talking about baseball here.

This isn't the first time Loverro's taken offense at internet-types questioning Robinson. Over a year ago, he presented a parody of bloggers that was as inapt as it was unfunny.

We've tried to stay in touch with what our fans want, and have closely monitored the various Web sites devoted to the Nationals -- natsfanswithnolife.com, ilovetheo.com -- and have concluded that they don't like the way Frank handles pitchers in the eighth inning with runners on first and second and two outs. So we're going to chose to ignore Frank's 52 years in baseball -- 2,808 games as a Hall of Fame player and 15 seasons as major league manager, including just one losing season during the last four years managing a team made up of players from the Land of Misfit Toys -- and fire him.

Hah hah! That's exactly what we sound like, all having no life and all! No souls, either!

To sum up, Thom Loverro is maybe an idiot, is probably crazy, and therefore a welcome addition to the world of Nationals blogs. We'd better enjoy his time blogging, because I have a feeling that it won't be too long before his bosses tell him that he should probably cut it out.