However, it’s a bit disingenuous for a guy who left his professionalism at the door to complain about how rudely he was treated. People didn’t call him names because they disagreed with his opinion, people called him names because he started the name calling.

I will agree that people from all walks of life could stand to be nicer to their fellow man, but I am going to hold “professional journalist covering MLB team for 20 years” to a higher standard than random e-mail guy.

SF Scrub is right that Schulman is not a columnist. But a beat writer’s job is to analyze as well as report. He shouldn’t be giving an opinion on firing the manager but giving one on why the game was won is fine. He was selling the point the Giants got beat by the guys no one’s heard of. And bottom line here: scrub means bench player, the term he should have used in the first place. He could have gone with the less colorful but more accurate “the 74 OPS+ utilityman Ryan Raburn” I suppose.

Yes, people hide behind the anonymity of the computer or typewriter and fire off a bunch of crap, but so? Are we in third grade now? Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?” Henry Schulman has no inherent right to be free of criticism. No one denies his First Amendment right to call Ryan Raburn whatever he wishes, but on the flip side, we all have the right to call Mr. Schulman a moron when he exercises a lack in judgment like this.

You get paid to write your opinions for a living. People are going to vehemently disagree, and the lowest common denominator always resorts to personal attacks. Get thicker skin or find a new job. If Henry Schulman had exercised some professional judgment, he never would have had to deal with the mean insults of Tiger fans and Todd Jones to begin with. Not so much fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it Hank?

I just want more wins.
and more booze.
and more q-bert.

Over 500 by all star break is a real possibility.

That sounds different than Boston fans with Plaschke?

Look, fact of the matter is, the internet era makes it far too easy for anonymous emailers to fire off bile garbage like that, and something should probably be said as an answer to it.

Also, to agree with Joe above, I don’t think a lot of time was spent on this story. The only time I heard of it was the day after, people had their say and moved on. I think if you would have made this post that day it would have had more of a point but I think most people are past it already.

Seriously though. I do tend to agree with you. I made my post *right* when that story was announced on during the Tigers game the next day with the Giants. My response was a knee jerk reaction.

The part of your post that got me the most was comparing us to Boston fans. Great point. If Mr. Schulman wants to consider Ryan Raburn or any other player a “scrub” or anything else he should be able to without being screamed at by everyone in MI.

However, you do have to admit that it probably wasn’t the best choice of words for the point he was trying to make.

Are Tiger fans being petty? In the grand scheme of things, what was said was not that bad, but we’ve always been protective of our own. That’s a Detroit thing, not a Tiger thing. You mention the “human victory cigar” (a reference to Darko, I assume), but a couple things: 1) We Detroiters called him that, not some jack-off from San Francisco and 2) Darko was a #2 pick, well-paid, who when he did play did not appear to give his all. Raburn, on the other hand, is much less celebrated, yet gives his all whenever he is inserted into the lineup and plays good old-fashioned hard-nosed baseball.

As far as the players, it’s only natural to expect them to stick up for one of their own, and I think most baseball people are suspicious of the media, at least from my experience. Rare is someone like Curtis Granderson, who seems to have a good relationship. Most baseball types are more like Jonesie in that respect.

At the end of the day, I don’t think people spent a lot of time on this story. It just appears that way in the information age. There’s only so much that can be said about the team’s poor start anyways.