For the record, James voted Rollins fifth on his Fielding Bible ballot.

Conlin is an idiot in every sense of the word in that he has no use for logic or evidence nor any respect for those of us that deal in that currency so long as we do so on a blog. He also seems to have this absurd sense of entitlement arising from the fact that he carries press credentials. As if that gives any added credence to his (or anyone else's) opinion, or as if the fact that one is not a member of the press detracts from their opinion.

I thought the real problem was that Conlin is a moron. That was obvious at least 15 years ago.

Agreed, Crank. He was a staple on Dick Schapp's show, but had a difficult time participating in open debate. Now he has been media lapped a second time. This is ugly.

The Minneapolis-Star Tribune has a "journalist" with a similar vitriol against bloggers, Nick Coleman. He constantly reinforces the stereotype of elitists with his pretentious nature and utter contempt for those that disagree with him. The difference though, is he commentates mostly on politics where the contentiousness is a given in this day. How a sports writer can get that worked up about a disagreement is beyond me, even with the Philadelphia stereotype. His Hitler comment about bloggers makes throwing snowballs at Santa seem tame.

he kept nolan ryan off his hall of fame ballot.

enough said.

re: Bill Conlin

actually, I'm going to take the contrary point of view and defend Conlin here.

I had quite a long email exchange with Mr. Conlin about two or three years ago about Scott Rolen v. Mike Schmidt, much of which centered on sabrmetrics v. the conventional view.

Conlin, who has had the phillies beat for the bulletin, inquirer and daily news since before the 1964 phillies collapse, proved to be a dogged and determined email writer, and a very clever antagonist.

What was even more interesting was that even though he announced in many of those emails his absolute hatred of bill james and all things sabrmetric, during the past two years SINCE i last emailed him, Mr. Conlin, who is smart not stupid (his kid played baseball at one of the ivy league schools, it might even have been harvard) actually started citing sabrmetric data quite frequently in his columns.

In short, Conlin since having the email exchange with me, went and looked up the Bill James numbers, and started understanding them, and using them in his columns.

I would submit he understands perfectly well that the numbers don't support Jimmy Rollins selection as MVP.

The reason he's trashing the bloggers who favor David Wright is simply and plainly that Conlin is gloating over the fact that the New York guy didn't win the MVP prize due to the fact that the Mets had a collossal choke el gaggo yechhhh oops I blew a 15 game lead at the end there, for which David Wright, through no fault of his own, paid the price by losing the MVP to Jimmy Rollins, because a Phillie, not a Met, had to win the MVP since the Phillies, not the Mets, won the pennant in the NL East, which in New York media circles is much more important than anything that happened in colorado.

To reword this, since Philly beat out new york, a philly guy had to be MVP, and Rollins had the best numbers of any philly guy, though on win shares technically Utley was slightly better, but overall offensive numbers Rollins was huge--30 homers, 40 Stolen Bases, 200 hits, 100 runs scored, 40 doubles, 15 triples, huge numbers all the way around. And he batted well from both sides as to OBA and SA. And Rollins batted well in August from the #3 hole when Utley was out of the lineup keeping Philly in the race, as well as the #2 and #1 holes.

Rollins, in short, showed his versatility and value to the Phillies in many ways down the stretch when the pennant was won and he was responsible in large part for destroying the Mets during the key series' in September when the Phils swept the mets six straight games.

I think Conlin is being a bit smug and playful with the bloggers.

The fact is no matter how much the numbers say that Pujols should have won the MVP last year or Wright this year, the fact is that 58 homers last year spoke loudest, and an NL east division pennant this year spoke loudest. As Mr. Hornsby once sang (not rogers), "that's just the way it is."

--art kyriazis, philly

Wow, a professional journalist said: "I wonder how it feels to be the Phillies bitch" in an email to a reader? That is one of the most unprofessional things I have ever seen.