The Non-Presence of Josh Willingham and the Premise of Standing Pat

And other people have called you dumb too. You only choose to emphasize the one evaluation.

Here’s my source of expertise:

2009 65 and 97
2010 69 and 93

This just ain’t cuttin’ it. He maybe a better than average GM, but if we’re ever gonna win a WS we need someone better.

There smacked that dead horse one more time.

Once again:

We are not discussing whether he’s a great GM. We are discussing whether he won his position primarily through privileged access or based on merit.

I’m a bit paranoid about having my real-world, professional identity linked to social media stuff, considering that I’ll be on the job market. (Yeah, I know, that’s very paranoid — talk about learning from Nixon.)

So I’ll just say I’m getting a joint degree that falls broadly within the social sciences, and that I work on modern U.S. policy and politics, generally, and economic issues, more specifically.

Thanks for the kind, encouraging words. I’m trying my best to not get too discouraged, and I know I’m very lucky to be leaving a top institution with a good CV.

My plan is just to keep working my ass off, apply and hustle as much as possible when I’m on the market, and then pray that I don’t soon find myself filling out law school applications on my break at Taco Bell.

Your completely right. It was more the fact that he went out of his way to make the “Hoynsie” comment that annoyed me than anything else, and my initial rant was written with that emotion.

Mainly, I just though the smugness that some of his tweets conveyed were not-so-great PR for a public face of the organization, and I guess I also took it as a sign that Shapiro thinks he’s too smart to interact with “average” fans (even though the new media initiative is something he could obviously squelch if he doesn’t like it).

In retrospect, I would not have even gone down that path of talking about his background. But a little more humility on his part would go a long way in my eyes, and it probably wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.

I do think it’s funny, though, that if we were having the same conversation about Nicholas Cage, Gyweneth Paltrow, the Kennedy kids, the Bush kids, etc., there’d probably have been a lot less heat in this discussion.

To paraphrase Jay’s reply to Chuck above, I don’t think Shapiro is a “spoiled, know-nothing rich kid,” but I do think he’s a privileged, really smart rich guy who should no better than to risk alienating fans by insulting them or by dismissing their frustration over not winning a championship in their lifetimes as insufficient knowledge of business theory.

I think you have to be wary of drawing the parallel with Dan Gilbert. That’s Dan Gilbert’s public persona. He says crazy things. Then again, he doesn’t directly control the product on the court. I think fans are willing to let owners be a little crazy because they know most owners don’t play a large role in the actual team. GMs, on the other hand, are held to a more professional standard. I’m sure it is unrealistic to expect Shapiro to never tweet anything that could be taken the wrong way, but at the same time, that’s the job he gets paid to do.

Well, just to be clear, I didn’t bring up that I study this stuff as a “you should listen to me”-type comment. Rather, mentioned it in a comment that was an apologetic agreement with someone else’s point that this was getting way out of hand. It was an aside meant to say “Yeah, of all people I should know it’s really dumb for me to have brought this up casually in this context.” I didn’t mean for it to come across any other way. (But to be lightly snarky, if you’re arguing that Shapiro doesn’t need to apologize for knowing a lot about baseball management, I shouldn’t apologize for knowing my field, right?)

Overall, though, I don’t really care about how my education plays into this and don’t expect you to do so, either. My larger points about Shaprio’s tweets have nothing to do with that.

I also said specifically that I’m not trying to be anti-intellectual as some sort of common-man badge of honor or whatever. But it is true that the more educated I become, the more nauseating I find it when smart people go out of their way to trash people they perceive to be less-intelligent than them. And — in my opinion, at least — it’s hard to read something like the Hoynsie tweet any other way. That’s not because I think nerds need to apologize, it’s because I think if you’re smart you don’t need to elevate yourself by trashing others. I found it distasteful that he insulted a segment of Indians fans (no matter how annoying you or I or anyone else might find them). It just seemed cheap, petty, arrogant, and below someone in his position.

I suspect that all most average fans know is that someone like Willingham would have made the team better. Maybe Shapiro thinks they should understand more. That’s fine. But, as I mentioned earlier, I think there were better ways for Shapiro to respond (or even to not engage in the discussion at all). There’s a huge middle ground between bowing down to stupid commenters because they’re potential customers and mocking them. That’s all. He could’ve used it as a “teachable moment,” if you will, not a mockable one.

One last point would be that I think we just fundamentally don’t agree on how meritocratic the market or the country is. My general viewpoint would be that in order for me to believe that people rise to positions (even high ones) mostly on merit, I would have to believe that there were almost no black people worthy of being managers, GMs, CEOs, professors, etc. for decades and decades. I’d also have to believe that the reason that only about 7% percent of kids who come from families in the lowest income quintile reach the top income quintile (while more than 37% of kids from the top stay there) is that the kids of poor people are inherently inferior. I don’t believe either of those things, and I think I have good reason for not believing them.

That being said, I’ll reiterate that I don’t think Shapiro is dumb, or that I’m smarter than him or whatever. (I’m reminded of John Lennon responding to the Jesus comment controversy: “I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down… I’m not saying that we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.”)

I get where you’re coming from, Jay, and I’ve learned a lot of great stuff about baseball from LGT, in general, and your posts, in particular. But this might be one of those things that’s too close to personal experience and politics for even well-meaning people to agree on, and it’s obviously too far beyond a baseball comment to keep it going.

It is a pretty cool gig. I wouldn’t pass it up.

So they’re good for something after all?

Holmgren is getting hammered right now, and it is fair.