Future Cranks?

I must say that http://www.futureangels.com/ is a splendid website and the man who runs the website, Stephen Smith, is to be thanked and commended for the very fine service he provides all Angels fans with his devoted and comprehensive coverage of the Angels’ minor league farm system. In addition to his hard work, he provides his website free of charge and demonstrates a solid knowledge of baseball and baseball history, especially as concerns the Halos.

And he is quite right that there are those fans who cannot refrain from criticizing Angels’ management for every little thing, even in the midst of the best run the franchise has had in its history. He points out, rightly, that many raise loud protests who cannot possibly know all the details of front office tactics and behind-the-scenes goings-on. In particular, Scioscia and Stoneman frequently come in for harsh criticism from many fans who quite possibly do not know what they are talking about. However, there are those who do know what they are talking about, and in any case, I think Smith might swing too far the other way. He doesn’t seem to be able to brook any criticism at all, and shows a rather testy and defensive tone at times. I sometimes get the impression from reading his blog, that so far from not deserving much of the criticism received, someone like Stoneman actually doesn’t err at all.

Smith decided to stoop and resort to name-calling recently. Overwhelming his detractors by well-placed Wikipedia citations, he has blanketed all comers with the heady title of, “Crank.” I exercised my liberty of commenting on his blog. I might comment again and may even give the link to this post in my comments. Yes, perhaps we can attract some readers?

My comment had referred to his misspelling of ad nauseam. It was surely a petty criticism, but so is labeling those whom you do not know cranks for simply failing to agree with you all of the time:

Mr. Smith:

Your website is wonderful and helpful. Please accept my sincere thanks for a well-constructed and very informative effort. I do want to say that you may be unfairly labeling those who see things differently than you. You have in fact resorted to petty name-calling and in this spirit, I must not resist from pointing out that you betray your own lack of learning by your utterly predictable misspelling of ad nauseam. Please be more careful about telling others that they “can not be turned,” lest you forget about the beam in your own eye. Again, many thanks for a stellar website.

JD

http://futureangels.mlblogs.com/futureangels/2007/08/cranks_and_kran.html