Trolling the 'Trolls'

Saturday's beers turn into Sunday's whines.

See if you can pick out the ironies:

The CHB, complaining about unfounded criticism: "When did anonymous Twitter trolls become a representation of the collective thought of any region? Tough-guy social media cowards are the same folks who used to write on the bathroom wall in high school. It’s a mistake to give them voice and there’s no need for a franchise to apologize for anonymous nitwits who could be spreading hate from anywhere. Stop the madness."

"Nothing against Ty Law and Raymond Clayborn, but Bill Parcells deserves to be in the Patriots Hall of Fame ahead of anyone else currently drawing a breath." Ever heard of Tom Brady?

"The Celtics went 25-57 this year. So why do I keep hearing that just about all of the players are coming back?" How often do NBA teams keep their rosters? (Try never.) How often does Danny Ainge telegraph his intentions? (Same answer.)

"Surprised there was so little commentary last Sunday when John Farrell elected to 'rest' David Ortiz against the Blue Jays.The Sox are having trouble scoring runs." Papi is 38, has no knees, and the Red Sox are built to win with pitching and defense. Toronto, meanwhile, has scored the most runs in the division ... and is in last place.

"[T]he shrinking number of black big leaguers is probably owed to a dearth of college scholarship opportunities more than anything else. College baseball has become the domain of affluent white players from suburban communities. The NCAA allows only 11.7 scholarships for a college baseball team (football gets 85), which means that programs with rosters of more than 30 players are cutting almost all scholarships into partial packages. Skilled high school athletes have betters odds of acquiring full scholarships if they play football or basketball." Basketball gets...13. Do we really think that extra 1.3 scholarships is a difference maker? Moreover, those numbers are for D-1 only. Once D-2, D-3 and NAIA and JCs are accounted for, free rides for baseball overwhelm those for hoops by a count of 24 to 15. Finally, the NBA won't draft high schoolers. MLB does.

"Here’s Larry Lucchino mocking the Yankees in Fort Myers Feb. 21: “They are still, this year at least, relying heavily on their inimitable old-fashioned Yankee style of high-priced, long-term free agents. I can’t say I wish them well, but I think we have taken a different approach. If you compare what we did last year in the offseason with what they’ve done this year, there’s quite a difference." The Red Sox are 31 games into the season and the Yankees actually have the worst run differential in the division. Let's see where they are in September, shall we? 

"This is the trend [in public relations]. Control the message. Grips are overlapping (John Henry, for instance, owns the Globe, in case you had not heard), conflicts abound, lines are blurred, and true independence is hard to find." What's more important: independence or fairness?

"Alert to sports journalists: Time to stop with the “how” questions. They’ve become epidemic even though they are lazy and largely unanswerable." Right. But accusing anyone over 30 who hits a few homers of using steroids is good reporting, right?