OSTD: What is it and why does it prevent you from winning internet arguments?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Back in 2010 the Kansas City Star wanted something on their website about the Kansas City Royals and after a couple other people turned them down, offered me the job. (BTW: Hated the Judging the Royals title – sounded obnoxious – but was told it wasn’t optional.)

The Star turned me loose and let me cover baseball in my own way which I appreciated because I had something specific in mind.

I’d been lucky enough to hang around with big league players and listen to them talk about the game and realized that despite watching the sport all my life, when compared to professional players I actually didn’t know all that much about baseball.

But I did know teams kept statistics on things they valued or wanted to avoid. Stuff that wouldn’t show up in the box score, like: “line drive outs” or “8+ pitch at bats” or “mental mistakes.” I thought that stuff was interesting and informative and figured all baseball fans would be interested as well – more on that bit of naiveté in a moment.

My primary worry was that the players wouldn’t take me or what I was doing seriously. Turned out most of them liked it because it gave them a chance to talk about the nuances of the game and explain why they did what they did.

It was baseball from the player’s point of view.

And some fans didn’t want to hear that.

Fan reaction

Despite the fact that they’d never played an inning of competitive baseball, some fans had convinced themselves that they knew more about the game than the general managers, the field managers, the coaches and the players in the big leagues. And some of those same fans didn’t mind saying so in the comments section of Judging the Royals.

Those fans were pissed off to have their assumptions challenged. They didn’t want to hear that some players weren’t as good as they thought and other players weren’t as bad as they thought. But I was coming to different conclusions because I was measuring different things – things that didn’t usually get all that much attention.

A guy who was great at the plate, but couldn’t run a lick or play defense or remember how many outs there were was getting downgraded and a guy who didn’t hit like a Hall of Famer, but played good defense, ran the bases well and didn’t make mental mistakes was getting upgraded.

Some people didn’t like that and told me so.

Responding to internet comments

Like a moron (OK, I wasn’t “like” a moron, I actually was one) I figured if I just explained my point of view and why I held it, people would come around. Some did, but some did not and they told me so at length and I would answer at length. I was responding to each and every comment and the people in charge of the Star’s website were thrilled; I was told I was “doing it right.”

As I found out, not so much.

I soon learned that someone could claim the moon was made out of green cheese and no matter how much research I did and no matter how many experts I drug out to make my case, it didn’t change a thing. The green-cheese people would either ignore what I said or move on to different argument.

Nevertheless, I kept doing term papers in response to people’s comments and it was taking more and more time to churn out those replies. Pretty soon I was spending a couple hours a day responding to internet comments.

My schedule back then

6 AM: Get up, read the paper, think about what I read while getting ready and driving to work. Hope a cartoon idea drops out of the sky and hits me in the forehead.

7:30 AM: Look at the notes from the Royals game the night before, write and post a piece on the Judging the Royals website.

8:45 AM: Find the editorial page editor and show him or her the cartoon ideas I have and make up an excuse to not attend to the 9 AM editorial board meeting which can go on for hours and include stories about kids, traffic, weather and what new restaurant someone discovered over the weekend.

9 AM: Get back to the drawing board and start drawing the next day’s cartoon.

11 AM: Have lunch and do it early because most of the time lunch will consist of the leftovers from the dinner my kids wouldn’t eat and I better get to the newsroom microwave first or I’m gonna waste 20 minutes in line while someone 117 pounds overweight heats up their Lean Cuisine which is a sham put on for fellow employees because they also have a meatball sub hidden in the bottom drawer of their desk – and that story is not 100 percent made up.

2 PM: Finish the cartoon and then go through the 50 steps necessary to put the cartoon in the paper because they fired all the people who used to do that stuff for me.  The 50 steps thing is not totally fictional either.

2:30 PM: Arrive at Kauffman Stadium because that’s when “early work” begins and it’s the best chance of catching a player one-on-one and getting him to say something meaningful because if I wait for the scheduled press conferences I’m just gonna hear a lot of clichés like; “That’s a good team over there” and “We never give up.” If every once in a while a player would say, “Man, those guys in the other dugout suck” or “After about six innings, if we don’t have a lead, we just stop trying” press conferences would be awesome, but that never happens so I need to show up early.

6:00 PM: Go up to the press box and start taking notes on the stuff players said while I still remember it because if I take notes in front of them or shove a microphone in their face and remind them this is an interview, players are going to tell me that’s a good team over there.

7:05 PM: Watch a baseball game and take more notes.

10:30 PM and I totally made that number up because nobody knows when a game is actually going to end: Go down to the clubhouse and get quotes from the players and remember they just want to get home or – if they’re young and single – go out to a club although a surprising number of young players would rather get some takeout and go home and play video games because everybody’s got cell phones now and posing with an attractive young woman in a bar so she can take a selfie with her new celebrity pal and post it on the internet can cause a shitload of trouble with wives and girlfriends. Also not a made up story.

12 PM: Get home and try to unwind and get to sleep which isn’t easy and can take two beers or a glass of wine and makes me wonder whether I ought to start smoking weed like a pretty decent percentage of pro athletes do.

OK, I wrote all that to show you there wasn’t much time in the day to devote a couple hours to having arguments with complete strangers on the internet. And I eventually realized I was not going to win too many of those arguments because I had a bad case of OSTD.

The heartbreak of OTSD

I was having a multi-day-multi-installment debate with some dude on the internet when he let it slip that he was in high school. So this kid could not have played a second of college ball or pro ball and yet he was disagreeing with what big league players and coaches had to say about the game.

I realized I was wasting my time.

It was like having a religious debate with one of those guys preaching on street corners; there wasn’t going to be any agreement reached or anything learned and meanwhile the nut on the street corner was going to enjoy the attention.  

After a while it dawned on me that kids living in their parents’ basement or unemployed, angry, divorced men with access to alcohol had a shitload more time to conduct arguments on the internet than I did and would probably always get the last word because I had a serious case of OTSD.

Other Shit To Do.   

Assuming you have Other Shit To Do – hobbies, a family, reading Moby Dick (which has been on my to-do list for four years) – you probably won’t win a lot of internet arguments either because when it comes to internet arguments, crappiest life wins.

Spending the day arguing with complete strangers on the internet is not healthy, so go do something that doesn’t involve the internet, arguments or strangers — but I still expect you to come back here tomorrow.

Talk to you then.