Longtime baseball writer Murray Chass takes an interesting look at Mike Piazza over at murraychass.com (NOT A BLOG [more on that below]), examining, of all things, the acne on the back of Piazza.

Chass said that he wanted to write about it back in the day, when Piazza was still active, but since he had never been publicly accused of using steroids, Chass’ editors at The New York Times wouldn’t allow him to discuss it.

Since the bacne is a notable side-effect of the juice, Chass thought it was relevant, but instead sat on his opinion until now.

Recently, Joel Sherman of the New York Post wrote a column that discusses Piazza and the steroid era, so Chass thought this would be a logical time to break his silence.

Chass saw in the locker room the large amount of acne on Piazza’s back when he was in his prime, and then, out of nowhere, it was gone.

So what happened?

But the method Piazza used became apparent to me. It wasn’t medicine or any substance; it was abstinence. This was during the 2004 season, the first season baseball was testing for performance-enhancing substances with identification and penalties attached. If Piazza had been using steroids and didn’t want to get caught, he had to stop using. If he stopped using, his back would clear up.

His back cleared up. Completely.

Sure the evidence is circumstantial, but his on field performance seemed to peak with his bacne, then decrease with it as well. I’m not pointing any fingers, but if everyone else in baseball’s young 21st century is going to get convicted on circumstantial evidence, then Piazza too should be included.

Now, back to my earlier tease about his Web site being NOT A BLOG.

From murraychass.com’s About page [Emphasis mine]:

This is a site for baseball columns, not for baseball blogs. The proprietor of the site is not a fan of blogs. He made that abundantly clear on a radio show with Charley Steiner when Steiner asked him what he thought of blogs and he replied, “I hate blogs.” He later heartily applauded Buzz Bissinger when the best-selling author denounced bloggers on a Bob Costas HBO show.

Bloggers, however, are welcome to visit this site; so are stats freaks, fantasy leaguers and Red Sox fans. How else will they know what is being said about them by a columnist they love to hate?

Otherwise, this site will most likely appeal primarily to older fans whose interest in good old baseball is largely ignored in this day of young bloggers who know it all, and new- fangled statistics (VORP, for one excuse-me example), which are drowning the game in numbers and making people forget that human beings, not numbers, play the games.

At first glance, it’s just your typical “old writer hates new media” talk that is far too common for me to quote specifics.

But my argument, and the point that Chass seems to miss is this: You’re site is a blog, like it or not.

Let’s look at the evidence.

By definition, a blog is “a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order.”

Murraychass.com — a series of entries on a single page in reverse-chronological order. Check.

The other tell-tale sign that you have a blog: You are running your site on blogging software.

A quick check of Mr. Chass’s page source code (View – Page Source) will tell you that he is running WordPress 2.5.1 (time to update, guy), one of the most popular blogging platforms available.

So murraychass.com fits the definition of a blog and is run as a blog on blogging software, but don’t you dare call it a blog.

If people like Mr. Chass and Buzz Bissinger and their friends would understand that a blog is a Web site that falls under a certain format and uses certain software, perhaps they wouldn’t be so afraid of them.

Are there shitty blogs? Absolutely. Are there equally shitty print columnists? No doubt.

Instead of picking a fight with an entire generation of writers and sports minds (some obviously better and/or more influential than others), perhaps you should simply critique or praise writing as necessary and open your mind to a world of information.

It’s fine if you don’t want to use expletives on your site, since that’s not what you did in print journalism. That doesn’t mean that anyone who uses a curse word is a blog and those who don’t aren’t.

This is a ridiculous conversation to have, but unfortunately the last generation likes to make ridiculous generalizations about the next one. If you don’t like this site, or others that may be formatted or written similarly, that’s fine. There is a whole list of print columnists that I have absolutely no respect for.

And for the record, I worked in “traditional media” for many years before enjoying the freedom of these here Intertubes. I’m no stranger to a locker room and if I was respected at one point by print writers, why shouldn’t I be now?

Not everybody who has a blog falls into your definition of “blogger.” And not every blogger is the same. Would you like me to criticize your work because of what Jay Mariotti wrote? I didn’t think so. Just because it’s written on the Internet doesn’t by definition make something poorly written or incorrect.

Perhaps if some of the older writers embraced the new-fangled stats like VORP, they’d better understand the sport they are covering. In the end, isn’t that what the job is really about?

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