Say it ain't so, (fire) Joe (morgan)!

November 18, 2008 10:45 AM

#$^$ the heck? Fire Joe Morgan, one of the interwebs' most beloved baseball geekery/Sabermetrics/media-criticism blogs, calls it quits (for now).

FJM started as an in-joke among several anonymous friends - who later revealed themselves to be mostly TV comedy writers
(previously) - fed up with the idiocy of sports journalism. It evolved into one of the most consistently hilarious reads on the web, skewering said journalists’ lack of understanding of basic statistics, providing informed commentary on baseball, and even occasionally mentioning (gasp!) football and other sports. Among other highlights of FJM’s illustrious history: detailed critiques of ESPN’s webchats with FJM namesake Joe Morgan; repeated rants on rampant Derek-Jeter worship; devastating defenestrations of the hat guy; and, of course, fuck the heck?.

posted by googly (17 comments total)

So they finally fired Fire Joe Morgan?
posted by wendell at 10:51 AM on November 18, 2008

Fuck the heck? Shit the heck? Ass the heck?
posted by Plutor at 11:01 AM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Fuck the heck.
posted by mullacc at 11:02 AM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'll miss Ken and dak and junior. I blame Darin Erstad for clogging up the basepaths. This blog was easily one of the most entertaining things on the web for the short period of time they wrote.
posted by angry jonny at 11:29 AM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

I cried myself to sleep last night over this.
posted by rokusan at 11:29 AM on November 18, 2008

.
posted by ORthey at 11:32 AM on November 18, 2008

Among the very, very best of the web. It will be missed (by me).
posted by Damn That Television at 11:33 AM on November 18, 2008

So they finally fired Fire Joe Morgan?

It's the world's worst-kept secret that Morgan will be "leaving" ESPN any day now.
posted by Zambrano at 11:35 AM on November 18, 2008

Did you know that Darrin Erstad was a punter in high school?

FJM was 24 karat. I hope they take a bit of a break, miss the hell out of the site as much as we will, then come back at full strength with the spring's first Tuesday JoeChat.

These guys are brilliant.
posted by YFiB at 11:37 AM on November 18, 2008

I liked FJM a lot, but some of the shtick was starting to get old, e.g. Joe Chat critiques.
posted by oddman at 11:43 AM on November 18, 2008

I liked FJM a lot, but some of the shtick was starting to get old

They Bill Watterson-ed it, and for that I applaud them.
posted by ORthey at 11:45 AM on November 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Joe Chat critiques

There were getting to be so many FJM disciples in those chats trying to JoeBait him it was diminishing the humor of what FJM could do with them. I loved the guy who signed into the chat as "Ken Tremen, Dous, Neb." and asked some question about Jeter's consistency or something.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:01 PM on November 18, 2008

I also started feeling bad for Joe after awhile. He shouldn't be working as an analyst, though.
posted by rokusan at 12:44 PM on November 18, 2008

Dag nab it. Such an awesome source of writing, baseball nerdery, and hilarity. My favorite piece:

I am a relatively smart person. I majored in Knowledge Acquisition at the University of Science.

Tasty morsel.
posted by grubi at 3:23 PM on November 18, 2008

I laughed when they described David Wright as a mythical fairy being who uses a bat carved from a candy cane.
posted by Man-Thing at 11:04 PM on November 18, 2008

Or was it David Eckstein? It was a David, I know that. And definitely a candy cane.
posted by Man-Thing at 11:08 PM on November 18, 2008

It was Eckstein, a common target of scorn among numbers-men, but he was actually being used in that case as an example of someone better than the even less-productive Juan Pierre:

Juan Pierre hit zero home runs last year. Mythical fairy creature David Eckstein hit three, for Chrissakes, and he swings a three-inch bat carved out of a candy cane.

As in, even Eckstein is a better hitter than Juan Pierre.

Link.
posted by rokusan at 11:12 PM on November 18, 2008