Mr. Calcaterra sings the truth

You should know of Craig Calcaterra from Shysterball over at The Hardball Times. Now he writes for NBC Sports Circling the Bases. Long story short, he’s a creditable baseball writer. And now he lets us know that we’re not crazy in reference to the Grady Sizemore bit.

Look, it’s obviously a crime to hack someone’s computer, and if Sizemore’s girlfriend’s computer was hacked, whoever did it should have their butt in a sling (and if they’re liable to anyone it’s his girlfriend, not Sizemore). But these poor bloggers didn’t hack anything. They merely posted something that about umpteen hundred other websites posted yesterday, long after the initial crime — assuming there even was one — took place.

A cease and desist letter like this — coming from the legal arm of Sizemore’s agents, by the way — is an exercise in P.R. damage control, and a hamfisted one at that. Sizemore showed some bad judgment in taking these pics of himself and sending them into cyberspace. Anyone who has been alive for the past decade or so knows that what happened with them — their ultimate release to the public — was inevitable.

Most people in Sizemore’s situation would probably take this as a learning experience, hope it all dies down quickly and move on. Sizemore decided to release the legal hounds to harass bloggers. Which is a pretty weak move on Grady’s part in my mind.

We aren’t seeking some profound justice here. The damage has been done. We now think Grady is a tool. Sure he’s a millionaire, good looking young lad and he’s a good ballplayer. But he’s lost our respect. While he can probably go on sleeping at night we deifnitely don’t give the respect out like it’s candy. When someone has it, they have to really screw up to lose it. Sizemore has done a good job of being a model citizen in Cleveland up until the recent events.

As Calcaterra pointed out in so many words, we’re one of many smaller mom and pop blogs on the net that were reporting about what had happened. We didn’t even post the more racy photos (choosing to pass over the coffee mug over the ballsack bit). The last thing we ever wanted to do was THIS. But we might as well make the best out of a situation we’re not happy about.

Sizemore’s lawyers opened up a can of worms–and we knew that we had more ground to stand on then they did–so what is the end result of all this? Even more people are going to read about this story then before.

You messed up Grady. All could have been handled if you just would have been a professional about it. You weren’t “cool”. Just be cool.