BERT'S 2002 PAGE

(10/10)

My ego tells me that my fans in the pool are waiting with baited breath to see how badly I crucify Todd while he is in his current state of mortification. As much pleasure as I take in the problems of others, especially when their name is Bob (Valentine, Torricelli, Romaker et al), I am going to give Todd a reprieve. You are probably wondering why after everything Todd and I have been through am I showing him mercy now when it would be so easy to hack him to pieces. There are several reasons.

First and foremost, it is because it would be so easy. There is little challenge in kicking a man when he is down, and thus, very little fun. I would kick the aforementioned Bobs if I had the chance, but that is because I don't like them very much. However, I do like Todd. The main reason that I like Todd as much as I do is because he is an adversary. There are two kinds of people in this world that make life worth living. They are allies and adversaries.

Allies are there to stand by you to fight the good fight. You can count on them when the chips are down. Adversaries are sometimes even more important than allies, because they keep you on your toes and remind you of what you are fighting for in the first place. When I think of my allies, I think of people like Craig, Tony, and sometimes, Mike and Josh. When I think of my adversaries, there is always Josh and sometimes Mike, but at the top of the list is Todd. What is so special about Todd is that he allows me to be his adversary, and for that, I am grateful and no matter what awful things I ever have to say about him, they will always be said with the utmost of respect.

I am also not going to go after Todd at this time because he got royally screwed by some two-bit internet hack who probably doesn't even have a degree in journalism. This is the problem with the internet today. There is such an obscene demand for content that almost anybody can find a forum for their ridiculous rantings (i.e. me on this website). Gregg Easterbrook violated some serious rules of journalism when he hatcheted up Todd's e-mail for his own sick and twisted purposes (I say sick and twisted because as much as I was joking when I was saying what I was saying about Oberlin men and women, I have no doubt that this guy was completely serious.), most importantly (sorry Mike - what should I say if not most importantly), he did not place ellipses (...) at both ends of Todd's quoted words to show that he was only partially quoting him. If he was writing for ESPN magazine, instead of ESPN.com, and quoting Todd Pinkston instead of Todd Lang, he could lose his job.

Actually, just for the fun of it, after they print this section of the column in the program of the upcoming Oberlin Class of ?? reunion and have a good ol' laugh at Todd's expense (as President of the Class and Grand Poohbah, Mike would be the ultimate weenie if he didn't do this), the class should get together and organize a mass e-mail to ESPN.com, networking all of their friends, families, and assorted contacts, clients, and colleagues and get that little bastard fired. And if he was named Bob, I would go up to Bristol, CT and kick him myself.

Finally, the last reason that I am not going after Todd is because I prefer to go after him when he is wrong, not when he is stupid. Todd was stupid for trusting this schmuck in the same way that I was stupid for challenging the trophy idea. I realized how stupid I had been over the trophy when I did something even stupider in my fantasy baseball league that showed me how stupid I had been over the trophy (That was probably the worst sentence ever written in the history of mankind, but I don't have the energy to try to fix it.).

In an effort to prove to Josh, Mike, and Doug how ridiculous the trophy idea was, I decided to propose it for my fantasy baseball league, expecting the rest of the league to go off on me and ridicule me for making yet another silly proposal. As you can probably predict, the exact opposite happened. For the first time all season, I was actually praised for having a brilliant idea. The support for the trophy was unanimous. I was mortified. Thus, I can empathize with what Todd is going through right now. The best laid plans of mice and men, often go astray (or something like that - even if I misquoted Steinbeck, at least I got the intent right - Gregg Easterbrook probably never graduated from high school, much less college, much less a college at the level of an Oberlin).