Cyber Fight!!!

Wow. That was exciting! So much back and forth. One would make a bold statement and then there would be almost an immediate response by the competition.

I'm not talking about the game at Wrigley today between the Cubs and the Reds. Nor am I talking about the game in Philadelphia between the Phillies and Cardinals. I'm talking about the battle in cyberspace started by Steve Stone, joined by Dave Kaplan and for some reason, Al Yellon, and later essentially ended by Bruce Miles.

It all started during a lovely July day as I sat in Aisle 424 watching Kevin Hart, using a bit of awesome lent to him by the injured Ted Lilly, shake off a rough start and proceed to mow down the Reds' lineup. Meanwhile, the Cubs offense completed a team cycle in the first five batters to get three runs in the bottom of the first to take control of the game.

This is when things got interesting.

I was providing my usual in-game quips via Twitter when I caught a tweet from Steve Stone, the former Cubs color commentator and current White Sox commentator, about Milton Bradley. Now, it should be mentioned that Steve Stone, who is now a paid member of the White Sox broadcast team, still spends an inordinate amount of time commenting on the actions and play of the the Cubs. You can see what I am talking about by reading this from Hire Jim Essian, who goes more into detail.

Anyway, Steve sent out this tweet:

"Rumor is that tigers are interested in trading for milton bradley. Cubs should fly him in a private jet."

Given that Stone has been bitter and snarky towards the Cubs since being dismissed after the 2004 season (as fallout from Dusty's team being full of whiny bitches who couldn't handle criticism of their crappy play), I wasn't sure if this was just Stone toying with Cub fans or Stone being an actual journalist. So I sent him this:

"@BaseballStone If you are f*cking with us, you are a mean, petulent man. That wouldn't be cool."

That might have had more zing if I hadn't misspelled "petulant," but nevertheless, I think I had a fair point.

Still, I had no idea that Stone's tweet would get folks so excited. Immediately, people started re-tweeting Stone's message, speculating on who the Cubs might get back in return, how much money of Bradley's remaining two plus years of salary would have to be eaten by the Cubs, why the Tigers would ever want Bradley in the first place, and whether the Cubs would be stupid to make any such deal.

Enter Dave Kaplan.

He posted a confirmation of the rumor reported by Stone on his blog on Chicagonow.com:

"Two very solid baseball sources confirmed for me just moments ago that the Detroit Tigers are interested in Cubs RF Milton Bradley. They believe that Bradley would be a much better fit as a DH than as a right fielder and that he would mesh well with Tigers manager Jim Leyland."

At this point, the Twitterverse went apeshit. Remember, this is two members of the Chicago mainstream media that have reported that the Tigers are interested in acquiring Bradley, and thrown in their two cents as "experts" that the Cubs should absolutely do so as soon as humanly possible. The speculations grow exponentially.

I understand that maybe Twitter still hasn't exactly hit the mainstream culture, but blogs certainly have, and none within the Cubs blogging community is bigger than Bleed Cubbie Blue. It is fed by an agreement with Yahoo!, so there are tons of people who log into BCB for their Cubs news. One of the BCB readers posted a Fan Shot (where readers can share their own feelings, opinions, and news about the Cubs) announcing that WSCR radio in Chicago and another blog, MLBtraderumors.com had reported the Bradley rumor, and then provided the link to Stone's original tweet that started the whole mess.

Al Yellon, the administrator and primary author of the site, elaborated on his reader's post in his game recap and gave the rumors a bit more credence when he "confirmed" the rumors:

"This rumor was confirmed to me from my own sources, so I think this possibility does have legs, and I hope it happens, sooner rather than later."

I'm not exactly sure what sources Al has in Detroit who would be in position to confirm anything. My guess is that he confirmed that the rumor existed, not that the rumor was true. Either way, he gave another large group of people the idea that Bradley would be getting traded soon.

Along the way, some other journalists started jumping into the situation and conveying the idea that the rumor was probably not true. Primarily, Bruce Miles of the Daily Herald started doing some checking around, and found out that A) the Cubs were not aware of any interest in Milton Bradley, B) the Cubs were pissed off that the rumor got so much traction in the media and C) a member of the Detroit media debunked the rumor from the Tigers' end.

"Two people with the Cubs said it was the first they'd heard of any rumored deal and that the Cubs have not talked to any team about Bradley.

The Cubs front office was furious that such a rumor had grown so fast and had been picked up around the country. A rock-solid media person in Detroit told me there was nothing to it on his end."

At this point, both Kaplan and Stone started backtracking. Kaplan sent a tweet trying to clarify his and Stone's original reports:

"Let's be clear. All stone and I are saying is that Detroit has interest in Milton. Nothing more nothing less"

Stone, took a slightly different angle by contradicting his original report and throwing in a dig at Bradley:

"From the mouth of dave dombrowski the GM of the tigers, i would not have him on my team. Bradley homered and is closing in on beckham rbi."

So that's that. Rumor started, rumor spreads, rumor killed. End of story, right? Nope.

Stone couldn't leave well enough alone, so he sent one more tweet:

"In detroit for the series. Understand a guy named bruce miles believes that the whole bradley story was made up. Who is bruce miles."

Notice that he was not defending his sources that had started the rumor, standing by what he had originally been told, or even claiming that the erroneous report was taken out of context. No, he just decided to belittle the guy who uncovered that Stone was wrong.

Now, I would almost understand if I had been the one to call out Stone for reporting a crap trade possibility. He could say, "Who the hell is Tim McGinnis?" and he'd have a point. I'm a relatively new blogger with no inside sources, no journalistic background, and about three readers. Bruce Miles, on the other hand, has been covering the Cubs for the Daily Herald (the largest newspaper in the Chicago area that isn't in Chapter 11 bankruptcy) since 1998. I'm sure their paths have crossed, so Stone wasn't asking who Miles is. He was asking "Who does Miles think he is to contradict someone like me?" Very professional and very classy of Steve.

A reader commented in Miles' post that Steve had taken the shot and Miles responded as one might expect:

"I'm laughing out loud over that. Shows you a couple things: One, Stone could never be a GM. He's too thin skinned and doesn't want the accountability. Two, he's playing the "I'm bigger than you" card. Nice.

If Stone was such a brilliant baseball mind, why haven't the 29 other teams lined up to hire him?
Great story. A few years ago in Pittsuburgh, he was going on about what he was going to do 'when' he bought the A's. Ron Santo finished his dinner, wiped his mouth and said, 'I'll tell you what you're going to be doing next year _ broadcasting baseball!'

And so it was. And so it is."

If that story about Santo is true, he should get a statue outside of Wrigley for that alone.

What is interesting to me about all of this is that I'm sure almost nothing will come of this little cyberslap-fight. There is nothing about the rumor in the Sun-Times that I saw as of this writing. The Tribune reports that the rumor started, it was killed, and they asked Bradley about it anyway. Bradley, understandably, was not amused:

"'I don't pay attention to rumors,' he said. 'I'm always rumored. I'm one of them guys that are multi-talented, can do a lot of things. I'm not surprised. It's just a rumor.'

A Cubs official then told Bradley the rumor was '100 percent untrue.' Bradley began berating the media for spreading the rumor, calling it 'garbage.'"

But the fact is, this was all started and perpetuated by two mainstream media personalities. They are two guys that most casual Cubs fans believe have credibility as insiders and journalists (though probably not as much after today). The casual manner in which this rumor was reported is exactly why so many mainstream reporters get upset at bloggers.

Where is Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez ganging up on Stone on ESPN? Where are the other Chicago reporters and why aren't they jumping up and down on Stone and Kaplan for getting ahead of themselves and being irresponsible in their journalistic methods and reporting?

It won't come. Stone and Kaplan are part of the club and the others won't turn on them like they would if they had just been bloggers like me.

By the way, the Cubs won and the Cardinals lost. The Cubs now stand 1/2 game behind St. Louis (and have two fewer losses).

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UPDATE

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Steve Stone has weighed back in on the Bradley rumor debate in a very reasoned and professional response:

"To all the people who believe who believe that david kaplan and i made up the bradley story---get a life. Trade deadline rumors are not new."

I'd make fun of the typos, but I can't spell "petulant." Luckily, I now know that it is spelled "S-T-E-V-E-S-T-O-N-E."