IN THE TOOLSHED

Since 2004, I’ve been a periodic visitor to a Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim (Jesus, takes forever to type that) blog called Halos Heaven. I’ve even linked to it on my site (that will be fixed soon). In the past, I’ve occasionally posted on the site, using the nom de blog “Chris Knapp’s Sac.” The moderator has tended to be an apologist for the team’s management and consistently a team homer, which makes sense, since he’s a fan and it’s his site. And that blatant homerism has been a source of amusement until a few days ago, when I created a post that was censored.

Granted, I haven’t visited the site much this season. Instead, I’ve spent my surfing time on more objective sites like Baseball Think Factory, as I’ve tired of the myopic, chest-thumping POV on the Angels site. But I attempted to create a “fan post” because I’ve become fed up with the host of the Angels post-game show, a guy named Jeff Biggs who has bounced around L.A. sports radio for at least the past decade. In the past, he made little impression on me (perhaps that’s why he’s bounced around so much). But this season he’s turned up on the Artie Moreno-owned station AM 830 KLAA and, I swear to god, I can only listen to this guy for five minutes at a time. Because it seems like each time I tune in, he’s giving a great big impassioned speech about the greatness of the Angels organization and the greatness of owner Artie Moreno and, oh, yeah, Frank McCourt sucks for firing Ross Porter. Yes, dude, it did suck that McCourt fired Porter the way he did. For all I know McCourt is a terrible owner, and an awful guy. Is it possible that Biggs is bitter that he didn’t get a gig with the Dodgers?

All I’m saying is that I don’t want to listen to a show about the Angles and hear about how happy the host is to have a job. I get it. Now move on. He also spews the robotic banalities like “I’m sure the GM and the owner will make the right decision when it comes to [Lackey, Figgins, Abreu, Vlad].” I realize you’re paid to be a house man and a tool, but at least pretend to try to have an opinion.

But what set me off the other day was a diatribe against Vladimir Guerrero that was spewed without any context whatsoever. Biggs said that Vlad wasn’t producing like a no. 4 hitter this season. Well, duh. He’s missed two and a half months of the season with injuries. Never mind that he’s had his best stretch -- 9 home runs, 17 RBI, over .300 batting average over the last 28 games -- since he’s return from injury. But don’t you owe it to your listeners to at least mention that his numbers are down because he’s hasn’t played. Not if you’re Jeff Biggs.

So I posted a not-very-subtle dig at Biggs on Halos Heaven (admittedly, I used words like “tool”). It was taken down shortly thereafter by the site’s moderator, who then sent me an email:

Look, Biggs is a friend of mine and I can't have just a drive by shooting of him on my site.

You want to go into greater detail and discuss in a longer, more thoughtful piece, I might consider it.

Sorry, but I am biased and I am going to stick up for my friends, if you are going to talk down Biggs you are going to have to do it better than than your three sentences posted on the site tonight.

I mentioned this to a buddy of mine. He said that the site moderator is a frequent guest on Biggs’ radio show. That explains it, I figured. Biggs helps legitimize the fanboy. Therefore the fanboy doesn’t want to lose his special privileges by biting the hand that feeds him. Fine; I won’t play in your sandbox anymore. I'll try to get my Halos ya-ya's from more credible sources.