Yes, WW, the redesign does facilitate more frequent posting.

For more on the new format, please see

http://www.salon.com/sports/daily/feature/2008/05/02/format/

and discuss there.

Thanks.

AchillesisCrying When you're 53, and they've invented some new way of transmitting information that makes the internet obsolete, are you going to yell at younger sportswriters who use this new form of transmitting information?

Nope. When I was at a newspaper and they invented the Internet, I jumped at the first opportunity. I'm in the word business. How those words are delivered is secondary to me. I'm interested in the subject, and the mode of delivery has a subtle effect on how I do my job, which is write words. But the mode of delivery isn't my department. Bring on the inventifying.

I love newspapers as much as the next old-school guy. Grew up with them, worked for them. I miss working in a newspaper newsroom a little bit, and I miss seeing the product of my day's work in other people's hands on the bus ride home. (OK, on the bus ride to work the next day, heh.) And I'll probably miss the Internet when the mind-meld thingy gets invented in nine years. But like Ernie Harwell told me: "I like the past all right, but it's past. We're living in the present."

If only it were in print, rather than a bunch of losers in their basements taking profane pot shots at each other.

Still, it's a way more interesting discussion than the one Bissinger et al. had on TV.

That damn TV! It lowers the discourse!

I said my piece so I'll stay out of the way except I want to respond to one thing.

bigguns To return to something I alluded to earlier, Mr. Kaufman is using Mr. Bissinger badly. Mr. Kaufman called Mr. Bissinger, "dad." That's slang for some variant of codger, but Mr. Kaufman is also casting himself as the hip son and just never you mind that Mr. Kaufman is a decade or two away from being broadly seen as "dad" and is specifically seen as "dad" on a daily basis in his home.

I was being ironic there. I am closer in age (44) and professional background (as far as I can tell) to Bissinger (53) than I am to Leitch (32). I don't know this but my guess is that the average age of my column's readers is significantly younger than me. Than I. The funny is that I am decidedly not the hip son. Leitch has socks hipper than me. (Than I.) And I think Leitch would tell you he's not all that hip. But Bissinger's acting so much like the getoffmylawn grandpa that even Shakespeare looks like the hip son.

I guess that all didn't come through in those three letters, d, a and d.

lrsigman Correct me if I'm wrong... ...but wasn't Coolbaugh actually hit in the neck by that line drive, not in the head? How are the helments going to prevent that from happening again?

I think it was more of a wake-up call. I mean, can you imagine the meeting?

"That was terrible about Coolbaugh. Those coaches are really dangerously close to home plate. I think we should have a rule that they have to wear helmets."

"But hang on, Jim. Coolbaugh got hit in the neck, not the head. A helmet wouldn't have saved him."

"Oh. OK. Let's wait till someone gets hit in the head and dies, then we'll make the rule. Good call, Steve. You really saved me some embarrassment there ... "

Thanks for that. I'm looking forward to reading it on the bus home. Check out the cover of the mag, pictured on the page. A couple of female gymnasts doing some kind of floor routine with red bowling-ball looking things, a year and a half from the next Olympics.

And yall complain when I write about NHL instead of NBA playoffs.