Bill Conlin has reportedly died

And Fart shouldn't be held responsible for one particle of Conlin's transgression for acknowledging he was a good stylist.

 

A telling point in the exchange between Conlin and Daulerio: AJD advises BC to threaten the papers with litigation if they publish. Conlin does not comment on this suggestion. If he did ever sue, I haven't been able to locate any records. Has anyone? Did he sue? If not, isn't that a tacit admission of guilt.

 

I am not a lawyer but I think the fact that the newspapers used named sources makes it hard to sue them. The newspapers had no reason to believe the victims were lying when they made their allegations. Therefore it would be difficult to prove reckless or negligent behavior on the part of the newspaper, even if Conlin could have disproved the allegations that occurred 40 years ago.

This si not intended as a defense of Conlin, just the difficulties involved in suing in cases like this.

 

Conlin himself was responsible for his own actions, but it certainly seems like some of the parents were somewhat less than decisive in taking actions to deal with the situation.

For questionable reasons too -- supposedly some of the parents "were afraid they were going to do harm to Conlin."

I think many parents in similar situations would make an absolute point to do precisely that.

 

I don't quite get this thing where someone's professional talents cannot be acknowledged because if their unassociated misdeeds.

There are a world of examples of talented people doing bad things. It does not suddenly make them talentless.

I'm not going to say RIP, but I'm not going to say the man couldn't write, either.

 

Those who say that Conlin wasn't a talented or informed baseball journalist definitely never read his work. Shot, is right, there are plenty of bad people out there with talent.

 

It is ridiculous that we're discussing the merits of a pedophile's baseball knowledge, or would try to distinguish between the baseball writer, and the pedophile. They're the same person, and you can't "mourn" the passing of one, without the other.

 

I grew up in Philadelphia and read Conlin's work. He fucking sucked.

 

And, then there's that.

 

Not really. Takes talent to win a Spink.

 

Sucked, ehhhhh, I dunno. I didn't grow up in Philly but I read a fair amount of Conlin's baseball stuff, especially after the interwebs appeared. Along with his teevee appearances he seemed fairly typical of the grouchy-old-man columnist railing about "why isn't sports like it used to be 40 years ago?"

I was never particularly overimpressed either way about the quality, or lack thereof, of his writing.

Every town should have at least one of the "respected old voice" columnists and for a while Conlin was Philly's. But the 'get off my lawn' shit gets very annoying very quickly.

Which means nothing in regards to his activities in victimizing children.

It might mean something if he had written an eloquent and convincing rebuttal and denial of the charges, but he never did.

I think if I were accused of such charges and I were a talented and persuasive writer, and I had any credible evidence possible to refute or disprove such charges, I'd put my golden writing skills to work to that end. Conlin never did, so we are left to draw our own conclusions.

 

Pretty much what I'm saying, although maybe a little differently than you meant it. I don't know.

I just see it as apples and oranges. History is full of people who were capable of career success, even greatness (although I'm not saying Conlin was great), while being more than a little bit flawed socially.