Brawl in Beantown

My two favorite sports writers, and Boston natives to boot, Bill Simmons and Charles Pierce are in a nasty little spat. Given that I stumbled upon them independently of each other and enjoy both of their takes on sports I was saddened to learn of their animosity for one and other. Here is a summary from the Huffington Post about the most recent spat and here is Charles Pierces retort:

Quote from Huffington Post:

Author and ESPN writer Bill Simmons lashed out at writer Charles P. Pierce today on twitter, citing why he changed part of his book, "The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy."

"Hey CPP: took you out of TBOB cuz you trashed it without ever mentioning that you used to email me all the time until I told you to eff off," Simmons tweeted.

Pierce wrote a review, which was posted on Deadspin, blasting Simmons' book in Nov. 2009.

Simmons also tweeted that he thought Pierce's review was dishonest and that he "came off like a spurned lover."

Pierce responded to the tweets in his blog, calling Simmons a "mendacious, whiny little thin-skinned bag of breeze."

Quote from Pierce:

We started an e-correspondence that was perfectly amiable. Then, at one point, right around Lebron's first year in the league, he fired off a pig-ignorant crack about Lebron's mother and the circumstances of Lebron's birth. This Blog sent him an e-mail saying, essentially, wow, that seemed a bit harsh. He replied with some snarkery and This Blog replied by telling him to "stay out of the deep end of the pool" until he'd actually learned how to report something. That was the last e-mail we ever exchanged.

Since then, he's been trafficking in the notion that he told This Blog to intercourse off because he was resisting its attempts to "mentor" him. (That's what he sold Whitlock. Pimp Hand, give us a call, man!) This is all my granny. This Blog had no intention of "mentoring" him because, to his credit, he was making his name in a new medium with which This Blog was not familiar, and because, if This Blog were going to mentor someone, it would pick someone with more intellectual integrity who was a helluva lot tougher. This Blog would be perfectly willing to explain this all to his face, including its genuine admiration for much of what he's accomplished, but, given his history in such matters, it fears it may die an unfulfilled blog in this regard.

I'm torn since I have affection for both but the giveaway is Bill Simmons' insult of Charles Pierce's career. Either Pierce doesn't care about how people perceive his career and Simmons' insult is futile and lame or he does care and Simmons' is gloating and being ungracious in light of his success. Either way Simmons is acting like a baby.