Bill Conlin, a Hall of Fame baseball writer, became the latest person with a connection to the sports world to be accused of molesting children.
Conlin resigned his position from the Philadelphia Daily News after a story was published accusing him of molesting four children in the 1970′s.
According to the article, three women and a man say Conlin groped and fondled them and touched their genitals in assaults when they were ages 7 to 12.
Not that Conlin’s alleged abuse of children sets him apart from the others that have recently been accused, but in his case there’s a feeling of poetic justice.
Before launching MoonDog Sports, I wrote an article about several e-mail exchanges between my friend Bill Baer and Conlin.
Baer publishes the web site Crashburn Alley and he’s an avid baseball fan. In November 2007, Baer addressed Conlin’s position on Sabermetrics, a statistical analysis used to measure a baseball player’s true value.
Following several e-mails between Baer and Conlin addressing the Sabermetrics issue, Conlin went off on a tangent that spoke volumes about his true nature.
In one of his replies to Baer, Conlin wrote this about bloggers:
“The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called ‘Pamphleteers’. They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites.”
At that time, my article All Bloggers Stop Writing Immediately focused on Conlin’s slight against bloggers, but the accusations that have surfaced lead me to an entirely different perspective.
Before the allegations, I viewed Conlin as just one in a long line of tired old guard columnists who had long outlived their usefulness.
Perhaps his comments regarding bloggers was a glimpse into the core of Conlin. His arrogant, ignorant and self-absorbed views of bloggers revealed a dark side.
But his possible molestation of children uncovers a horribly ugly corner of the human heart.
Now, I can’t help but view him as a potentially vile creature that would harm a child.
I’m not prejudging his guilt or innocence, but if he is guilty of child molestation, then Conlin deserves everything the justice system can dole out.
Losing his job, his life as he knows it, that may seem to be enough of a punishment. In that respect, poetic justice has been served.
But there is no level of justice that can mend the lives of children who were victimized. Conlin will have to answer these allegations, and the responses he gives damn well better not be in the same tone he used in the e-mail replies to Baer.
In fact, Conlin’s time on Earth may depend on it.
