@bhouse: I conducted the interview through an oxygen mask.

@Doc: Thanks!

Keep up the good work!

MATTHEW BERRY: No. I have no problem with the phrase itself, but I’m not sure I agree with it.

So – what is he saying? Is he ragging on Razzball as not something he reads between masturbation sessions?

@Alex Panagiotopoulos: Yeah, I don’t really read Funston, but I’d be happy to interview him.

Oh, and I’d take Berry’s money too.

P.S. I’d like to nominate HD for the humorless dullard list. It’s clueless chumps like that whose money I spend in October.

“ESPN contacted us on whether we wanted to interview Matthew Berry. They did not provide a briefing nor asked for questions in advance. We were expecting to submit the questions and get written answers (you can see our baseball previews where we pose questions to local blogs – http://razzball.com/category/2009-team-preview/ – as examples). ESPN requested we do it over the phone.

Mr. Berry fully acknowledged that he’d never read our site before. Again, ESPN’s bad for not being prepared. PR 101. That probably would’ve helped set expectations but we’ll take responsibility for being inexperienced interviewers. We should’ve thrown some softball questions out there to start before anything more challenging. We may have gone too far in being acerbic or tongue-in-cheek. It obviously didn’t leave a positive impression with Mr. Berry.

We asked some general fantasy baseball questions and also took the opportunity to ask what we thought were interesting questions – e.g., ‘Why doesn’t ESPN back up their ‘manifestos’ with real data given the amazing data set they have at their disposal?’ and ‘Given that ESPN FLB writers are quite vocal in their strategies, does it make sense for ESPN players (of which, we have many) to zag against their strategy vs zig?’ Were we supposed to just ask only Fantasy 101 questions that we already have set opinions on?

The end result was verbatim (at least 1-2 questions/replies were not included b/c neither the question nor reply was that interesting). We did not edit his comments out of context as he said in the chat (there was some re-ordering for flow). If he wanted to pimp the ESPN fantasy baseball platform, we would’ve printed that. We’re fans of the new platform. We mention ESPN 11 times in the post!

So it’s disappointing his experience was so unsatisfactory that he had to go Buzz Bissinger on us in the chat room but such is life. We don’t really have any ill-will or desire to propagate a flame war. And that’s that.”

Way to make yourself look like an amateur and a major prick. Sadly though, not an amateur prick.

I never heard of this site, Razzball, and I read a ton of fantasy content. I’d have been interested (maybe?) if I’d heard about this site in some other way than this interview. Looking at the site’s stats via Quantcast, it looks like you’re lil’ site is doing ok with a worldwide audience of 35k. In case the Razzballerz were unaware, this actually places them between funnycatpix.com and charactercounts.org. Unfortunately it appears the Razzballerz are more concerned with the funny cat pix of the world as clearly character doesn’t count.

I went to college, shit, I went to high school with guys who could conduct this style of interview. GROW. UP.

@Schlitzy: Yeah, that’s the one.

@VanHammersly: “Stealing?” Really? Wow. Yeah, I think the reality of the situation is they don’t actually do any real research. They sit around and say, “Jeter’s a solid pick cause he plays every game.”

@hasenmensch: Maybe one day we’ll open the Razz-vault.

List 3: Ten guys who are not sexy, will go very late in drafts but are not done yet

Ken Griffey Jr.
Paul Konerko
Gary Sheffield
Johnny Damon
Magglio Ordonez
Randy Johnson
Jamie Moyer
Ramon Hernandez
Mike Cameron
Randy Wolf

I’ll give you this, at one point, he asks me why I’m so angry.

“I don’t want a large Farva. I want a goddamn liter of cola.”