I tend to be unimpressed with assertions when little else accompanies them. If you tell me that “the average driver now drives 92 MPH” but don’t mention anything else, why would I believe you? If you present some data or tell me about a study you read, well, that’s a different story altogether. The point I am getting at may seem simple enough but when it comes to sports, and particularly baseball, baseless assertions impersonate cogency all the time, and nowhere in the world are baseless assertions passed off as truth with more ease and frequency than at “America’s Most Beloved Ballpark”, Fenway Park.

Here’s a sampling of some of the stuff I heard last night. And keep in mind; this was just within earshot of me.

“David Ortiz has to be the MVP. I mean, look at this shift they put on for him. You ever seen this shift put on for A-Rod?”

“Trot Nixon always hits well at the end of the year because Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz bat in front of him.”

“Manny Ramirez deserves MVP votes for protecting Ortiz all year.”

“Kevin Millar has been a lot better than people give him credit for…Shea Hillenbrand sucks.”

“Jason Varitek always comes through in these (clutch) situations.”

“Manny Ramirez is the most overrated player on the team.”

“Look at that. Groundball right at the 1st Baseman and Billy Mueller hustling his ass off down the line. The average fan just doesn’t understand how much that helps a ballclub.”

Now, I am not a baseball snob and realize that I spend more time reading and writing about the game than most. I experience the game differently than the majority of baseball fans and I am sensitive to the notion that everyone is entitled to enjoy the sport in any way they choose. But why is everyone so eager to demonstrate how much he or she knows (whether they know about the issue at hand or not) at a ballpark? The interesting part of baseball for me is always the unknown. Three years back, when I first started to read Bill James and Pete Palmer and really look at the game more analytically, I used to enjoy scouring the OBP leader-boards to find players that were better than I had ever realized. Guys like Craig Biggio and Frank Thomas were players of historic significance, and I never had realized it. Now, however, I believe I have acquired a sort of given understanding that on-base percentage is an important component of an offensive baseball player’s worth. Accordingly, I have no problem asserting that Derrek Lee had a much better year than Andruw Jones in 2005. I know that to be the case because I have put the time in to be able to know that. I now spend my analytical pursuits on things I don’t know a helluva lot about. Things like DIPS and the value of a clutch hit. Those are things I do not feel I have a great grasp of and therefore, you won’t hear me popping off about them.

A large part of me feels bad for the close-minded sports fan. I was one for about 21 years of my life. However, since I started trying to understand the sports about which I had always been so opinionated, I have been exposed to a whole new level of enjoyment of baseball and to a lesser extent, the other games I follow. I wish the most vocal sports fans were the most informed but they’re not, and the informed sports fan is palpably absent amongst the so-called “Smartest Baseball Fans in the World.”