Kasper: In baseball debates, anonymity has an ugly side

I wrote earlier this year about how the Internet has exponentially helped me do my job with all the facts and figures available at a moment's notice.

There is no doubt computer technology has helped teams and players. too. Every at-bat, each pitch, all the defensive alignments can be cataloged and reviewed at the click of a button. Yes, there are some players who are probably better served not being overloaded with information, but most guys want access to all the available data.

Some who miss a simpler time may disagree, but I believe the Internet age has helped the game of baseball. It has made fans and analysts smarter and it has somewhat leveled the playing field among front offices trying to exploit market inefficiencies.

There is too much information out there for all to see for any team to slip through the cracks and pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Yes, there are small things clubs can do to gain a small advantage, but now they are doing it in broad daylight.

Outside the ballpark walls, the wild west nature of the Internet has nurtured readily accessible ideas from some incredibly bright people who might have been marginalized if not ignored by those within the game in eras past.

Anyone with math skills and a good computer program can produce a study on just about any baseball topic these days. And all it takes to be seen is a well-placed tweeted link.

The wide-open landscape also generally keeps everybody honest. You can't write or say things about the game or its players without scrutiny from members of a peanut gallery that sometimes come armed with better data on their side.

If you think about baseball coverage 20 to 30 years ago, it might have been easier for columnists to veer the conversation in a certain direction because they had a much bigger share of the market. Yes, it was on a local level mostly, but what you knew about your team and its players mostly came from those few writers covering it. And while their opinions didn't go unchallenged per se, there wasn't a comments section below each article telling the writer how full of you-know-what that he/she was.

Today, opinion pieces that don't make well-reasoned arguments get ripped to shreds on sites dedicated largely to commenting on commentary, as funny as that sounds. And it doesn't matter if the byline belongs to a J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner or a Hall of Fame player. Empty, baseless proclamations don't fly anymore no matter who writes or utters them.

That leads me to the one thing about the Internet age I don't like - anonymity.

I acknowledge that it allows some people to be more honest and critical than they otherwise would be. But it also lets those who hide behind an avatar spew vitriol that is completely uncivilized. I am all for keeping teams, managers, players, writers (and yes, even broadcasters) honest, but vile personal attacks are hurtful and don't foster any good debate.

Ultimately, you take the good with the bad. And the good - the system of checks and balances everywhere you look on the web - outweighs the bad.

So let's embrace progress. If you want to learn more about what in the world "BABIP" is, the Google machine is ready to go to work. If you want to tell me that I mispronounced "Yakima" on our broadcast last week, you can tweet me in two seconds. And if there's a flaw in this column (which I highly doubt!), you can immediately and directly point it out and keep me on my toes.

Just play nice people. That's all I ask.

• Len Kasper is the TV play-by-play broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. Follow him on Twitter@LenKasper and check out his baseball-blog with Jim Deshaies at wgntv.com.