Somebody was being nice. Or mean. Around here, it’s hard to tell sometimes. But a couple of weeks ago, our perennial favorite, ESPN.com baseball hack Rob Neyer re-did his personal Web site. Don’t worry though, the image of him in flannel remains. Included on that page is his version of why his 2001 worst-seller “Feeding the Green Monster” was such a horrendous piece of crap.

In the article, he somehow blames it on..nobody. He says things like, “The real problem wasn’t that I’d written a bad book, though; it was that I hadn’t written the book he [the publisher] wanted me to write. The book that he was expecting. The book he thought I had promised, in my proposal, to write.”

You know what that means, Flannel Boy? It means it’s your fault. You have to read the whole tortured explanation to see that this whole thing is just so-Neyer.

Anyway, somebody at www.baseball-primer.com linked to Rob’s new site and they started discussing him and his work. I like the Primer and stop by from time to time to see what they’re talking about. I was alerted to the Neyer thread and the fact that a link to my infamous review of the book was posted on the thread.

Over the years, Rob and I have traded some friendly e-mails. They mainly consist of me wondering aloud why ESPN would pay the world’s most boring writer to write a daily baseball column, and then of him writing me back and swearing at me.

Anyway, I got beat up on the Primer for a couple days, especially after an intrepid reader mailed me to alert me that my review was up for review. I threw in my two cents and they batted me around for a few posts, then got distracted by a shiny object and went away.

Anyway, a few Neyer updates (the reason for this in the first place.) He’s married now, to a woman who gets a passing mention in the book. He has an eleven year old stepson who he forces to wear nothing but flannel. He claims the kid is a pretty good athlete, which, I think we all know has to be a product of the fact he’s Flannel Boy’s “step” son.

How about the fact that he admitted he cut 25,000 words from the first draft to the one I had to sit and read? I am astonished. What could those 25,000 words have been? How could he cut the “bad” stuff and still be left with that pile of crap?

People ask why I hated that book so much. It’s easy. The idea was a great one. The season in which he attended all of the games was a fascinating one in Boston. We got nothing. He couldn’t decide to write about the park, the city, the team, his social phobias or wax nostalgic about odd things. He’s completely humorless in the first place, so even if he had picked an interesting angle it would have been weaker than you’d expect, but still… This man makes his living writing about baseball, and he couldn’t write a readable, medium-sized book about an entire season at Fenway Park? It boggles the mind, really.

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The Cubs finally managed to beat those pesky Brewers. Cubs fans ask all the time, “Why can’t we beat the Brewers?” The reason is simple. Over the past five years the Cubs haven’t beaten anybody consistently, why should Milwaukee be any different?

Shawn Estes turned in his second solid start in a row, and for now, at least, the calls to ship him off to a AAA city like Des Moines or Detroit have quieted.

Dusty Baker came out and flat out said that Juan Cruz won’t be traded. That’d be fine if a) he wasn’t the best trading piece to use to get a real-live major league caliber third baseman and b) it was Dusty’s decision.

Steve Stone pointed something out the other night that I had noticed on at least two previous occasions. Dusty had manuevered his lineup so that in the ninth inning there would be four straight lefthanded hitters coming up. The reason this is good? If you’ve got a righthanded closer, you don’t want him facing all lefties. Dusty is forcing the other manager to decide if he wants his (theoretically) best bullpen arm closing out the game, or if that manager would rather go with his best lefty set-up guy. Think of it as the difference (later this year) of facing Jason Isringhausen or Jeff Fassero in the ninth.

By the way, Jeff’s ERA is back to a Troll-like 7.84 this year after he fooled the Cardinals’ fans into thinking he pitched well for them in 16 innings last year. Sure, he went 3-0 with a 3.00 ERA, but he gave up a homer every four innings and blew both of his save chances. But you can’t convince Cardinals’ fans he didn’t do a great job.

Then again, you can’t convince them that St. Louis is pretty much Biloxi with an arch, either.

The Cubs got a lucky break early in the game and cashed it for one run. One? Sigh.

Dusty says Juan isn’t going anywhere.

Mike Downey thinks baseball is too slow. Wow. Deep.

Jerry Manuel shook up the lineup and the Sox won.

Phil Rogers must think we forget he’s a moron and that needs to remind us all of the time. Now he wants the Sox to trade for Carl Everett. I’m not even making this up. I don’t care what Carl hits, he’s a strange, bad, sometimes violent person. That’s all that disfunctional Sox clubhouse needs.

Groucho luxuriates in MJ getting fired by the Wiz.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut to urge the Bulls to bend over backwards for MJ. Why? Hasn’t he proven he knows nothing about personnel? Hasn’t he proven he’ll just meddle and no good will come of it? And this crap about luring free agents. Who did he lure to Washington? Shut up, Jay.

Dusty says the starters should pitch deeper into games. Who’s gonna argue with that?

The Wizard of Roz on gay baseball players. He says he knows of “at least one” gay player in Chicago in recent years. But enough about Ryne Sandberg. Oh, I kill me.

Remember when the Bulls traded Toni Kukoc to Philadelphia and in the three-way deal they got John Starks and some guy they released right away. Hey, that was Bruce Bowen! Nice trade, Hamster.

I don’t think Jose Canseco knows what “blackballed” means.

Yao really is the Jerry Lewis of China! But can Yao’s telethon book the big stars like Tom Dreesen and Steve and Edie?

ESPN ranks the NFL teams and you have to scroll quite a ways to find the Bears.

Tom Verducci opens his mailbag and nice things about the Cubs fall out.

This review of “The Matrix: Reloaded” thinks it’s too much flash. Hey, it’s the Matrix for chrissakes. It’s supposed to be like that!

The world’s greatest newspaper has clues about how your favorite sandwich tells us all about you.