Nail on the head. You have a right to hold the opinion that Jack Morris was a better pitcher than Bert Blyleven. But your opinion would be wrong, because Morris was not a better pitcher. Blyleven was.
Now, if you want to say you enjoyed watching Morris pitch more than you enjoyed watching Blyleven, that’s also your opinion. Provided you are telling the truth, however, that’s an opinion which can’t be refuted by facts. If you liked watching Morris pitch more, then you liked watching Morris pitch more. But that would be a matter of personal taste, and not a matter of objective analysis. One runs into big problems when personal taste and objective analysis are confused.
I don’t think this opinion problem is limited to just baseball, by the way. There seems to be society wide issue with confusing subjective opinion and objective facts. Everyone has the right to an opinion; not everyone’s opinion is right.
really patrick but I’m just not sure all that many people care about the morris vs Blyleven thing. Maybe it fills up some space in the intranet for a couple of days, but after that it is pretty quiet on that front. Let both in, Let neither in, Who cares
My opinion which is subjective and therefore not based on any objective facts is that the Baseball Hall of Fame is not a particularly interesting thing and discussions of who “does or doesn’t belong” in it are similarly not interesting. I live within 100 miles of it and have visited it once in my 45 years on earth, zero times of my own volition as an adult.
For me baseball is something I enjoy and cherish but I’m not big on debating which cream deserves on whatever merit to rise to the top. I simply enjoy the whole thing, from Rickey Henderson to Ricky Ledee, and I just don’t care who wonks would decide to king. The wonks do and I say bully for them. Let them enjoy that I won’t interfere because it just doesn’t matter to me at all.
Yes. Valid use of an opinion.
As the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
‘great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’
would be an opinion, not a fact.