The Will Leitch Farewell Tour of Deadspin continued today with a longish post attempting to put my somewhat over the top attempts at antagonizing Will into some greater perspective.

Though admitting he once considered CSTB, “one of our favorites, though, and the one that seemed to have the best idea of how to run a general interest sports site” (keep in mind this was 2003, folks), Leitch also includes the caveat, “most of it was just long cutting-and-pastings of AP stories with a one-sentence ‘comment’ on the end.” So in other words, a mere parasite like me oughta have greater respect for someone who adds a two-sentence ‘comment’ to the end of stories cut and pasted from ESPN.com.

At the risk of C&P’ing far too much of Leitch’s self-described plucky midwesterisms, I’ll summarize the post in question.   Outta the blue, mild-mannered Man From Mattoon was bulldozed by an invisible grouch who proceeded to publish his cell phone number and encouraged the homeless to use his fiancee’s portrait for target practice.  Though these missives were distasteful and oh-so-unprovoked, they ultimately help Young Will to buck up, grow-a-pair…and eventually blossom into the fragile butterfly we all saw torn to fucking shreds on HBO.

You’re welcome, Will. Anytime. But the following points need to be made :

1) The CSTB category “Will Leitch Sucks” did not appear “within 25 minutes” of Deadspin’s public launch.  Said category was created weeks after the fact, though for the purposes of proper indexing, old posts relevant to the matter at handed were edited to include the category.

2) It is true I posted Will’s phone number, but I only did so after some moron at CBS Sportsline sent a press release that included it.  There’s a breach in Leitch’s personal security and he wants to blame the whistleblower?

3)  re : the bit about encouraging the homeless to get busy with pics of Will’s ex.  Not cool (dude).  Hardly my proudest moment — especially the part where I had to pay the homeless to do it. This was a reprehensible act and I don’t think I will ever fully live down the way I exploited…the nation’s less fortunate!

(seriously folks, did it ever occur to Will or his dipshit loyal readers that constantly mocking him was not entirely different from targeting, say, Stephen A. Smith or Chris Berman, neither of whom, to my knowledge, have ever met Will Leitch or done anything to personally hurt him?  Or that this long-running schtick is someone’s idea of humor?   That if Will were to disappear I’d have to go back to making fun of Mushnick’s beard everyday?)

4) “It can be difficult for the blog uninitiated ” which we most definitely were ” when they are being hammered online, but, thanks to CSTB, we grew used to it pretty quick. Heck, no one was gonna say anything worse than what he was saying.”

Not until recently, no.

5) The revisionist history is all well and good for lazy types who never bothered to notice how the majority of anti-Leitch posts at CSTB were not in fact, sneak attacks mounted as part of some bloggy traffic war, but directly referenced Deadspin’s real content and totally legit questions about such.

6) Good luck at New York, Will. Hopefully, the magazine won’t “focus too much on New York City for our tastes” and you’ll last more then two days at your new gig before someone compares you to Jm J. Bullock.