October too unpredictable to deal in absolutes

CLEVELAND — His morning proctology examination was not the most uncomfortable part of Paul Hoynes’ day, which tells you what kind of day Tuesday was.

This was the day Hoynes, the Cleveland.com Indians beat reporter who just a couple of days earlier had declared the Indians’ October pursuit of a World Series championship over before it even began, walked into the home clubhouse at Progressive Field and faced the men he had counted out.

With the prying eyes of his fellow media members surrounding him and the room filled (not by accident) by every member of the ballclub, this was scrutiny of a different sort. And when I asked Hoynes which was more challenging — the doctor’s probe or the Indians’ ire — he answered before I could even finish the question.

“This,” he said with his charming chuckle. “But don’t write that I liked the proctology exam!”

If you’re just joining this battle of Tribe vs. Scribe, it came about like this:

Carlos Carrasco took an Ian Kinsler liner to the hand on the second pitch of Saturday’s game, breaking his fifth metacarpal and ending his season. This injury, on the heels of the Tribe’s loss of Danny Salazar to a flexor strain mere days earlier, compelled Hoynes, a bulldog of a reporter and a good man who has covered this team for longer than many of its current players have been alive, to write the Indians’ obituary.

“Write it down,” Hoynes wrote. “On Sept. 17, the Indians were eliminated from serious postseason advancement before they even got there.”

Well, you can imagine how that went over. And Tuesday gave us our first follow-up to the Twitter tussle in which second baseman Jason Kipnis encouraged Hoynes to cover the rest of the season from his couch and starter Trevor Bauer called him a “coward” for taking his scheduled day off Sunday instead of coming to the clubhouse and facing the music.

“I felt what I wrote was the right thing to write at that time, and I still do,” Hoynes told me. “And I understand if they’re mad, I really do.”

We can delve into a journalistic discussion here about the importance of immediate attendance after such a strongly written piece (Hoynes, for the record, said he regrets not showing up Sunday), but, ultimately, the primary problem with Hoynes’ opinion — one I shouldn’t have to tell you he is 100-percent entitled …

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