Murray Chass is all in a dither because MLB is not going to providing printed version of its league reference guides. Instead, the books will be published online as PDFs. If you're not afraid of computers, and if you own a printer, this is not a big deal.

He summons some of the old curmudgeon to close out his piece, but it's kind of stupid:

Younger writers, more attuned to the use of the Internet than their older colleagues, may not have a problem with the disappearance of the books. But in past years they didn’t have the Internet as an alternative reference site. They apparently just didn’t feel the need for any information the books provided.

That says more about them than it does about baseball’s decision.

Yes. It says that they, unlike Murray Chass, realized that the information in the books was available elsewhere. On the Internet.