Buzz Bissinger's Three Nights in August (and Moneyball)

I know there's another diary touching on how La Russa and Bissnger's takes on Moneyball, but I found an excerpt from his upcoming book Three Nights in August that expands on it.

     In the fallout of Michael Lewis's provocative book Moneyball,
baseball front offices are increasingly being populated by thirtysomethings
whose most salient qualifications are MBA degrees and who come equipped
with a clinical ruthlessness: The skills of players don't even have to be
observed but instead can be diagnosed by adept statistical analysis through
a computer. These thirtysomethings view players as pieces of an assembly
line; the goal is to quantify the inefficiencies that are slowing down production
and then to improve on it with cost-effective player parts.
    In this new wave of baseball, managers are less managers than
middle managers, functionaries whose strategic options during a game
require muzzlement, there only to effect the marching orders coldly
calculated and passed down by upper management. It is wrong to say that
the new breed doesn't care about baseball. But it's not wrong to say that
there is no way they could possibly love it, and so much of baseball is about
love. They don't have the sense of history, which to the thirtysomethings is
largely bunk. They don't have the bus trips or the plane trips. They don't carry
along the tradition, because they couldn't care less about the tradition. They
have no use for the lore of the game--the poetry of its stories-- because it
can't be broken down and crunched into a computer. Just as they have no
interest in the human ingredients that make a player a player and make a
game a game: heart, desire, passion, reactions to pressure. After all, these
are emotions, and what point are emotions if they can't be quantified?

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?textType=excerpt&titleNumber=688947

First, no stat-head/thirtysomething has ever said that baseball's history is bunk. That's a ridiculous statement, and I don't have the energy to bother too much with it.

But for this I have plenty of energy:
It is wrong to say that the new breed doesn't care about baseball. But it's not wrong to say that there is no way they could possibly love it, and so much of baseball is about love.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. It's a blanket statement that feels like it was written more for dramatics than anything else. I just don't see how being a member of this "new breed" inhibits a person from loving the game. If I'm DePodesta, I have to love the game to stay and put up with the insane amount of BS streaming from the local critics.

Are people really so ignorant that they can believe something like this? Or is it just a jab at something the writer doesn't understand or disagrees with? If it's the latter, I think it's getting to the point where it's mean-spirited. Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I can't help feeling that way. I listen to these "baseball men" comment on Billy Beane, Moneyball, stat-heads, and the new breed...and I see a bully beating up on some dorky kid...constantly.

I've never traveled on a plane with any team. I've never spoken to a baseball player in my life. I've witnessed, first-hand, six  major league baseball games. I probably haven't been alive long anough to wax poetic about the history of the game...at least not from a personal point of view. I miss Paul DePodesta. I'm really excited about having Gary Huckabay work with my favorite team. And I'm going to watch as many A's games as I can this season even if most baseball "experts" say the team is going to tank...mostly b/c I trust Billy Beane. I'll be damned if Bissinger thinks that I don't love baseball.