John Steigerwald explains himself

John Steigerwald -- the guy who blamed Bryan Stow for his own beating in a recent column -- took to his blog today to say that he did not blame Bryan Stow for his own beating. The blog has been flooded with traffic so it’s been down much of the afternoon, but here’s a Google Cache version of it:

I don’t apologize for the column but I do apologize to the Stow family if this nonsense has reached them and in any way added to their pain. I don’t, for one second, blame Brian Stow for the beating he took. I do blame the ever increasing out of control, out of perspective behavior by fans, too many of whom are no longer satisfied with going to their stadiums and cheering for their teams. And I sure as hell don’t think –as some hysterical posters have claimed –that Brian “had it coming.”

Steigerwald also says “Nowhere did I imply that Stow deserved what happened to him. I thought that the difference between DESERVING a consequence and unwittingly contributing to one was implicit.”

I and tons of other people linked his first column and said our piece, so now we link his explanation and let him say his. I’ll leave it to you to decide if he sufficiently acquits himself. In the meantime, I’d suggest that Steigerwald look up the definition of the word “imply.”