Frank Coonelly tells Ron Cook to eat it

Maybe you read Ron Cook's column in the PG yesterday about the Pirates attendance problems. You probably didn't, because it was by Ron Cook. That's understandable. I skimmed it. It was lame. But do you know who did read it? Frank Coonelly. Check out the evisceration of Cook in Coonelly's online chat from yesterday afternoon:

piratefan11: In today's PG, Ron Cook accuses you of settling for "mediocrity" by praising the team for playing hard despite losing and making excuses for poor attendance. Do you care to share your thoughts?

Coonelly: piratefan11, thank you for providing the forum in which to respond to this assertion by Mr. Cook in today's P-G. Again, Mr. Cook unfortunately did not find it newsworthy or appropriate to actually solicit my opinion on this very important topic. He instead selected two unrelated quotes from articles written by his colleague Mr. Kovacevic written months apart to reach his own conclusion as to our aspirations. Not surprisingly, given this type of journalism, he could not be more wrong. We have no interest in being average. We are not at all satisfied with the team's current standing in the NL Central nor with the team's performance to date. I did, correctly in my view, tell Mr. Kovacevic that we competed in every game that we played including the games against the best teams in the league. Competing night-in and night-out is what we are supposed to do. We will not be satisfied until we are competing for championships. Had Mr. Cook asked me whether I was satisfied with the level of our play, he would have had an opportunity to understand that we aspire much higher than he suggested in his column today.

Holy crap. I have no idea why Coonelly cares about what Cook thinks so much, but that was freaking awesome.