On last night’s Dodgers broadcast, Eric Collins — who fills in for the legendary Vin Scully on road games outside the division, and who might well replace Scully at year’s end — got into a bit of a spat with former White Sox and current analyst Steve Lyons. It’s hard to tell without audio whether this spat was friendly and good-natured or angry and tense. Fortunately, Sons of Steve Garvey managed to get the transcript down, and boy, is it a whopper.

And by “whopper” I mean “holy crap Steve Lyons hates knowledge.” Below is just a little snippet; go read the whole transcript for the full story.

Lyons: There is a place, a very small place, for the computer geeks that are now taking over the game of baseball. There is a place, but it’s a small place. We’re seeing way too much of it.

Collins: Now I’m going to fight that battle.

Lyons: None of those numbers — that UZR-mum thing that rates defense —

Collins: UZR. Ultimate Zone Rating.

Lyons: UZR. And your WHIPs and your OPSes. They don’t show me what kind of heart the guy has. BABIP?

Collins: Batting Average on Balls in Play?

Lyons: Stupid. Doesn’t tell me if the guy is a player. Doesn’t tell me if the guy can play. Is he a gamer? Does he get dirty? Does he go out there and play hard? Is he a good teammate? None of that stuff tells me any of that. That’s the guy I want.

Obviously this is really dumb. Steve Lyons is actively anti-knowledge. That would be fine if Lyons was merely watching the game at home, but as it is his job to convey baseball knowledge during the course of the game — to analyze — showcasing such utter and proud ignorance is baffling. It’s actually more Lyons’ bosses’ fault. Craig at Shysterball is right: What other job in America would allow this?

But here’s where I stop being outraged and start being encouraged. Why? I’ll tell you why.

This conversation didn’t happen as a result of Lyons’s ignorance. Lyons’s distaste for things he doesn’t understand was an unfortunate byproduct of Eric Collins singing Gordon Beckham’s praises through the weird, wild, wacky numerology behind OPS, or on-base-plus-slugging, which is one of the simpler and more widely used sabermetric stats in baseball. Lyons, being completely devoid of the knowledge of this which they call “oh-pee-ess,” became angry. When he flipped out and started talking about “heart,” Collins went toe to toe. He didn’t flip out, nor did he start calling Lyons stupid, though that had to be what he was thinking. He merely dealt in simple facts, which are, like a Big Bang theorist arguing someone who believes dinosaurs were here 5,000 years ago, really all you need.

Which is why this is encouraging. There is now a legion of baseball broadcasters — young guys, guys who aren’t afraid of the Internet, guys who grew up with Bill James, guys who didn’t play baseball but read the hell out of the backs of baseball cards — making their way into broadcast booths everywhere. The Cubs’ own Len Kasper is of the breed. Unlike the dunderheads, these guys don’t see loving baseball and loving sabermetrics as two mutually exclusive categories. They love it all. Baseball has always been a club, but now the nerds are sneaking in, and no matter how much guys like Lyons and Joe Morgan caterwaul, they’re here to stay. We knew that already.

But now the nerds have microphones. Now the fight is fair.