Sorry for the late post; have been traveling way too much recently.
I read today's column while en route from Boston to Philly. My first thought was, Hey Dan, haven't seen you in awhile. My second was, The CHB reappears for this?
Shaughnessy has barely caressed the keyboard of late, and when he has the topics have been for the most part peripheral to sports life in Boston. He's gone from rewriting old columns to barely writing at all -- and sending them by box turtle when he does.
There was the 50,000-word dispatch on some relic at Harvard who handled equipment for the sports teams. That ran almost two weeks ago, and was more or less Dan's only effort until his road trip this week to the baseball Mecca of Minneapolis, where he had drafted a pair of mundane pieces on the key Red Sox-Twins matchup.
On to today's attempted whimsy.
His latest remarks come in response to the announcement that Globe sportswriter Chris Snow is leaving to take a front office job with the Minnesota Wild NHL franchise. There are numerous problems with this piece, as several folks have already cited. Two others are:
* He finishes the piece by calling Snow's move "one in a million," yet before the jump he ticked off no fewer than seven pro sports executives who got their starts as sportswriters.
* His claim that Peter Gammons would make a great GM: "What fan would not be comfortable with Gammons making personnel decisions for his or her team?" Ummm, me (although I think Dan's imitation of Gammons' famously fractured syntax was amusing -- assuming it was intended, of course).
This appears to be the end of the line for Dan. The Red Sox and Yankees are engaged in yet another classic struggle, and the best he can do is weak reminisces. I find it sad, in a way, though not Shakespearean. It's more like seeing the poor sot who used to go around talking to himself in the park now curled in the fetal position waiting to finally succumb to death's grip. So long, Aqualung.
6 comments:
"This appears to be the end of the line for Dan."
Do you have Globe moles? And are they telling you this? Its an exciting thought so I wouldn't want to be all worked up over nothing. CHB's comment today about how Red Sox players would react to him leaving has me wondering if he's contemplating retirement. The sooner, the better!
Globe moles: yes. Are they telling me this? No.
The CHB has taken a couple of fairly long breaks already this year, and that's often a sign of someone who is trying to recharge their batteries. And the handful of columns he did produce in the past month have been lacking his usual bitterness. All that said, I'm probably reading things into this that aren't really there.
Oh well, here's hoping that we are all still around to enjoy CHB's last day whenever that comes. But you are right that his schedule has been Big-O-ish lately. According to the Globe archives, there have been six columns from CHB since writing that Theo hasn't had his contract signed on May 11.
"He finishes the piece by calling Snow's move "one in a million," yet before the jump he ticked off no fewer than seven pro sports executives who got their starts as sportswriters."
Well, there are something like six billion people in the United States, so that's not really a contradiction.
Seriously, though: Why would Shaughnessy leave? He makes good money, put forth virtually no effort and his bosses give him a long leash. Don't kid yourselves, he's here to stay until they hand him the gold watch and show him the door in 10-15 years.
Anon, there are something like six billion people in the world. Try 275-280 million in the US. And there aren't even one million sportswriters.
So the odds would be much less than one in a million.
Did it occur to you that anonymous complaints on some random blog are a waste of time?
Didn't think so.
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