Really? I had no idea.
First, we get this abortion of parallel structure:
Michael Jackson has the moonwalk. Hollywood Boulevard has the Walk of Fame. Marc Cohn had ``Walkin' in Memphis." Johnny Cash walked the line. And the Red Sox make their opponents walk off the field in abject agony after another winning hit by the local nine.Ugh. Then we get this:
You know what? You could insert the name of any team in baseball here (except for maybe the Dodgers). It's a worthless statement. Traffic is bad around every park after games. Only idiots leave before the end of the game, unless it's 14-0, in which case I think Sox fans would vacate the premises as well.
Wonder why traffic is so bad around Fenway after the games? Because nobody ever leaves the ballpark, that's why. Only a dope would walk away from a Sox game before the final out is registered.
Intent on finding out if Fausto Carmona has the makeup of a closer (he doesn't), Cleveland manager Eric Wedge left his rocket righty on the hill to suffer one of the more humiliating beatings of any season.So after 2 bad outings, we have concluded that Fausto Carmona, a 22-year-old rookie, will never be a closer. Welcome to the world of small sample sizes, and thank your lucky stars that Dan has nothing to do with baseball decisions. But yes, I agree, it was humiliating. Hitting two guys on two consecutive pitches in the exact same spot is really, really bad.
But at the risk of sounding negative, I'm still wondering if these star-sparkled finishes are only obscuring the fact that July 31 might still go down as the Day the Music Died for the 2006 Red Sox.No comment here, just hysterical laughter.
Are the Sox going to regret not making a move? Are there enough walkoff wins left in the tank to make fans forget the inaction?We already know what Dan thinks about this. Yes and no are his answers to those questions, respectively. Let's ignore all the complexities that went into the Red Sox not making a deadline deal, the fact that this team has major holes disguised by their interleague record's impact on their overall record, etc. They have enough holes, I think, that Theo didn't think it worthwhile to give up what it would take to get this team over the hump. They're about .500 against the AL. They have 3 starting pitchers and a suspect bullpen. Their CF sucks (sorry, Coco). In the winter, we pretty much saw this sort of thing coming. 2006 is a transition year. But hey, let's ignore all that.
Following this is a bunch of quotes from John Henry and Larry Lucchino attempting to stick to their "new operating philosophy" by not stabbing Theo in the back. They succeed rather well.
Still, let's hope the Sox didn't let organizational arrogance -- too much pride in their own prospects -- get in the way of making a deal that would have helped the ``big league team" finish ahead of the Yankees for the first time since 1995.Yes, let's trade Jon Lester and Craig Hansen, because we have excess starting pitching and excess bullpen arms. Who needs 3 starters? Bah.
Dan should know arrogance, though.
This column has all the signs of being written before the comeback, which forced CHB to write the awful prose that starts the column. It is interesting to note that his default mnode is to pump out outdated song refences in order to fill space. How tired.
ReplyDeleteThe presence of this website is shocking to me. I am certainly no Shaughnessy fan, but this is flat-out pathetic. Nitpicking through every word he writes to find tiny things that he ended up being wrong about is not fair. No one can predict the future. Shaughnessy is paid to write what he thinks about the present. If you disagree with him, great -- in fact, most of the time, he wants you to.
ReplyDeleteThat's what you don't realize. This whole website, while on the surface ripping Shaughnessy apart, is actually doing exactly what he sets out to do. The Globe hopes Shaughnessy will get people talking about the Red Sox. That's what any good sports columnist does. And he clearly does that to you.
He's not being asked to predict the future. He's being asked to be fair to the subjects on which he writes, and to stop rehashing his old work.
ReplyDeleteAnd let's be real: the Globe is in business to sell newspapers. Nothing else.
Hey "anonymos" aka:CHB. If you don't like the site, then don't visit, and go back to writing you craptacular coluns about why you wish you were The Epsteins Gorilla suit.
ReplyDeleteThe best CHB quote of yesterday actually happened when he was talking to Tina Cervasio on the pre-game.
ReplyDeleteHe was talking about how it's normal for a guy to lose 10-15 pounds of weight in water on a hot night (!) and that a guy like C. C. Sabathia could afford to lose some weight. I am not in any kind of a medical field, but based on the fact that one *GALLON* of water weighs 8 pounds (http://science.howstuffworks.com/question227.htm), I have to believe this is an astonishing crock of crap. Even if he did lose that much water weight, hopefully he's putting the same amount back on by drinking Gatorade every single time he comes back to the dugout on a really hot night. If he really lost a gallon and a half of water, I can't believe he'd not have keeled over from dehydration.
The best part about it was, the "fact" served no purpose to his point whatsoever.
chief, you know i support your site in general and that i agree with 99% of what you're pointing out. but my criticism of this particular post is that the first several comments are purely subjective and ones i happen to disagree with. also, there WERE people leaving the ballpark last night--i was there!
ReplyDeleteanyway, i think you have much more of a platform with the fact that dan cannot stand to be positive for more than a few paragraphs and instead descends into his familiar short-sighted negativity with the paragraph that ironically begins with "at the risk of being negative..."
THIS is exactly why his columns infuriate me so. apparently he'd rather we'd traded away jonathan papelbon and jon lester for andruw jones. apparently he preferred the yawkey years (which i actually believe he did...it meant better sales for his book). either that or he doesn't *get* what the FO is trying to do this year.
or, if we are to be completely cynical about it, he'd be wading into a similar morass of negativity if we *had* made a trade, all about the damage it will inflict on the team. he might even have used the same "day the music died" phrase. i wouldn't be surprised.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteI haven't actually read Dan's last two columns. It was Jenny, not me, who wrote today's entry.
I was at last night's game too, and Beth is right: fans were walking out after Hafner's homer.
What should be noted was that the Sox didn't plan to keep Andruw Jones; they were going to flip him to Houston for Roy Oswalt.
Also, if The CHB has a skill, it's finding the single negative seam in a linen factory full of positives and then driving a truck through it. The Sox are playing well ahead of last year's playoff team, and yet Dan acts like it's quiting time.
Its not hard to be lazy when you know that your job is never in danger.
ReplyDeleteSeems the heat is getting to be a bit much for young Jenny as she labors through Elementary Composition 002.
ReplyDeleteYou offer something for public consumption, you take what comes with public consumption. But then why do you read Shaughnessy (and obviously you go tearing into the paper or Web site to see if his column is in that day) if he upsets you so?
Jenny would seem to apply "If you don't like it, don't visit it" only to others; she obviously is an eager reader of Shaughnessy, if only to find a way to rip him.
Game. Set. Match.
"Wonder why traffic is so bad around Fenway after the games? Because nobody ever leaves the ballpark, that's why."
ReplyDeleteThis makes no sense at all. If all the fans are still in the ballpark, where is the traffic coming from?