Dan gives us one of his
stock columns today. This is the one in which he is exaggeratedly positive about everything. Red Sox are going great, the weather is great, the Patriots will go 16-0, something once thought bad for you will be found to be good, etc. I guess it's what he does when there is no player or team to beat up. And there is a Springsteen reference to boot. He can't be bothered to be original. Get ready for a whole summer of nothing from Dan.
Last night on NESN Shaughnessy insisted the Yankees would start Clemens on Sunday against the Red Sox. No mention of that in this column, of course.
ReplyDeleteAnd need I trot out all the times where The CHB said Beckett was a shitty pitcher?
Wonder what the little CHBs feel like when they see their friends laughing at their dad's latest "effort?"
Why is it I feel like when the nappy-headed chb writes a column like this that he is being sarcastic.
ReplyDeleteIts almost as if he is trying to fake rooting for the Sox.
And how come no mention of purple-lips tagging blondes north of the border?
jim,
ReplyDeleteYou are right. He is being sarcastic. That's what makes it so awful to read. It's one long, bad joke.
I think these columns are mocking the upbeat attitude, but he doesn't go far enough to make it interesting. He just wants to have it both ways.
Happy Shaughnessy is WAY more disturbing than Bitter Shaughnessy.
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely sarcastic considering it was written after the Celtics already lost the lottery and he pokes fun at this by mentioning that they could win. and this part:
ReplyDelete"You'll be able to drink water from the Charles, all college tuition will be free, and the Celtics will experience good luck."
it's sounds more like he wrote article sarcastically to basically say "stop being so happy about how the sox are doing, they could easily fall down just like they did in '78 at the very end (hence the reference to '78 at the very end followed by the very sarcastic comment "It's not going to happen this time. The Red Sox are 36-15. And Josh Beckett is back."
If anything this is worse then his norm, he has nothing he can complain about with the Sox doing good, so instead he makes fun of the fans for being optimisitc about the promising future in both the Sox and the Patriots. Talk about a guy that must just hate sports. I don't get why he just can't be happy for our sports teams
Not only do I sense irony in Dan's column today (especially when he mock-insisted that Beckett did NOT have a blister), but I honestly think that he's trying to jinx the Sox. He's on the verge of a severe writer's block, and if he doesn't get some material soon, he might decombust.
ReplyDeleteHe looked sincerely P.O'ed on NESN when he was criticizing the Yankees for not pitching Clemens at Fenway this weekend.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt that the perfunctory "let's recap the Sox/Clemens history for the people who just arrived here from Mongolia" column was already 95% written.
Whom exactly would the Yankees bump from the rotation to fit in Clemens, anyhow? They're pitching their top three this weekend - Wang, Mussina and Pettite.
ReplyDeleteCertainly they wouldn't push back Pettitte, he's their best pitcher this year. Maybe Mussina, but I'm going to believe that Torre and the Yankees have carefully thought this out. Much ado about nothing.
When was the last time CHB wrote ANYTHING disparaging about the Celtics. If he doesn't "Root, Root, Root for the Hometeam" like his defenders say, then why hasn't he gone after Danny, Doc, and Wyc the same way he goes after Tito, Theo, Belichek, and Pioli?
ReplyDeleteDid anyone catch the post-game press conference with Beckett? A cell phone rings, and Josh deadpans, 'You might wanna put that on vibrate.' Obviously the call was from the wife of some sports hack, asking 'hubby' to stop and get some more milk on the way home. It probably was CHB's phone that rang.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt that the perfunctory "let's recap the Sox/Clemens history for the people who just arrived here from Mongolia" column was already 95% written.
ReplyDeleteVery funny. Do you want my job writing?
jj,
Great point. Dan deals only in hypotheticals without worrying about facts. If the facts don't fit the storyline, ignore them.
"If anything this is worse then his norm, he has nothing he can complain about with the Sox doing good, so instead he makes fun of the fans for being optimistic about the promising future in both the Sox and the Patriots. Talk about a guy that must just hate sports."
ReplyDeleteThe column today wasn't as bad as the now infamous "Yahoo" Patriots column but it's still a bitter diatribe. (Shank, Borges and Felger are all setting us up for the big I-told-you-so moment when the Pats start to decline...in 7 or 8 years when Brady retires).
In politics, you have to run a positive ad four times for people to remember it. A negative ad you only need to run once. The same goes for sports to a degree. It's easier to write a negative column than a positive one. People tend to remember the negative.
Here's why a lot of sports writers and talk radio goobers don't attack the Celts: When they started off in the biz, they were all Celts beat writers in the halcyon days of the 80's...Add that to the fact that Ainge (Celts player from those days) and Doc are personable and have never met a microphone or tape recorder they didn't like.
Paul, I agree with your assessment as to why they do not flog the Cs. I might also add: why beat a dead horse? Fewer fans are paying attention, thus fewer feather to ruffle, less attention drawn to the lazy hack.
ReplyDelete"feathers"
ReplyDeletesorry for the typo
-Anon 5:46
You people can't be serious. Are you so bent on giving air to petty grievances that you take a pretty straightforward column about the best start to a baseball season we've ever seen around here and decide it is sarcastic?
ReplyDeleteMost moronic line of the day: "he mock-insisted that Beckett did NOT have a blister." Well, no. He made fun of the Sox-speak that turns something most of us would call a blister, especially on a part of the hand used for repetitive work, into a medical term used only by practitioners and science geeks.
It's a positive column expressing a bit of wonder that things are going historically well.
It is reminiscent not of sarcastic jabs that appear when needed, but of a 1986 classic Shaughnessy column about how wonderful it was to be a Boston sports fan at the time. The Celtics won a championship, the Bruins and Patsies were in the finals, the Sawx were on their way to a pennant, Marvin Hagler was the middleweight champion of the world, and Peter Fuller's Mom's Command had been champion 3-year-old filly under the owner's daughter (yeah, hoss racing has lost its fan base, but this hoss, recently destroyed due to the infirmities of age, was elected this week into the hoss racing hall of fame, a story buried by El Globbo this week, but a great story since it can be called vindication of sorts for Fuller who had the blue-bloods snatch the Kentucky Derby from him and then had to wait 24 years to see his horse win the honor she earned)
"Are you so bent on giving air to petty grievances that you take a pretty straightforward column about the best start to a baseball season we've ever seen around here and decide it is sarcastic?"
ReplyDeleteAbout 90% of Shank's columns are sarcastic. An avulsion is not a blister. That's a cold, hard fact.
I know why newspaper people hate blogs. Freedom of the press allows them to keep an "objective" eye on government, corporations, sports etc. Blogs let us, the public, to keep an eye on the newspapers and to voice our "petty" grievances and to throw the BS flag on hacks like Shank.
Anon 7:12, real original with the "Sawx" and "Patsies". You must be from NY, right?
Anonymous -
ReplyDeleteJust a little refresher, the Bruins did not make the finals in 1986. It was and always will be the Canadiens and the Flames. Habs won 4-1. It was Patrick Roy's rookie year and his first SC.
And it is hard not to take the nappy-headed CHB's column sarcastically when this guy hawked the Curse theory for 20 yrs, when everyone KNEW that the problem was that the Trust was ordered to make the team just competitive enough.
When they came back from 0-3, the nappy-headed CHB was running around saying that the Curse wasn't reversed until they won it all. He is pathetic and is obviously still upset that the Sox won in 2004.
Anon 7:12, are you really that clueless to not realize it is riddled with sarcasim?
ReplyDelete"..You'll be able to drink water from the Charles, all college tuition will be free..." really, that sounds like he's being sincere to you? Try saying that line to someone outloud and see if anyone doesn't think you're being sarcastic
"...and it feels like we all might win the lottery..." he wrote the article AFTER we all already knew that they lost the lottery. And lastly, he compares the sox to the 78 team...umm, do you not know what happened that year?
oh, and the most obvious evidence that he is being sarcastic:
ReplyDelete"...He looked like the best pitcher in the American League -- with the possible exceptions of Curt Schilling and Daisuke Matsuzaka." everyone knows he HATES Shilling, he would never in all seriousness proclaim Schilling the best pitcher in the AL, and Dice-k is struggling and he definitely wouldn't in all seriousness name him one of the best in the AL
newspaper people hate blogs, mostly because they represent a loaded gun aimed right back at them. In the '38Pitches' case that Shaughnessy rails against endlessly, it represents a short-circuiting of the 'normal order of things.' Only the media is supposed to have access athletes, and the blog and the Internet dilutes the need for a Shaughnessy (indeed, even the newspaper he works for) to even exist. They are angry at the Internet for a whole host of reasons (see: declining circulation & readership of the printed paid-for newspaper), and you can easily see that in Shaughnessy's tone. He can't hide it, nor does he really want to.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to see that while Shaughnessy rages against the Internet and blogs, his compadre--Bob Ryan--has embraced same. He's got his own blog now, recognizing, sensibly, that if he can't beat 'em he ought to join 'em. But Shaughnessy, having hoisted his 'I Hate Blogs!' flag long ago, can never really join the fray and be taken seriously afterwards.
This may or may not be a link to a game where you see how far you can kick CHB.
ReplyDeleteSo Shank is ripping the Patriots now. Of course like the forgotten but not necessarily gone Ron Borges (who still has his guest radio gig with the other CHB Douche Felger) Shank will rip the Patriots and not provide some kind of alternative to their approach to building a football team.
ReplyDeletepaul, Shank, Borgie, and Felgie are now like Dakota From Braintree - they throw stuff out there hoping that someday they'll be correct. If I read or hear another Deion Branch remark from Felgie I'm gonna scream.
You guys remember when Shank hit the F1 key back in 2002 and wrote the exact same article? The Sox were on a roll . . . they couldn't do anything wrong . . . Shank writes his piece-of-crap piece . . . the Sox go immediately in the tank.
ReplyDeleteHere it is, 2007: The Sox are (were) on a roll . . . Shank hits the F1 . . . the Sox start their June Swoon.
Curse of the Curly-Haired Boyfriend?