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Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Shank On The Yanks

The general pattern is that Shank's CNN / SI columns are well superior to his Boston Globe columns (not a high bar to clear), but this one sticks out more than others on a few levels. His interest in baseball seems a little more heightened than it's been for the past six months, plus he talks to the Yankees' A-Rod, which seems to fit the pattern of antagonizing playoff baseball players. What's not to like?

A personal touch is needed for this part of Shank's ouevre:

I spent last week in Los Angeles as a panelist on ESPN's Jim Rome Is Burning. On Friday afternoon, while the Yanks were in Boston in the cramped visitors' clubhouse (New York had 56 players on its roster for the final weekend), I was on TV expressing my thoughts about the Yankees' apparent disinterest in winning the AL East. I warned that it could be tough on the Bronx Bombers if they went to Minnesota for Game 1 and lost the first game with CC Sabathia on the hill.
I saw this segment at the bar. I did not hear a freakin' word he said, but he was so much more relaxed and smooth than I've ever seen him on air. I'll give him props on that front.

Back in Boston, the Rome show aired live in the visitors' clubhouse. When Alex Rodriguez heard me casting doubt on the Yankee strategy and painting a doomsday scenario against the Twins, he walked over to the clubhouse TV and turned it off.

Sunday morning in Boston, when the Yanks still had a chance to win the division, I sauntered over to A-Rod's locker at Fenway and asked him why he turned me off on the clubhouse TV.

"Too negative,'' said the Yankee slugger. "I didn't want our young players to hear that.''
Too negative. That's our Danny Boy! I wonder what A-Rod thinks of Michael Felger?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a Yankee fan, but I now think I understand why Sox fans hate Shaughnessy. Why is the fact that A-Rod turned off the channel when he was on worthy of an SI.com column? What kind of egomaniac is Shaughnessy, anyway?

That tidbit about the channel-changing was a minor entry in the Yankees LoHud.com blog, and didn't even mention Dan's name. But he managed to confront Rodriguez for the sin of changing the channel when he was blathering against the Yankees. And people say A-Rod is the one with the ego?

Anyhow, I wrote an article about this for my blog (Shaughnessy also made some factual errors in his piece):

http://subwaysquawkers.blogspot.com/2010/10/beantown-brouhaha-rod-disses-dan.html

Anonymous said...

I'm a fan of sports competitions.

I don't understand the purpose of The Shank. Are there people that actually respect The Shank?

This supposed "Lost" weekend in Boston by the Yanks was more a result of the anticlimax of the Red Sox. The Sox don’t have the talent, depth or fight that the Yankees have.

The Yanks are still the defending champs and we’ll see if the Twins can overtake them. I’ll be a fan of that competition.

I will never support The Shanks’s childish tantrums … how crude of him to ask A-Rod about turning off the TV … and then to write about it … great journalism? or just plain idiocy?

g