Early Xmas At Fenway

Shank expands on the Carl Crawford signing at yesterday's Fenway introduction. It's a standard Shank effort, complete with a shot at Jacoby Ellsbury. I mean, you have to have at least one current Red Sox player to take shots at, right! It's probably a clause in Shank's contract.

I'm stealing this thought from one of the commenters at the Globe (following Shank's quotes):

He is a superior athlete who is not particularly fluid nor graceful. His swing is on the choppy side. But he gets the job done. And Sox fans are going to like his defense.

I worry about his legs. Crawford does a lot of his damage with his wheels and the horrid surface inside Tropicana Field no doubt took a toll. There is also his mediocre history at Fenway — a .275 career average and .301 on-base percentage with only four homers in 320 at-bats over 76 games. Fenway doesn’t seem to amplify his offensive skills.

This is a common tactic for Shank - marking his territory in advance. When Crawford goes into a slump, or otherwise doesn't perform, Shank can fall back on this article (and rip a huge money, long-term deal) and say 'I told you so'. If the subject concerns Shank's disclaimers that he's now cool with players being 'overpaid' (and then he won't be cool with it the first time he jumps on Crawford), that part will be simply ignored or not mentioned by him.

Shank writes the following:

Across Baseball America, this signing makes folks hate the Red Sox more than ever. The Sox for years have presented themselves as a middle-market franchise, crying about the Yankees’ ability to buy championships. Signing Crawford, especially on the heels of trading for Adrian Gonzalez, merely confirms what we already knew: The Red Sox can get any player they want. Even Mark Teixeira.

Here's a question - does that paragraph remind you of this paragraph?

This assures that the rest of sporting America is going to hate us more than ever. The Sox-Yankees rivalry dominated the first half of this decade, and baseball fans outside of Boston and New York got sick of our quest to overthrow the Evil Empire. Now the Boston-New York war is back with a vengeance, and the Red Sox have become the Yankees.

If you're going to be a lazy writer, you might as well go all in and just reuse entire columns!

Speaking of which (or, in the At Last I Admit It When I'm Stealing From Others Dept.):

On the other side of the Atlantic, there may be carping about John Henry pouring all of his available dollars into his baseball operation. No doubt Liverpool fans would rather see money spent on Henry’s futbol team.

Interesting observation - is this a) a remarkable coincidence, or b) a theme shamelessy lifted from the Wall Street Journal on Friday? You make the call!

P.S. If you run into the registration screens at boston.com like I did this morning, just use Firefox (or another non-IE browser) or clear your temporary files, kill IE and start it again. I didn't have to delete cookies to resolve this one, but it's possible you may have to.