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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

New Book Nothing New

Sports Illustrated is now running an excerpt from Shaughnessy's latest hatchet job book, and as expected, it's heavy on the panting and light on everything else.

Among the breathless revelations:

  • Tom Werner cares about television.
  • John Henry is really rich, and doesn't always have time to spend making hands-on decisions on  every single one of his international businesses
  • The Fenway Sports Group also owns a soccer team
  • Fans don't want to watch losing baseball teams or selfish players
And in the course of the fairly short excerpt, there was, as expected, at least one major factual error: "Our owners in Boston, they've been owners for 10 years. They come in with all these ideas about baseball, but I don't think they love baseball."

  • John Henry: has been a franchise owner since 1989, first in AAA then since 1991 in the majors (Yankees, Marlins, Red Sox).  
  • Tom Werner: franchise owner since 1990 (Padres, Red Sox)
  • Larry Lucchino - President/CEO of Orioles (1988-93), President/CEO of Padres (1995-01)

So which person has been an owner for 10 years? Henry and Werner have been owners for more than 20 years each. And who buys a minor league baseball team, or spends his entire career in baseball, if he doesn't love the sport?

The prose is, well, to call it "basic" would be an insult to fifth-graders everywhere.  Fat, drunk and curly is no way to go through life, Shank.

For his part, Francona is now backing away from the harsher parts of it. What a shock.

3 comments:

Roger Bournival said...

Shank's not fat - he runs one mile a day!

Roger Bournival said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roger Bournival said...

Prior comment was deleted by me; edit is as noted below.

Here's a comment from that last link that sums things up nicely, simultaneoulsly disproving OB's (AKA Bruce M***) misleading complaint in (the previous) a prior thread:

"Francona should have known that the book would be a hit piece as soon as he signed up Dan Shaughnessy to do the writing.

Is there a city in this country that has more sports writers who don't actually like or enjoy the home teams they cover than Boston?"

I'm pretty sure that question is rhetorical in nature...