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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Picked Up Pieces Column Time

When you don't have any ideas for a column, you write about everything. Today's picked up pieces column amply demonstrates this. He writes about the upcoming Patriots - Ravens game on Sunday, Edgar Allen Poe, The Beatles, Bill Belichick, John Fox, Grady Little, Janet Marie Smith (she redesigned Fenway over the past decade), Lance Armstrong, Penn State football, Marcus Camby, Hideki Matsui (let's get ready for baseball!!!) and sundry others.
Not to be negative, but if the Patriots win Sunday, they have a chance to become the losingest team in Super Bowl history. Four franchises have lost four Super Bowls: the Bills, the Vikings, the Broncos, and the Patriots.
"Not to be negative" - who said Shank lacks a sense of humor? Negativity has been his defining trademark for the past three decades.

In case you're wondering, Shank still hates bloggers:
Brick by brick, media access fades toward zero — a perfect future in which fans will get all their news from team websites. In a recent Sports Illustrated story, Roy Blount Jr. wrote of strict rules for those covering the Steelers: “At no time will media be permitted to interview members of the Steelers’ organization in the lobby or parking lots without prior consent from Steelers p.r.’’ The Los Angeles Angels have replaced their perfect press box with luxury boxes and moved the ink-stained crowd down the baseline. And here on Causeway Street, the Celtics are trying out a new system that closes the locker room to all media pregame. Sports Guys Rule. Pretty soon, everyone can just stay home, watch TV, and write their rambling opinions in 5,000 clever words.
Dan Shaughnessy - bitter to the last drop!

Just remember that a picked up pieces column written by a Boston Globe sports columnist isn't rambling in any respect - that's different.

4 comments:

Monkeesfan said...

Of course Shank can't accept that a lot of bloggers actually know more and understand better than he does. I'm surprised he doesn't rejoice that as far as I know bloggers still aren't issued press passes by sports sanctioning bodies.

ObjectiveBruce said...

You obviously have limited understanding of a column such as this.

The best of them all was Another Man's Poison, by George Frazier which The Globe carried in the great Frazier's last years.

He told a biographer that it was the most difficult type of column to write because every entry had to be sharp and pointed. He said it took a period of time to accumulate material for such a column.

Clearly Shaughnessy's work here is devoted to a number of short subjects. Rather than crank it out or slap something together as you buffoons seem to think, it is clearly the product of work and thought.

Roger Bournival said...

Whatever you say, Bruce!

mike_b1 said...

Yes, OB, it took a lot of work and thought to quote Roy Blount Jr. Just an extraordinary effort.