The Ultimate Weathervane

I've had the displeasure of reading Dan Shaughnessy's columns for over three decades. During this time, many themes have arisen about this columnist's abilities, and moreso, the lack thereof.

A mere forty eight hours ago, the Boston Globe's 'ace sports columnist' (a phrase we should use very, very loosely) lectured Red Sox fans about not taking the team's success for granted. You would expect some semblance of consistently in subsequent columns about the playoff success of the Red Sox, wouldn't you?

Today's column, in that regard, can only be described as epic fail:

Do we really have to go to Tampa/St. Pete? Can’t we just forgo the formalities and let the Red Sox advance to the American League Championship Series on sheer style, dominance, karma, and duende?

The Duck Dynasty/ZZ Top/Fidel Castro Red Sox look unbeatable at this hour. They bested the fatigued Rays, 7-4, at Fenway Park again on Saturday night and will send 12-1 Clay Buchholz to the mound to finish the series Monday.

The Sox look like the best team in baseball. No team won more regular-season games (97), and the Sox have played even better in the first two games of the playoffs. They won the opener, 12-2, with every man in the lineup registering at least one hit and one run. It was more of the same Saturday night (eight of nine starters got hits) as the John Farrell All-Stars bolted to a 5-1 lead, then cruised. David Ortiz hit two monstrous home runs. In games started by Matt Moore and David Price, the Sox have 19 runs and 25 hits.

I abandoned any further response to Shank's shameless, massively contradictory column once I found this absolute gem in the comments section:

FiveIslands
10/06/2013 09:45 AM

It does feel like abuse, picking up the globe and reading another one of these tiresome Shaughnessy columns filled with snarky comments declaring premature victory over an opposing team. What Dan, no calling the Rays frauds like you did the Texans last winter in the playoffs?

Of course the great Dan-o is always so right ... except when he is so wrong. Like when he went on TV with "Miss Heidi" (by the way Dan has she taken out a restraining order yet?) to pronounce the Sox were a lock for the 2011 playoffs in a middle of a rain delay in Baltimore. Or when he spent a week in California, in 2009, antagonizing the Angels by asking every player on that team the reasons why they had never been able to beat the Sox in the post season, and then proclaiming certain victory for the Sox in the Globe. Of course the Red Sox went on to be swept 3-0 by the Angels. Or enduring a week of Shaughnessy saying, before the 2010 AFC Divisional playoffs, that the Pats were a lock because Brady never loses playoff games in Foxborough and the Jets were exposed when the Patriots steamrolled them earlier in the year; and then seeing the Pats lose 28-21.

I place the time period when Dan-o started writing these columns around 2005, after Carl Everett "Shaughnessyed" Shaughnessy by called him a "curly haired boyfriend" of another writer. Too bad Carl didn't stuff him in a locker for all of enternity so we wouldn't have to endure the subsequent decade of Shaughnessy columns.

Word, brother...