'Papi-ng' Off over Ortiz Retirement

In feting -- if one can call it that -- David Ortiz, who announced his retirement this week, The CHB falls back on a well-worn (worn out?) cliche of who belongs on the Boston Mt. Rushmore.

His picks: Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Ted Williams and Tom Brady. Obvious choices, and hardly novel, given that the same path was taken in the Boston Herald in February. Usually The CHB does a better job of hiding his source material.

Attentive readers might recall a couple months after the Herald column, Boston.com ran a similar survey, limiting choices to Red Sox players. That one spurred The CHB to call such parlor games "contrived."

He has a point: This is an age-old conversation starter. Going back to 2009, for instance, ESPN had Williams, Brady, Orr and Red Auerbach.

But as always, Shank is his own worst enemy. Indeed, he has been yammering on about the Boston Mount since at least since 2004, when following the Patriots' second Super Bowl win he imagined Tom Brady's visage carved in place along with Williams, Bill Russell, Orr, and Larry Bird. (That's five busts, for those who are counting.)

A year later he reiterated those choices while extolling the virtues of one Adam Vinatieri (remember him?).

By 2011, we were back to four, with Larry Legend having been supplanted, at least in Shank's mind.

Indeed, this is one of his favorite topics, next to ragging on Dominican divas (a label he once again sticks to Ortiz, as if running around on two damaged knees and standing in against 100 mph heaters somehow makes you a wimp) and inserting Larry Bird references into columns where they have no business being.

Like this one.