And Now For Some Ron Borges Bashing - II / La Fin

From the looks of it, we may not have Ron Borges to kick around anymore (some emphasis added):

It’s been a rough morning for Boston Herald columnist Ron Borges.

Borges believed he had a major scoop in today’s paper: A column citing unnamed “sources” close to Tom Brady saying that Brady was ready to hold out of offseason work if the Patriots didn’t give him a significant pay raise, comparable to the contract the 49ers just gave Brady’s former backup Jimmy Garoppolo. But then WEEI revealed that one of its listeners had hoaxed Borges with a text purporting to be from Brady’s agent, and that the whole premise of Borges’ column was bogus.

PFT checked with the Boston Herald‘s sports editor, Sean Leahy, who told us, “We’re looking into it.”

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald has pulled Borges’ column off its website, which strongly suggests that they’ve already concluded that “looking into it” is something that Borges failed to do when he got the text.

Borges cited “sources,” plural, in his column saying that Brady would hold out, but it appears that Borges was relying on only one source, and that one source was a prankster who fooled him. Borges has a history of poor journalistic practices, including an instance of plagiarism that precipitated his departure from the Boston Globe. We’ve caught Borges copying and pasting from PFT without credit in the past. Now he has egg on his face again.

If it was a single source, he's as good as fired or otherwise made redundant, since the Herald's bankruptcy auction happens on Tuesday, with three potential bidders so far. His previous history does not help him, and a little Globe birdy told me back when it happened - when Borges was shown the door at the Globe, 'he didn't burn that bridge - he NUKED it'.

UPDATE AT 4:15 PM - I forgot to note that Shank's Twitter feed contains no tweets or retweets as of this update. Fellow Boston sports assholes need to stick together, you know!