You'd Have Thought They Lost The Game

The fact that the Red Sox won last night didn't stop Shank from piling on somewhere:

Unprofessional outing by Rodriguez. 52 p through 2. Sox trail 4-0. ESPN. Showing America the slop we’ve seen all year. Sox lucky B’s and C’s in playoffs https://t.co/fNYatqmC6M

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 29, 2019

A poor performance, yes; I think the word 'unprofessional' isn't quite the right one here.

A Tale Of Two Columns

Shank, yesterday:

Before we go any further, here’s a little tip for you Celtics fans: Resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be seeing a lot of Giannis Antetokounmpo at the free throw line. This is not because the refs have it in for the Celtics. Do not listen to the words of Tommy Heinsohn, or any latter-day Johnny Mosts. There’s no need to call sports talk radio and cry about Giannis getting favorable treatment. No. The Greek Freak is going to be at the line all day because the Celtics have no one that can stop him legally in the paint. He is an NBA freight train and if he gets the ball going downhill it’s either 2 points or two free throws. Brad Stevens will throw Aron Baynes, Al Horford, and Semi Ojeleye at Giannis (too bad Marcus Smart, Jim Loscutoff, and Bob Brannum are not available). It will not be enough. Antetokounmpo is going to be the MVP of the NBA this year. He is the reason this series could be the end of the road for the frustrating, maddening 2018-19 Celtics.

Shank, this afternoon:

MILWAUKEE — The Celtics flipped the switch, just like they said they would. They pantsed the best player in the world and delivered a message that they are a force to be reckoned with in this NBA tournament.

The Celtics humbled the NBA’s top seed Sunday, smothering Giannis Antetokounmpo and racing to a 112-90 win over the Bucks in the first game of their Eastern Conference semifinal series.

The Greek Freak finished with 22 points, but anybody who watched knows the he was humbled. He made only seven of 21 shots. Three of his baskets were 3-pointers. He had 1 point in the first quarter and made only two of seven shots in the first half when the Bucks fell behind by 15. The Freak’s shot was blocked three times in the restricted area. These things just do not happen.

But they did. What a difference a day makes.

The Waiting Game

Shank lightly complains about the long wait between Celtics' playoff series:

MILWAUKEE — Celtics-Bucks.

This is the series you’ve been waiting for.

And I do mean waiting.

When the Celtics finally take the Fiserv Forum floor Sunday afternoon to play the top-seeded Bucks, it will have been a week since the Green Team actually played a basketball game. The Bruins will have finished FOUR playoff games since the Celtics erased the Pacers last Sunday in Indianapolis. The Patriots will have made all their trades and selections in the three-day NFL Draft.

A pretty good column follows; it's worth checking out.

John Havlicek, R.I.P.

As you get older, you see an increasing number of people you felt you knew, liked and were comfortable with pass on. Unfortunately, another one of those persons has passed away.

John Havlicek has died.

And there goes part of your youth if you grew up in New England watching the Celtics in the 1960s and ’70s.

Havlicek scored more points than any other Celtic in history. That’s right. More than Larry Bird or Paul Pierce. He was the connecting tissue between Celtic dynasties. His rookie year was Bob Cousy’s final season (1962-63), and he retired just months before Red Auerbach drafted Bird out of Indiana State (1978).

Worth reading in full.

Ask A Stupid Question

Shank does his third Bruins column of the 2018-2019 season, complete with an Animal House reference:

Major League Baseball requires that its managers engage in a full-blown press conference a few hours before every postseason game. At the 2016 World Series, this allowed me a chance to ask the stupidest question of my long career.

It was at Cleveland’s Progressive Field in the tense moments before the seventh game of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and Chicago Cubs. It was a situation that required a really futile and stupid gesture.

When Indians manager Terry Francona took his place behind the microphone and breathed a deep sigh, I pounced.

“Would you say this is a must-win game?’’

Francona understood the lame attempt at humor and broke up laughing.

Read on for more lameness.

Spring Quiz Time - III!

Goin' way out on a limb here...

With the conclusion of yet another local team triple play this afternoon, try to guess which game Shank will write about:

A) The Boston Celtics sweep their opening round playoff series with a 110 - 106 win over the Indiana Pacers;

B) The Boston Bruins stay alive in their opening round playoff series with a Game 6 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs;

C) The Boston Red Sox sweep the weekend series with an 11th inning win over the Tampa Bay Rays, or

D) Shank doesn't write a column.

You know how I'm betting.

Spring Quiz Time - II!

For the few who did not pass the previous time, we're offering a chance for you to redeem yourselves in Shankology 101!

Last night, we had again three local Boston sports teams who were in action. Can you correctly guess which game Shank decided to write a column about?

A) The Boston Celtics won their third playoff game in a row, a 104 - 96 road victory over the Indiana Pacers;

B) The Boston Red Sox, on the road against the white-hot Tampa Bay Rays, finally saw the bats spring to life in a 6 - 4 win, or

C) The Boston Bruins lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2 - 1 and are now one game away from playoff elimination.

If you guessed C), step up and claim your prize!

There’s always the notion that the Bruins will beat the Toronto Maple Leafs in the playoffs. The Bruins, after all, haven’t lost a playoff series to Toronto since 1959. The Leafs haven’t won any playoff series in 15 long years. And we all remember 2013 when the Bruins won Game 7 vs. Toronto despite trailing by three goals in the third period.

The Bruins will prevail. The Leafs will fall. Bank on it.

But now it feels a little shaky. There’s legitimate fear that maybe this time the Bruins are in danger. Suddenly, it’s possible that the local hockey season could be over by dinner time on Easter Sunday.

As I was watching this unfold last night; I had one primary thought - 'there's no way in hell Shank is going to be this predictable, is he?'

Never disappointing, always negative.

Fool's Gold

On today with @ZoandBertrand from 11-1. B’s, C’s, sucking Red Sox, Kraft. Dan’s Dates at 12:50. Radio gold

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 19, 2019

I caught the 'Dan's Dates' part of the show around that time - it was painful, like 'a tooth filling without novacaine' level painful.

Shank Still Doesn't Like Or Understand Science

First off, this is coming from a guy who's as lazy as the day is long, the daily grueling one mile run being just one example.

I have read the entire Mueller Report.
Ideal Gas Law confirms there was no collusion and no obstruction.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 18, 2019

And he gets to tweak the Patriots again - it's another two-fer!

Spring Quiz Time!

Last night there were three local teams in action. Let's see if you can correctly (guess - edit) which one Shank decided to write about:

A) The Boston Celtics won Game 2 of the first round playoff series, 99 - 91, over the Indiana Pacers;

B) The Boston Bruins won Game 4 of their first round series, 6 -4, over the Toronto Maple Leafs; and

C) The Boston Red Sox lost to the New York Yankees, 5 - 3.

If you guessed C), step up and claim your prize!

NEW YORK — The Red Sox stink. They lost to the Yankees, 5-3, Wednesday after Ryan Brasier surrendered a grand slam to Brett Gardner on an 0-and-2 pitch in the seventh inning. The Sox are 6-13 and a whopping 8½ games out of first place.

I grew up on Hub hardball gloom. I came of age as a baseball fan when the Red Sox annually finished eighth in a 10-team league and flirted with 100 losses. I learned talk radio at the right hand of Eddie Andelman, who perfected the sky-is-falling mind-set of Red Sox Nation.

I did a Sunday night TV show with Bob Lobel, who had a panic button on the set and kept saying, “Why can’t we get players like that?’’ every time an ex-Red Sox did something good for some other team. I wrote “The Curse of the Bambino,’’ my doctoral thesis on Red Sox negativity.

Continuing the negativity and seriously dating yourself multiple times? It's a two-fer!

The End Is Near

Shank asks the question which has been fairly obvious for a while.

Is this the end for for Dustin Pedroia?

Original column spotted at 10:45 PM - any further questions about Shank not having an editor?

NEW YORK — Are we nearing the end for Dustin Pedroia?

No one takes any pleasure in this prospect (except perhaps for Shank - ed). But there was a sense of doom and gloom when Pedroia was taken out of the lineup after flying to right field in the top of the second inning Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.

This was the first game Pedroia started in the field since Friday at Fenway against the Orioles. His left knee has not come around the way the Sox hoped.

I love Pedroia as a player, and even more as a person who would take absolutely no shit from Shank.

Not Too Predictable

It's another loss by the Boston Red Sox, so imagine our collective surprise that Shank wrote a column about it.

NEW YORK — In a move that screamed “panic,” the Red Sox Tuesday gave up on catcher Blake Swihart and recalled Sandy Leon from Pawtucket.

“I told Sandy, ‘Don’t feel like you have to come here to be the savior,’ ’’ manager Alex Cora said before the Sox series opener with the Yankees. “It doesn’t work that way.’’

Amen.

Reunited with his binkie backstop, struggling Chris Sale returned to the mound and surrendered four runs on seven hits and a walk in five innings of an 8-0 skunking. Leon went hitless in three at-bats with two strikeouts and a throwing error (truly not his fault). Sale is 0-4 with an 8.50 ERA and the Red Sox are 6-12, the franchise’s worst 18-game start since Kevin Kennedy’s warriors went 3-15 in 1996.

I'm willing to bet Shank wrote a slew of columns shitting on that team at the same time back then.

Old Time Hockey, Eddie Shore

Thar she blows - Shank's first column on the 2018-2019 Boston Bruins!

Bruins channel their Big, Bad days in physical master class

There was great buzz in the arena and a sprinkling of good signage when the Bruins came out for warmups before Saturday’s Game 2 against the Toronto Maple Leafs. In a town that’s gone soft on its teams — rarely is heard a disouraging word about the sacred Pats, the smug Sox, or the ever-glass-half-full Green Team — Bruins fans have retained their edge, dignity, and demands.

There is no fooling these people. Put a bad product on the ice or show something less than 100 percent effort and they will come at you with pitchforks. The B’s fan dynamic is almost exactly what it was 40 years ago and this is a good thing.

The Bruins rewarded their fans with bone-crunching hits in a 4-1 victory Saturday night. It was the total opposite of Boston’s dead-ass, 4-1 loss in the series opener. Playing one of their best games of the season, the Bruins squared the series with 60 minutes of blood and thunder hockey.

The only real surprise here - this column was written after a win, not after a loss.

Consistency, By Dan Shaugnessy

On Thursday, Shank belts out an ill-timed tweet:

Another Red Sox starter looking like he’s making his final spring training start.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 12, 2019

...just before the Red Sox won, 7 - 6. Otherwise, no follow-up columns or tweets.

On Friday, the Red Sox won again, 6 - 4. There were no follow-up columns or tweets.

Today, the Red Sox lost, 9 - 5. You bet your ass he had something to say about it:

And all this vs. a team that is trying to lose. Clever of Sox to hold the starters back in spring training https://t.co/sKwoLH2MOE

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 13, 2019

What Do You Mean 'Now', Kemosabe?

One thing's for sure - Shank has never done 'disingenuous' very well.

Should we now be worried about the Red Sox?

At what point, precisely, are we allowed to wonder whether these Red Sox are OK?

You've been 'wonder'ing from Game 1, asshole...

We have made the excuses. The Sox have a World Series hangover. They had a rugged schedule the first 11 days. They were due for some reality, and Tuesday the Sox told us that Chris Sale had no fastball in Oakland because he was sick. The struggling Sox cannot possibly fall out of contention because everybody in the American League (besides the Astros and Yankees) stinks.

Pay no attention to this early slump, the Sox are going to be OK.

Swell.

But Tuesday’s home opener reopened the vault of suspicion and has us seriously wondering what is going on with the Local Nine. The Red Sox got their 2018 championship rings, celebrated amid an amazing/gaudy assemblage of hardware (10 championship trophies) and star power (Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Rob Gronkowski in the same space?), then took the field and produced yet another stinkbomb, this one a 7-5 loss to the tanking Toronto Blue Jays.

Note the use of the royal 'we' and 'us', in a lame effort to take his fingerprints off yet another negative column. The problem, so far - the 2019 Red Sox haven't given him (or should I say 'us'?) to say otherwise.

My My, He's Full Of Shit

Either that, or Shank's turned in his best ever troll job:

The 108th Fenway Park Opening Day is Tuesday, and we have so many questions.

Will Dustin Pedroia make his 2019 debut and start at second base? Will Gronk throw out the ceremonial first pitch? Will Chris Sale crack 93 miles per hour on the gun? Will Jackie Bradley Jr. crawl over the Mendoza Line?

The Red Sox are in last place and have the worst run differential (minus-26) in all of baseball. Only four teams have made more errors, and Boston’s five-man pitching rotation (aggregate salary: $88 million) has an ERA of 9.13. Will any of the Red Sox get booed in the wake of the club’s abysmal 3-8 slog through Seattle, Oakland, and Phoenix?

“I don’t think anybody has ever gotten their World Series rings and gotten booed,’’ said David Price, a man who knows a thing or two about getting booed in Boston.

As one who traditionally sees the glass as half-full, I am here to tell you that there will be no boos before the game at Fenway Tuesday.

See what I mean?

Making It More Than Obvious

After another road loss for the 2019 Boston Red Sox, Shank gets another chance to take a dump on them.

Not to pile on, but the Red Sox losses are piling up

OAKLAND, Calif. — Take heart, Sox fans. The manager is as mad about the Sox sloppy play as you are.

“I pay attention to details,’’ Alex Cora said after bad baserunning, a missed flyball, and another crummy performance by a starting pitcher created a 7-3 Red Sox loss to the A’s Thursday. “I love paying attention to details and that’s something I took pride in last year and right now we’re not paying attention to details. That’s on us. That’s on me. That’s on the staff. I know there have been mistakes, but at the same time . . . it gets to a point where honestly, today I was watching and there were a few things that were great last year that we’re not doing so good right now. It’s early enough that we can clean it up, but that’s on us.’’

A routine flyball dropped on the warning track between Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. Eduardo Rodriguez coughed up a 3-0 lead and couldn’t finish the fourth inning. Betts made a boneheaded baserunning decision in the ninth, getting gunned down going to third with no outs and the Sox trailing by four.

“It’s a bad decision and he knows it,’’ said the manager “That one can’t happen and he knows it.
...
There’s no sugar-coating this. The start of the Red Sox season has been a big bowl of bad. Six losses in eight games. Last place in the AL East. I find myself starting a lot of sentences with “Not to pile on, but . . . ‘’

That's correct, because an overwhelming majority of Shank's Red Sox columns are conveniently written after a loss.

Since Opening Day Shank has written five columns, all of them negative in tone, about the Red Sox, and that excludes tweets in a similar negative tone. When this turns around and the Red Sox start on three+ game winning streaks, we'll note the existence / absence of Shank's columns and keep some sort of tally of Mr. Negative's 'work'. It would be nice to see some balance, wouldn't it? We shall see.

DHL Dan LXXXII - Making It Less Obvious

Instead of devoting another full column to the Boston Red Sox slow start, Shank, on a mini-vacation, devotes a mere four paragraphs to it:

OAKLAND, Calif. — Picked-up pieces from 10 days out west with the Red Sox . . .

■ While the Sox struggle out of the gate (tied with the Angels for the worst record in baseball going into Wednesday night), several key Yankees are returning from injuries or have gone down since the season started: Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Andujar, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, Jacoby Ellsbury, Dellin Betances, CC Sabathia, Luis Severino, and Troy Tulowitzki. This has not gone unnoticed in the Boston clubhouse. The West Coast time zone allows the Sox to monitor their rivals back east. Almost daily, while the Sox are playing cards, listening to music, and getting ready to take batting practice, their clubhouse TVs are tuned into Yankee games vs. Baltimore or Detroit. Playing against the tanking Orioles and Tigers, the Yankees lost three of their first five.

■ New York’s injury bug makes it a good year for the Sox to start slow, but that doesn’t diminish the overreaction back home. A Globe reader e-mailed me and asked if the 2019 Red Sox might be the first team eliminated from contention before they have a chance to raise their championship banner. This is why we love the Boston baseball market.

Since there are fewer and fewer of them, $10 says the 'Globe reader' was none other than Shank himself.

■ The Red Sox can spin it any way they want, but there’s got to be something wrong with Chris Sale. Two starts, 59 fastballs, zero swings and misses.

He's actually watching the games? Stop the presses!

■ Just wondering, but did the 1950s and ’60s Yankees shut down Whitey Ford every spring training back in the days when Ford pitched in the World Series every year? Or are the Red Sox the first to invent the reduced spring workload plan that’s worked so well in the first week of the 2019 season?

The Chris Sale / Jon Lester Conundrum

Is there any pitching-related matter with the Boston Red Sox that Shank can't hang around the neck of the Jon Lester trade?

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Red Sox locked up Xander Bogaerts and Chris Sale in the last two weeks, committing $265 million of John Henry’s money to a couple of players that would have been free agents at the end of this season. It’s a serious commitment that should warm the heart of Red Sox Nation.

I am a fan of the Bogaerts extension, but not so sure about Sale, who was scheduled to pitch Tuesday night in Oakland.

Sale was hoping to stop the bleeding after the Sox lost four of their first five games, getting outscored, 41-24. Alex Cora’s five-man rotation surrendered 26 earned runs in 21 innings in those five games, yielding 11 home runs. Aggregate ERA: 11.14. It was a big bowl of yuck.

But I’m thinking bigger picture today (first time for everything! - ed), wondering if the contract extension to Sale was a sound baseball decision, or perhaps overcompensation for past sins. Did the Sox let their mistake on Jon Lester rush them into a mistake on Sale?

Seems like now is never too early for Shank to preemptively second guess and pile on, is it?

Fake Praise?

I'm inclined to think that columns like this one are designed to lessen his reputation as a relentlessly negative asshole.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Red Sox made it official Monday. They have extended the contract of Xander Bogaerts to the tune of six years and $120 million.

I love this move. It works on every level.

Bogaerts would have been a free agent at the end of this season. The Sox have no ready backup in their system. Letting Bogaerts play out his contract was a big risk. Now they know who’s going to be playing shortstop through 2025, potentially 2026. Ambassador Bogaerts will join Johnny Pesky, Rico Petrocelli, Rick Burleson, and Nomar Garciaparra as Red Sox shortstop royalty.

You can almost see Shank gritting his teeth when he typed out 'Nomar Garciaparra', can't you? I know I can!

The Internet - How Does It Work?

With Google, Bing (and other internet search engines) and the Globe sports newsrooms at his disposal, Shank can't readily find the answer to the following question:

Help! I can't find this. Which NCAA game is first next Saturday?

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 1, 2019

Fortunately, his Twitter 'followers' are there to bail his helpless ass out:

Google it

— Scott Zolak(@scottzolak) April 1, 2019

Virginia 6:09
Michigan St 8:49

— Jack Lamar (@JackLamar619) April 1, 2019

For the win:

And you call yourself a journalist

— Phil Mitchell (@philflare) April 1, 2019