Making It Official

Shank 'officially' wishes Tom Brady would leave the New England Patriots.

I am officially hoping Tom Brady leaves the Patriots

I just want it to be over.

And I officially am hoping Tom Brady leaves the Patriots.

Sorry.

I want Tom to go because his history-making time has run its course here. I like sports drama, and it would be a much better story if Tom goes to a new team. I’d like to see what Bill Belichick can do without Brady. I’d like to see what Brady can do for the Los Angeles/Tampa Bay/Tennessee Bradys.

I don’t want to bear witness to another AFC-East winning, oh-so-boring 10-6 Patriots season with 43-year-old Tom staggering through games, pouting through his postgame press sessions, then delivering cryptic messages on social media.

Kansas City, Tennessee, Baltimore, and Houston were all better than the Patriots in 2019. With or without Tom, it’s unlikely the Patriots will be better than those teams in 2020. It’s time for all of us to get on with our lives.

These are compelling points, and the rest of the column is worth a read. I'm willing to cut Brady all the slack he's earned, but all things must eventually pass.

This part is telling (I've brought it up before):

Please. Make it stop. I’d rather do four hours of sports talk radio solo than listen to any more debate on this issue.

Almost can't wait for his next Zo and Bertrand appearance!

Mill Grist

After writing a positive Red Sox column (in order to show some 'balance', perhaps?), Shank falls right back into form:

More good news for the Boston Devil Rays https://t.co/QojY2KOeXc

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 27, 2020

He's hoping the 'Boston Devil Rays' catches on. My apologies for bringing it up in the first place - that's enough oxygen for that one.

Unearthed

Since I'm not into religiously checking on him, I just noticed a mild Boston Red Sox column from Tuesday in the place of the usual criticism and subdued, poorly disguised vitriol:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — He was there the night the Red Sox collapsed in the Bronx when Grady Little didn’t take Pedro Martinez out. And he was in Anaheim in 1986, catching Donnie Moore after Moore surrendered a series-changing home run to Dave Henderson in the ALCS.

Red Sox bench coach Jerry Narron also was the man who replaced Thurman Munson behind the plate at Yankee Stadium on the night after Munson was killed in a plane crash.

Narron is a hardball Forrest Gump — a humble, unassuming man who always seems to be on the scene when big things happen. This past week he was named bench coach of Ron Roenicke’s 2020 Boston Red Sox.

I wouldn't exactly call the Forrest Gump comparison as a compliment. Some self-promotion (natch) also ensues. I'd say that part was shameless, but you know that already.

When Sports And Politics Collide

Who responds to their own tweet, other than to bask in what he thinks is a clever observation?

I rest my case https://t.co/tkMxzeDTg9

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 26, 2020

It's more like the Lions, Browns and Bengals, but that's just me.

Question for Shank - will your wife be donating to another Democrat from your joint checking account this election cycle?

Stonewall Shaughnessy

Shank does not appear to be terribly thrilled with the pace of the Red Sox sign-stealing investigation by Major League Baseball:

One more week and this “nothing to see here” investigation will be as long as the Astros probe https://t.co/PeDgXgEtcE

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 26, 2020

I wonder if MLB dumps the findings on Super Tuesday next week, when the primary news focus will be elsewhere? If you're gonna clear the Red Sox of wrongdoing, that's when I'd do it.

DHL Dan XCVI - Curiouser And Curiouser

In today's installment of the Picked up Pieces column from Ft. Myers, Shank touches on a wide range of subjects, including the Summer Olympics, the Beanpot from a few weeks ago, and...

Ah - who am I kidding? Of course Shank keeps beating up on the Red Sox!

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Picked up pieces while wondering if the Red Sox are going to promote “Zakim” and “Tobin” nights at Fenway this summer in honor of their 2020 Bridge Year.

Now that the lame humor's out of the way...

■ Everybody loves Big Papi. He’s Boston Baseball’s Father Christmas. He was a clutch and dominant player, great to fans, and stood up for our city in 2013. All of Boston prayed for him when he was shot in the Dominican Republic in June. It’s great to see him looking healthy. But his first day back in Sox camp last week was not his finest hour.

Ortiz is part of Sox management now and Big Papi has become Big House Man. Now that Ortiz is taking the side of Sox ownership on every issue, are we supposed to forget how he groaned about his contract and disrespect from his bosses almost every year? Ortiz insists that the Mookie trade was a good trade. That the Sox had no choice. Got it.

But when a member of the Red Sox brass (Ortiz is identified as a “special assistant” to Fenway Sports Group in the club directory) calls Mike Fiers a “snitch” while the Boston Red Sox are the subject of an ongoing MLB investigation regarding cheating allegations, it borders on witness intimidation.

Would someone like to tell Shank this isn't a criminal proceeding here? Furthermore, MLB has completed their investigation into the matter, further proof that Shank has no editor between him and the Post / Submit button. Will he go for the triple play?

Truth has never been an enemy of baseball fans. We could have used a little more of it during the steroid era and Ortiz has considerable exposure in this area.

...and there it is. It happened for years right under your fucking nose, dickhead; you and every other Boston Globe baseball guy. Too bad Ortiz didn't kick your ass when he had the chance.

Other than that, it's a decent column!

UPDATE AT 4:50 PM - The Astros investigation has been completed; the one involving the Red Sox is ongoing. Shank's getting cute here by conflating the two (i.e., strongly implying Fiers, who was never a member of the Red Sox, is involved in the current investigation).

Five Aces

Shank is clearly delighted with the 2020 'bridge year' Boston Red Sox. He's written 11 columns so far this month, and all but one of them was about the Red Sox. Unsurprisingly, every single one of them was negative in tone and / or heavily critical of the Red Sox in some manner.

And the hits just keep on coming…

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The 1971 Baltimore Orioles famously had four 20-game winners and advanced to the seventh game of the World Series. Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson all made 30 or more starts and all pitched 224 or more innings. Three of them exceeded 280 innings.

The world champion 2004 Red Sox had five starting pitchers who never got hurt. Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, Derek Lowe, Tim Wakefield, and Bronson Arroyo each started at least 29 games and logged no fewer than 178 innings.

Fast-forward to 2020 and a Red Sox team with almost zero reliability in the starting rotation. More suspects than prospects.

These are not the Red Sox of “we have five aces.’’

He Chose... Poorly

That would be baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, catching heat from all quarters for not coming down hard on the Houston Astros.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Hey there, baseball fan. Did you ever think you’d be longing for the good old days of commissioner Bud Selig?

Wow. Major League Baseball is imploding in the Sign-Stealing Scandal Spring of 2020, and commissioner Rob Manfred is making Uncle Bud look like Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, or maybe Winston Churchill.

I think Shank's contractually obligated to mention Landis every time some serious baseball history comes up.

The hardball world is furious with the Houston Astros, and virtually no one is happy with the performance of Manfred since MLB announced its findings about the Astros scam Jan. 13. Manfred gave Houston players immunity from punishment in exchange for cooperation, has declined to fire some Astros executives who had direct involvement, and — most egregiously for many — allowed the Astros to keep their 2017 championship even though he has proof that they cheated to win.

Shank brings that up throughout the column, and that seems to be the punishment Shank and others are thirsting for. At least that's an improvement from banning all of them from baseball, which Shank was looking for last month.

Explanation Unknown

Shank's been getting into the Red Sox ownership bashing recently, hasn't he?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — In an attempt to clear the air and explain the motivations behind the trade that sent Mookie Betts to the Dodgers last week, Red Sox principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, and CEO Sam Kennedy delivered comments and answered questions for 32 awkward minutes Monday morning at JetBlue Park.

I would not say they stuck the landing. It went about as well as Deval Patrick’s presidential bid and the quest to bring the 2024 Summer Olympics to Boston.

Little is likely to change in the wake of Sox management’s effort to explain a salary dump that the club refuses to acknowledge is a salary dump. Folks who hate the Betts deal are unlikely to feel any better from what was said at the tense presser. The Red Sox seem to know this.

I'm wondering why ownership can't bring themselves to say 'Mookie wanted to be traded' or 'Mookie wanted to play for the Dodgers' - even this casual fan saw that last year when the subject first came up. It doesn't serve Shank to bring that up, either (though he's done so in the past) so he can continue to bash Red Sox ownership for a little longer.

One other thing - we might start the Mookie Betts Watch, like Mike B. was doing every time His Shankness mentioned Larry Bird in his columns over the years. How many times this year will Shank bring up this trade? I'm going with a dozen, and that's probably low.

Making The Sale

I was anticipating Shank starting to bang out pro-forma player focused articles any moment now. Today's column, with Chris Sale as the player in question, is quite different:

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Chris Sale was 10 minutes into a half-hour press session when he got the first question regarding the sign-stealing cheating scandal that has poisoned Major League Baseball in this spring of 2020.

“Here it is . . . ,” Sale said with a grimace.

And there it was. Indeed.

Sale talked about all of it. He talked about getting lit up by the Houston Astros in Game 1 of the 2017 American League Division Series at Minute Maid Park. He talked about speaking with MLB investigators who are looking into possible rule-breaking by the 2018 world champion Red Sox. He talked about his relationship with former manager Alex Cora, who conspired to beat him in ‘17, then called on him to shut down the Dodgers in the final moments of ‘18. He talked about what he would tell his children about all of it when everything shakes out.

Changeup Thrown

Instead of another column in the recent stream of negative Red Sox columns, Shank breaks with tradition and goes back to beat reporter:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — At last, an Alex Verdugo sighting.

The former Dodgers outfielder, the top prospect coming to the Red Sox in the Mookie Betts deal, made his first appearance Friday morning at JetBlue Park and was seen chatting with new teammates Jackie Bradley Jr. and Kevin Pillar while pitchers and catchers were going through their brief workout.

Neither Verdugo nor Pillar participated in any workouts, and Verdugo was not in the clubhouse during media availability periods.

Pillar, a former Blue Jays outfielder, could be playing in place of Verdugo in the outfield at the beginning of the season if Verdugo’s balky back puts him on the shelf. Pillar, joining the team as a free agent, moved his stuff into a stall in the locker room early Friday. After reviewing his physical, the Red Sox made the one-year, $4.25-million deal official later in the day.

We'll see how long that lasts.

Shank's National Pasttime

... is kicking a team when they're down:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Baseball’s cheating scandal just keeps getting worse. And the Red Sox have it hanging over their heads as they go to work on a season made more difficult by the salary dump of Mookie Betts and David Price.

The cheating Houston Astros — who have shot past the Patriots as the most hated team in America — conducted a hideous press conference in West Palm Beach Thursday that left more questions than answers.

Astros owner Jim Crane spoke, as did new manager Dusty Baker, and we listened to brief prepared statements from Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve, two of the cheatin’ ’Stros who won a World Series in 2017 while employing an electronic sign-stealing system that regularly allowed their hitters to know what pitch was coming.

Shank Pretends To Hate The Mookie Betts Trade

Shank's starting out the 2020 Boston Red Sox season in fine form:

What a week.

What a winter.

What a team.

Desperate for relevance, backpedaling after a wildly unpopular deal that angered the fan base like nothing since Grady Little didn’t lift Pedro Martinez (or perhaps when Haywood Sullivan forgot to mail Carlton Fisk’s contract), the Red Sox officially begin spring training Wednesday at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Fla.

Almost a full week after initially agreeing to trade Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers, Chaim Bloom finally met with the media at JetBlue Monday and essentially made the same request that ownership did when it was learned that the commissioner’s office was investigating the Red Sox for allegations of cheating in the 2018 season:

Love, Unrequited

Check out this slobberfest from Shank to soon to be departing Red Sox pitcher, David Price:

Dear David Price,

Hope you and the family are doing well and looking forward to your future with the Los Angeles Dodgers. There’s plenty of noise about the trade back here in Boston, and fans are quite upset about the Red Sox dealing Mookie. I have tried to explain that they are going to miss you as well, but most of them aren’t buying.

Looking back, I still can’t understand what happened with you here in Boston.

Why did you hate it so much?

Can't afford a fuckin' mirror, Shank? Snark aside, I'm having trouble coming up with an athlete for whom Shank washed his balls so thoroughly the entire time he was in Boston. And if that's not enough bogus mental imagery to ruin your appetite, I'll do better next time!

One of these things is not like the others:

Why did you make things so difficult for yourself? I know this can be a tough place to play, but you made it much harder by being sulky and stubborn. Every day. It encouraged folks to overlook significant contributions you made in your four seasons.
...
I loved your game when you pitched for the Rays, Jays, and Tigers. I loved it when you stood up to David Ortiz after Big Papi pimped a couple of homers in the playoffs. You seemed like a thoughtful guy with great talent who would be a good fit here. But you were not. It was a disaster. You didn’t like it here and the fans didn’t like you.

The passive / aggressive routine continues on, if you're into that sort of thing - Shank sure is.

Biting The Hand That Feeds?

Why else come out with a tweet like this one?

John Henry to me Jan 11: "This focus on CBT resides with the media far more than it does within the Sox . . . You seem to think Chaim was brought in to reduce payroll. That is simply not the way FSG operates . . . We try to act responsibly so as to be consistently competitive.''

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 5, 2020

Striking Out Early

Shank weighs in early on the 2020 Boston Red Sox season in his trademark optimistic style:

Trading Mookie Betts means the Red Sox have given up on 2020 season https://t.co/ywv29GqKbO

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 5, 2020

Ought to be real fun reading Shank's missives from Ft. Myers next week, once pitchers and catchers report.

DHL Dan XCV - Titletown?

I'm wondering how Shank came up with this first angle - did it dawn on him at some point or did he rip someone off after they brought it up in conversation? I'm going with 'ripped off':

Thoughts on Titletown, TB12, UMass football, and other sports topics

Picked-up pieces while waiting endlessly for Tom Brady to tell us where he’s playing next season . . . for Mookie Betts to be traded . . . for the Red Sox to hire a manager . . . for Rob Manfred to tell us whether the 2018 Red Sox were cheating . . . for Danny Ainge to acquire a big man before Thursday’s NBA trading deadline . . .

■ Imagine my surprise when I heard a guy from San Francisco talking about his region as a home of sports champions. Doesn’t everybody know that Boston is Titletown, USA? Twelve duck boat parades in this century?

It turns out that the Bay area has been our equal over the last decade, and if the 49ers had prevailed Sunday, that region would have more championships than Boston since 2010. Instead, we are tied with six crowns and 11 appearances in finals over the last decade.

Since 2010, the Bay area has won three World Series (Giants in 2010, 2012, 2014) and three NBA crowns (Warriors 2015, 2017, 2018). In addition, its teams have been in five other championship rounds (2012 Niners, 2016 Sharks and Warriors, 2019 Warriors, and 2019 49ers). Boston since 2010 has six championships in 11 finals (Celtics 0-1, Bruins 1-2, Patriots 3-2, Red Sox 2-0).

All that and more at the link.

There's No Promotion Like Self-Promotion

Shank punted on tweets during the Super Bowl and instead reminded everyone he won an award a few years ago:

Proud to be part of a Globe team with four bb writers who were honored with Spink Award In Cooperstown pic.twitter.com/PwWb49MBaT

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) February 2, 2020

The Royal We

Shank takes a stab at trolling Patriots Nation on Super Bowl weekend:

NOT MIAMI — No Super Bowl party this year. No Star Market sheet cake with little plastic goalposts and a gridiron painted in frosting. No carefully planned delivery of chicken wings Sunday at 6 p.m. No bet on the over/under, or on how many times Tom Brady will be mentioned by the TV commentators in the first 10 minutes.

Sure, we reluctantly will watch the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers at the appointed time, but we don’t really care which team wins. We have no dog in this fight. The Super Bowl will be played Sunday night in Hard Rock Stadium, but we are not into this game the way we’ve devoured it almost annually since the turn of the century.

Super Bowl LIV unfolds on Fox Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Swell. Why would we care? This game does not involve Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and the New England Patriots. After all those years of No Days Off, we find ourselves with Too Many Days Off.

That's impressive bandwagon commandeering right there, folks!

In addition to the offense committed by ordering chicken wings and not grilling them yourself, Shank also pretends to be a fan as noted above just so he can take a shit on everybody. Nice guy, isn't he?

Shank Still Hates David Ortiz

...and the (other) organization owned by Shank's boss:

Big Papi now mouthpiece for Sox ownership. https://t.co/xvpV3F8thB

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 31, 2020

NOTE - Meant to post this a few days ago; apologies.