DHL Dan CXXXVI - Amazing Grace

Shank, as he's wont to do, jumps all over David Ortiz for his, um, inconsistency:

Examining an ‘amazing’ statement by David Ortiz, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while watching the Little League World Series …

▪ After becoming the first MLB player elected to the Hall of Fame despite a positive steroid test — a test that baseball commissioner Rob Manfred suggested might have been a false positive — David Ortiz went on the offensive in the wake of Fernando Tatis Jr. testing positive for clostebol in mid-August.

“MLB needs to have some sort of regulations before they make public news like the one that happened to Tatis Jr.,” Ortiz told Dominican reporter Hector Gomez. “I think they haven’t handled this situation the right way. We can’t kill our product, we’re talking about an amazing player.”

It sounds like Ortiz is saying, “Sure, Tatis is using, but fans love him and he’s got great numbers, so let’s pretend nothing happened.”

I'm of the school of though that maybe Ortiz should just avoid giving opinions about this topic, in no small part because he gives folks like Shank free gas to pour on the fire. Then again, Shank would probably find a way to drag him for saying nothing.

Fixing The Red Sox

In the latter part of the 2022 baseball season, the Boston Red Sox are in last place in the American League East. Shank actually has a column devoted to constructive criticism of the team:

Some suggestions on how to fix the broken Red Sox for 2023

How do we fix the Red Sox for 2023?

Here’s a thought for starters … how about ownership opens up its wallet and spends some money?

Only let’s do it wisely this time.

The last-place Red Sox, who proudly remind you they won four World Series in this century, have become a bottom-line-based operation. True, they still have a ridiculously high payroll, but that’s from mistakes going back to 2019 when Dave Dombrowski was giving out multimillion-dollar contracts (hello, Chris Sale) like M&Ms. The Sox are still paying David Price, for gosh sakes.

Since Dombro was fired and gave way to Chaim Bloom, the Sox have been dumpster divers — ever in search of a deal, always trying to turn another team’s trash into treasure. They’ve had a few hits with Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock, Christian Arroyo (when he’s healthy), and John Schreiber, but mostly it’s been misses.

DHL Dan CXXXV - The Popular Patriots

Finally - a Patriots themed column without the normal cheap shots and insults aimed towards Bill Belichick and the Krafts:

A look at Patriots popularity, then and now, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering why Red Sox fans still root against the Yankees when the Yankees are playing the Rays and Blue Jays — teams the Sox need to leapfrog to get a wild-card spot …

▪ Two unrelated correspondences this past week made me appreciate just how big the Patriots are in today’s New England sports market.

A friend forwarded an e-mail that had been sent from “Patriots Members Services” regarding how long it might take to move up on the team’s season-ticket wait list:

“Our records indicate that you joined the List in April of 2016. To give you a point of reference, waitlist Members who joined the Patriots Season Ticket Waitlist as late as December of 2003 were offered season tickets prior to the start of the 2022 season.”

Bonus - a Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis reference!

Lost Season

If ever there was bulletin board material for the 2022 Boston Red Sox, here it is:

With atmosphere at Fenway electric, it’s hard for Red Sox to admit this is a lost season

Red Sox-Yankees. Good close games, full houses, and the Red Sox competed.

Sweet. Just like the old days . . .

Except for those nasty American League East standings that show the first-place Yankees 15½ games ahead of the last-place Red Sox.

There are 46 games left in the Red Sox’ Lost Season. Thirty-two of them will be against the Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, and Orioles and we all know the Red Sox fare poorly when playing teams in their own division. The last-place Sox are 15-30 against the AL East.

DHL Dan CXXXIV - Cutting No Slack

Shank seems to be a tad upset with Tom Brady today:

This time, Tom Brady shouldn’t get any slack, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while suggesting that our leaders find a more prominent spot for the Bill Russell statue . . .

▪ Tom Brady is a great football player and put the Patriots on the map.

He is also proof that winning a lot of championships cuts you slack forever in this town.

Brady turned 45 this past week while working out in Tampa, trying to win his eighth Super Bowl. On the day before his birthday, we learned that Tom was talking to the Miami Dolphins — angling his way out of Boston — before he even started his 20th and final season with the Patriots in 2019. Throughout the ‘19 season, Brady was actively working on his next gig while he was playing for the Patriots.

Beyond weak. Phony. A betrayal. Hard to forgive.

One thing potentially missing from this diatribe - given it was Brady's final season with the Patriots, was Brady at the point where he knew he was on the outs with the team? That might be a mitigating factor in all of this, no?

When all this came out, the Dolphins were docked a first-round draft pick (and a third) and slapped with a $1.5 million fine for tampering violations. Owner Stephen Ross was suspended for six games.

Brady got nothing … just like in an NFL game in 2022. You can’t touch the golden boy quarterback, which — avocado ice cream aside — is the biggest reason Brady can keep playing at this level at 45.

So it has nothing to do with Brady's training regimen? You decide if Shank's ignorant of this fact or deliberately ignoring it to make this point.

Brady’s integrity takes a well-deserved hit. You have to be a true sycophant/fanboy to dismiss this one. We know for a fact that while he was performing and pouting with the 2019 Patriots, he was scheming to join one of their hated division rivals.

He later did the same two-faced thing in Tampa; his “retirement” was merely a ruse to get him to a player/ownership role in Miami. The scam was foiled when Brian Flores filed his discrimination lawsuit against the Dolphins and Brady had no choice but to slink back to the Bucs, but not without first getting his coach (Bruce Arians) fired. For all these years, we’ve heard about how team-guy Tom took pay cuts to help the Patriots. In the end, it was just the opposite.

How is all of this OK with you, Boston? Your guy was mentally checked out of Foxborough in his last Patriot season. A lot of Patriot fans are still angry at Bill Parcells for talking to the Jets while he was taking the Patriots to a Super Bowl. The Tuna had a much better reason for leaving (stabbed in the back on draft day by Bob Kraft) than Brady. How is Parcells a traitor but Brady is OK?

This is another non sequitur - you can believe Parcells isn't a traitor, or that Brady is regardless of your opinion on Parcells. I think Shank's forcing things here so he can keep taking shots at Brady.

Bill Russell, R.I.P.

This was, of course, from a few days ago:

Bob Cousy remembers teammate Bill Russell: ‘He fought the good fight’

They had Hall of Fame players and a Hall of Fame coach, and the Celtics were champions every year, it seemed. They won eight consecutive NBA titles in Red Auerbach’s last eight years as coach. They won 11 championships in 13 seasons between 1957–69.

And the one and only constant was Bill Russell. The man in the middle. The greatest winner in team sports history.

Russell died Sunday at the age of 88.

We’ve been losing these fabled champs with somber regularity the last four years. Frank Ramsey died in 2018. John Havlicek in 2019, Tommy Heinsohn and K.C. Jones in 2020, then seven months ago (just before New Year’s), Sam Jones. Hall of Famers, one and all.