Poisoned By Last Place

Those are Shank's words from yesterday's column, not mine, but we all knew he'd be singing this tune after... one loss?

Not surprisingly, the Red Sox already are back in last place

The 0-1 Red Sox are in last place.

Which is home for this once-great franchise. The Sox have finished in last place in five of the last 11 seasons — more than any other team in Major League Baseball.

The upstart Orioles beat the Boston wannabes, 10-9, Thursday at frozen Fenway — a train wreck of a baseball game (12 walks, 3 errors, 5 Oriole stolen bases, none of which drew a throw) in a non-tidy 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Ugh. This is not what Theo Epstein was aiming for when he helped create rules that hasten down the wind and speed up the game.

With the Sox trailing, 10-4, in the middle of the eighth inning, the Olde Towne Team came off the field on a freezing March afternoon and the public address system blared “Sweet Caroline.”

So good. So good. So good. The Orioles’ mound wildness and defensive sloppiness made it close in the final two frames, but the Sox were worthy losers, and frozen fans went home unhappy, probably emboldened with false hope.

Shank buried this team quicker than anybody Whitey Bulger buried at Tenean Beach.

Celebrate Good Times - Come On!

Yeah, I went with the Kool and The Gang lyric there, before Shank had his chance to do the same:

Regardless of Red Sox expectations, this is a day to celebrate the return of baseball

For one shining moment, let’s have no snark. No cynicism. No wiseguy remarks about bat-to-ball skills, spin rate, analytic geeks, standing ovations in Springfield, or payroll flexibility.

Let’s celebrate the start of another baseball season. The Red Sox are 0-0 and not yet poisoned by last place or false narratives.

You don't need the benefit of hindsight to realize that line is world-class bullshit. I mean it helps a lot, but whatever...

Almost 30 years ago, the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell — their Gammons — released a book titled, “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”

It’s a great phrase and reminds us of a long-ago day when baseball was king of New England and Opening Day was a legal excuse to skip school.

Happy New Year, everyone. The Red Sox are readying for their 123rd season opener Thursday (2:10 p.m.) at ancient, beautiful Fenway Park against the Orioles and we are in Full Rochie, Hakuna Matata mode.

For this one day only, we are all Bart Giamatti, Roger Angell, Ken Burns, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Ich bin ein citizen of Red Sox Nation.

I wonder if Shank realizes that line from JFK is actually a massive gaffe? The literal meaning of 'Ein Berliner' is 'a donut' / 'one donut'; the proper way for JFK to have conveyed his message in German is 'Ich bin Berliner', or 'I am of Berlin'; i.e., 'I'm one of you.'

DHL Dan CLXIII - Stating The Obvious

Shank helps to set a certain tone for the 2023 Boston Red Sox:

Red Sox can’t afford a rough start to this season, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering when Pete Rose becomes commissioner of baseball …

▪ When Chaim Bloom sat for his first spring training interview at Fenway South on Valentine’s Day, the first question was, “Do you think your job is on the line this year?”

Welcome back, Red Sox.

No pressure, Chaim.

The Sox open their 123rd big league season at Fenway Park against the Orioles Thursday afternoon. That night, the first-place Bruins will play the Columbus Blue Jackets at the Garden, while the Celtics will be in Milwaukee for a critical game against the Bucks. The Bruins have a chance to win more games than any other team in NHL history, and the Celtics — who have more good players than any other NBA team — are trying to make it to the Finals for a second consecutive spring.

The Red Sox? They’re trying to avoid a second straight last-place finish and abject irrelevance in the New England sports marketplace.

If and when the Red Sox lose consecutive games, you can be sure Shank will be there with a few columns specifically designed to put them into 'abject irrelevance'.

DHL Dan CLXII - Cleanup In Aisle 5

Some things are naturals together - bacon & eggs, Rum & Coke, and Shank and local pro sports teams on losing streaks:

Brad Stevens says Celtics have things to ‘clean up’, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while remembering a guy bellowing “We love ya, Cooz!” from the Garden’s upper deck 60 years ago Friday …

▪ Brad Stevens sees the same things you see. The Celtics president of basketball operations is ever-careful and diplomatic, but he knows the team isn’t playing great ball the way it was at this time last year. He sees the blown leads, Jayson Tatum’s struggles, the rugged learning curve for Joe Mazzulla, and the reliance on 3-pointers. He knows better than anyone what it’s like to coach today’s fundamentally challenged, social media-driven NBA talents.

The slumping, still-immature Celtics came into the weekend with 12 regular-season games remaining, having dropped 2½ games behind Milwaukee in the quest for the Eastern Conference’s top seed.

“I’m certainly not looking at it as the sky is falling, but we’ve got to clean some things up,” Stevens said after the Celtics’ 2-point win at Minnesota Wednesday. “If you look across the top of the East, we have not played as well out of the break as probably the other top five or six teams. We’re not in the playoffs tomorrow, but we’re not far.”

What's This 'We' Shit, Kemosabe?

Shank feels left out (or he's feigning it again) of this year's NCAA basketball tournament:

We’re feeling left out of the men’s March Madness — and it wasn’t always like this

No white sport coat. No pink carnation. We are Big Dance wallflowers.

It’s March Madness season across the USA, but here in Greater Boston, we’re not involved. We are the ultimate outsiders. We are landline folks in a SmartPhone World.

The NCAA men’s Division 1 basketball tournament is more popular than ever and launches in full fury Thursday and Friday with subregionals in Columbus, Greensboro, Orlando, Sacramento, Des Moines, Albany, Denver, and Birmingham.

Here in the Hub of the Universe, we have no Terriers or Huskies in this fight. Also, no Eagles, Minutemen, Crimson, or Crusaders.

New England is represented. Sort of. On Friday, 15th-seeded Vermont plays Marquette in Columbus, fourth-seeded UConn faces Rick Pitino’s Iona in Albany, and 11th-seeded Providence plays John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats in Greensboro.

Once again, Shank writes a column whose tone is unmistakably provincial and arrogant - it's all about Boston / New England. The kicker is the use of John Calipari's picture to head the column; Shank hates this fucking guy, yet he'll use the picture to help sell the column. I was watching an ESPN '30 for 30' show about John Calipari a few days ago, and at one point it showed a picture of one of Shank's columns bashing Calipari during the end of Calipari's tenure at UMass, otherwise known as the 'run him out of town' phase of the relationship. Utterly shameless.

The Old Rivlary

Shank covers a spring training game between the Red Sox and Yankees:

The names have changed, but Red Sox and Yankees always carries weight

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Yankees-Red Sox.

Ruth. Gehrig. DiMaggio. Mantle. Jeter. Judge. Williams. Yastrzemski. Rice. Pedro. Manny. Mookie.

What tradition. What folklore. What a galaxy of stars and stories. Fisk vs. Munson. Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. The greatest rivalry in sports.

And we had none of that at JetBlue Park on a postcard-perfect Sunday afternoon.

We had Allen. Koss. Bauers. Chaparro. Gomez. Costanza. (OK, I made that last one up.)

Quick quiz: Tell me which of those names above are Yankees and which play for the Red Sox?

Nobody knows. But that’s OK. This is spring training. The Sox have 10 players at the World Baseball Classic and sent a whole team to Sarasota for a split squad game Sunday against the Orioles. When you combine that with the cost-cutting exodus of homegrown talent — where have you gone, Xander Bogaerts? Sox Nation turns its lonely eyes to you — you’re not going to have a lot of star power for a mid-March exhibition against a Yankees team that didn’t want to put Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo, and Gerrit Cole on a 130-minute bus ride from Tampa.

So much for all that weight, with half of both squads missing from the game...

Always An Optimist

Shank, back for another round of Fort Myers fun, trackes down Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom, who's all rainbows and fluffy bunnies:

Keeping Chaim Bloom’s optimism in perspective, and other thoughts

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Picked-up pieces while waiting for Joe Mazzulla to call timeout …

▪ At Red Sox spring training in 1967, rookie manager Dick Williams — inheriting a 72-90 team that finished ninth — asserted that the Sox would win more games than they lose. They wound up going to the seventh game of the World Series.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in Bloomville.

I put the question to beleaguered Sox baseball boss Chaim Bloom on Thursday morning at Fenway South: Can you guarantee that the ‘23 Sox will win more than they lose? Or maybe just promise they won’t finish last again?

“There are no guarantees in this game,” Bloom said. “And especially not in the AL East. So no, I can’t honestly give fans a guarantee. That’s what makes baseball fun. You don’t know what’s going to happen. I think this is going to be a fun team.”

Coexistence

I wonder if John Henry told Shank to knock it off with the relenting negativity for the 2023 Boston Red Sox?

With Red Sox, hope and realism can exist at the same time

FORT MYERS, Fla. — On my way back to spring training, I got into a small Twitter dustup with Red Sox mascot Jared Carrabis, a wildly popular baseball fan from Saugus who has turned his Sox love into a business empire.

The likable Carrabis landed a sweet gig with a betting company, has a billion Twitter followers, has his own NESN show, and the Sox love him so much he had his own duck boat station for the last championship parade. He was the official team moderator when fans revolted at Winter Weekend in Springfield.

Jared has been promoting the great “vibes” in (still undefeated!) Red Sox camp, and after Raimel Tapia’s homer in a 7-1 win over the mighty Tigers Monday, he wrote, “We went from the Red Sox are scrambling to put together an outfield to the Red Sox have too many outfielders and not enough spots REAL quick.”

Read on for the modern equivalent of a slap fight.

DHL Dan CLXI - Ramming Speed!

Shank's pretty happy about the recent modifications in Major League Baseball:

Getting baseball up to speed again is reason to rejoice, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while brushing my teeth in less than 20 seconds …

▪ We love baseball. But baseball has not loved us back in recent decades.

The game we grew up with became unrecognizable as MLB asked fans to endure interminable stretches of non-action and abject indifference. We had pitchers who would not throw the ball and hitters who would not step into the batter’s box. None of the players seemed aware that they’d brought a once-great game to a standstill.

Now everything has changed. We have a pitch clock, mandating action. To avoid being assessed an automatic ball, pitchers have 20 seconds to throw a pitch (15 if the bases are empty). To avoid an automatic strike, batters need to be in the box, ready to swing, with eight seconds left on the clock. Spring games are being played an average of 26 minutes faster. With more action.

Hallelujah.

Gotta say I agree with him 100%. Regular season games are tough to watch when they take three hours to play and we're well aware of how long typical Red Sox / Yankees games (and most playoff games as well) can take. These moves will save baseball's ass in the long run.

A Cautionary Tale

The Boston Bruins currently have the best record in the NHL. Leave it to Shank to mention potential adverse results once the playoffs come around:

What happened in 1971 should be a cautionary tale for this year’s Bruins

The 2022-23 Boston Bruins are the best team in hockey, enjoying what might end up being the greatest regular season in the 105-year history of the National Hockey League. They are favorites to win the Stanley Cup.

But more than in any other sport, the best team doesn’t always win in hockey.

Ask the 1970-71 Bruins, or any old-timers who followed that powerhouse all those years ago.

The Bobby Orr Bruins won the Cup in 1970 and ’72, but the best team of that golden era was the ’71 team. The ’71 Bruins won more games, scored more goals, and piled up more points than the Cup teams that bookended them.

And they never made it out of the first round of the playoffs. The mighty Bruins were beaten in seven games by the hated Montreal Canadiens and kid goalie Ken Dryden, who had only six games of NHL experience before the playoffs.

Running into one of the five best goaltenders of all time will likely result in bad things happening to your team, and that's part of the 1971 loss to the Canadiens. Also - the rest of the Canadiens' roster wasn't too bad, either!