Now Get Off My Lawn!

Shank steps into the 'old man yelling at clouds' part of his professional career:

Have celebrations in sports gone too far or are they simply a sign of the times?

Waiting for the Bruins and Celtics to start the playoffs, wondering what the Red Sox will look like when they play good teams, I find myself thinking about sportsmanship, taunting, celebrations, and getting old.

Getting old comes first in this sports story because it colors the way one thinks about sportsmanship, taunting, and celebrations.

This is the sports fans’ circle of life.

I will swear on a stack of bibles I did not read any of this column before going with my opening comments. The title of the column is all that's required.

Old-timers want things to stay the way they were. There’s a (misguided, no doubt) notion that the games, athletes, and traditions were better and more classy in the old days. Guys who hit homers put their heads down and acknowledged their achievement with a polite, Harvard Club handshake as they crossed home plate. Running backs went across the goal line, then turned and pitched the ball back to the official. Our games had a DiMaggio/Barry Sanders dignity. Heroes “acted like they’d been there before.”

In 2023, young fans want action, color, noise, and “look at me” chest-thumping. This is sports. It’s supposed to be fun. There’s nothing wrong with a little celebration — even if that means mocking your opponent. And anybody who doesn’t like it is either Clint Eastwood grumbling “Get off my lawn!” or Abe Simpson yelling at clouds (I’d prefer to be Mick Jagger singing “Get Off Of My Cloud,” but that’s never happening).

Read on for more of the same. I'll make a couple of notes that'll nuke Shank's whole premise and document yet again his hypocrisy on the matter. First - Shank doesn't mind the concept of 'trash talk', as long as it's directed at someone or a team he doesn't like, like the 2015 New York Jets, Arian Foster of the Houston Texans, or even when noted local columnist Jon Keller was defending him for Shank's use of 'trash talk' (i.e., his usual MO of antagonizing fans) with harsh columns.

Second - for anyone who watched the 1980's Boston Celtics, there is no greater trash talker then or now than Larry Bird. Kevin Garnett gives him a good run for his money but let's just focus on Bird for a moment. Does anyone out there think Shank would, for instance, direct this kind of column's critiques toward the Hick from French Lick? Hell would freeze over first.

Third - here's an old gem from the archives, the third and final nail in the proverbial coffin. Shank's also fine with 'trash talk' when it helps him write a column. The salient part:

Further into the column, Shank demonstrates his hypocrisy (We never would have known about it in the genteel good old days.):

“You could not print all the things we said,’’ said Cedric Maxwell, Ainge’s teammate from the 1980s and a Hall of Fame trash talker. “You could not write it all down. The families. The moms. Didn’t make any difference. We didn’t have to be politically correct. We could be asinine.

“I remember one guy, before the start of a playoff series, saying, ‘No way that bitch is getting 40 points off of me.’ Somebody wrote that down and it actually got in the paper.’’

I know. Because Max said it about Bernard King, and I wrote it down, and it appeared in the Sunday Globe on the day of the first game of the 1984 Eastern Conference semifinals between the Celtics and Knicks. King refused to shake Max’s hand before the game. King didn’t get his 40 until Game 3, but the Celtics won the series.

Does anyone seriously think this (or the 1984) column get written if Larry Bird was the trash talker in question?

Some questions are evergreen, and answer themselves.

He might have a point about the obnoxious celebrations (a light show during a Red Sox game is indeed WTF territory) were it not for most of the aforementioned faux lamenting of modern-day trash talk when he's been fine with it for decades.