'Hall' Guys

Today we turn to The CHB's favorite subject -- baseball -- and his favorite punching bags -- baseball players. 

Specifically, yet another Hall of Fame column column on the Hall of Fame. And, ad nauseam, a shot at David Ortiz for NOT being a talented ass like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez and countless others who might well miss their opportunity at immortality.

"Big Papi has Hall of Fame numbers and is beloved by the baseball community, especially commissioner Rob Manfred. On the day Ortiz retired in 2016, Manfred flew to Boston and gave him what amounted to a presidential pardon, instructing Hall voters not to trust results of the 2003 baseball drug testing in which Ortiz came up positive."

Thankfully, this is just the lede of one of his lazy man "picked-up pieces" columns, so long-suffering readers need not suffer too long.

As we know, The CHB finds abhorrent any data more complicated than an RBI. So it's strange, but not out of form, that he takes yet another shot at the Red Sox, whose received low marks in a recent fan poll. 

Apparently, the Sox finished tied for last of the five major local pro sports teams (yes, the Revolution were included. Has soccer taken off yet?) for “most admired team for the way they run their organization.” But let's be real: Fans are fickle. The Red Sox had a shit year and people are down on the team. 

To further the point, when asked which team’s ownership has done the best job over the past year, the Celtics jumped 36 percentage points from a year ago, and the Pats fell 44 percentage points. 

These are constantly moving targets, like a Top 40 radio list. It's barely worth a mention, even in a Shaughnessy column.

This is the best part. In the same column where -- frontrunner that he is -- The CHB fetes Theo Epstein, calling him a future Hall of Famer, and credits him for the Sox World Series championship in 2018 (not a typo), he manages to excoriate him for being "a Moneyball, card-carrying member of Bill James Youth." 

So it's no surprise, a few grafs later, when he takes the the Red Sox to task for recruiting the wrong kind of staff: "... qualifications include 'advanced understanding of statistical methods or machine learning techniques, proficiency with modern database technologies including SQL, demonstrated experience with programming languages (e.g. R or Python).' So much for a veteran scout who can tell you when a young hitter has trouble with the curve."

Do you think he noticed that Theo's Bill James Youth methods led to (by Dan's count) three WS winners? 

How'd all those veteran scouts work out for the Red Sox between 1919 and 2003?

About as well as this column does.

New Bud Book Juices Shank's Loins

This is the circular reasoning of someone who knows no logic (aka, sports columnists): Ask a leading question. Get no response. Assume the lack of response means the subject has something to hide.

In financial circles, public companies are notably (sometimes for legal compliance) cautious about speaking out of turn. Given that officers can go to jail for saying the wrong thing, they tend to clam up. They are especially prudent when it comes to speculation, or even commenting on speculation. Reason: If you make a habit of disputing rumor, observers will assume true any rumor you don't comment on. So the safest approach is to decline comment on everything.

Sports commissioners often find themselves in no-win positions. They work for the owners, yet the fans and media tend to assume they work for the consumers. So they ask stupid questions and get their panties in a wad when they don't get the answers they want.

To wit: Bud Selig, former MLB commissioner, has written a book. And Shank, ever opportunistic, feels he need to share an anecdote about ... former NBA commissioner David Stern. (Block that metaphor!)

Likewise, he mentions the conspiracy that baseballs are juiced. This apparently is due to the fact that there are a lot of home runs in baseball. Has the CHB ever actually watched a major league game? Some of these guys could hit marshmallows 500 feet. There are also a lot of strikeouts in baseball. Why? Because everyone is trying to hit homeruns. Duh.

But I digress, as does The CHB. Back to Selig. Apparently Bud Man should have done more about steroids in baseball. I agree ... but keep in mind the keepers of the faith -- aka the sportswriters -- turned a blind eye to what was going on as well. And then -- worse, in my opinion -- those same sportswriters have taken to trying to establish policy by deciding who did -- and didn't -- take PEDs. So Nomar Garciaparra must have cheated. Same with Mike Piazza. And Jeff Bagwell. And so on and so on.

To lay that all at Bud Selig's feet is a bit much, especially when writers like Shank continue to rewrite the same columns ad nauseam.

Then there's the "bag job" -- the story about the sale of the Red Sox to John Henry. Selig allows that Henry was the preferred acquirer. But clearly former trustee John Harrington didn't want to sell to the other bidders. Moreover, Henry, as a minority owner of the Yankees and then owner of the Marlins, had already been vetted. Let's go back to the top: The commissioner works for the owners. The Red Sox were and are a private entity, not a public trust. Why was Shank so PO'd about Henry buying the team? It remains a mystery. Perhaps he was taking graft from one of the bidders to push their candidacy.

Perhaps someday The CHB will write a book, at which time we can remind of of this paraphrased quote: "Refreshing. A man who is no longer a sportswriter is liberated."

The CHB's Buckner Eulogy Just Another Botched Play

Revisionist history abounds today in the wake of the news of Bill Buckner’s passing.

Exhibit A: Shank himself. Eulogizing the former Red Sox star, he writes: “But for the final 33 years of his life, Buckner was best known as the guy who missed the ground ball. For many fans and media members, it defined him. And it was unfair.”

It was unfair alright, but there's a shell game going on and The CHB is behind the table. Let's start with the fake plaudits: “Bill Buckner had more big league hits than either Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams. He was an All-Star and won a batting title. Playing on ankles that had to be iced almost round the clock, he knocked in 102 runs for the pennant-winning Red Sox in 1986.”

Now it’s true The CHB has said this before. Indeed, it’s almost a word for word repeat of his ESPN interview with Bob Ley in 2016, when the Cubs and Indians were battling for their first respective World Series championship in decades. (Note that he credits Buckner with 103 RBI in the clip.)

But a trip through the Globe archives shows that, much like Shaughnessy’s soul, the actual record is much darker. It ranges from the trite (after the Sox won the 2004 World Series, their first in 86 years) … “The suffering souls of Bill Buckner, Grady Little, Mike Torrez, Johnny Pesky, and Denny Galehouse are released from Boston Baseball's Hall of Pain.” 

… to the random (at the Hall of Fame ceremonies last summer): “Hall of Famer Wade Boggs is here. He can talk about 1986 when the Sox took over first place in May, never looked back, pulled off one of the great comebacks in playoff history against the Angels, then broke New England’s heart in the Bill Buckner World Series against the Mets.”

The CHB coverup continues The flashbacks were in full force each time the Sox made it to October: 

• “But if they somehow lose the 2018 World Series, Game 3 will stand forever as Boston’s baseball’s Buckner moment of the 21st century…”
• “The Cardinals had won 13 of their last 14 postseason homegames, and Saturday's stunner was the first Series game to end on an errorsince Mookie Wilson's grounder went through Bill Buckner's legs in 1986.”

Indeed, almost any time he wrote about the Red Sox and the World Series in the same column, Buckner’s error was cited. “Game 6 also gave us a little dribbler by Mookie Wilson, Vin Scully exclaiming, ‘Behind the bag . . . !’’ and Bill Buckner riding a Train They Call Infamy all the way to a featured role in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.’’ “

He even found ways to insert gratuitous references into writeups that had nothing to do with the Red Sox or Buckner, like this from the Royals-Mets World Series in 2015: “It featured the first series late-inning go-ahead run due to a first baseman's error (Eric Hosmer) since Bill Buckner's gaffe-for-the-ages in 1986.”

Shanughnessy himself spent column after column writing about it. (Not to mention using the episode to frame an entire book.)

He even took shots on his Twitter account.

Hang on! Here’s one, from 2012, where he plays it straight (mostly). “[Tom House] caught Hank Aaron’s 715th homer in 1974 (only because Dodgers left fielder Bill Buckner couldn’t scale the fence — thank goodness Doug Mientkiewicz wasn’t there).”  Surprised he didn’t sneak in a bit about the Hammer’s record-breaking blast being too high to go through Buckner’s legs? Me too.

On the bright side, it kept The CHB away from the Garden and the Stanley Cup finals, where the Bruins were thumping the Blues. 

Billy Buck, Bruins Nation thanks you for your service.

Don't Bogaerts Our Joint

Are you scared yet?

You should be. At least that's what The CHB thinks.

"Where’s the panic" over the pending free agency and potential departure of Xander Bogaerts, he demands. "Where’s the outrage?"

Uh, we're Red Sox fans. Our boys are starting the current century much like we started the last one. They've won four World Series in 15 years, the same pace as in the 1900s, when they won four between 1903 and 1917. We have nothing to fear, except overwrought sports hacks.

So who cares if the Sox lost Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester and Mo Vaughn to bigger deals in other towns? Ellsbury and Vaughn were busts. We could have used Lester, but would anyone today truly trade Lester for Sale?

And when Danny boy refers to Red Sox management as "smarter-than-everybody," the snark is meaningless. They are smarter than everybody. Or did the glow reflecting off the four World Series trophies induce momentary insanity in our resident critic?

No, "Nomar Garciaparra is not walking through that door." Ignoring, for the moment, that The CHB whined incessantly that Nomar was an untouchable fraud, let's just thank god Shank is, for once, correct. After all, Nomie is 45 and has been out of baseball since 2009.

But those who actually, you know, watch the games instead of the beer line have long since figured out that the Red Sox are the best organization in baseball. Hyperventilating over what could happen is no longer necessary.

Oh, and in case history repeats, the Red Sox were champs again in 1918. But I think The CHB already knows that.

Damn Those Fences

Raj clued me in to this.  It started with Bruce Jenkins, columnist/math-fearer/schlub, who tweeted all the things he found bad about WAR (none of which were based on actual, you know, math). Naturally, his fellow Luddite, The CHB, promptly retweeted it.

It appears the original tweet has been taken down, but this one is close enough:

I've been big on stats since I was a little kid, but not WAR. Bill James calls it "not very impressive. They get so far into the data that they throw up their hands and take a wild guess." (cont.)

— Bruce Jenkins (@Bruce_Jenkins1) December 27, 2017

My take: It's the "stick to tradition no matter how ineffective it is" approach. Take Cy Young. Since he threw 749 complete games, major league managers should go back to leaving their starting pitchers in the whole time. Obviously that's the path to success, and all these relievers are just mucking up everything, right? While we are at it, let's go back to the single/stolen base/swing at everything approach. And get rid of those damn seats and fences. People can stand, dammit.

The game changes as our understanding of it changes, and anyone who doesn't adapt gets left behind. 

Likewise for WAR, WARP, VORP, and a host of other descriptors. Stats are just a means to describe what happened. They are a language, based on numbers. The language of the game evolves, as all languages do. Anyone want to read a gamer written in Elizabethan English? I didn't think so.

All Worn Out from PEDs

The CHB thinks it might be high time baseball Hall of Fame voters put the whole steroids issue to rest.

In the hands of a skilled journalist, it's a fair question. But Shank is no skilled journalist.

As such, he can't actually address the real question. Instead, he resorts to the usual trinity of whispers, innuendos and lies, such as Jeff Bagwell is suspect because he got bigger as he got older. (As if that never happened before. Ever seen Tony Gwynn?)

But at least the white guys get some benefit of the doubt. (Was there seriously any question about Rogers Clemens using? His best friend testified under oath that he shot him up.) He falls back on his cliched racial denigrations (Sammy Sosa "played the language-barrier card before Congress," as if being Dominican is the same as growing up in Groton).

But why the change of heart? I have to think it has something to do with this guy:

Curt Schilling has, in the minds of many Hall voters, gone a step too far when he retweeted a photo of a guy in a shirt that read "Rope. Tree. Journalist." Shank and his ilk were all over talk radio saying this was the last straw, and that Schilling was welcome to shit all over any politician he pleased as and waste millions of dollars of the public's money long as he didn't wish ill on the Fourth Estate.

To that end, Shank's take is that Schilling's latest volley pushes him out of Hall consideration because of the so-called "character clause." Here's what the Hall actually says about voting:

Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon, or even a sports journalist, to recognize that character stops when the player retires. There's nothing in the clause that indicates that an ex-player who, for instance, gets busted drunk driving, as Carlton Fisk did, should be kicked out. Heck, Tony LaRussa got busted several times and they still voted him in. Is retweeting a bad joke honestly worse than getting behind the wheel of a 2-ton vehicle after a night of scotch ("I love scotch. Scotchy scotch scotch. Here it goes down, down into my belly")?

So what about Shank's character? What about a guy who called David Ortiz, perhaps the most important athlete in the history of Boston sports ever, a "sad sack of you know what?" What about years of racist spitting and sputtering against every black and Hispanic athlete to cross 128? That didn't seem to stop him from accepting the Spink (or should that be Pink?) Award for baseball writing.

Big Papi is ultimately why The CHB wrote this column. Because in five years, he will have to decide whether to vote in Big Papi. Shank thinks Papi is a fraud. But if anyone can spot a fraud, it's a fraud.

Oh and Shank, if voting for the Hall is truly the "most volatile and toxic thing we do all year," there's always a remedy: Quit.

Curses! Another Blown Lede

No one loves a good curse more than The CHB. So it stands to reason that today's excrement exercise is one big kiss off to 108 years of Cubs failure

In true Shank fashion, he tries to make poetry out of prose -- "They blew a lead of 6-3 with two out and nobody aboard in the eighth inning. Manager Joe Maddon was being measured for a Grady Little cap. [T]he Cubs ... won it when lefty Mike Montgomery retired Michael Martinez on a grounder to Kris Bryant with the tying run aboard at 12:47 a.m. You could hear Harry Caray hollering'Cubs win' and 'Holy cow' in hardball heaven." -- and in the process completely misses the actual drama of the game. No surprise there.

Even less surprising to those of us who have tortured ourselves to bring you this column for going on 10 years, is his attempt to stick it to the Red Sox in the process. Indeed, this was one of the classic World Series, and Shank spends most of it writing about the Red Sox.

Let's start with Theo Epstein, who has now "has punched his ticket to Cooperstown as the man who killed two curses."

Since The CHB doesn't seem to remember what he previously wrote about Theo, I'll remind him: 

• "Epstein is a student of the game, but it's a mistake to say he knows more about baseball than [Larry] Lucchino or anyone else." 
• "It was charged [in 2005] that Sox management conducted a ''smear campaign" against Epstein. How? Where's the campaign?"   
• "Epstein made a ton of bad moves in the later years of his tenure, then went to Chicago for a $19 million contract and watched from afar as the Sox decomposed. ... Mistakes were made. Money was spent badly. The Sox lost their way and tried to throw money at their problems." 

There's Jon Lester, "who was famously lowballed, then traded, by the smarter-than-everybody Sox in 2014, did what he proved he could do in Boston: he came up big in the big moment. Lester was called upon to pitch in relief and stuffed the Indians for three innings." Well, not exactly. Lester allowed two runs in three innings work, and it was his wild pitch that cut the Cubs lead to 2 in the bottom of the fifth, giving Cleveland hope they could come back.

There's John Lackey, who gave up 3 runs in 5 innings in a Cubs loss Game 5.

There's Terry Francona who "[had] a commanding World Series lead, only to see it implode over the final three games."

Imagine what Shank would have said if this had happened while Francona was managing the Red Sox. Oh wait, it did:

The greatest choke in baseball history ended the only way it could have ended, with the Red Sox gagging on the Camden Yards lawn one last time. ... Say goodbye to Terry Francona. In the midnight confessions, Francona spoke of “the mess we got ourselves in,’’ then said, “We needed to take care of business and we didn’t.’’ 

In historic fashion.

Wouldn't losing a 3 games to 1 lead in the World Series, dropping the final two on your home field, be even worse?

Yes it would. I can think of only one thing worse: Shank's column.

Pill Papi: PEDs or Not, Ortiz is Hall Bound

The Shank column we've all been waiting for: Recognition that David Ortiz is Hall of Fame bound, and there's nothing The CHB can do about it.

Guaranteed, His Shankness would never vote for Big Papi on the first round, if at all. But he argue, tongue firmly in cheek, that since the New York writers say Ortiz is a Haller, that's a leading indicator that (PEDs or not, which is what the column is really about), he's bound to get the call.

Regardless of whether Ortiz deserves the recognition, which would have made for a much better column, btw, here's hoping Shank is actually right for a change, if for no other reason than it's another excuse to remind everyone of Shaughnessy's epithet for Big Papi: "a sad sack of you-know-what."

Pap Smear

Shank wants the Sox to bring back their former closer Jonathan Papelbon.

In making the case, he regurgitates all the same rationale he used when Paps left in 2011:

He put a cardboard 12-pack box on his head. Check!
Detailed recap of last game as a Sox pitcher. Check!
"Accountability." Check!
Chicken-and-beer. Check!
“I’m Shipping Up To Boston.’’ Check!

Sorry, we're done with that. And no matter how badly The CHB wants a new storyline, the Sox don't need another reliever who can't get anyone out. 

Big Ploppy

File under So What?

Today Shank does a double rip on those who had -- and gave away -- David Ortiz.

Over and over, [Twins GM Terry] Ryan has had to explain why he so casually dismissed one of the greatest sluggers of this generation.  

But there is another team that let go of David Ortiz: the Seattle Mariners. 

The Mariners had Big Papi in their stable for the first five years of his professional life, and they were no better than the Twins at evaluating what he would become.

But let's recall who else dismissed Ortiz's ability: The CHB, who once referred to the man who has surpassed Ted Williams in lifetime homers as a "sad sack of you know what."

Guess what else is a sad sack of you know what? Shank's column.

Jest Wing

Ready for this? The CHB is going into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Well, sort of.

For starters, it's the baseball writer's wing of the Hall. So already it's like kissing your sister (which I'm pretty sure is what got Shank started on his road to fatherhood, which next to his mediocre career has been perhaps his greatest exercise in failure).

Moreover, you know who votes in the inductees? Yep: other writers! That's about as big an accomplishment as getting a mother to love her baby. What a joke. 

More humor. The CHB waxes nostalgic about Earl Weaver. You know who Earl Weaver was? Baseball's first sabermetrician manager. Of course, The CHB is too busy whining about baseball to actually, you know, understand it.

The One Where The CHB Perpetuates Manager Myths

The typical CHB column consists of a very simple formula:

1.  Start with a provocative (read: absurd) lede. 
2.  Give a few supporting details to flesh out the lede. 
3.  Then regurgitate the backstory, relying on as many previously written sentences and "jokes" as you can. 
4.  Take a shot at the management of whichever team you are writing on that day. 
5.  (Optional) Throw in a reference to Larry Bird.

Today's piece follows that formula to a T.

The emphasis (I don't dare say point, since there wasn't one) of the piece is on John Farrell, but as is his milquetoast way, The CHB doesn't say whether Farrell should be fired; only that it's what people are talking about. Naturally, in pursuit of his trite analysis, he leaves out a few important details.

Such as

"After everything that’s happened around here, Farrell knows he’s just one more slump away from the fate that ultimately awaits every man in the corner office at Fenway."

(False. Ralph Houk retired after the 1984 season. You'd think Mr. Curse of the Bambino would know such trivia.)

And "Grady [Little] was buried for one bad decision."

(False. Grady was buried for numerous bad decisions, not the least of which ignoring all the data the team statisticians were coming up with.)

And "How many times do you see a manager/coach fired while his team is still on a path to the playoffs?"

(Often. But under John Henry, it has not happened with the Red Sox; this ownership group has yet to fire a manager mid-season.)

And "Terry Francona's not walking through that door."

(Good. Tito had peaked. It was time for him to go. He had lost control of the clubhouse. Or perhaps The CHB doesn't remember the whole "beer and chicken" fiasco, which would be strange, since he wrote about it endlessly. Still, you'd think The CHB would remember writing about Torey Lovullo and how promising he was when filling in for Farrell over two months last season )

P.S. The Red Sox under Farrell won the 2013 World Series. Guess how many World Series the Indians have won under Tito. Zero. I'll take my chances with Lovullo.

Column on Boggs a Sad Affair

I looked at the headline of today's piece on the retiring of Wade Boggs' number, and said the following:

• Chicken
• Riding the cop's horse after the World Series win
• Margo Adams.

Then I read the column.

"Only Wade could insist that he ate chicken three times a day, 365 days a year." Check.

"Boggs won a World Series with the Yankees and infuriated more Sox fans when he hopped on a New York City police horse to celebrate the victory at Yankee Stadium." Check.

Surprisingly, there was no reference to Margo Adams (although The CHB did throw in the anecdote about Boggs' wife running over him during spring training).

The rest is the usual soulless recitation of facts. So dull, in fact, a reference to Boggs' widely known affair with Adams would have been welcome.

Dan Does Drugs

Expect to see this theme often this year: Papi and PEDs.

It's a one-man meme with The CHB, who can't seem to move off the refrain that no man in his 40s, save for a few dead white guys, could possibly be capable of the assault on pitching that Papi is administering this season.

Perhaps it's because he was so fooled by Barry Bonds, whom Shank feted for years even after Bonds' head had grown to the size of one of those watermelons you might see at an Arkansas county fair.

Let's go back to The CHB's comments from Oct. 18, 2002, on the eve of the Giants-Angels World Series, when he all but proposed to Bonds:

Why does America hate Barry Bonds so much? Is it because he's too good? Is it because we constantly hear that his teammates can't stand him? Is it the phony, Carl Everett-esque point to the heavens when he crosses the plate after homering? Is it because he sounds so insincere? Are we threatened by the prospect of him passing hardball gods Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, and Hank Aaron on the all-time homer list? Bonds is the central figure of this World Series. It is difficult to come up with another player who's gotten more attention before the start of the event. We want to know how/if the Angels will pitch to him. We want to see if he can finally perform in the clutch. Despite his (relatively) strong showing in the first two rounds, Bonds will still be remembered as a postseason bust if he fails in this World Series. And so many are rooting against him. It should make for fascinating theater.

In the midst of all that manlove, nothing there about steroids. Oops.

Another highlight (lowlight?) of this picked up pieces (of shit) column: A shot at "the increasingly unhinged Curt Schilling," who says Red Sox owner John Henry is "not a good person."

Ironically, snark aside The CHB would probably agree, but honestly, who cares? Henry is there to win World Series and write checks. Personally, if he does those two things, I could care less if he spends his nights putting up all the stray kittens in Brookline into a sack and tossing them into the Charles.

Tito Lay

With the Indians and former Red Sox manager Tito Francona in town, The CHB opts for nostalgia today, for reasons unknown.

We say reasons unknown because Francona is now in his fourth season as skipper of the Indians. During that time, he has visited Fenway Park 11 times. It's old news, except to those with severe memory problems who are resigned to repeating themselves.

Just like Dan!

Speaking of memory problems, The CHB must think these are the 1976 Indians. He refers to them as a team with "no stars and no payroll":

• Cory Kluber, 2014 Cy Young Award winner, 2015 top 10 Cy Young votes; 
• Francisco Lindor, 2015 Rookie of the Year runner up; lifetime BA .317
• Michael Brantley; finished 3d in AL MVP vote in 2014; lifetime BA .292
• Danny Salazar, lifetime ERA 3.48, averages 10Ks/9 innings
• Carlos Carrasco, finished 13th in the Cy Young vote in 2015

So be it. The CHB wants to insinuate that Tito is such a great manager, the Indians on winning simply on the strength of his ability. And, he wants to needle Francona's former bosses -- John Henry, Tom Werner, et al -- for apparently no being pen pals with their ex employee. (You think The CHB keeps in touch with Arthur Sulzberger?)

And while it's true that in terms of salary the Indians are closer to the bottom of the majors than the top, when it comes to the alleged need to spend money, who is the loudest of them all?

Pass.

Ted or Dead

Straw man: a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent.

This fallacy comes into play today with The CHB's positing that Ted Williams was the greatest Red Sox player of all time and that David Ortiz, well, isn't.

"I can’t believe I’m even posing the question. It’s ridiculous. It feels like a sin against the church of Boston baseball."

Well, given that pretty much everything Shank writes is a sin against logic (not to mention an insult to intelligence), that should come as no surprise. But since our job is to debunk the bunk, let's have at it.

We'll start with the basic argument, which is, who cares?

Answer: No one. Because no one is talking about it, save some moronic "television sports debate show" host. (And Shank complains that fanboy bloggers never leave the house. It makes one wonder whose backyard shed said announcer has been living in.)

Addressing the "greatest" question, there's a slew of data that demonstrate that Williams was not only the greatest Red Sox of all time, but he was a top 10 major leaguer of all-time. Ortiz, meanwhile, might barely scratch the Top 10 Red Sox, behind Williams, Cy Young, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, Yaz, Wade Boggs, Carlton Fisk, Dennis Eckersley, and Joe Cronin, among others, as MLB Hall of Famers who wore the Sox uniform. (That list, of course, does not include Babe Ruth, the greatest of them all.)

Indeed, the Newton Nabob's "logic" has more holes than an encephalopathic brain.

As in, Williams was better than Papi because Beethoven was superior to Prince. (Seriously.)

Even more appalling are the "data" Shank uses to bolster his non-argument. As in, not homers. Not batting average. Not Gold Gloves or any other such measure.

Attendance. (Seriously.)

He cites Richard Johnson (insert your own dick joke here), the Sports Museum in Boston curator (who knew?), who says, "Ted was the reason people went to Fenway from 1939 to 1960."

As if.

The first six years of William's career, the Red Sox averaged between 4,600 and 9,600 fans a game. Granted, that was the run up to the War years. Attendance then peaked in the four-year run after WWII ended, averaging between 18,000 and 20,600 up until 1949. (That run coincided with the Red Sox's best records during the Williams era.) The numbers, while better than the AL average, were still roughly half Fenway's capacity.

As wins became scarcer, so did the crowds. By the time Ted retired, the Fens was down to about 14,000 fans per game, a little over 40% of capacity.

Since Papi joined the Red Sox in 2003, the team has never averaged fewer than 33,000 fans per game or less than 91% of capacity, and Fenway was sold out for entire seasons.

No, fans don't go to see the players. They go to see the team win. And if the team doesn't win, the fans don't go.

Ironically, today The CHB discounts team success when it comes to player rating.

"[I]f championship rings are your only measurement, then Mark Bellhorn (one) is better than Ernie Banks (zero), and Sam Jones (10) is almost twice as good as Michael Jordan (six)."

Again, a sham statement, not to mention hypocritical. After all, who pushes the "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" argument harder than The CHB? And who pushes the "Bill Russell was the greatest NBA player of all time because he won the most" argument harder than The CHB?

(Oddly enough, Wilt "the Stilt" Chamberlain outscored, outrebounded, and out-assisted Russell in head-to-head matchups, thus underscoring the importance of T.E.A.M.)

Yet that's the sum of this big bowl of stupid soup The CHB musters up. It's almost enough to make poor dead Ted's head spin.

Dope Springs Eternal

Here's the stunning problem with The CHB's column on the Celtics today: He whines that the Celtics' loss to the Hawks in round 1 of the NBA Playoffs last night demonstrated their lack of talent, while conveniently ignoring that two of their top three players were out for effectively the entire season.

Question: Have the Celtics progressed enough in the 3 years under Stevens? The CHB answers his own question: Wins have risen from 25 to 40 to 48. That's a 23 game swing. The next best positive gain in that time frame? Milwaukee, with 10. The C's finished with the 7th best record overall in the NBA. Could anyone have seen that two years ago? Of course not. Would you have been pleased if, two years ago, you were guaranteed a 48 win season by now? Of course you would.

What The CHB seems to forget is that to actually, you know, win a championship, you first have to make the playoffs. So while he's extolling the virtues of the Timberwolves, which he has been doing on the radio for some time, let's remember that the Wolves, with Wiggins, Rubio and Townes, won a total of 29 games this year. They are about as far from the playoffs as The CHB is from getting laid by a woman.

It's a talent league, and the C's don't have enough talent. But truthfully, neither do the Thunder with Durant and Westbrook, or the Clippers with Paul and Griffin. The Bulls have two players -- Butler and Rose -- better than anyone on the Celtics, and didn't even make the playoff. So why insinuate Celtics coach Brad Stevens isn't up to the task, except to be contrarian?

More memory problems. Wasn't The CHB just saying "Our winter sports teams are good again. There will be playoffs and it might not be as bad and bloody as we once feared. ... [T]he local sports landscape is brighter today"?

CHB Slinks While Porcello 'Springs'

Remember how Shank was going on and on about how the Red Sox performance in spring training didn't bode well for the regular season?

In particular, remember what he said about Rick Porcello, one of the "Meatball Five"?

Well after Porcello's sterling 6.1 innings of shutout ball last night, here are his numbers to date this season:

GP  IP      H    B   K   W  L   WHIP  ERA
4    25.2    19   5   30   4   0    0.94     3.51

3.51

Not too shabby. 

Anyone (else) remember what was said during spring training? 

Anyone else care? Because The CHB certainly has clammed up.

Julien Story an Old One but Not an Accurate One

Roger already wrote about this today, and not to cover too much of the same ground, but I want to focus on one line in particular from The CHB's mailed-in column today: "The Bruins have to rebuild and [coach Claude] Julien might not be the guy for a team of youngsters."

The only reason Julien remains the coach today is because his 2010-11 Bruins team won the Stanley Cup. Let's look at that roster:

Five of the top seven scorers were 25 or younger. 

Oh but, you say, the playoffs were all about the veteran experience. Not so fast:

The top four scorers were all 25 or under, and the median age of the top 15 scorers was 28. In terms of ice time, only two forwards older than 25 averaged 15 or more minutes a game, and the four were all 25 or younger. 

Fast forward to today (see below). The median age of the top 15 is 27. In fact, contrary to what The CHB says, the 2015-16 Bruins' "youth" was barely changed from that of the Cup winners. 

The case could be made that the Julien needs to go. But it's not because the Bruins are too young. It's because they lack sufficient talent. And for that, the blame lies with none other than Cam Neely.

Spring Paining

Seeing is believing, and because of that The CHB thinks how you perform in spring training predicts how you will perform once the bell is rung.

And he's worried, because the Red Sox pitchers aren't holding up their end of the performance bargain.

Well, let's look back to Spring Training 2013, the last time the Sox won the World Series. Here are the spring training and regular season ERAs for the seven pitchers with the most starts for the Sox that year:

Clay Buchholz: 0.79 ERA in 22.2 innings (1.74)
John Lackey; 5.40 ERA in 11.2 innings (3.52 regular season)
Jon Lester: 0.75 ERA in 24 innings (3.75)
Felix Doubrant: 3.00 ERA in 18 innings (4.52)
Ryan Dempster 3.74 in 21.2 innings (4.57)
Alan Webster: 1.64 ERA in 11 innings (8.60)

Not very predictable, was it?

And here are the numbers from 2015, when Boston finished last:

Buchholz: 2.84 in 19 innings (3.26)
Eduardo Rodriguez: 1.17 in 7.2 innings (3.85)
Wade Miley: 3.71 in 17 innings (4.46)
Henry Owens: 8.74 in 11.1 innings (4.57)
Joe Kelly: 11.05 in 7.1 innings (4.82)
Rick Porcello: 2.57 in 14 innings (4.95)
Justin Masterson: 3.52 in 23 innings (5.61)

Even less so last year,

But sure, let's keep insisting that you know more about baseball than the guys who actually run the game.