'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.

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 Get Mad - Get Even!

That's what Curt Schilling did last week when Shank went on Mike Felger's show on Comcast Sports New England to talk about his firing from ESPN:

"He got what he was asking for, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for him right now," said Shaughnessy, with whom Schilling has feuded from almost the day the pitcher arrived in Boston. "I'm just going to miss him. He's good on TV."

Didn't take long for Schilling to respond . . .

@CSNNE Not even a contest, the 2nd most bitter human I've ever known. Doesn't make him bad or wrong many times, just bitter. #CHB

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 22, 2016

I want to know who's #1 in your book, Curt!

But wait - there's more!

And then he added a comment on CSN's Facebook page, under a link to the video . . .

“Don't need the advice of a bitter human who only remains relevant because of that coif and his desire to take opposing views, regardless of their factual truths. CHB was irrelevant the day we won game 4 and the World Series, ending something he made a career out of inventing, the "Curse". It was a curse of talent, nothing else. People like this need a boogeyman to create content, original thought escapes them”

Then, this one out of deep right field:

@dawsonoot two things, I didn't ask for your opinion and Mike Felger is about as large a know-nothing douche as ever existed.

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 22, 2016

You could accuse Felger of a lot of things; a lack of knowledge is not one of them. This looks like a shot at Felger inviting Shank on for the express / implied purpose of Schilling bashing, knowing full well Shank would deliver. In that case, the charge of douche is correct. Not like Felger gives a rat's ass either way...

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.

With The CHB, All Betts are Off

One of the hallmarks of a Shaughnessy column is his tendency to build one person up by trashing another. To that end, today's piece, on Mookie Betts, does not disappoint.

In promoting Betts, The CHB trashes Adrian Gonzalez, just one day after trashing the GM who was "irrationally protective of the trove of draft picks" and traded future All-Star 1B Anthony Rizzo for AGone. Which do you want: develop great players in-house, or sign/trade for them? Because no franchise does both consistently well.

He takes a further dig at team analyst Bill James, whose work, of course, led to the Red Sox signing players like Mookie Betts.

And he gets a basic fact about Betts wrong, writing his "career path has been seamless," ignoring that Betts was slow to hit when he first arrived in the bigs and was sent down to AAA.

On a side note, it's impossible to know what counts with The CHB, since he whines about "results" when the process doesn't work out and whines about lack of "character" when it does (2004, 2007, 2013). In today's column he claims Dave Dombrowksi is the most "accountable" Red Sox GM since the late Lou Gorman, and yet it was Gorman who traded future MVP (and Hall of Famer) Jeff Bagwell (and World Series MVP Curt Schilling) and yet never acknowledged they were stupid trades. The Red Sox are supposed to compete every year, The CHB always asserts. But remember what happened on Dombrowksi's watch the year after his Marlins won the 1997 World Series? They lost twice as many games as they won.

At the end of the day, the proof that Red Sox owner John Henry doesn't interfere in the work of his employees even when he has to suffer complete foolishness from them is this: He also owns the Globe, and The CHB still has a job.

Flipped Out

It's Dan's World...we just live in it.

Or so he wants us to think, given the lede to his column today:

It amuses me that the football world is talking about coin flips, deferrals, arrogance, hubris, amazing luck, insulting the opposition, and the Patriots’ chances to win Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara Feb. 7.  

Welcome to my world. I’ve been writing about this stuff for years. Finally, everyone is paying attention.

Ahh, yes. The CHB knows football! He knows Cover 2 and the stack. He knows the nickel and the blind side and the short side. He knows the route tree and the "T."  He even knows the Statue of Liberty (the play and the drink). He's brilliant, and we would do well to bask in his reflected glory.

Getting back to reality, the only thing Shank knows about football is that he can't play it. He certainly can't critique it. What he thinks passes for analysis is really just one part observation mixed with two parts whining.

For example, The CHB thinks he was the first (and only) fellow to notice that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick defers the ball when they win the coin flip (which they almost always do). To The CHB, this is arrogance (and perhaps, cheating). To the rest of us, this is common sense: when the hole parts and you can walk in for the score, you do so.

Next, confirming what we had guessed at before, Shank reports on what all the bloggers and tweeters have to say. We always assumed The CHB spent most of his day listening to talk radio and reading what others wrote, then lifting either the best lines, or, when he was feeling particularly lazy or hungover or both, the entire premise of the column.

He compounds his journalistic sins by alleging for the umpteenth time that the Patriots throw games in order to improve their playoff chances.

Finally, he closes with the most pathetic of puns: "Heads they win. Tails you lose." Stolen from Jim Rome?  Or Ben Watanabe? Or Barstool Sports?

Arrogance is ripping off the same lame retread column and somehow thinking it makes you clever.

Royal Failure

Hahaha. One day after positing that a 98-mile-an-hour heater from Mets' righty Noah Syndergaard had changed the Series, its the victimized Royals who apparently were fired up.

This after they came back to beat the Mets in Game 4, prompting The CHB to write: "Their manhood was challenged ... momentum had shifted [and] they came back swinging."

It was a great game, filled with questionable managerial decisions and crucial plays, both positive and -- in the case of playoff hero Daniel Murphy, whose misplay of a grounder in 8th allowed the Royals to tie the score in what became a 5-3 Royals win. Any of this would have made for a great baseball column. But Shank just isn't capable of that.

Funny: Eric Hosmer, who butchered a grounder in Game 1 that could have cost the Royals the game (they tied it with a homer in the 9th and then won it in extra innings), hits a crappy little grounder right at Murphy. The latter boots it, but it's Hosmer who, per The CHB, is "ever-clutch."

We can be thankful, I suppose, there were no Bill Buckner references.

Fisk and Shits

Quick: Do you remember where you were on this date 40 years ago?

The correct answers are "of course not" and "who cares."

As it turns out, it was 40 years ago today that Carlton Fisk hit the 12-inning homer to beat the Reds in the 1975 World Series. It was Game 6 before there was "Game 6."*

And that's what The CHB wants to tell us about.

Here's the problem: Fisk's moment was transcendent. The date doesn't matter. It's an iconic moment, not in baseball history, not in New England history, but in SPORTS history. For years it was part of opening sequence to the NBC Game of the Week, and the Bat in the Night is part of a display in Cooperstown.

What's more, everyone and their dog is trotting out pieces on it this week. Even The Boston Globe Magazine beat Shank to the punch.

Oh, the problems with the piece are rampant. The CHB says Fred Lynn was the "best center fielder we’d see until Jackie Bradley Jr. came around." Not even close. Coco Crisp -- the prototype for JBJ -- was twice the defensive CF that Fragile Freddy was. Even Rick Miller, Lynn's contemporary, was a superior OF.

He calls Luis Tiant the "best best big-game pitcher we would ever see." El Tiante had a 2.86 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 34 post-season innings. Jon Lester has a 2.85 ERA and 87 K's in 98 innings -- in a higher octane offensive era. (Perhaps Shank keeps his eyes closed when Lester is on the mound.)

All in all, Shaughnessy's homage is familiar in tone and content to Clark Booth's writeup from 2004.
Fisk's home run is memorable. The CHB's hasty, crappy memory of it, not so much.

*Screw you, Buckner!

Column of Contradictions

"Hope" a word not often found in The CHB's vocabulary, and when it does make one of its rare appearances, it's typically delivered in snide fashion. Which is why today's column is a treat -- ostensibly on the increasing odds of the Red Sox improving in 2016 but in fact a true column of contradictions in which The CHB even manages to refute himself in a single paragraph.

With that, on with the show:

Contradiction 1. "[U]nlike last year, the Hub’s hardball high hopes might be rooted in reality rather than ball club propaganda and wishful thinking."

Compare that to April 3, when The CHB's pick to win the AL East was none other than the Orioles saying, "Why does everyone think the Red Sox made up 25 games on these guys?" Which came just a few months after he wrote that the Red Sox should be applauded for spending money.

Those Orioles, by the way, are same team the Red Sox beat three games straight this weekend while allowing ZERO runs, and which the Sox are now in position to relegate to the cellar.

Contradiction 2. "Despite the shattered dreams and yet another lost summer of meaningless games, the Red Sox have managed to make changes and showcase skills that generate legitimate hope for 2016."

What changes, exactly, have they made? A bunch of front office hires who have yet to put their imprint on the team. The other "changes" were made for them: John Farrell started cancer treatment, Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez hit the DL, allowing the Sox the convenience of replacing them with better players (Sandoval and Ramirez had a combined WAR of -2.0 this season). What's really happening is that the Sox are at least playing to their level of ability; it just came too late to make a race of it.

Contradiction 3. "New boss Dave Dombrowski is an old-school baseball guy who’s got prospects, cash, and vision. Now all he has to do is rebuild a terrible pitching staff."

Yet in May and in August this year, The CHB called those same prospects "universally overrated" and "over-valued."

Miley, Porcello and Kelly combined for 4.7 wins above replacement this year. Not great, but hardly "terrible." Buchholz, the guy who wasn't a No. 1 in Shank's eyes, was on a All Star caliber pace (2.7 WAR in 113 innings) before getting hurt. In truth, the starters were decent if occasionally erratic. The bullpen dragged everyone else down.

Contradiction 4. Again on April 3, The CHB predicted the Red Sox would make the wild card this season. If the Sox were so overrated -- "ball club propaganda and wishful thinking" is how he now describes them, why did he pick them for the playoffs?

Contradiction 5. Will Dave Dombrowski trade "some of the coveted prospects who were always overprotected in the slow-moving Cherington regime"? That slow-moving regime produced two outstanding players in Betts and Boegarts (the latter of whom is having one of the six best seasons for a 22 year old shortstop in major league history)

Contradiction 6. "We don’t have enough space here to address the Hanley/Pablo problem."

In October and again in November of 2014, The CHB insisted the Red Sox sign Sandoval. "The Red Sox can’t sign Pablo Sandoval fast enough," he wrote. (For the record, we argued against it.) Sandoval was flat-out awful. Against all odds, Ramirez was even worse. Yet The CHB called his signing a "boffo day." John Henry and Bill James are looking smarter and smarter.

Contradiction 7. All these changes will "undoubtedly vault the Sox back into contender status with media outlets and in Vegas." Besides the O's and Sox, here are the rest of The CHB's picks for the rest of the MLB playoffs were the Tigers, Angels, Indians (wild card), Nationals, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants (wild card), Pirates (wild card), with the Nationals over the O's in the World Series.

How did that compare to the Vegas preseason favorites? In order by division, they were: Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Mariners (WC), Athletics (WC), Nationals, Cardinals, Dodgers, Cubs (WC), Padres (WC).

So not only did Vegas match The CHB with three correct picks each, but Shank did no better in forecasting the World Series participants. So much for old school.

Shank Talk on Orsillo Exit Just a Lot of Hot Air

Looking for threads, The CHB continues to yank John Henry's. But his goal, if he has one (doubtful), remains vague.

In typical hyperbolic fashion, The CHB claims the "firings" of Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino, GM Ben Cherington and announcer Don Orsillo were "classless."

But were they? Let's take them one at a time, shall we?

1. Lucchino: The CHB has repeatedly argued that the Red Sox has underachieved. So, if that's the case -- and three World Series titles in 10 years would bring out the ecstasy of every MLB team, Yankees included -- shouldn't the architect been canned? After all, it was more than a year ago that Shank called him an "absentee owner." Going back to 2013, The CHB said Lucchino deserved blame for the 2011 collapse and 2012 wipeout. And even before that The CHB was claiming Lucchino was on his way out because he didn't have a contract.

Then last month The CHB asserts Larry is bailing because he "just got tired of being there."

Make up your mind, Danny Boy. Was it Lucchino's choice or not? And was it time for him to leave or not?

 2. Cherington: See above. If the team is as bad as The CHB claims it is, why shouldn't the general manager be shown the door? Back in early 2013, The CHB was mocking Cherington was being -- can we say it? -- dumb: "Some of us (me) think Cherington is a little slow-moving for the combustible Lucchino." We can read between those lines. After all, the point of the piece was that Cherington wasn't getting blamed for the Red Sox' 2012 performance, but that he should have been.

3. Orsillo: His contract was also up. And yes, it's a huge shame he is getting the boot. It happens. Before he became the drunken face of the Cubs (something The CHB probably can relate to) Harry Caray was dumped by the Cardinals. His son, Skip, was relegated to Peachtree TV after 20-plus years calling Atlanta Braves games on TBS. The handling of this was inelegant, to say the least, but it happens, even to Hall of Fame announcers.

My take: The CHB has been frozen out of the loop on what remains the region's biggest beat -- the Red Sox -- and he's seething over it. As is his passive-aggressive style, this is his response.

CHB Column Latest Underperformer

Six days after The CHB was laid to waste, scooped on the Dave Dombrowski hiring by the likes of Heidi Watney (!) and David Wade (!!), he picks up the pieces long enough to claim the renewed energy at Fenway owes itself to players worried about losing their jobs.

Who, exactly, is worried remains to be seen.

Pablo Sandoval has a huge contract, and the Red Sox don't have a viable replacement at third base. He ain't worried. Hanley Ramirez has an even huger contract, and while they have lots of outfielders, none of them is making $22 million a year. He ain't worried either.

Dustin Pedroia is injured but the heart and soul of the team and has a contract that runs through 2021. The only guy in the system who might be able to fill his spot today is the current starting centerfielder, Mookie Betts. He ain't worried.

And on it goes. The other underperformers have already been traded (Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino) or released (Justin Masterson), or are on the DL and unlikely to be booted without a long look next spring.

The other myth The CHB tries to push is that the Red Sox are suddenly going to return to the Stone Ages of baseball; that is, when the league RBI leader was the default MVP. Ha! Wonder if Shank knows the difference between the Red Sox and, say the Cardinals and Giants is not their scouts but rather their so-called baseball people NOT taking the stats guys' advice. Keep in mind, it was the stats guys who said don't sign Sandoval. The CHB, on the other hand, made it the platform of his off-season campaign. Who's the smart guy now?

A Cancer in the Clubhouse

All of The CHB's hyperventilating and bloviating over the Red Sox goes for naught now that manager John Farrell has been diagnosed with lymphoma.

But never let Shank miss a golden opportunity to revise history. As Roger linked to below, in today's (last night's) piece The CHB surmises, "[E]ven in bad times Farrell has commanded respect and dodged the slings and arrows that traditionally puncture the man in the corner office on Yawkey Way."

Indeed. Just a couple weeks ago, The CHB was referring to Farrell (among others) as one of the "company men ... headed to their third-last place finish in four seasons" and a "subordinate eager to please the bosses".

Slings and arrows 1, respect 0

And The CHB questioned in late June why Farrell still had a job, asking LArry Lucchino, "Why does he have that support? Again, it looks like he’s a company man, who won’t push back and therefore stays on the job."

Slings and arrows 2, respect 0

Oh yes: There's also all the usual background info on Farrell, a CHB staple, as if no one has heard of Wikipedia (which is probably where he gets it all).

The Boston Red Sox have a cancer in their midst all right, but it writes for the Globe.

Missing the Point (Man)

Larry Lucchino is stepping down as CEO of the Boston Red Sox. How many times has The CHB tried to suggest prematurely this was happening?

Let's see....

Feb. 15, 2015: The CHB claims Mike Gordon has usurped Lucchino in the Boston Red Sox pecking order.
July 8, 2014: Says Lucchino is an "absentee owner."
2012/13: Lucchino does not have a contract with Red Sox.

What's classic is that not only did The CHB get the timing wrong -- and by years -- he also got the replacement wrong. It's Sam Kennedy.

Hall of Shame

The CHB's column on Pedro Martinez's induction today to the Baseball Hall of Fame is sterile in its mindless recitation of Pedro's stats and moronic for calling him, yet again, a diva. Classy.

If there were a Boston Racist Hall of Fame, The CHB would get my vote.

Satire is Reflexive

Satire is reflexive.

As we have routinely called attention to The CHB's flip-flopping and used quotes from his own columns to mock him when events turned out differently than he predicted -- which is almost always -- The CHB is now borrowing from our technique to take aim at Red Sox management.

Unfortunately, just as John Henry and Co. believe(d) mightily in the team -- and at least said so, and to be honest, what else are they supposed to do? -- so too did The CHB.

• “This isn’t quite Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, but I’m applauding this. [T]hey’re putting money back into the payroll. I applaud that. Some of these contracts may not look so good four, five years from now when you see what these guys look like, but I won’t care.”
• It’s OK now to applaud the Sox for spending money and trying to make their team better and more interesting in 2015. What we’ve seen this week is more like the Red Sox of the old days — a team that would spend buckets of cash to take other teams’ best players; the Red Sox who were more like the Yankees than they ever wanted to admit. ... [L]et’s welcome the Red Sox back to relevancy."

• "Pablo Sandoval ... is a 28-year-old switch-hitter who can rake. He can turn on the high fastball, something nobody does anymore. ... He can hit when it matters most. He’s also a cat-like defender."

So there's that.

What's weird is how he continually refers to the 2013 World Series championship as a "fluke." So if winning 95 games plus three playoff series is a fluke, then what were the crash of 2012, the World Series losses in 1967, 1975 and 1986, etc. -- anomalies?

Advice: Don't bother reading the column. Shank jumps back and forth so much among topics, you'll be convinced he didn't take his dementia meds before writing it.

Afterthought: What the hell is with Nick Cafardo? He writes for the umpteenth time that the Red Sox have to start their youth movement, then in the same column says none of the AAA players the Sox have are major league caliber. Note to Nick: Stop sharing a row with The CHB. It's rubbing off.

Flipping for the Sox

The CHB yet once again reminds us that the Red Sox are playing poorly and have no chance this year and is furious that the management won't admit as much.

One would think someone who has written on this topic for as many years as Shank would know by now that 9 games out in June is not a death sentence. Remember '78? That was a 14 game comeback that began in July.

And what's remarkable is that he kind of does(!), as a few grafs down he writes about the Sox going 40-15 following a "particularly animated discussion" between Sox president Larry Lucchino and then manager Terry Francona in the World Series championship year of 2004. So we have a situation where the Sox -- per Shank -- can't win, even though history shows they have.

Here's where Shank really gets stupid: "Some of us are comparing the Hanley-Pablo signings to the Gonzalez-Crawford acquisitions before 2011. You got away from that philosophy, now it feels like you’ve flipped back."

Well, lo and behold, it was none other than The CHB who just last October insisted the "Red Sox can't sign Sandoval fast enough," and was still singing his praises in February called him a player who can "hit when it matters most." Who's the flip-flopper now?

Most absurdly of all, he asks whether the World Series win in 2013 somehow negatively affected the franchise. Are you kidding? Has the bar been set so high that three World Series wins in 10 seasons is now no longer good enough?

And once again The CHB is complaining about the stats guys, never stopping to realize that every team in the major leagues employs an army of statisticians, including favorite sons Giants, who don't make a move without getting the OK from Yesh Goldfarb (seriously, that's his name).

The CHB: Looking more anachronistic by the day.

'Madness in the Spring'

Yesterday it was, could Bob Kraft be assembling a commissioner coup? Today it's "Bob wimped out."

To recap:

• The CHB believes the Patriots cheated and then lied about it.
• The CHB believes the Patriots had its punishment coming if for no other reason they have been guilty of the crime of "arrogance" (which in CHB talk is the same as "winning").
• The CHB believes writing the same column seven or eight times in a row will somehow change people's minds, or not, because we, too, are "arrogant."

Given that the NFL rules don't allow appeals from ownership, the smart thing for Kraft was to concede, so naturally The CHB sees this as a sign of weakness, even though he thinks they are as guilty as OJ.

What I found comical is that Shank has spent multiple columns on the Deflategate story over multiple days in San Francisco and has yet to land an interview with a Patriots player or employee.

There's also this odd Jethro Tull reference thrown in ("Patriot fans spitting out pieces of their broken luck," which is funny in that if anyone has less need for an aqualung, it's The CHB, who is already full of air (and probably has spent more than one afternoon in a boozy haze sitting on a park bench with snot running down his nose).

CSI (CHB's Shitty Investigation)

The mystery behind the Patriots' response to Deflatage deepens, but Dan is on the case!

• Why, for instance, if the Patriots did no wrong, did they suspend two lower-level employees for their roles?

• Will Robert Kraft sue the NFL?

• Could Kraft be working behind the scenes to oust NFL commissioner Roger Goodell?

It's spell-bounding drama, and the way The CHB tells it, readers surely will be on tenterhooks, at least until we learn what in the hell tenterhooks are.

What's telling, of course, is no one is talking to The CHB. The hometown columnist couldn't even score an interview with Kraft, who chose instead to talk with Peter King of Sports Illustrated.

This is where not being a dick would come in handy. Too late for that!

Pucked Up

Overreactors of the world, unite!

The guy who knows nothing about hockey (the time the Holy Cross varsity shoved a puck up his ass as a prank notwithstanding) says it's time to fire the Bruins GM and the coach.

Here's the best part: The CHB says Peter Chiarelli has "bleeped up" the draft every year. Here's a few of the guys who Chiarelli has drafted: Phil Kessel, who finished fifth in goals and sixth in scoring two seasons ago; Tyler Seguin, who finished fifth in goals and 7th in overall scoring this year, and fifth in goals and fourth in overall scoring a year ago; Dougie Hamilton, considered one of the top young blue liners in the league; and David Pastrnak, who at 18 made the big club. If there's a nit to pick, it's that Chiarelli didn't react fast enough to the change in hockey from lumbering to speed, and gave up too soon on the guys who could finish.

Great analysis, Shank!

'Yank'ing a Familiar Chain

It's Red Sox, it's Yankees, it's cliche time!

Starting the counting:

• Teddy Ballgame
• Bucky Dent
• King George
• The House that Jeter Built
• Pedro Martinez tossing aside Don Zimmer

Wait, that's it? Nothing about Johnny Damon, The Rocket, Wade Boggs or Jacoby Ellsbury? Zippo on Nomar sitting out or Manny striking out?

Even The CHB is getting bored with the charade, it seems.