'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.

'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.

Shank On A-Rod

Shank posted this column during the latter innings of last night's 6 - 5 marathon win over the Yankees. It's interesting to note that in this column Rodriguez is treated far better than the Red Sox's DH, complete with Shank's new favorite catchphrase:

NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez is approaching Willie Mays on the all-time home run list and his own team won’t acknowledge this fact.

A-Rod is baseball’s pariah. He is the bubonic plague. Hating on A-Rod is one of America’s favorite parlor games. Even in his own organization.

Rodriguez went 2 for 5 with three strikeouts in Friday night’s Red Sox-Yankees series opener that went deep into the night. It’s weird to see him in uniform again. It’s weird to see him in the Yankee locker room, where he dresses next to Jacoby Ellsbury, a tremendous talent who never gets particularly close to his teammates.

The beloved Yankee stars are all gone. Bernie Williams. Andy Pettitte. Jorge Posada. Mariano Rivera. Finally, Derek Jeter. But A-Rod is back. He is back because the Yankees still owe him a giant bag of money ($61 million through 2017). He is back because he served his one-year suspension. He is back because he’s got nowhere else to go.

Waving Goodbye

As the season winds down for the 2014 Boston Red Sox, as well as Derek Jeter's career, Shank devotes today's column to the retiring Yankees shortstop. Sort of!

Tongue firmly in cheek and dripping with sarcasm, Shank uses the first few paragraphs to take his patented dump on the Olde Town Team:

Welcome to Jeter-palooza. Hub Fans Bid Jetes Adieu. Three final sellouts and more eyeballs diverted from the train wreck of the 2014 Red Sox.

The Red Sox are truly blessed. They’ve managed to finish in last place in two of the last three seasons, but everybody’s still having a swell time singing “Sweet Caroline’’ before the home half of the eighth.

Nobody’s mad at the Local Nine. After all, they’ve won the World Series three times in 10 years and they won it last year and they’re going to bring Jon Lester back (OK, I made that one up) and everybody is happy just to enjoy another day in America’s most beloved ballpark.

Fenway fans don’t mind paying the highest prices in baseball to watch the Pawtucket Red Sox stagger across the finish line in the basement of the once-proud American League East. Now, thanks to Derek Jeter, the ready-for-golf Red Sox and Yankees are the feature game on Fox today, and seats behind the Yankee dugout Sunday are fetching something north of $20,000.

The rest of the column is in fact devoted to Jeter, and the obligatory comparison to Ted Williams is made.

And in case you needed to be reminded about the Red Sox' performance in recent years, Mr. Sunshine drives the point home to wrap things up:

The Red Sox, meanwhile, continue to enjoy the widespread notion that they are a perennial contender. They are not. Since losing the 2008 ALCS to Tampa in 2008, the Sox have won a playoff game in only one of six Octobers. They have not made the playoffs in four of the last five years. Since Sept. 1, 2011, they are an aggregate 24 games under .500.

But never mind all that. Pay no attention to those AL East standings on the Green Monster. The sun is shining and Derek Jeter is here to say goodbye. It’s going to be a great baseball weekend.

Day Late, Column Short

Shank's Saturday column recaps the Thursday night usage of a 'foreign substance' by Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda:

NEW YORK — The problem is . . . everybody does it. Including the Red Sox. This is why Sox manager John Farrell was in no position to cry foul when the whole world saw the pine tar-stained hand of Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda in Thursday’s 4-1 victory over Boston.

Pineda was not “doctoring” the baseball. He was not using pine tar to make the ball do funny things. He was using pine tar to maintain his grip of a slippery baseball on a chilly night. Hitters actually don’t mind. There’s some comfort in knowing that a 6-foot-7-inch, 95-m.p.h.-throwing righthander has some control over where the ball is going.

Generally, you'd write about these things in a more timely manner, wouldn't you? Why not swap Friday's Ellsbury column with this one, or run the Ellsbury column before this series started? The Ellsbury column is one more suited to moving around, but the Pineda column looks to me like one you need to run sooner rather than later.

How Soon He Forgets

So now the Red Sox are the "most endearing, clutch, unlikely, loveable bunch" since the Carl Yastrzemski-led Impossible Dreamers of 1967.

2004, then, must have retreated ever so deeply into the recesses of Shaughnessy's scotch-infused brain. Does it really get more clutch than facing the best closer in the history of baseball while down a run in the ninth inning and down 3-0 in a best of four series against your longtime nemesis, only to come back and win? Sounds like something only Larry Bird could ..., oh wait, now I sound like him.


Suggestion: Never compare your future boss to Tom Yawkey, a notorious racist and likely the leading reason the Sox went 86 years without a World Series crown.

Hits and Misses

The CHB today suggests that by hitting Alex Rodriguez last month, the Red Sox might have kicked a hornet's nest: "We might end up looking back at that particular hit by pitch as part of what turned everything around for the Yankees."

Let's ignore that simply getting A-Rod and his .864 OPS back in the Yankees lineup, replacing the automatic outs they had been trotting out to the hot corner all season, is the rational reason.

And while we are at it, let's also ignore how just last April, The CHB had given up both teams for dead.

Hey trees! There's the forest!

7.5 Games Up, The CHB Finally Gives In

So now he acknowledges it... Little late to jump on the Sox bandwagon, Shankster.

Wrong Again, Redux

“The question now is, 'Who are you going to pick to finish in last place — the Red Sox or the Yankees?' ’’ -- The CHB, March 24, 2013 American League standings as of this afternoon:
EAST	W	L	PCT	GB
Boston	85	57	.599	-
Tampa Bay	77	52	.554	6.5
NY Yankees	75	65	.536	9
Baltimore	74	65	.532	9.5
Toronto	64	76	.457	20

If the Red Sox keep playing like this, The CHB will have to turn his attention to the Celtics in order to find someone to bash.

Doubting Dan

Now he's just being a dick.

The CHB pretends the Red Sox, who bested the Yankees Saturday, are a lovable bunch of resilient overachieving stragglers who have miraculously turned into a better behaved version of the Bad News Bears. They have, it's true, but that's not why Shaughnessy is struggling to keep down copious amounts of bile (as well as a case or two of Bud Lite) to fete them today.

Of course, it's likely he's just being ironic, for The CHB is no more a fan of the Red Sox than he is of hearing the bartenders yell "last call" at The Fours.

But at this point, he's writing not for the reader but for his job, and his career -- if we can call it that -- is now in the hands of one John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox and soon to be owner of The Globe.

Oh to be there when Henry goes Donald Trump on Shank's butt. This is gonna be great!

One Month In, He's Wrong Again

“The question now is, 'Who are you going to pick to finish in last place — the Red Sox or the Yankees?' ’’ -- The CHB, March 24, 2013 American League standings as of this afternoon:
EAST	W	L	PCT	GB	HOME	ROAD	RS	RA	DIFF	STRK	L10
Boston	18	7	.720	-	11-5	7-2	128	88	+40	Won 5	7-3
NY Yankees	15	9	.625	2.5	9-4	6-5	112	97	+15	Won 4	7-3
Baltimore	15	10	.600	3	7-5	8-5	129	104	+25	Lost 1	7-3
Tampa Bay	12	13	.480	6	8-4	4-9	103	97	+6	Won 2	7-3
Toronto	9	17	.346	9.5	5-8	4-9	95	130	-35	Lost 4	2-8