It's Quiz Time!

Shank does a columnin the tradition of 'dumping out the sports drawer' and he came up with an interesting local sports quiz:

If I used these old Boston sports references, would you know what I mean?

I can’t prove it, but think it all started in the 1980s when Billy Crystal (remember him?) was doing stand-up and told a joke about his young daughter asking him, “Daddy, did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?”

This is the challenge for the aging newspaper columnist.

Wait. Did I say “newspaper”?

I mean, how can we assume anyone on our digital platform knows what a newspaper is? Many of them have never handled one. It breaks my heart today when I walk into local television newsrooms and there is no newspaper to be found.

...

Try this: Here are 17 notes, quotes, names, sites, and numbers unique to the 20th century Boston sports experience. How many require an explanation?

1. “Six, two, and even.”

2. Ben Dreith.

3. “Too late!”

4. “We’ll win more than we lose.”

5. Rene Rancourt.

6. 13,909.

7. “Mercy.”

8. .406.

9. “Curly-haired boyfriend.”

10. Sherm Feller.

11. McFilthy and McNasty.

12. Margo Adams.

13. The Iron Horse.

14. The Can’s Film Festival.

15. The Victory Tour.

16. “Pumped and jacked.”

17. Eliot Lounge.

Answers:

One More For The Road

A bit out of sequence, but this one was the Patriots - Bills pregame column:

The Buffalo-Boston sports history is glittered with, well, not much

Buffalo-Boston. Sports History for $200.

What have we got?

How about the beloved C. Montgomery Burns/Jeremy Jacobs owning the Bruins and running Boston’s vaunted hockey franchise from Buffalo since 1975?

How about scoring-machine Bob McAdoo and NBA rookie of the year Ernie DiGregorio leading the Buffalo Braves against the John Havlicek-Dave Cowens-Jo Jo White Celtics in the first round of the 1974 playoffs? It took the Celtics six games to beat the Braves. Tommy Heinsohn’s championship-bound Celts had to go through Buffalo again in 1976. Two years later, there was a complicated NBA ownership/franchise swap where the Celtics stayed put and the Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego.

How about when the Buffalo Sabres and the French Connection line played vs. Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins in the early 1970s? Anybody remember the Terry O’Reilly-coached Bruins beating Buffalo in a six-game set en route to the Stanley Cup Finals in the spring of 1988?

Inversion

At last - Shank comes up with a decent column!

In the sports-world pecking order, Tampa has left us in New England behind

They don’t have Duck Boats in Tampa. Or Swan Boats. Or Harvard. Or Yo-Yo Ma. Or Fenway Park.

But you know what they do have?

Better teams than we have.

That’s right. In an unthinkable inversion, Tampa is Titletown and we are Loserville. I can’t seem to get my big head around this new reality. We’ve mocked them for decades. Now they own us. The Lightning beat the Bruins in the playoffs. The Rays beat the Red Sox every year. Tom Brady is going to the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

How does that taste, Boston?

Now that I think about it, he's just trolling us again, but not without reason.

Both Sides Of His Mouth

Wow - this column is classic Shaughnessy! The U.S. Olympic Committee is looking for a chump loser host city for the 2024 Summer Olympics and for some ungodly reason, chose Boston as the potential host city.

Let's hear more from Shank, still catching his breath:

The winning streak continues. The High Renaissance of Boston sports is extended, perhaps all the way to 2024, which would represent the full first quarter of the 21st century.

It’s not just about the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins anymore. The United States Olympic Committee Thursday selected Boston as the city that America will put forward for consideration as the host for the 2024 Summer Games.

Two years from now, the International Olympic Committee will select a host city from among a field that is expected to include Rome, Paris, Berlin . . . and Boston, the Sports Hub of the Universe.

Funny, that's not what he was saying six months ago:

Stop the madness. Please. Can we have no more noise about the Olympics coming to Boston in 2024? Can we cease and desist with the preposterous notion that this is a reasonable, fiscally-feasible project?

We do not need the Summer Olympics. We already are a world-class city. What we need is bridge repair, housing, better public schools, an improved MBTA, and programs for the disenfranchised. We need better ways to get in and out of our city. We do not need an event that would strangle us financially and logistically for decades.

So, like our former Senator John Kerry, he was against it, before he was for it!

Examined logically, nothing that Shank raised as concerns has happened in those six months - no bridges were repaired, no schools got better, no improvements on the MBTA - that would cause a rational person to change his opinion on this issue. And then there's Shank...

But wait! What's this bit, further down today's column?

And yet the committee selected Boston, a clogged city with a cranky constituency, no downtown stadium, and a well-oiled resistance (I remain a card-carrying member) to the wild and crazy notion of hosting the Olympics.

So, now he likes the idea of Boston hosting the Olympics, but just not the event itself. Got it!

Cry Me a Rivers

In his writeup today on Doc Rivers' return to Boston, The CHB pulls out seemingly every last player or coach to leave Boston -- any sport -- in the past 20 years.

• Bill Parcells? Check.
• Johnny Damon? Check.
• Ray Allen? Check.
• Terry Francona? Check.

 It just goes on and on like that.

• Grady Little? Check.
• Dave Lewis? (Seriously, does anyone remember him? Or care?) Check. 
• M.L. Carr? Check.
• Bill Fitch? Check.
• John McNamara. Check.

Oddly, he omits the insta-cliche of Rick Pitino, who isn't walking through that door.

But guess who does walk through The CHB door? Larry Bird. (You knew it was coming, didn't you?)

Making The Rounds

During the "holiday" season, Shank normally treats us to a few human interest stories, the only type of Globe column he's seemingly able to write with any consistent quality. Today, he's finally out of the box with a story about Children's Hospital Boston. An unusual thing about this particular column is its length - 3 pages total.

I guess not even Shank can be all asshole, all the time, or is that what he wants us to think?

Nothing Else Matters

This week's CNN / SI column focuses on the NFL and how it crowds out other sports this time of the year. The early portion of the column exhibits Shank's continuing man crush on Tom Brady, and there's also some 'sampling' from an earlier Shank column, which doubles as a sorry excuse for rapier wit:

In this century, Brady is New England's Michael Jackson. He is Brady Gaga.

There are fewer things more pathetic than being pleased with your own cleverness; I just can't think of them right now...

Who Cares About College Football?

According to Shank, it's not us. Although college football was "practically invented in the northeast", Shank assures us that we are a professional sports town. It's not the first time Shank has expressed such an opinion (I'm unable to locate previous articles stating this sentiment with respect to college football), and Shank also throws in the seeming disinterest in local college basketball and hockey to bolster this argument.

While it may be difficult to actually gauge or quantify levels of interest between college and pro sports in this neck of the woods, Shank provides many examples of the past popularity of college football (roughly dating from 1920 to the Flutie-era BC Eagle football teams) and the more recent dearth of college sports coverage in print and radio. It's likely that shift is attributable in part or in whole to the likes of Yaz, Orr, Bird & Brady. I don't agree with him on the John Calipari era UMass teams, probably because this is where I started following college basketball. While I follow college and pro sports (currently half-watching the Navy - Maryland football game), I think there are more occasions where the pro games (of all types) seem to be bigger events, and perhaps more numerous, than their college counterparts. For example, (end of September - early October) even with the Red Sox out of playoff contention, the Red Sox - Yankees series will always draw like a magnet, or the Patriots playing a division rival. To quote Shank,

That's just the way it goes. We are a professional sports town.

A reasonable statement; I'm just not entirely convinced.

Marathon Man

Shank covers two Boston sporting events on Monday:

Early in the afternoon, there were thousands of people running toward Kenmore Square, their faces twisted, their pain obvious at the end of an excruciating ordeal. Some needed medical treatment.

Those were the Red Sox fans, beating feet out of Fenway Park after another hideous (8-2) loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Marathon runners? Most of them were doing pretty well by comparison. Running 26.2 miles is a piece of cake compared with watching the local baseball team these days. In April 2010, the Fenway mound is Heartbreak Hill.

The Sorry State Of Massachusetts

Shank went to the Beanpot on Monday night and couldn't get 'fired up' about it:

I went to the Beanpot last night and tried to get fired up about the whole thing.

...

Here’s what really killed me. Last night’s Harvard roster had only one guy from Massachusetts (Chris Huxley of Weymouth). Harvard had 11 players from Canada, one from Sweden, and one from Croatia. Boston University, last year’s national champion, featured two kids from Massachusetts (out of 21). Northeastern had four Bay Staters and Boston College a whopping 11.

Not to sound like a WTKK talk show host, but the lack of locals took something out of it for me. What happened to the days of Peabody’s Bobby Carpenter on the cover of Sports Illustrated? The days of Charlestown’s Jackie O’Callahan, Scituate’s Dave Silk, and Winthrop’s Mike Eruzione winning Olympic gold? Jim Craig going from Oliver Ames to Boston University to Lake Placid?

I don't know; times change, perhaps?

Sports, Politics And Revenge

That's how Shank sums up the attitude in Massachusetts in his latest CNN / SI column. It's a good enough article, but we now start to see the seeping in of elements that make Shank one of the best in the business.

Add one teaspoon of condescension:

That's right boys, and girls. She said that Curt Schilling was a Yankee fan. And that closed the curtain on her bid for the U.S. Senate.

...a few shots at Curt Schilling:

Most recently Schilling has mixed sports and politics in Boston. A dedicated Republican, never shy about giving his opinion, the big Blowhard actually considered running for Kennedy's seat in the early weeks after the congressional lion passed away. Ever the glory hound, he announced he wasn't running on HBO's Joe Buck Live.

...throw in a few misspellings:

...Celtics owner Steve Pagliacu (should be Pagliuca)...
...Fred Smerles (should be Smerlas)...

...add overstatement that could easily get past a chin-stroking, head-nodding Boston Globe editor:

Oh, and then there's this fellow named Tom Brady.

Brady has it all. He's got the looks, the charisma, the fame and he's remained politically neutral on just about everything. He got into a little hot water when he accepted an invitation to one of George Bush's State of the Union addresses, but has otherwise steered clear of polarizing issues.

And we have what resembles your standard Globe product.

Question for Shank: are Republican presidents the only kind of president whose issues are polarizing?

The Great Column Convergence begins...

Not That He's Bitter Or Anything

Enough of the human interest stories! Today, we must vent our spleens!

INDIANAPOLIS - It’s always about us, and therefore this AFC Championship game must be viewed through the prism of Patriot Place.

Colts-Jets.

Ugh.

Any way both of these teams can lose today?

Let’s start with the ugly dateline. The AFC Championship game is being played at Lucas Oil (Can Boyd) Stadium in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, the heart of the heartland. That’s a big bowl of wrong. We all know this game should be played annually at the Razor off Route 1 in Foxborough.

And on it goes. Apparently it's not a bad enough game for Shank not to go to Lucas Oil (Can Boyd) Stadium. Read on to see what people and things Shank hates. It's the abbreviated list...

Reverting To Form

Shank's eight CNN / SI article is a semi-decent read of the upcoming New Year's hockey game between the Bruins and the Flyers. Longtime Shankophiles will recognize trademark Shank elements throughout the article: Beatles & Stones references, bemoaning hockey as less popular as football, baseball & basketball (ignoring his own lack of articles on hockey vs. the other sports), crapping on Red Sox ownership for committing the high crime of revenue generation, and reusing portions of a previous column to help him write this column. Can't say I'm terribly surprised with this 'effort'...

Hello, Dan ... You Must Be Going

The above title is an offshoot of a quote from the mouth of the inimitable Groucho Marx.

Although I never envisioned becoming a part of this site -- aside from entering my comments regarding other postings -- I've changed my mind, essentially because Dan has berated me for "being unfair" to him in my book, It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement and the Curse of the Bambino.

I find that accusation both amusing and ironic since Dan has acquired the nickname "Shank" through his relentless and seemingly vindictive attacks on others. Perhaps the best example of this is Curt Schilling, whom Shank continues to shamelessly refer to in his columns. Apparently Curt (another abrasive personality who can easily get under one's skin) upset Dan after his trade to Boston in November, 2003, when he refused to cuddle up to the Shankster.

So, even though Dan lauded Schilling's acquisition by the Boston Red Sox, Curt quickly gained Shank's enmity. From that point onward, Schilling became a moving (and, sometimes, a stationary) target of Dan's. Dan has accused Schilling of "channeling" through a psychotic Astros pitcher who physically attacked his general manager, and of taking millions from the Sox last year even though he knew his shoulder was blown out and couldn't pitch.

Despite the fact that the Red Sox braintrust refuted those claims, Shank never saw it fit to correct that particular charge. I'm sorry, but, Dan, that's unfair! In subsequent postings I'd like to endeavor to illustrate how Dan never saw fit to correct the many, many pieces of misinformation in his tome, The Curse of the Bambino, even though it's in it's 21st printing (at last count), and Shank's gotta know that much of his fairy tale is flat out wrong!

I personally have been pilloried by at least one Dan apologist for refuting the so-called "Curse" even though it's been done before by other authors, albeit in much shorter form. Be that as it may, the myth needed to be buried once and for all.

And Dan really ought to send a "thank you" letter to my publisher, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., of New York City, since its editor seriously watered down my chapter on the Boston sports media. Otherwise, Shank might have sent a Holy Cross hitman after me.

Finally (for now), I'm using my real personal information to back up my involvement on this website. For one thing, I think that's only fair and proper. A secondary reason, frankly, is I've got a book to promote. And, just for the record, since Dan loves to slam bloggers and Internet addicts, I'm not some cretin holed up in my basement -- we don't have a basement ... we live outside of Atlanta -- endlessly logged on. Our office is off our living room, and that's where our computer is!