DHL Dan CLXIV - Haunted

Thre's always one player or manager on the Red Sox that's in Shank's doghouse - Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Grady Little, Manny Ramirez, Theo Epstein, Josh Beckett and John Lackey (the 'chicken & beer' guys), Bobby Valentine, Jacoby Ellsbury, David Ortiz and a host of others. This year's scapegoat is hard-luck pitcher Chris Sale, who has yet to pitch for the Sox this year. Why let a mere detail like that get in the way of a good rip job?

The Chris Sale contract continues to haunt the Red Sox, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for Reese McGuire to make a throw when an Oriole is stealing a base …

▪ At this moment, Chris Sale’s contract extension — inked in the sugar-high spring of 2019 when the Red Sox could have waited to measure his health — is the worst signing in Boston sports history.

It’s worse than deals given to Rusney Castillo or Pablo Sandoval. Worse than Carl Crawford or Matt Young. Way worse than David Price or Daisuke Matsuzaka. Worse than Vin Baker, Pervis Ellison, Antoine Walker, or even Rick Pitino. Worse than Kevin Stevens, Marty Lapointe, or Adalius Thomas.

Them's fighting words - there was never a worse signing than Rick Pitino, whose awful reign was the equivalent of burning the Celtics to its foundations, then salting the earth where the dying embers lay. I'm also deducting a style point for Shank not mentioning Curt Schilling's last contract.

Sale delivered in his first two seasons in Boston and got the final out of the 2018 World Series. This isn’t about that. This is about the non-yield since the Sox went out of their way to lock him up in that fateful spring.

This is also the eight time Shank's mentioned / complained about Sale's contract 'since that fateful spring', a pinata of Shank's which always delivers a few treats whenever he whacks it.

Fixing The Red Sox

In the latter part of the 2022 baseball season, the Boston Red Sox are in last place in the American League East. Shank actually has a column devoted to constructive criticism of the team:

Some suggestions on how to fix the broken Red Sox for 2023

How do we fix the Red Sox for 2023?

Here’s a thought for starters … how about ownership opens up its wallet and spends some money?

Only let’s do it wisely this time.

The last-place Red Sox, who proudly remind you they won four World Series in this century, have become a bottom-line-based operation. True, they still have a ridiculously high payroll, but that’s from mistakes going back to 2019 when Dave Dombrowski was giving out multimillion-dollar contracts (hello, Chris Sale) like M&Ms. The Sox are still paying David Price, for gosh sakes.

Since Dombro was fired and gave way to Chaim Bloom, the Sox have been dumpster divers — ever in search of a deal, always trying to turn another team’s trash into treasure. They’ve had a few hits with Nick Pivetta, Garrett Whitlock, Christian Arroyo (when he’s healthy), and John Schreiber, but mostly it’s been misses.

Head Of The Class

Shank banged this one out a bit before the other Kyrie Irving column:

Right now, Kyrie Irving in a class by himself in being hated by Boston sports fans

There are two categories when we get into athletes who are hated by Boston sports fans.

Category No. 1 includes natural-born enemies of our teams. Guys such as Bill Laimbeer, Ulf Samuelsson, Manny Machado, Alex Rodriguez, LeBron James, and Peyton Manning. Easy targets, one and all.

The second group is the house of hombres who played or coached here in New England, eventually wore out their welcome, and left a trail of bad feelings when they moved to new destinations. This group would include Roger Clemens, Bill Parcells, Carl Crawford, David Price . . . and Kyrie Irving.

Kyrie, who spent two wild and unsatisfactory seasons in Boston, made the key plays in a fourth-quarter surge and scored 29 points in a 104-93 Game 1 Brooklyn playoff victory over the Celtics Saturday. Wearing green shoes, as if to taunt Boston again, Irving combined with superstar teammates Kevin Durant (32 points) and James Harden (21) to put the .500 Celtics into the fast lane for a quick exit from the 2021 NBA playoffs.

It's a good column in part because he lets Kyrie do the talking, which leads to interesting results.

Like He Really Cares

Shank's trying to bullshit us again:

A year ago at this time, all we cared about was the Bruins’ shot at the Stanley Cup

Remember the last weekend in May of 2019? One year ago? It felt like the only thing that mattered was Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals, featuring the St. Louis Blues and your Boston Bruins in a packed TD Garden on Causeway Street.

Here on the Globe sports pages, we had you covered from crease to crease and everywhere in between. We talked to Bobby Orr about his memories of playing the the Blues in the Finals way back in 1970. Orr spoke of the old days, then went out of his way to defend 42-year-old defenseman Zdeno Chara, who was getting some criticism on local sports radio.

"I've been hearing a lot of crap recently about Z,'' said Orr, who rarely says anything controversial. "Are you kidding me?''

In that same Sunday sports section, we had a lengthy profile of Chara written by Christopher L. Gasper (whatever happened to that guy?). We had a nifty account of a Red Sox loss to the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. The story was accompanied by a photo of Red Sox manager Alex Cora making a mound visit to talk things over with Sox lefty David Price (whatever happened to those two guys?). The Red Sox were 27-25, still claiming that it wasn’t a mistake to shut down all of their starters throughout spring training.

Yes, indeed - lots of Bruins coverage at the Boston Globe. Shank cared so much about the Bruins / Blues Stanley Cup finals he didn't write a column about the series until the Bruins lost in Game 2, three days after Shank's purported interest in the series. For the record, Shank did columns for the remaining games, but let's not try to rewrite history here by claiming ex post facto that he gave a shit until the Bruins lost, which is classic Shaughnessy.

Classic Media Overreaction, Part Deux

Shank continues to peddle the notion that health related clubhouse restrictions are impeding his ability to do his job, among other notions:

Trying to keep you informed — while keeping our distance — at Red Sox camp

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Nomar Garciaparra was ahead of his time. Come to think of it, maybe David Price can come back to the Red Sox now.

Monday morning was Day One of having no reporters in the clubhouse at spring training. It was the same at every NBA, NHL, and MLS locker room in North America. The coronavirus has temporarily (perhaps) created an atmosphere that players crave. Can’t say that I blame them. Who would want all those prying eyes when you are at your workplace?

Let the record show that I was one of the last reporters to darken the doorstep of the Red Sox clubhouse at JetBlue Park before the ban was announced Monday night.

I bolded that word above for a few reasons. One of them is my omission from yesterday's post that this thought of a permanent clubhouse ban is bollocks. He started out his last column in the same way before he more or less backtracked and by the end said he hoped it wouldn't be for long. It's part of his routine, basically...

It was an uneventful experience, but I’ll tell you about it anyway since I may be the last Globie ever to work the Red Sox room at JetBlue.

It all starts to fall apart when the next chunk of the column talks about Shank's interactions with Red Sox players and personnel, some of whom had to split to catch a bus for last night's game against the Braves, and there were four of them. Maybe this number should be at six to eight because now all the Red Sox players can use this excuse to avoid Shaughnessy. Excellent!

Further - what the new rule(s) actually are:

A few hours after my last loop in the locker room, the Red Sox PR staff sent out a media advisory regarding Tuesday access, stating, “The media relations staff will bring players and coaches out to the media bench between 9:15-10:15 a.m.” The memo advised reporters to request players in advance, and stated, “A minimum distance of 6 feet needs to be kept between the player/coach speaking to reporters.” (I think the Shaughnessy Rule is 10 feet.)

My 'Shaughnessy Rule' is 10 miles - what's yours?

Reporters who requested interviews dutifully gathered by the outdoor interview bench at 9:15 Tuesday morning. They waited for just under two hours. In that time, the only players produced were Barnes and Brandon Workman, at the request of the Associated Press.

Even though this particular one was short on player availability, this would be called at worst 'limited access', correct? Shaughnessy, contrary to the last column's conclusion, clearly thinks otherwise:

Welcome to Nomar Nirvana. More fists. More elbows. No handshakes. No high-fives. No spitting.

And no reporters in the clubhouse.

Except for the ones six feet from the podium! His 'concerns' are exaggerated and overblown, like that of the rest of his media brethren on this subject.

Shank's National Pasttime

... is kicking a team when they're down:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Baseball’s cheating scandal just keeps getting worse. And the Red Sox have it hanging over their heads as they go to work on a season made more difficult by the salary dump of Mookie Betts and David Price.

The cheating Houston Astros — who have shot past the Patriots as the most hated team in America — conducted a hideous press conference in West Palm Beach Thursday that left more questions than answers.

Astros owner Jim Crane spoke, as did new manager Dusty Baker, and we listened to brief prepared statements from Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve, two of the cheatin’ ’Stros who won a World Series in 2017 while employing an electronic sign-stealing system that regularly allowed their hitters to know what pitch was coming.

Shank Pretends To Hate The Mookie Betts Trade

Shank's starting out the 2020 Boston Red Sox season in fine form:

What a week.

What a winter.

What a team.

Desperate for relevance, backpedaling after a wildly unpopular deal that angered the fan base like nothing since Grady Little didn’t lift Pedro Martinez (or perhaps when Haywood Sullivan forgot to mail Carlton Fisk’s contract), the Red Sox officially begin spring training Wednesday at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Fla.

Almost a full week after initially agreeing to trade Mookie Betts and David Price to the Dodgers, Chaim Bloom finally met with the media at JetBlue Monday and essentially made the same request that ownership did when it was learned that the commissioner’s office was investigating the Red Sox for allegations of cheating in the 2018 season:

Love, Unrequited

Check out this slobberfest from Shank to soon to be departing Red Sox pitcher, David Price:

Dear David Price,

Hope you and the family are doing well and looking forward to your future with the Los Angeles Dodgers. There’s plenty of noise about the trade back here in Boston, and fans are quite upset about the Red Sox dealing Mookie. I have tried to explain that they are going to miss you as well, but most of them aren’t buying.

Looking back, I still can’t understand what happened with you here in Boston.

Why did you hate it so much?

Can't afford a fuckin' mirror, Shank? Snark aside, I'm having trouble coming up with an athlete for whom Shank washed his balls so thoroughly the entire time he was in Boston. And if that's not enough bogus mental imagery to ruin your appetite, I'll do better next time!

One of these things is not like the others:

Why did you make things so difficult for yourself? I know this can be a tough place to play, but you made it much harder by being sulky and stubborn. Every day. It encouraged folks to overlook significant contributions you made in your four seasons.
...
I loved your game when you pitched for the Rays, Jays, and Tigers. I loved it when you stood up to David Ortiz after Big Papi pimped a couple of homers in the playoffs. You seemed like a thoughtful guy with great talent who would be a good fit here. But you were not. It was a disaster. You didn’t like it here and the fans didn’t like you.

The passive / aggressive routine continues on, if you're into that sort of thing - Shank sure is.

He's Got His Number

Thirteen weeks into the 2019-2020 pro football season, Shank writes something complimentary about the New England Patriots:

HOUSTON — New Englanders love this place. This is where 28-3 happened in February 2017 and where the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick Patriots won their second Super Bowl in February 2004. Houston is where the 2018 Red Sox eliminated the cheatin’ Houston Astros in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series on a night when David Price beat Justin Verlander. It’s where Larry Bird won his first NBA championship in May 1981 and where Roger Clemens learned how to throw a fastball in the 1970s. Houston was headquarters to our space program when Derry, N.H.’s Alan Shepard walked on the moon in 1971.

And it is the home of the Houston Texans, a sometimes formidable football team that is constitutionally incapable of beating the New England Patriots.

So, here we go again. We are Lucy holding the football and the Texans are Charlie Brown lining up for a kick, ever hopeful that it will be different this time. But everyone knows it will not be different.

Lots of Shank staples in this one - there's a Larry Bird reference, lots of references to other sports and the signature reuse of previous columns, so there's your triple play for the day.

The Provincial Shaughnessy - A Continuing Series

Here's another column template for which Shank has based countless columns on - it's all about Boston!

HOUSTON — The Houston Astros and Washington Nationals are engaged in the 115th World Series and a lot of folks in Boston have tuned out because the games are too late, the pace is too slow and . . . in case you hadn’t noticed . . . the Red Sox are not here.

But the Sox are always here, don’t you know? Everything in life traces back to New England and the Red Sox. So here’s a clip-and-save, handy-dandy guide to how New England and the Red Sox are represented in a Astros-Nationals World Series:

And this is part of what Shaughnessy considers 'representation':

■ If the Nationals win the World Series it might help the Red Sox in their PR campaign if they have to trade Mookie Betts. Bryce Harper was The Franchise for Washington, but the Nats couldn’t re-sign him and then went out and won the National League pennant anyway. A championship for the Nats makes it easier for the Sox to justify trading their best player. They can point to Washington and say, “Look what happened after the Nationals lost Harper.” Meanwhile, if you are thinking about a logical place to trade Betts, consider the White Sox.

■ The Red Sox have David Price in the middle of a seven-year contract that pays him $31 million per season. Chris Sale next year starts a five-year, $145 million deal that puts him on the threshold of Price. This series has Stephen Strasburg (seven years, $175 million), Max Scherzer (seven years, $210 million), Zack Greinke (six years, $206.5 million), and Justin Verlander (two years, $66 million). It also has Houston righty Gerrit Cole, who is a free agent and will be making more than any of them by the time spring training rolls around.

To save the reader some time, these two brief examples purporting to demonstrate how 'the Red Sox are always here' - baseless speculation and player salary comparison that amounts to a huge non sequitur, for lack of a better way to explain the useless nature of that comparison. There are other attributes of this column that make it suck like a bilge pump but you don't need me to point the rest of them out, as you may be familiar with them by now. If he was trying to make a convincing case about this series being 'the Red Sox are always here', he fails poorly.

Looks Like I Didn't Miss Much Here

I just got out of the hospital after spending five days at Beth Israel Deaconess for a cardiovascular problem that's been largely resolved. My normal daily routine involves reading lots of blogs and websites and small amounts of TV for keeping up on news and current events. Instead I watched a lot of CNBC, Bloomberg Business, ESPN, the Travel Channel and Discovery Channel. The latter two channels were amusing in that if there's an episode on with strange unexplained natural phenomena like crop circles or some such, it was explained by 'could it be... ALIENS???'

By way of contrast, Dan Shaughnessy is quite predictable to the point of boredom and parody, hence the reasons this website's been around for fifteen years now. How predictable is he? Well, I'll let him tell it:

Keeping up with the times is a challenge for this ancient sportswriter

We are all young when we start in this business of writing about professional sports; younger than the players.

I remember being petrified and intimidated, trying to ask questions of grizzled vet Carl Yastrzemski when I was 21 years old in 1975.

Dave Cowens — only four years older than me — was already an NBA MVP by the time I got to his locker in 1976. He told me my inquiry was a “high school question.’’ He was right. I was nervous, nerdy, and not ready.

Now I go into those same rooms and most of the players are younger than my own children.

I turned 66 last month. This means I am three times older than Rafael Devers. Not a little bit older. Not twice as old. Three times as old. For every day Rafael Devers has been on this earth, I have been here three days.
…
But now I am three times older than Rafael Devers and I’m still here. (Don’t get your hopes up, this is not a retirement announcement.)

So much for the early Christmas present!

Actually, it's a pretty good column and that could be from a number of factors - he's not shitting on one of the local pro teams & players, and... well, maybe that's the only compelling factor. We see this 'old grizzled veteran sportswriter' type of column every couple of months, one of his half-dozen or so column templates.

Then again, his other column is right back to the business at hand - complaining about the Red Sox:

The Red Sox foolishly rested their starting pitchers in March and April in expectation that they would have more in the tank for October.

Now there is not going to be an October, so Alex Cora probably will be able to shut down Chris Sale and David Price in the final weeks of this lost season.

Sunday at Fenway was one of those maddening losses that so typifies this annoying Red Sox season. The S.S. Dombrowski extended its trip to nowhere and made it clear that there will be no games for this team in October.

In summary, what we don't have here is a case of plus ca change - it just stays the same, without ever changing, and that's Shank in a nutshell.

That's A Big 10-4

Here's Shank getting an easy column out of David Price reigniting his 'feud' with Dennis Eckersley:

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — I’ve never really found it hard to take sides in the David Price-Dennis Eckersley dust-up. Price is a talented baby who feels he is being a good teammate and a tough guy when he rips Eckersley. A bewildered Eckersley, who never wants to talk about it, just shrugs his shoulders and wonders about his nonsensical nemesis in the Sox clubhouse.

“He’s my new Kirk Gibson,’’ Eckersley said with a laugh Saturday in Cooperstown, N.Y. “Everywhere I go people are asking me about David Price, telling me what he said about me. For years, I carried the Gibson thing around. Everybody was droppin’ a Gibson on me. Now I got this. I don’t get it.’’

No one understands it. But let’s get one thing straight: This is not a back-and-forth feud. This is Price — twice in three years — going out of his way to attack Eckersley. Eck has never fired back and he’s not firing back now. He initiated none of it and studiously avoids the topic. I tried to get him to talk about it again Saturday with no luck. Eck just wants to enjoy his life, his grandchildren, and his broadcast career. He’s recovered from alcoholism, broken marriages, and surrendering one of the most famous home runs in World Series history. A few mean words from a petulant millionaire lefty can’t hurt him.

Agreed - Price is acting like a jerkoff and he should just can it.

The One Where Shank Starts To Turn On David Price?

Shank's been pretty supportive of Red Sox pitcher David Price ever since the Sox signed him three and a half years ago. That appears to be changing.

Fellow Boston Globe baseball reporter Chad Finn is doing a story on former MLB ace and current NESN announcer Dennis Eckersley and the 2017 'feud' between Eckersley and Price has now become the focal point, at least for some people around here:

I mean David Price won a World Series here and Eck did not, so I guess the fans can rally around him now in this weird feud. Here he basically implies nobody likes Eck past or present, but he has lots of friends that will say nice things about him after he retires. Cool, I guess https://t.co/2RbtS4MD2q

— Matt Dolloff (@mattdolloff) July 17, 2019

I interviewed people for the story and didn't use anything they said because there was so much universal praise for him that it got redundant. Jim Rice loves him. Remy. Buddy Bell. He's a son to La Russa. Scott Sanderson, who recently passed away, loved him On and on ... https://t.co/HuyMbB8QCN

— Chad Finn (@GlobeChadFinn) July 17, 2019

Further, the MLB doc included interviews with ex-teammates Ron Darling, Bruce Hurst, Mark (And I'm Mark) McGwire, Ray Fosse, and Fred Lynn, among others. https://t.co/13Gx5VDl8G

— Chad Finn (@GlobeChadFinn) July 17, 2019

Naturally, Shank has to weigh in with a tweet that demonstrates a lack of self-awareness:

David Price thinks he holds the cards. Then why be such a jackass? https://t.co/vY7eeFsdDn

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 17, 2019

There are plenty of things that Shank's written about over the years that make him look like a jackass, so let's savor that irony for now. Further down the road, if the Red Sox can't land a playoff spot and Price winds up pitching poorly, expect Shank's criticism of Price to reach the point where he'll become the next Red Sox player to be run out of town by His Shankness.

UPDATE AT 5:40 PM - Sure looks like Shank's setting the table to eventually run David Price out of town when the time is right:

Just spoke with Bruce Cornblatt, sr. producer of MLB Eck Doc. Said, "I came away feeling Eck's teammates all loved him. We got 100 % cooperation from those we asked. Hurst, Fosse, Darling, McGwire, Lynn, Remy.We didn't ask many. By design. This was supposed to be Eck on Eck.''

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 17, 2019

Re-establishing that Price doesn’t know what he’s talking about https://t.co/H950NZa8RZ

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 17, 2019

My My, He's Full Of Shit

Either that, or Shank's turned in his best ever troll job:

The 108th Fenway Park Opening Day is Tuesday, and we have so many questions.

Will Dustin Pedroia make his 2019 debut and start at second base? Will Gronk throw out the ceremonial first pitch? Will Chris Sale crack 93 miles per hour on the gun? Will Jackie Bradley Jr. crawl over the Mendoza Line?

The Red Sox are in last place and have the worst run differential (minus-26) in all of baseball. Only four teams have made more errors, and Boston’s five-man pitching rotation (aggregate salary: $88 million) has an ERA of 9.13. Will any of the Red Sox get booed in the wake of the club’s abysmal 3-8 slog through Seattle, Oakland, and Phoenix?

“I don’t think anybody has ever gotten their World Series rings and gotten booed,’’ said David Price, a man who knows a thing or two about getting booed in Boston.

As one who traditionally sees the glass as half-full, I am here to tell you that there will be no boos before the game at Fenway Tuesday.

See what I mean?

The Obligatory David Price Spring Training Column

Shank's back to writing about the Red Sox, albeit in a predictable spring training sort of way:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It’s all quiet now for David Price. He is just another very good major league pitcher who makes a lot of money. He is just another World Series champ in a clubhouse with 21 other guys who can make the same claim. He is just another former Cy Young winner on a starting staff peppered with puffy résumés.

Perhaps most important, Price has passed the Boston pro sports terrible temperament torch to Kyrie Irving.

When discussing Price, no ever talks about Fortnite or Dennis Eckersley or postseason choking anymore. No one says, “Yuck.’’

Thanks for brining all of that stuff up again, Shank!

The Obligatory David Price Spring Training Column

You folks know the drill by now with the spring training columns, right?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — David Price changed his uniform number from 24 to 10 during the offseason.

“You’ll figure it out,’’ a playful Price said a couple of times during his first media session at JetBlue Park Thursday morning.

Hmmm, No. 10. No. 10. Homage to the late, great Celtics guard Jo Jo White perhaps? Maybe a measure of respect for Rich Gedman, an underrated two-time All-Star from Worcester who caught for the Red Sox in the 1980s?

UPDATE, 2/16/2019 AT 7:50 AM - Forgot the link to the story; like you're gonna read the whole column, right?

The 2018 World Series Champs

Shank writes a decent column about the winners - the 2018 Boston Red Sox:

LOS ANGELES — You can go back to bed now, New England. There’ll be no more late October nights watching the Red Sox thrash assorted Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers.

The 2018 baseball season is over and the Boston Red Sox are World Series champions for the fourth time in 15 seasons. Led by David Price’s seven-plus stellar innings and home runs by Steve Pearce (two), Mookie Betts, and J.D. Martinez, the Sox defeated the Dodgers, 5-1, in Dodger Stadium (a.k.a. “Fenway West”) Sunday night, winning the 114th Fall Classic in dominant fashion.

So there. New England has another masterpiece for its professional sports High Renaissance.

The New Mr. October

After a regular season in which he wrote a few columns containing many subtle and not so subtle digs & criticisms about the subject, Shank is now singing his praises.

David Price has morphed into Jim Lonborg/Luis Tiant/Josh Beckett/Jon Lester. Dare we say Curt Schilling? Boston’s much-maligned $217 million southpaw — a dartboard ornament for most of his three seasons at Fenway — is suddenly the Mr. October of the Red Sox pitching staff.

After a lifetime of historic postseason failure (zero wins in 11 postseason starts), Price has found his playoff mojo at the precise moment it matters most. On the heels of his series-clinching Game 5 masterpiece in Houston last week, Price on Wednesday dazzled the Dodgers, allowing only three hits in six innings of a 4-2 Red Sox victory in Game 2 of the World Series. J.D. Martinez delivered the winning runs with a two-run, two-out single to right in the fifth. Sox pitchers retired the final 16 Dodger batters.

Fortunately, that's it for the 'column', which doesn't bore you with any of that silly game recap stuff.

Red Sox / Dodgers World Series Preview

Well, it's not much of a preview - Chris Sale goes against ace Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw tonight and tomorrow's matchup is David Price against Hyun-Jin Ryu, who's a hard-throwing lefty. I saw him on one of the NLDS games last week and he looks really good.

I'm really waiting on Shank to post some stupid tweets, but there's nothing up right now. That tells me he's writing half of his game column right now.

Whitewash / Rewriting History

Behold, as Shank regales us with tales of yonder and explains the 2018 Red Sox playoff resurgence (emphasis added):

HOUSTON — The turning point might have been Oct. 6 when Yankees slugger Aaron Judge strolled and trolled past the Red Sox clubhouse after New York’s “big” playoff win at Fenway Park.

Judge and the mighty Bronx Bombers had just hit three monstrous homers in a 6-2 win, and the 6-foot-7-inch slugger felt comfortable playing Sinatra’s “New York, New York’’ on his Bluetooth speaker as he passed the Sox locker room in the underbelly of ancient Fenway.

The image went viral, and so did all the fears of doom about the 2018 Red Sox. Despite their record-breaking regular-season success, there were still regional concerns that these Sox were 108-win show ponies who were going to fold again in October. David Price (pulled in the second inning of Game 2) was once again a playoff bust and these front-running Sox were going to cave — just as they had in 2016 and 2017.

As noted in the prior post, Shank writes in the passive voice as though he didn't have a god damn thing to do with these notions of 'regional concerns' and 'front runners' who were going to 'cave' in the playoffs. Shank has been pushing this notion for months now and decides to write this column in a weak effort to sidestep and paper over all of his columns this year that more or less said the exact opposite. Don't buy this disingenuous spin for a second.