Theo Out; Could Dan Be Responsible?

Dan says he ran Carl Everett out of town. Well, now he can add Theo to the mix.

Thanks buddy!

Disingenuous Dan

No more talking about Theo Epstein! says Dan Shaughnessy, who never, ever wrote a word about someone else’s private matters. He then spends 1229 words not talking about him.

If anyone knows dirty laundry, it’s Shaughnessy. He’s aired so much, he probably has his own clothesline on Yawkey Way.

Yet that doesn't stop him from clucking around like a giant curly-haired chicken. “It's too bad it went this far,” Moral Man Dan claims. “The unfortunate part of the entire episode is that a lot of inside stuff went public.” This from a fellow who has made a career out using the pages of the Globe to torture Carl Everett, Jimy Williams, Nomar Garciaparra and countless other Boston sportsmen who made the mistake of opening their mouths while at work and and in earshot of the Great Lurking Eavesdropper. Suggested title for Dan's next book: How Black is Your Kettle?

“The only unfortunate aspect is that the embers will smolder for years to come.” Darn right. Dan himself will see to that.

Self-promotion alert: “The above sentence appeared in a book I wrote on the 2004 Red Sox championship season and it was the only line Theo objected to.”

Sorry for the Delay

My wife had a baby and I've been dealing with more important things, like changing his dirty diapers, than Dan da Man.

Dan Does it Again!

In a mailed-in column that for the most part is about the first World Series game in Texas (a snooze of a topic if ever there was one), Dan actually finds a way to shoehorn in none other than Larry Bird:

Twenty years ago, I was sitting with a couple of writers and a couple of Celtics in the atrium lounge of the Dallas Hyatt when hundreds of young people started pouring through the lobby en route to a Bruce Springsteen concert next door at Reunion Arena.

"Springsteen, who's he?" asked Larry Bird.

"Larry, he's the you of rock and roll," I told him.

"Well, he must be pretty good, then," offered Larry.

For the unordained, working in references to Larry Bird is a common Dan technique, like he did here in an April, 19, 2003, hatchet job on Boston Bruin Joe Thorton ("Not to bring up unfair comparisons, but Larry Bird would never have said those words."), and again here, discussing Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera ("This would be like Larry Bird getting booed at Boston Garden."), and again here, writing the day before the Sox-Yankees ALCS, and here, in a March 3, 2003, piece on boxer (!) Jose Ruiz ("Though he was never a local sports celebrity like Bobby Orr, Larry Bird, or Pedro Martinez"), and most recently just last Sept. 26.

(Re the alleged Bird-Springsteen comment, the twist is that perhaps Dan is embellishing just where the episode took place. As Gerry Callahan wrote for Sports Illustrated on Sept. 30, 1998, the event took place "in a less pricey pub in Dallas.")

Back to today's column, where in culminating his latest Larry analogy Dan makes the startling admission: "That exchange is sort of beside the point, but I love telling the story."

Well, at least he recognizes it, even if his editors don't.

If the Pattern Fits

"It's not a pattern you want to fall into," says Theo Epstein in Dan's latest "effort" (which, at just 882 words, is for the typically longwinded Dan barely more than a throat clearing. Maybe it was getting dark and he still had to get his run in). "But it's the personality of this club not to do things easily. It's too cliche to say we've done it before, but obviously we have. But we can't rely on it because history doesn't win games."

Ah, but history does write columns. In those 882 words, he raises the ghosts of the infamous Chicago Black Sox, ex Red Sox mediocrities Matt Young and Orlando Cabrera, ex Red Sox stud Pedro Martinez, and of course, the 2004 Sox. Never gone there before.

Indeed, other folks write columns that sometimes cover the same ground, like Howard Ulman, who covers the BoSox for the AP, and ProJo's Sean McAdam.

And sometimes, even Dan himself, the day before (!), whose effort on Thursday contained this nugget: ''It's not a pattern you want to fall into," said general manager Theo Epstein. “It's the personality of this team to not do things easily."

It’s not a pattern you want to fall into. That is, not unless you’re Dan Shaughnessy.

Dan-Tastic!

Today, Dan summons the ghost of Bill Buckner. What a nasty, bitter guy. Dan comes off like a Country-Western song, you know, the ones where the singer's dog dies, his woman runs off with his best friend, and his whiskey bottle's done empty.

The old joke is that if you play a CW song backwards, the wife comes back, the dog is reborn and the whiskey bottle is full again.

Hmmm. I wonder whether, if you read Dan's column backward, he'd morph into a upbeat, forward-looking, funny guy?

Dan Knows Rivalries

Dan knows what's missing from the looming Red Sox-White Sox playoffs showdown: A lack of history between the two teams. (Never mind that they are two of the original American League franchises.)

We all know Dan knows rivalries. After all, he wrote a book on them. And another. And another.


Oh, and he's even HAD a few of his own: Remember Carl Everett? Dan won't have to look far for him this week; he's batting fifth for the White Sox.

Then there was Dan's attack earlier this year on Michael Holley, civil rights, and the entire African-American race.

And what's reported to be an online chat transcript, from the Boston Dirt Dogs site, features this Dantastic admission: "i have had guys get in my face for years -- clemens, vaughn, boggs, boyd, scott wedman, quinn buckner, robert Parish. name that tune." Gee, what a shock.

Note to self: Always best to start fights with players on the opposing team. Where I come from, guys like Parish used to pee on guys like Shaughnessy in the showers. (And Parish probably could have hit him sitting in the upper balcony at the old Garden; he's said to be hung like, well, let's just call him Mr. Ed.)

And finally, today's out-of-leftfield snide remark alert: "Oh, and remember the 1919 White Sox, the team that threw the World Series? They had a pitcher named Bill James. Not sure why, but that has to mean something."

Who Plays Who?

Although Dan couldn't figure out the possible playoff scenarios, you can, with the help of Baseball Prospectus (subscription required). Here's how it works, in their words:

How’s this for a stone gas: the Red Sox, Yankees, White Sox and Indians finishing in a four-way tie? It could happen and it wouldn’t take anything too far out of the ordinary to make it so.

95-win scenario:
New York splits with Baltimore, takes two of three from Boston
Boston takes three of four from Toronto, one of three from New York
Chicago takes one of four from Detroit, is swept by Cleveland
Cleveland is swept by Tampa Bay and then sweeps Chicago

96-win scenario:
New York sweeps Baltimore, takes one of three from Boston
Boston takes three of four from Toronto and two of three from New York
Chicago takes one of four from Detroit and one of three from Cleveland
Cleveland takes two of three Tampa Bay and two of three from Chicago

There are a couple of other variations that will get all four teams there as well.

What happens then?

Firstly, the teams would play off for the Divisional titles. Boston would head to Yankee Stadium and Chicago to Jacobs. The losers of those games would then play for the wild-card slot. That would be an interesting turn of events. It would be slightly more interesting if the Angels were to go 6-1 and finish with 95 wins as well.

History Repeats and So Does Dan

"History Repeats, Naturally," commands the headline in The Great One's column today. Well, I repeat too, sometimes naturally, sometimes with the help of Metamucil. And shit I did, after reading the dump our man took in the Globe today.

To wit: From "wicked winds" to the "cherished championship" to "sensational string" to "postseason permutations" to "hair hurt," our man has clearly graduated from Alliteration 101.

But he's just gaining momentum, folks. Remember "Block that metaphor!" -- the old New Yorker way of rapping the hands that wrote poor prose? Here's two beauties:

BTM 1: "After the storm, we saw a ballgame that had all the magic ingredients of 2004, fueling a desperate Nation with hope that the Red Sox can overtake the Yankees at Fenway this weekend and win the American League East."

BTM 2: "The game can kill you and it can also bring you back to life. Fenway was alive at 10:31 last night when Ortiz did it again and this weekend we await the next indelible memory -- the tragic or magic moment that folks will be talking about 50 years from now."

Dan then turns his spew onto the rest of baseball, for while it's OK for him to mail it in, God forbid anyone else look after their own best interests first. "The White Sox won the Central early in the day, giving them no incentive for their final three against the Indians, a prospect that threatens the Red Sox." (Never mind that Ozzie Guillen has stated that for the integrity of the game the ChiSox will go full bore this weekend.)

And then there's this nugget: "And the Yankees won for the 15th time in 18 tries, beating the shameless Orioles one last time. Kenesaw Mountain Landis would have sanctioned those quitters from Baltimore." Hmmm...those "quitters" put up 17 runs on the Yanks on Tuesday, then lost a 2-1 squeaker on Wednesday. Something about the overmatched O's running into a chainsaw seems to have escaped Dan here.

And of course, what would a piece-de-Shaughn be without the obligatory personal shot, this time at Bill Belichick: "Unfortunately, trying to figure out who will play who, and where, is tougher than diagramming a Faulkner sentence or getting an interesting quote from Bill Belichick."

Ouch. Seems No. 2 has been long missing from No. 1's life. So has a brain. Just saying.

Red Sox Split

But no sign of Dan.

Must be combing his hair.

Dan Blows Brady

Today our man uses one his favorite literary conventions (is it OK to say "Dan Shaughnessy" and "literary" in the same sentence?): comparing superstars in one sport to those in another. In his gush over Tom Brady, he likens the Pats QB to Larry Bird and Bobby Orr. Now I never watched Orr -- I was both too young and too Midwestern -- but I read a lot about him. He came to the Bruins as savior savant; hard to say the same vision was had for Brady, a 6th round pick who collected splinters on the bench for a season-plus until Bledsoe went down. And Larry was much the same as Orr; expectations rode as high as his 6'9 frame. Even that first Super Bowl season, Brady was asked to do little more than protect the ball.

Now there's no doubt Brady is an outstanding QB. Last time I checked, however, hockey and basketball players still played two ways -- offense and defense -- and both sports field far less players on their respective fields at a given time, which magnifies the effect any single player can have. Meanwhile, Tom Terrific is only on the field about 50% of the game, if that, doesn't play defense, doesn't play special teams, yada yada yada. So is comparing a football player to those in other sports perhaps a bit of a stretch? Yeeesssss.

Back to today's column. Doubtlessly there were those who were thinking that since Dan was covering the Pats today, he might actually write a piece sans a shot at the Red Sox (as in "first place Red Sox"). Wrong! Today's column contains this toss off line: "Come to think of it, can Terry Francona borrow Brady and use him out of the bullpen this week?"

Did I mention that the Red Sox are in first place?

Washed Out

No column today. Patience, grasshopper. Genius only comes three times a week.

So I'm Not the Only One

A legion of Sox fans share their derision for Shaughnessy, whom they affectionately (sic) refer to as the CHB (Curly Haired Boyfriend*).

And a former Globe intern shares his first encounter with Sweet Dan o' Mine.

(*Thanks for the correction!)

Dan Shaughnessy: Suckiest Suck Who Ever Sucked?

Not sure where this beautiful little comic came from, but it sums up our man just perfectly.