DHL Dan CXIII - The Usual Crap

Shank's latest missive reads like a laundry list of complaints and a glaringly obvious setup:

Picked-up pieces while wondering if Billy Beane somehow comes out of all this being sports editor of the Globe …

▪ If the Red Sox are looking for the All-Time News Dump opportunity, Tuesday would be a good day to raise ticket prices, or perhaps bring back cheatin' Alex Cora.

As pointed out previously, Shank was for Alex Cora before he was against him.

▪ Have you given up on the Patriots for Sunday? Not me. This isn’t “We’re on to Cincinnati” in 2014, but the third-place Patriots will beat the first-place Bills in Orchard Park. I don’t care about injuries, or players putting their homes up for sale, or how bad the Patriots have looked the last two weeks.

The Bills forever will be the Bills, and Bill Belichick’s 35-5 record vs. Buffalo in the last 20 years distorts my vision. New England has won 17 of its last 20 games against Buffalo. Believe the history. For at least one more week.

The Patriots are three point underdogs on the road. I'm not optimistic about this game - if the Patriots played anything like they did last week it'll be another shitshow. I'm certain Shank's doing this rope-a-dope thing so he can take a searing dump on them after the game.

Read on for more of the same.

Kicking The Tomato Can Down The Road

Behold - the column Shank's been waiting to write for nearly twenty years:

Now it’s the Patriots who look like the Tomato Cans

First we get the 2020 Red Sox.

Now this.

Where is Trent Dilfer when you need him? It’s times like this we need a national pro football analyst to declare that the Patriots aren’t good anymore.

If football games were matched with calendar years, Sunday’s Patriot debacle vs. the San Francisco 49ers would be 2020.

Jimmy Garoppolo (Why Can’t We Get Players Like That?) and the Sons of Joe Montana demolished the once-proud Pats, 33-6, at Gillette. It was the most-lopsided home loss of the two-decade Bill Belichick era. This one was so bad that Patriot-loving CBS didn’t even give us the “let’s fawn all over Bob Kraft” shot from the owner’s box.

The glee in which he writes this column is obvious in each and every sentence, and I fully expect another column of the same ilk sometime this week.

Time To Shit On The Patriots

What do you get when you combine the New England Patriots losing record in 2020 with Shank's disingenouous nature? An awful column, that's what:

The 2020 Patriots have kept me in suspense — and I’m a fan of it all

Are you a sports fan or a Patriots fan?

Some of us are both, but Shank wants you to pick one or the other.

If you are a sports fan like me, you are loving this Patriots 2020 season, because from week to week you don’t know what’s going to happen.

You buying that line of bullshit?

If you are a Wilfork jersey-wearing Patriots fan, you are not loving this 2020 season … because from week to week you don’t know what’s going to happen. I know I am outnumbered. Don’t care. This is so much more fun.

Read on to see Shank revel in the first subpar start the Patriots have had in two decades.

Unforgettable

That's the theme for Shank's latest column as he goes back nearly half a century to recall some of the best stuff in World Series games.

My unforgettable World Series moments over the last 43 years

NOT IN ARLINGTON, Texas — There are a million great things about being a sportswriter (a million and one if you count reader comments that accompany online missives). Big events create a timeline of your life. It’s one of the things I’ll miss as I stay home while the Dodgers and Rays slug it out at Globe Life Field.

I can’t claim a streak like the Washington Post’s great Tom Boswell, who this week wrote about not attending the World Series for the first time since 1975. Bos covered 44 straight Fall Classics and 252 games. I have press passes from 30 World Series.

Some collectible moments:

▪ Game 6, 1977. Yankees-Dodgers. Yankee Stadium. Reggie Jackson hits three homers on three swings to clinch the deciding game. It’s my first Series as a reporter, and in a dangerously packed postgame clubhouse, I get squeezed into Bill White’s live ABC-TV interview with Mr. October.

It’s a Gumpesque moment that lives forever online, and I still get asked about it when the Yankees replay the scene on the stadium video board during rain delays.

A solid column; go check it out.

He's A Hard Man To Please

The Boston Red Sox have announed plans to spiffy up the area around Fenway Park. Our Man Shank can only respond with sarcasm:

Swell. The Liverpool Red Sox are relentless in efforts to improve the local baseball team. This is why fans love ownership. https://t.co/iiyn7CfRjU

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) October 19, 2020

DHL Dan CXII - Alex Cora Watch

Isn't it funny watching Shank ragging on the Red Sox for their role in the 2018 sign-stealing scandal and at the same time pine for the guy at the center of the whole thing?

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether the Patriots and Broncos will actually take the field at Gillette …

▪ News that the Red Sox are bringing back their entire coaching staff, minus Jerry Narron and Craig Bjornson, means one of two things: either Alex Cora is the “new” Red Sox manager or the Sox are going to hire a puppet to carry out the wishes of the nerds in the front office.

Here’s hoping it’s Cora. Meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss makes a lot of sense for the Red Sox. There was a high level of comfort with Cora in the corner office. He worked well with ownership and baseball operations. Players loved him, especially Xander Bogaerts, Christian Vazquez, and Rafael Devers, who are the core of the team. Devers is simply a better ballplayer with Cora in the dugout.

Did Cora take a few liberties with the rule book? He did. But the Red Sox are in no position to stand on principle at this hour. They need a star and they need a proven commodity. Cora is both. With Cora as manager, the Sox also could bring back Ron Roenicke as bench coach. Not the worst idea.

Now that's convenient! I'm sure you know the grab bag of topics follow this one.

Baseball's Dying, But Not In The Way Shank Thinks

Shank takes note of the rather large numbers of former baseball players passing on:

Hearing that another baseball Hall of Famer died strikes me as a macabre metaphor for the sport I love.

Judging by the manner in which he writes about sports, I'll have to call bullshit here.

This has been a year of isolation, lockdown, fear, and death. The daily obits (“the Irish Sports Pages”) have been required, lengthy reading for old-timers like me. And October 2020 feels like the month of death.

In the darkness, we have a Cooperstown carnage. Joe Morgan died Sunday. Last week, it was Whitey Ford. The week before that, it was Bob Gibson. In September, Lou Brock. In August, Tom Seaver. In April, Al Kaline.

Shank goes on from there to chronicle what definitely looks like the many deaths of former MLB players, and it's sad to note. That said, the 'isolation, lockdown' that Shank bemoans is a completely, 100% self-inflicted wound by the honchos running MLB (and other sports, for that matter) by shortened seasons and especially the lack of crowds at the stadiums, making the game difficult, if not impossible, to watch.

Shank The Scold II - A Continuing Series

The National Football League seems to want to get on with professional life. Shank, naturally, has a problem with it:

How does the NFL continue its season as postponements and positive COVID-19 cases pile up?

Decades from now, football historians will talk about this NFL season the way folks today talk about Major League Baseball during World War II.

Wait, you mean the St. Louis Browns were in the 1944 World Series? And they played the Cardinals? And every game was played in the same ballpark?

People will look at the 2020 NFL season and wonder how it was that the Patriots postponed games three times in eight days in October. Why did they fly to Kansas City, play a game, and come home on the same night? Why did they start Brian Hoyer at quarterback? Why did they go almost a whole week without reporting for practice at Gillette Stadium?

Second guessing, one week after the fact - classic Shank. A ratioanl sort may ask - what good does a one or two day delay in playing games actually accomplish, other to than fuck things up? Why not simply remove players & personnal with positive tests from the team until they've quarantined? Does that make too much sense for the likes of Shank?

Skip the bullshit that comprises most of the rest Shank's column and let's cut to the chase:

The arrogant NFL needs to stop its presidential pretending that COVID-19 is a mere nuisance that might change the date of the sacred Super Bowl. It’s more than that. It’s about the health and safety of the players and their families. The virus has plans that Roger Goodell cannot control.

As I pointed out on Thursday and what this column still reflects - the Wuhan flu / coronavirus is precisely a nuisance. With the litany of reported positive tests I still have yet to read about any NFL player or staff member becoming sick or hositalized from the virus (fun fact - most people under 50 years of age don't get sick from this or any other virus unless they have contributing factors), and it bears repeating if it does happen, these sports chumps will be at DEFCON 1 calling for everything in the NFL to come to a screeching halt. Until that happens, it's rightly called a nuisance, much like Shank's presence at a press conference.

Does anyone remember 'duck and cover', the thing taught to schoolkids in K-12 during the 1960's and 1970's that in the case of a nuclear explosion you just hide under your desk and that's all it required to escape the devastation of a thermonuclear bomb going off? If you're within five miles of the blast radius your chance of going from 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit within a second is at 100%, and there isn't a fucking thing you can do about it, never mind being downwind from all that fallout. The lockdown measures and ensuing mentality reek of this similarly idiotic mindset. Even the WHO, after months of bullshitting the entire world, now finally admit that lockdowns should be a last resort because they cause serious economic damage in its wake. Might want to take that last one to heart, Shank & company...

A Love-Hate Relationship, Explained

If it weren't for the fact that there's always a losing team, Shank would have nothing to write about.

This pithy comment tells you almost all you need to know about the mindset of Dan Shaughnessy. Most people watch sports because they enjoy sports. Then there's this guy:

A different kind of love-hate relationship: Rooting against Tom Brady, LeBron James, the Lakers, and the Astros

The older I get, the longer this pandemic goes, the more I love to hate-watch.

How many of you are surprised at this revelation?

I’m not talking about CNN, Fox News, or the debates. That’s easy. Everybody hate-watches that stuff. I’m talking sports.

With the Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox all done, and the Patriots barely playing once a week, the daily sports hate-watch has become my sustenance. It’s a reason to go on living. It’s one of my four major food groups.

Makes one wonder what the other three are...

Thursday night was hate-watch heaven. We got to see Tom Brady smiling through the pregame, telling everybody again how it was time to leave New England. Tom wanted warm weather and more fun. Swell.

Then we watched the Buccaneers commit a million penalties in a 20-19 loss to the Chicago Bears. Even better, we saw 2020 Tompa Tom looking like 2019 pouty Tom in New England. Brady yelled at his teammates. He was Mr. Frowny Face all night long. When it was over, he ran off the field without acknowledging the Bears’ Nick Foles, a pedestrian QB with a habit of beating Brady.

That's enough negative bullshit for me - go ahead and read the rest, if youre into self-flaggelation.

Shank The Scold, Probably A Continuing Series

Care to guess the latest Boston Globe nitwit to go into semi-hysterical overdrive over a single positive Wuhan coronavirus case?

The NFL knew the risks. But they let the Patriots play the Chiefs anyway

Just what are the risks, you may ask?

The NFL’s almighty “Shield” did not protect Stephon Gilmore and his family.

The risks were obvious when the Patriots decided to take two planes to Kansas City for Monday night’s game. One plane, flying out of Providence, carrying around 20 players and team personnel, was reserved for people who had been in close contact with Cam Newton, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday. Another aircraft, flying out of Logan, transported everybody else in the Patriots party, including Bill Belichick.

Gilmore, the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year in 2019, was on the “higher-risk” flight, according to Patriots spokesman Stacey James. Gilmore tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday.

Watch the Watergate like accusatory tone that follows:

The NFL knew. The Patriots knew. They knew this might happen and they did it anyway. The NFL badly wanted the marquee matchup of the Patriots vs. the Chiefs, which is why a bunch of people who’d been exposed to a guy who tested positive were herded into airplanes, buses, and a locker room at Arrowhead Stadium. It was as if medical decisions in NFL headquarters were decided by the white coats at Walter Reed. Decisions were made on hope and TV ratings instead of science.

Science!

He keeps goping on in that vein for the majority of the rest of the column. At this point I cannot stand any further commentary on this issue from Boston Globe sportswriters who are too fucking stupid or arrogant to admit being exposed to this virus isn't a trip to Death Row; far from it in the overwhelming majority of cases, which is nearly all of them. As far as I can tell, few if any NFL players have come down as sick or hospitalized and you can bet your ass these same assclowns would trumpet such news far and wide if that happened in order to keep this charade going. That tells me right there it ain't happening.

If this douchebag continues to bleat about the Wuhan coronavirus, then fine - I'll continue to treat his commentary like the pinata-laden fodder it is.

Strange Days Indeed

Shank does the obligatory column after a Patriots loss, natch:

Just by playing, this game was as strange as it gets, and the Patriots actually had a chance to beat the Chiefs

The Patriots had a chance. After a preposterous couple of days, Bill Belichick’s masterful game plan and a stunning TD strike by relief quarterback Jarrett Stidham had the Patriots trailing by a mere 3 points (13-10) against the Super Bowl champs in the second minute of the fourth quarter.

And then it all went away in a hail of turnovers and missed opportunities as the Chiefs beat New England, 26-10, drawing the curtain on one of the strangest days in the history of the Patriots franchise.

Strange Patriots things follow, including the obligatory Clive Rush reference!

There have been some bizarre moment in the Patriots’ six decades. There was that time new coach Clive Rush was nearly electrocuted when he grabbed an microphone that was not grounded at an introductory press conference. There was the time the Patriots played a “home” game against the Jets in Birmingham, Ala., in 1968. There was the night in Miami when owner Billy Sullivan suspended coach Chuck Fairbanks hours before the Pats took the field at the Orange Bowl in 1978.

At least Shank generally supports the fact that they played the game, which is more than can be said about his fellow columnist Ben Volin, who wanted the game to be cancelled over two positive tests and seems to think being exposed to the Wuhan Flu virus is something akin to a death sentence. It is not. You know the rest - standard game recap and all that.

DHL Dan CXI - Pats Lose By 40!

Shank throws out the latest Picked Up Pieces column, and it's exactly what you've come to love and expect:

Picked-up pieces as the Lakers get ready to tie the Celtics with a 17th championship banner . . .

At least that one will have an asterisk next to it, given the chopped up & abbreviated season this year.

▪ This probably means they’ll lose by 40, but put me down as one who thinks the Patriots will beat the Chiefs Sunday.

Well, I thought a similar thing two weeks ago when the Patriots went to Seattle and played the Seahawks, but that game went down to the last play.

And now - a serious head case basketball player!

▪ More than ever, Kyrie Irving presents as a delusional fool. His latest beauty came when he went on Kevin Durant’s podcast, insulted ex-teammates in Cleveland and Boston, then gave new Nets coach Steve Nash a warm welcome, saying, "I don’t really see us as having a head coach . . . We don’t need someone to come in with their coaching philosophy and change everything we’re doing.''

On occasion, some people need a serious ass kicking.

The rest of the column is the usual grab bag of topics.

Much Like The Boston Globe, Then

Fresh off of burying the 2020 Boston Celtics, Shank sets his sights on the basement dwelling 2020 Boston Red Sox:

You know things are bad when the Red Sox are irrelevant

John Henry, Tom Werner, Sam Kennedy, and Chaim Bloom did the impossible this summer: The custodians of Boston’s once-beloved baseball franchise made the Red Sox disappear — not an easy trick considering the ballclub’s 120 years of institutional relevance.

The disappearance of the Red Sox had little to do with the coronavirus.

I'm not so sure about that. There were a lot of things that were thrown into kilter with the Wuhan virus, and spring training preparation, among other things, would suffer as a result. Granted the pitching staff looks like a complete shitshow but I'm not certain if that can be attributed strictly to poor GM decisions.

In some weird ways, COVID-19 probably helped the Red Sox. The pandemic allowed the Red Sox to give up on a season without hearing a single boo at Fenway Park. The Sox were allowed to tank in almost total anonymity. They were the falling tree in the proverbial forest; if a team tries to lose games in an empty ballpark with hardly anyone watching on TV . . . does it make a sound? Did it really happen?

Shank goes on from there to make his case, which is good to solid. Read on for more tales of the HMS Titantic 2020 Red Sox, or what's left of them.

Baby, You're No Good

After the Boston Celtics bow out of the Eastern Conference semifinals, Shank does the inevitable post mortem:

Let’s face it, the Celtics are not as good as they think they are

If you like basketball you know the right team won.

The Miami Heat, worthy in every way, beat the Celtics, 125-113, in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Sunday night and will advance to the NBA Finals, where they’ll play LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers starting Wednesday night. LeBron vs. Pat Riley. Pretty sweet.

Let the record show that the 2019-20 Celtics in no way deserved to win this series. They gave it a pretty good run, but in the end they presented as front-running posers who folded whenever a game went into crunch time. Green Teamers should face the fact that these Celtics — who are fawned over and comport themselves as if they’ve already put some banners in the Garden rafters — have won nothing yet.

I didn't watch enough of the series to know one way or the other; it's really difficult for me to watch sports without fans in the stands. I do know that the Celtics had no answer to Miami center Bam Adebayo; he tore up the Celtics in Game 6.

Eruption

No, not that eruption! Shank's talking about last night's game, an emphatic Celtics Game 5 win over the Miami Heat:

Dream big, Celtics fans. The Green Team has done this before.

The Celtics overcame a 12-point deficit, scored 41 points in the third quarter, and beat the Miami Heat Friday, 121-108, to extend their Eastern Conference finals series to a sixth game. The Celtics are attempting to become the 14th NBA team to crawl out of a 3-1 series deficit.

Sunday will be one of the great sports TV days in Boston history. We’ve got Patriots-Raiders at 1, Tom Brady at 4:25, and Celtics-Heat in Game 6 at 7:30.

Shank “It’s back to basics,” Celtic coach Brad Stevens said after his team’s big second half. “We need to be better again in Game 6.”

This looks like a classic rope-a-dope - write nice things about the local teams when they're winning, then blindside them when they lose. The rest of the column is a stroll down Celtics memory lane and the standard game recap.

Shank's Back On The 2020 Red Sox Bandwagon

Awww - who am I shitting? Nobody!

Big market Red Sox succeeding in their quest to assemble anonymous no-star team #tampabaybythecharles https://t.co/o61N7cwjh2

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 25, 2020

This guy . . . https://t.co/scwgdsTyF3

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 25, 2020

Second Guessing, By Dan Shaughnessy

Here's our man Shank, playing Monday morning quarterback:

It got lost in the shuffle, but Pete Carroll's decision to allow a home run pass play instead of a run play on 3rd-and-one after 2-min warning is what allowed the Patriots a chance to win. This is almost as dumb as the slant pass on the 1 in Super Bowl 49.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 21, 2020

Fortunately he does not do this all the time but in some respects I think this kind of commenting is irritating and pointless.

You Never Know

Shank sure called it last night:

With Bill Belichick opposing Pete Carroll, you just never know what will happen next

Sunday Night Lights.

Seahawks 35, Patriots, 30.

Clear eyes, heavy hearts, can’t win.

I don’t know about you, but I could watch these teams play one another for the next 14 weeks of the NFL regular season. It’s great fun to watch the 69-year-old Pete Carroll match wits with the 68-year-old Bill Belichick. The Seahawks have beaten the Patriots three times in four games since 2012, losing only the one that counted: Super Bowl XLIX.

This one went down to the final play of the night when Cam Newton was upended in front of the goal line as the clock ran out, denying the Patriots a last-second, come-from-behind victory. Down, 35-23, with less than three minutes to play, the Patriots seemed hopelessly out of this game, but roared back in the closing seconds — thanks in large part to yet another head-scratching play call by Carroll, who went for a home run when a 1-yard run would have iced the game after the two-minute warning.

I thought the Patriots were gonna get smoked, so even a loss in this situation's not too bad.

Bad News For The Celtics Is Good News For Shank

The Boston Celtics got beat like a rented mule last night (mostly in the third quarter) by the Miami Heat. Shank, not unsurprisingly, gets a column about the extra curricular activities in the locker room after the game:

Celtics have gone quickly from feel-good story to family feud

The Celtics have won one championship in 34 years and yet we still talk about them as if they are a dynasty.

Do you talk about them like they're a dynasty? I sure don't. The Red Sox won it all in 2004 and 2007 and I don't recall them being called a dynasty; maybe from some quarters they were. The Patriots however, are another matter, and the Bruins can't be in that conversation, not having won Lord Stanley's Cup in years near or next to each other.

Brad Stevens has never won a championship anywhere and we talk about him as if he’s Red Auerbach or Bill Belichick.

Again - what's with this 'we' shit'? He's simply using the plural form to pretend more people are on board with this notion than they're actually are.

Now this. The Celtics just blew two playoff games, and we have a locker room of young players yelling at one another, throwing things off walls, questioning their coach, and perhaps being restrained from attacking one another in fits of anger.

With a chance to advance to the NBA Finals, we have a team that has blown leads of 14 points and 17 points in back-to-back losses to the Miami Heat.

I didn't watch the entire game (barelyt watched it at all, with an entertaining NFL game on and a buddy coming by to run a few games of cribbage), and that third quarter spurt by the Miami Heat was my roommate's observation. Shank points out some contributing factors as to how Boston and Miami came into this series and then brings up the question of whether they can rebound from all of this (pun fully intended!) and you damn well know whose name he's gonna drop:

The Celtics can rebound from this. When the 1984 Celtics were routed by the Lakers in Game 3 of the Finals, Larry Bird said, “We don’t have the players with the heart sometimes that we need … We played like sissies.”

Those guys came back to win their series in seven games.

What about the 2020 Celtics?

...

It’s time for Stevens to step up. Give us a little less Fred Rogers and a little more Fred Smerlas. Go Cro-Magnon for a few days. Challenge your players' manhood. Call out some of your young players in the media. Draw up a zone offense. Throw the picket fence at the Heat and tell them not to get caught watching the paint dry.

It’s time for the 2020 Celtics to summon the spirit of Red and Russell and Cousy and Bird. Time for them to stop losing games and throwing chairs. Time for the 2020 Celtics to earn the everlasting love they always get around here.

Starting Saturday night in the bubble.

I have to say I agree 100% with this notion. Maybe the locker room argument / fight sets another tone, like another infamous singular act did back in 1984. I'm really surprised he didn't mention that play; that was a clear series turning event. Let's see how this one turns out and I hope the Celtics can come back from this and kick ass.

Tied To The Whipping Post

Is it me or is there always one Red Sox player Shank feels to need to shit on?

J D Martinez sitting on the Mendoza Line as we await his second at bat in Miami.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 17, 2020

Just call him JD Mendoza. https://t.co/VAPmtsCnHL

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 17, 2020