Keeping Hope Alive

Shank talks to former Red Sox skipper Alex Cora, currently serving a one year suspension from Major League Baseball for his role in the 2017 Houston Astros sign stealing kerfuffle.

Alex Cora speaks on his suspension, the Red Sox, and if he’ll return to baseball

Alex Cora is serving his one-year suspension from baseball at home in Puerto Rico, hunkering down with his family during the global pandemic, but he has not stopped thinking about baseball.

I spoke with Cora for 15 minutes Thursday afternoon, Cora’s first interview with a Greater Boston media outlet since mid-January when he was canned by the Red Sox after Major League Baseball released the findings of its investigation into the Houston Astros 2017 cheating scandal (Cora was Houston’s bench coach).

Does he want to manage again when he’s first eligible in 2021?

“If this was a regular time and they were playing games, I would say yes,” said Cora. “I would love to be back in 2021 in some capacity. I love managing at the big league level.

“But right now, I’m still kind of like putting my game plan together. It’s not where I want it to be. But obviously with everything that’s going on, with my daughter going into her senior year of high school, we as a family have to see what we want to do.

Shank has mentioned Cora coming back to coach the Red Sox in previous months (color me skeptical), so he keeps that flame lit:

He knows there will be plenty of buzz about him returning to the Red Sox in 2021. Cora’s former bench coach, Ron Roenicke, is Boston’s manager for 2020, but he is working on a one-year deal and may never have a chance to manage if baseball’s owners and players can’t agree on a return plan after the game was halted in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Does Cora think another team would hire him to manage?

“I know it’s not going to be easy, as far as people giving me a chance,” he said. “They are going to look back and then they are going to have to make up their minds. But at the end, I’m paying the price.

“I’m embarrassed. I’m sorry for what happened. And we have to move on.

Boston Globe Death Watch - IX

WBUR (political sisters-in-arms with the Boston Globe) performs the ancient ritual of bloodletting:

WBUR lays off 29, freezes salaries and says goodbye to four senior leaders

This is heartbreaking.

Show of hands? That's what I thought.

WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) is laying off 29 people “because of the economic fallout of the past several months,” according to a memo sent to the staff by the station’s chief executive officer, Margaret Low. A salary freeze has been imposed. In addition, senior executives Tom Melville, John Davidow and Peter Lydotes are leaving, and Sam Fleming will retire later this year.

Overall, Low says, the current budget of $46 million will be reduced to $40 million in the next fiscal year.

The memo also contains some ideas and observations about increasing the diversity of the staff and about the station’s ongoing commitment to local news.

Learn to code, assholes.

Questions Nobody Is Asking - II

Or - Shank officially joins the Boston Globe editorial board:

This is a great message. Perhaps this letter should be delivered to Bob Kraft’s close personal friend in the White House. The guy he donated $1 million to in 2017. The guy he flies with on Air Force one https://t.co/w9geBSSmGb

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) June 14, 2020

It's clear from the tweet that Shank's main problem is with President Trump, and he uses Kraft as a cudgel of sorts. Which is rich, considering the source - do you consider Shank the type to promote healing? He's been picking at scabs for decades.

DHL Dan CV - Questions Nobody Is Asking

Another day, another attack on New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft:

Are Patriots players uncomfortable at all with their management’s White House friendships?

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether the Red Sox will promote Truck Day 2.0 if they have a second spring training in Fort Myers . . .

▪ Drew Brees has apologized for stating that he believed those who take a knee during the national anthem are "disrespecting the flag of the United States of America.''

Brees cited two grandfathers who served in World War II when relaying his opinion, and his words were met with outrage from scores of professional athletes. Patriots defensive backs Devin and Jason McCourty were among the loudest objectors, tweeting, "This is a disgrace,'' and "Don’t avoid the issue and make it about a flag or the military. Fight like your grandfathers for what’s right.'' Well put.

But it makes me wonder how Patriots players feel working for owner Bob Kraft, who pals around with a president who said this when NFL players took a knee during the anthem in 2017: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, you’d say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! He’s fired!' ”

As always, Kraft likes to have it both ways. Two days after those remarks, he issued a statement citing his disappointment with the president’s comments. But in that same year, he donated $1 million to the president’s inauguration celebration, flew with Trump in Air Force One, and told the New York Times, “He [Trump] has been a wonderful friend.”

Meanwhile, I also wonder how Patriots players who raged vs. Brees feel about Bill Belichick, who wrote a glowing letter to Trump that the then-candidate used as a virtual campaign ad on the eve of the 2016 election?

All of two people in the Patriots organization are friendly with President Trump and Shank feels like most Patriots players ought to have a problem with it. To me, kneeling is subservience regardless of the circumstances. My first thought at seeing cops kneeling during these protests (many of which inevitably devolved into rioting, assault and massive looting) - "Guys - you're not kneeling in solidarity with these people; you're kneeling to them." To hell with that.

The rest of the column is the usual collection of complaints about lots of things.

Got Some Time For A Lecture On Race?

Well good, because that's what Shank, via Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a Muslim name, by the way) is delivering after fifty-plus cities across the United States got trashed and looted.

I've been thinking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lately.

Abdul-Jabbar is 73 years old and has been part of American sports fans’ consciousness for more than a half-century. Here in Boston, we remember him as Dave Cowens’s nemesis in the 1970s and a big part of the Celtics-Lakers, Larry-Magic wonder years in the 1980s.

There’s a lot more regarding Abdul-Jabbar and New England. Did you know he played a high school game against Catholic Memorial in Providence in 1964? Did you know he came to Holy Cross for a sham of a recruiting visit in 1965 when he was a senior at Power Memorial High School in New York City? Did you know he dominated kids from Boston College and Holy Cross when he was a national champ at UCLA?

Abdul-Jabbar has been in the news a lot these last few days. A lifelong activist, and a gifted speaker/writer, he has been a smart voice in the tumultuous days since George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Abdul-Jabbar penned a thoughtful essay for the Los Angeles Times (“Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge”) and has appeared on major TV networks discussing American issues of race, rage, and protest.

Let's have a sample of this 'discussion' (it's the only part):

"Yes, protests often are used as an excuse for some to take advantage,'' Abdul-Jabbar wrote. "Just as when fans celebrating a hometown sports team championship burn cars and destroy storefronts. I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere.''

Does that sound like a 'discussion' to you, or is Kareem telling you you're a racist? That's rich, coming from an adherent to Islam, whose holy book 'The Quran' declares adherents to the Muslim faith are by default superior to all others. I read that piece of shit book for about twenty pages (Sura 2 / Surah 2) and you know what? I got real tired real fast about being called kufr at least a dozen times, then parked it right next to a copy of Mein Kampf, which is fitting. Kufr does not mean 'non-believer', it means (Surah 2, footnote on the bottom of page 11) 'denial of the truth', and you might well be aware by now how they tend to regard nonbelievers and what they do to them. So forgive me, dear reader, for dismissing every word of this guy's commentary. Plus, he was on the Lakers, so fuck him twice.

You're All Out Of Order!

That's the general theme of this column:

Baseball owners are odious. Players are repugnant. Watching this baseball labor fiasco slowly unfold is the ultimate lose-lose exercise.

It is the most tone-deaf, callous, self-centered, stupid, and clueless behavior these eyes have seen in 45 years of covering professional
sports. Do I make myself clear?

A global pandemic has killed more than 100,000 Americans and put nearly 40 million people out of work. A video of a Minneapolis police officer killing a handcuffed Black man has triggered the worst civil unrest in decades. Our nation weeps, pleading for justice and fairness, while we watch American cities looted and burned.

And in the middle of all this death, outrage, and economic collapse . . . baseball players and team owners are arguing about player compensation in a hostile and selfish negotiation that threatens to cancel the 2020 major league season.

It's not just this season; it will be long-term, serious and permanent damage.

Boston Globe Death Watch - VIII

Stuff like this is why Boston Red Sox owner (and for now owner of what's left of the Boston Globe 'newspaper') John Henry is so well liked around these parts:

John Henry's Baseball Team Cuts Employees' Pay by 20-30% and His Newspaper Tries to Keep That on the Down Low https://t.co/mjjdoAT3Zh

— Jerry Thornton (@jerrythornton1) June 1, 2020

Well, it's because they have to. That'll change once some of these shitheads get axed and are thus then free to dish on the guy, which will be amusing as all get out.

Question Of The Day

Do you think Bruce Allen had anyone particular in mind when he responded to this tweet? I bet he does!

"And the Boston sports media spent most of that time period telling fans that the teams actually all sucked." https://t.co/ro3HUIr3xF

— Bruce Allen (@bruceallen) May 31, 2020

Boston Globe Death Watch - VII

Well, this is interesting...

Boston Globe employees, according to a survey of Guild members by the union, are nervous the Henrys are pushing for removal of the successors and assigns provision because they intend to sell the newspaper.https://t.co/1JRAFucN1z

— CW Magazine (@CommonWealthMag) June 1, 2020

Spoken Like A True Misanthrope

Shank attempts to find a positive side to the reopening of professional sporting events, sans fans:

If professional sports resume in July, August, or September, it’s going to unfold without fans in the stands.

We don’t know if promoters will try cardboard cutouts, crash-test dummies, carpool-lane mannequins, or blowup dolls to populate the seats. And we don’t know about simulated crowd noise. Teams and leagues might go the Indianapolis Colts route and pump in artificial crowd noise.

This could give Miami Sound Machine a whole new meaning (date yourself much? - ed). Maybe teams will play Kenny G and “Jock Jams.” The summer and fall of 2020 could be a good time for Queen with lots of “We Are The Champions,” “We Will Rock You,” and "Another One Bites The Dust.''

If I want to hear that shit for the four millionth time, I'll just go tune into WZLX where, like Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty and Pink Floyd, it's played once every single fucking hour. Come to think of it, I can also tune in WBOS and hear the same stuff, or WROR, and now add a fourth Boston area radio station to the 'classic rock' genre, WODS.

I know what I’m rooting for: the sounds of silence. And I don’t mean Simon and Garfunkel’s epic hit.

What's a column by Shank without a song reference from the 1960's?

Let’s have some peace and quiet. Do not disturb. Fenway Park could become like the reading room at the Boston Public Library.

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. I tried watching some Bundesliga soccer last week (also without fans), which lasted about ninety seconds. It's simply not the same without fan interaction; it's lifeless and sterile. I also think professional sports runs the risk of losing decent sized chunks of its fan base on a permanent basis. For myself, I refuse to watch any of this substandard 'product' when it comes back - no NBA, no NHL, no MLB. I'll probably make an exception for NASCAR and Formula One and even then, this will be in the back of my mind, and I believe it will be in most people's minds as well. Time will tell if Shank changes his mind on this one once he starts watching this crap.

Oh - and of course he takes another shot at Robert Kraft. This guy, in the words of Curt Schilling, really is one of the most bitter humans on the planet. As befits miserable people, Shank devotes the rest of the column to focus exclusively on poor / negative fan behavior, which is why it needs to return as soon as possible.

Silver Linings?

In a rare departure from normal business, Shank does his best to find some positives from the lockdown panic:

We are 11 weeks into our quarantined, gameless spring of 2020, and it got me to thinking about sports figures who have (inadvertently in most cases) somehow benefited from this scary, horrible pandemic. Truly this is a time with no winners, but we can identify a few teams and sports figures who’ve taken some positives from the daily darkness.

▪ NHL commissioner Gary Bettman Tuesday afternoon revealed his plan for the league getting into playoff mode. It turns out that eight teams that had no business being in the playoffs are going to be skating for the Stanley Cup because of COVID-19. This is no small break for teams like the Chicago Blackhawks and Montreal Canadiens that could advance when they didn’t deserve to be in the postseason.

This could be particularly galling for Bruins fans. We know that hockey is a sport where playoff upsets are the norm, and how’s it going to feel around here if the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins get sent home by a Habs team that didn’t even deserve a playoff spot? Mon dieu!

And on it goes - as passive / aggressive as it gets. Robert Kraft, the Red Sox, the Patriots and David Ortiz get similar treatment.

Fox News Watch

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft will be on Hannity tonight. What are the odds of Shank writing or tweeting about it?

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.

DHL Dan CIV - The Tone Deaf Column

It sure seems like Shank's been pretty critical of former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady after he was traded to Tampa Bay. Then again, this isn't a great look:

Picked-up pieces while fondly remembering a year ago when we were readying for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Blues on Memorial Day …

▪ Please stop it, Tom Brady. We’ve been grudgingly OK with you being amazingly tone-deaf in the middle of this COVID-19 crisis, but your latest sales pitch borders on wartime profiteering.

Brady’s high-end “we are superior to you” TB12 company released a new "immunity supplement'' this past week. The new product is a lot like the supplement bundle TB12 promoted at the end of March. Company CEO John Burns shamelessly told Yahoo! Sports, "Now more than ever, it’s important to have daily support for a healthy immune response.''

Now more than ever.

Get it? Now. In the middle of a global pandemic. You need this stuff to fight off the coronavirus. A 30-day supply goes for $45.

Well, these are challenging and difficult times and we're all in this together! Get with the program, Shank!

UPDATE, 5/24/2020, 10:29 AM - I meant to post this yesterday; whoops!

Assimilated By The Borg

I really like him as a athlete, but this is just pure bullshit:

Gerry Cheevers says forget your ego and wear your mask — and he should know

You know, there just might be different reasons for wearing each type of mask...

More than 50 years ago, he put a mask on his face in the name of safety and he has no regrets. He thinks folks who resist wearing a mask during today’s pandemic are letting their egos get in the way.

Say hello to Gerry Cheevers, the 79-year-old Stanley Cup-winning goalie of Bobby Orr’s Big Bad Bruins in the 1970s.

"People that won’t wear the mask are underestimating the seriousness of this situation,'' says Cheevers, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla. "Put it on. That’s all you can say. Don’t resist it. Don’t let your ego get the best of you.

"It’s not fun having a mask on. But if you won’t do it, I think it’s egomania.''

If you're looking for a reason / justification for healthy people to be effectively quarantined in an unprecedented fashion by the mask measure (and all the other restrictions you're being 'asked' to follow), you won't find it here. And do you think Cheevers is walking around with his a) goalie face mask and / or b) the stupid looking one you need to cover your mouth and nose with? I know it's not the former. It's a weak and unconvincing column in the extreme.

Phyllis George, RIP

Shank writes a sports obituary to one of the pioneers in sports broadcasting for ladies.

Former Miss America and CBS Sports television pioneer Phyllis George died last week at the age of 70. A lovely and talented woman, George was an underrated TV talent who joined CBS’s “The NFL Today” in 1975 and blazed a trail for female reporters who later covered the National Football League.

George also had an amazing number of connections to the Celtics. Her breakthrough at CBS came when she interviewed Dave Cowens in Weston in 1974. The foreword for her 2002 book “Never Say Never” was written by Rick Pitino. In 1979, George married John Y. Brown, owner of the Celtics and the man who triggered a trade that forever altered the future of the franchise and almost made Red Auerbach quit.

George might have had something to do with Brown’s fiasco trade. She was engaged to him in February of 1979 when he traded three of Red’s first-round draft picks to New York for scoring champ Bob McAdoo. Nobody ever said anything on the record, but it has long been speculated that Brown made the trade to impress Miss America, who was a McAdoo fan.

The Mea Culpa Column, An Occasional Series

Shank needs to get some stuff off his chest:

Regrets? I’ve had a few. And not too few to mention.

There was that prediction last winter that there was “zero chance” the Patriots could lose to the Texans (Texans 28, Patriots 22). It was the same with Super Bowl LII in frosty Minneapolis in 2018 when I told you that there was no bloody way Nick Foles and Doug bleepin’ Pederson could dethrone Tom Brady and Bill Belichick (Eagles 41, Patriots 33).

Wrong and wrong. When you write approximately 5,000 sports columns over 32 years, you are going to make some wrong calls. I can, for example, affirm that on the front page of the Oct. 17, 2004, Boston Globe (hours after the Red Sox lost to the Yankees, 19-8, in Game 3 of the ALCS), I stated, "So there. For the 86th consecutive autumn, the Red Sox are not going to win the World Series.''

An enjoyable column, if for nothing else chuckling at all these great calls!

Getting Stir Crazy?

It sure sounds that way:

We need to have baseball — and not the same tired negotiating rhetoric

Surely he has someone in mind with that surly statement?

I got an e-mail from Hall of Famer Jim Palmer Tuesday night. Subject line: “Pettiness.”

Talk about a perfect subject for Shank...

Palmer’s missive read (in part): "The players union just will never get it. People dying, out of work, can’t pay their mortgage, no Senior proms, MLB abbreviated draft to disrupt lifelong dreams, and people need a diversion, and Tony Clark doesn’t want to set a precedent! Full pay for games with no fans! The players know it’s all about revenue — less $, less pay and be glad you have a job. Otherwise, stay home and drive your wife crazy!''

This came on the heels of former All-Star first baseman Mark Teixeira saying on ESPN, "Players need to understand that if they turn down this deal and shut the sport down, they’re not making a cent. I would rather make pennies on the dollar and give hope to people and play baseball than not make anything and lose an entire year of their career.''

Exactly - stop fucking around and acting like the coronavirus is the next Black Plague. At least that's my attitude toward the continuing lockdowns; has been for months.

Shots Fired!

I think this one's spot on, if you're into the soap opera part of sports:

So here we go. Shot fired. Worst possible optic. Embodiment of tone deaf. Guaranteed to make America hate baseball https://t.co/aZrxgCxMbO

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) May 11, 2020

I remember the third baseball strike in 1994 - 1995 (the first two were in 1972, the next in 1981) and my main takeaway was pretty much this - 'WTF - millionaires going on strike?' However, after reading some of those links about the earlier strike, coupled with the balls it must have taken to organize and execute the first one, it doesn't irritate me as much anymore. In this environment I believe some flexibility is needed from the players and the union, if only to realize everybody's affected by the upcoming empty stadiums (i.e., no gate revenue), not to mention what's in the TV contracts that affects that revenue stream. It's a shit sandwich and they all gotta take a bite.

DHL Dan CIII -

Shank does what he can given minimal recent sports events - here he gives us an update on the eventual restart of Major League Baseball:

Picked-up pieces while waiting for the final two hours of “The Last Dance” . . .

▪ This is a crucial week for Major League Baseball. Owners finalized a return-to-play plan Monday and will offer it to the Players Association Tuesday, but it’s going to get ugly if the parties engage in a public spat about player compensation.

The pandemic has reminded folks how much they miss sports — even baseball — and there is no public appetite for one of those well-worn, old-fashioned, players-owners scraps over compensation. Citizens are dying in large numbers and a huge chunk of America is out of work, so this would not be a time for millionaires to haggle over finances. Commissioner Rob Manfred and the Players Association need to work this out nicely without their customary sabre-rattling.

The issue is going to be proposed player pay cuts motivated by playing games without fans. The players and owners have already agreed to pro-rated salaries based on the number of games played, but owners are going to want additional cuts if they stage a product with no fans.

He keeps this fire burning:

▪ It was announced Monday that Richard Seymour won the fan vote to gain admittance to the Patriot Hall of Fame. This means Bill Parcells is still out. Embarrassing. The Krafts circumvented the fan vote/popularity contest and inducted Billy Sullivan and Gil Santos independently. Will they ever do the right thing for Parcells?

...and you know the rest from there.

Another Walk Down Memory Lane

It'll be nice to have live sporting events again, if only to rid ourselves of yet another self-indulgent / self-referential piece by the Shankster.

Fifty years ago . . .

Did I just say that? Did I actually just start a sentence with fifty years ago?

You never think it will happen to you. It’s something your dad would say. Or maybe an uncle. Or a granddad.

On May 10, 1970, a Mother’s Day Sunday just like this year, if somebody started a sentence with “50 years ago," they would have been talking about May 10, 1920, when 100 women took ill with ptomaine poisoning after a church breakfast in Melrose.

When you are 16 years old in 1970, you are never thinking about the past. You are thinking only about today and tomorrow. You have a baseball game Monday and you could use a couple of hits to boost your batting average.

You are working a nine-hour shift scooping ice cream because you’re going to need $25 for the junior prom ($10 for the ticket, $10 for the tux, and $5 for the corsage for Joanie McGovern).

And that's as far as I got - how'd you do?

Shank Roundup

Sit back, folks - in the span of one day we have not one, not two but three columns from Shank! Fifty years ago some guy named Bobby Orr scored a goal, some perspective on this goal from the man himself (and a bad kitty!), and Shank has another chance to take shots at the New England Patriots, specifically coach Bill Belichick:

It will be awkward as Bill Belichick chases Don Shula’s records

Awkward... for who?

Bill Belichick, still coaching the Patriots at the age of 68, will go into his 70s chasing the ghost of Don Shula, who died Monday at the age of 90.

Belichick is all about football history, and that makes him all about Don Shula. Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history with 328 regular-season wins and 347 including playoffs. Belichick is at 273 and 304. There can be no doubt Belichick wants the record.

That's reasonable speculation / supposition.

The Hoodie already came close to Shula’s “other” record. Shula’s 1972 Dolphins are the only perfect team (17-0) in NFL history. Belichick’s 2007 Patriots got to 18-0 before the bubble burst in Glendale, Ariz., against David Tyree and the New York Giants.

Dan Shaughnessy, always accentuating the positive!

The rest of this column's pretty good, with maybe a bit of iffy and non-iffy speculation here and there but still worth a read. What else are you gonna do under the bullshit lockdown anyway?

And Now For Some More Boston Globe Employee Bashing

Just a reminder - for any of us folks to the right of Joe Lieberman, this is what some liberals want to happen to you:

What a surprise - the tweet in question has been deleted.

You know what is going to die soon? Many careers at the Boston Globe. Great business strategy - antagonize about half of what's left of your reader base in the face of sharply declining ad revenue. This newspaper can't shit the bed fast enough.

UPDATE AT 10:15 PM - Too good not to post (and Du Pont's a disingenuous asshole):

50 percent asshole, 50 percent coward. 100 percent Boston Globe. https://t.co/BJ69DUMrkH

— Kirk Minihane (@kirkmin) May 4, 2020

DHL Dan CII - The Big Loss?

Shank shares a few thoughts on current sports topics, which don't include recent live sporting events:

Thoughts on a big loss for the US women’s soccer team and other sports topics

Picked-up pieces while wondering if there’s an old Gerry Cheevers mask I can use when I go to 7-Eleven to pick up the daily newspapers …

▪ In a big story that got small attention, Federal District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner quickly and decisively dismissed the equal pay complaint of the US women’s national soccer team Friday.

The US women were the darlings of the sports media when they steamrolled all competition en route to winning the World Cup last summer, led by glory hog Megan Rapinoe (ever the charmer, she dropped an “MF-bomb” into a live microphone after the team’s parade through New York’s Canyon of Heroes).
…
As has been repeatedly and accurately noted, these players agreed to terms of their compensation in collective bargaining. The courts are not a tool to get you out of an agreement that you signed and later regretted.

Surprising conclusion, sort of, for a Boston Globe employee; rest at the link.

DHL Dan CII - The Larry And Me Column

The surest sign of cabin fever yet is this column:

There were a few bumps in the road between me and Larry Bird

Larry and me.

It was complicated.

I spend a lot of hours in the Wayback Machine these days. Hard not to. I am surrounded by old photos, old journals, and yellowed newspaper clips. I turn on ESPN and there’s Larry Bird going up against the Lakers in the “Heat Game” in the 1984 NBA Finals. And there’s young me at the courtside press table wearing gigantic eyeglasses that Michael Caine made famous in the 1980s.

This column's a bit too self-indulgement for my tastes - your mileage may vary.

Old Tyme Trolling

Shank's latest column has him going back to the well on a theme. See if you can pick up on it:

Worried about the Patriots’ standing in the AFC East? Don’t be

Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski are gone. Bill Belichick has quarterbacks named Jarrett Stidham and Brian Hoyer. The Hoodie used his first draft pick on a player from that well-known football factory Lenoir-Rhyne. Patriots players and staffers are fleeing Foxborough. Belichick has no cap space and the toughest schedule in the NFL this year. USA Today has New England 19th in its latest power rankings.
Clearly, the Patriots are a shell of their former selves.

It’s almost as if Belichick is intentionally handicapping himself — like when Larry Bird pledged to take only lefthanded shots in a road win at Portland back in 1986.

I mean, besides the gratuitous mention of Larry Legend!

How can Belichick be so Bird-like, cocky and calm, while the Patriot dynasty seems to be crumbling?

I give you three words: Bills, Dolphins, Jets.

Meet the New Tomato Cans. Same as the Old Tomato Cans. The Jets, Dolphins, and Bills are still Moe, Larry, and Curly. They are knuckleheads, porcupines, and lamebrains.

The reemergence of the Tomato Can meme aligns completely with the other part of this theme - The Patriots suck, but still no one else can beat them. He will not, of course, be bothered with this self-contradictory statement because he'll be singing a different tune in a few weeks or so.

Useless Award Postponed

Shank has a case of the sads for his compatriot in the Boston Globe sports department:

We will wait a year and honor Nick in July 2021 https://t.co/EsKB862nue

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 29, 2020

I wonder if that includes another paid mini-vacation for Shank in Cooperstown next year? You know how I'm betting...

Hackles Raised

Thar she blows! Another twofer type column from Shank:

It’s ridiculous that Bill Parcells isn’t already in the Patriots Hall of Fame

Bill Parcells is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

He is not in the Patriots Hall of Fame in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Parcells is good enough for football's ultimate shrine, but not good enough for a gallery in the shadows of Bar Louie and Skipjack's at Patriot Place.

You folks know exactly where this column is going, don't you?

It is ridiculous and embarrassing. It’s like somebody gaining admission to Harvard, then getting a rejection letter from the University of Kentucky. It’s like serving two terms as President of the United States, then losing an election for state rep. It’s like Jack Nicholson auditioning at your community theater and not getting the part.

Do I make my point?

Yes, you do - it's just not the one you think you're making. More on that in a moment.

It was announced last week that for the fourth time since 2011, Parcells is a finalist for the Patriots Hall. He’s on a ballot with Richard Seymour and Mike Vrabel, two worthy candidates. Between now and May 8, fans can vote for their favorite candidate at patriots.com/hof. The Patriots will announce the winner in mid-May. If form holds, the winner will not be Parcells. Petty and preposterous will prevail.

And there you have it. This column exists for one reason only, which will be obvious by the end of it - to further criticize and pile on Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and nothing more. The twofer is using Parcells' Patriots HOF selection to praise him, a halfway clever manner to conceal the other part (dumping on Kraft yet again).

Dan Shaughnessy, NFL Draft Guru

...or at least he thinks he is - here's Shank, criticizing one Patriots draft pick:

Can’t believe he was available. Best available athlete. What a steal. Bill has done it again! Blah blah blah.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 25, 2020

An intelligent person might want to wait until the draft's finished and evaluate the picks as a whole before criticizing any of them; and then there's Shank.

DHL Dan - CI

If you were under the impression that Shank would stop complaining about the punishment handed out to the Red Sox on the sign-stealing scandal, guess again:

Picked-up pieces while rooting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to go 0-16 …

Now what kind of an asshole wishes a team would go winless, simply because there are two people on that team he hates? Yes, this is a rhetorical question.

▪ The Red Sox look weak for letting J.T. Watkins, a low-level employee, and a West Point grad no less which means what, exactly? - ed), take the hit for their latest cheating scandal.

It’s a Big Nothing to the fanboys, but at least 11 Sox “witnesses” told MLB that they concluded Watkins had broken the rules by supplying them with information gained illegally. It’s certainly possible to assume most or all used the information. They all knew. And none of them were identified or punished.

The Sox baseball boss and manager also were absolved even though they’d been instructed that the team would be punished for future infractions after the Apple Watch incident in 2017. Nope. It was all J.T. Watkins. This 30-year-old guy had the power to move the video room at Fenway Park to a spot next to the dugout. All by himself.

It quickly devolves into unfunny comparisons, from there, one of them being a Bill Buckner name drop, and other odds & ends, some of which are good to read. Like many of Shank's picked up pieces columns, it's a mixed bag.

Dead And Buried

Shank takes note of Major League Baseball's punishment of the Red Sox in l'affaire sign-stealing from 2018:

As cheating scandals go, it’s nothing like the 2017 Houston Astros watching video in real time and banging on a trash can to tell their hitters what pitch was coming. It’s probably not even up there with letting a little air out of footballs, or videotaping NFL coaches’ sideline signals during games.

In other words, there's not much of a story here, unless you just want to pile on.

But despite what rose-colored Red Sox apologists might insist, it wasn’t nothing. And if you think a second-round draft pick is nothing, tell that to Fred Lynn, Jon Lester, and Dustin Pedroia, all Sox second-rounders.

After more than 100 days, 65 witness interviews, and a review of cellphones and in-house e-mails, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred released his findings into cheating allegations against the 2018 world champion Red Sox in a perfectly timed (the NFL Draft begins Thursday night) news dump Wednesday afternoon.

Actually, it's the classic Friday afternoon news dump. Must be a short work week this week!

Concluding that an MLB video replay rule was broken and “potentially benefited" the 2018 Sox, Manfred took away Boston’s 2020 second-round draft pick and suspended Sox video replay system operator J.T. Watkins without pay for a year.

OK, the draft pick's gonna hurt and aside from former Red Sox manager Alex Cora serving a one-year ban for his part in a bigger sign-stealing scam the year earlier with the Astros, one other guy gets two in the hat, metaphorically speaking.

Bonus - Nathan Jessup reference!

Manfred stated that Watkins “did not provide a persuasive explanation” for why he sometimes altered his information to Sox hitters during games.

Not much, right? Reminded me of the scene from “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Nathan Jessup tells the young attorney, "These two Marines are on trial for their lives. Please tell me their lawyer hasn’t pinned their hopes to a phone bill.''

There's Always Something To Complain About

There's never an offseason for Shank criticizing the New England Patriots.

Looks like Shank isn't too pleased with Rob Gronkowski's decision to unretire in order to go to Tampa Bay and play football with Tom Brady:

So I guess it was never The Patriot Way. It was The Brady Way. Good luck to Gronk playing tight end with his new David Bowie body. In the end, he totally screwed the Patriots.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 21, 2020

Compared to Gronk, Manny Ramirez left Boston in a blaze of glory

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) April 21, 2020

Jimmy Fund people told me many times over the years that Gronk did more stuff with no publicity than anyone. And somehow Dan hates him more than Aaron Hernandez. Was Dan this pissed when Gasper left for another job? https://t.co/3PBQZyYczD

— Kirk Minihane (@kirkmin) April 21, 2020

Boston Globe Death Watch - VI

You know it's a bad environment for the newspaper / media industry when the capo di tutti of left-wing rags (Guardian UK) says they're all about to get buttfucked wicked hard:

US newspapers face 'extinction-level' crisis as Covid-19 hits hard

As journalists across the US scramble to cover the impact of the coronavirus, they are grappling with a bitter irony: as demand for their stories soars, the decline of the business model that funds them is speeding up catastrophically.

The devastating sweep of Covid-19 is the biggest story in a generation, and for most newspapers and news sites it has triggered record numbers of readers. Yet the virus, industry experts warn, will spell the end for “hundreds” of those organizations, laying off journalists and closing titles.

Media outlets across the US have already responded to a huge drop in advertising triggered by the economic shutdown by sacking scores of employees. Some newspapers, just as demand is at its highest, have stopped printing – reverting to a digital-only operation that is just as vulnerable to the whims of advertisers.

The decrease in advertising was swift, as businesses tightened spending due to the economic impact of Covid-19. For a journalism industry already barely scraping by, the impact was almost immediate.

It's poetic justice, if you ask me - the US media is / was over the top and gleeful of reporting on this new strain of the influenza virus, the operating phrase 'if it bleeds it leads' never being more evident in their reporting. I can't wait to watch these assholes queueing up in the unemployment line.

Marathon Man

As most of you Massholes know by now, the Boston Marathon will not take place today; it's rescheduled for Monday, September 14. Our Man Dan manages to get a story out of this, and who better to help with such a column than Mr. Boston Marathon himself, Bill Rodgers?

No Marathon Monday.

No early morning buses shuttling runners to within walking range of the starting line. No piles of sweat pants and pullovers discarded on Hopkinton common. No kids along the route with orange slices and cups of water. No undergrads from Wellesley cheering runners when they pass through the Scream Tunnel. No massive gathering at the Newton firehouse on Comm. Ave. No breakfast club Red Sox fans atop the Green Monster, turning away from the infield to watch runners come into Kenmore Square. No thousands of Mylar sheets sheltering runners as they stagger from Copley Square after finishing the race.

For the first time since 1896 there will be no Boston Marathon in mid-April. This is the spring of 2020, which we will remember as a time when every path and roadway was Heartbreak Hill. If COVID-19 allows, the 124th Boston Marathon will be run on September 14.

Bill Rodgers, who won the race four times between 1975-80, says, "The world is upside down now, but it will be righted. It’s like a marathon, you feel your way through it. Think of the days ahead and what you’ll be aiming for. But right now, we’ve got to deal with this.''

There weren't too many comments on this article, but this one was really tasteless funny:

Sea Bass

4/19/20 - 5:31PM

And now, a moment of silence for the late great Rosie Ruiz.

Boston Globe Death Watch - V

As we wait for the panic, hysteria and massive overreaction to die down from Covid-19 / The Wuhan Kung Flu, let's check out the Sunday Boston Globe (a real bargain at $6.00!).

First up, the Sports Section - A+ for effort:

11-page Sunday Globe sports section today with 15 staff bylines including columns from @GlobeBobRyan and @Dan_Shaughnessy plus MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL notebooks and Stan Grossfeld photos from Fenway Park.

Read: https://t.co/I4niZH8ZSW

Subscribe: https://t.co/2rxUyK2iyq pic.twitter.com/yZr8DgJyMN

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) April 19, 2020

Next, something I can only describe this as ghoulish; typical of our garbage scumbag media - F grade assigned:

John Henry’s paper created a separate paid obituary section for COVID-19 deaths

“Boston Globe Prints 15 Pages of Obituaries on Sunday https://t.co/7BYkMNqk6o?”source=twitter&via=mobile via @thedailybeast

— Boston Radio Watch® (@bostonradio) April 19, 2020

Sure, that ought to sell lots and lots of newspapers...

We Doin't Need No Stinkin' Handshakes

It's bad enough watching large swaths of U.S. society continue to panic and overreact to a variant of the modern flu virus (it's called Covid-19 for a reason); and now the lead epidemiologist in President Trump's coronavirus task force does his best to throw more gas on the fire:

“We may never shake hands again.”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease expert.

While we continue to hunker and prepare for a day when games may resume (probably without fans for a while), we entertain the prospect of a world without handshakes.

Think about that. No more hands-touching-hands. No more reaching out. No more meet-and-greet events for politicians. No more lessons from dad about the importance of a firm handshake.

No handshakes would shake up sports as much as no crowd noise.

I can’t get my head around the notion of an NHL playoff series ending without the ceremonial conga line of handshakes. One of the best images in sports is watching a gap-toothed demonstration of sportsmanship and civility break out after seven games of cage-rattling, cross-checking, stick-wielding, bare-knuckle brawling.

When's the last time you recall Shank celebrating sportsmanship?

A Walk Down Memory Lane

This is the kind of column Shank used to be known for, before he became a somewhat bitter and vindictive asshole:

More than 50 years later, these sports clippings are still hanging in there

It has hovered over my head and shoulders for more than 50 years, a kaleidoscopic collage of sports photos, clipped from the 1960s pages of Sports Illustrated and Sport magazine. It is proof of a time when I loved sports more than anything, and saw fit to wallpaper my childhood bedroom with the gods of my youth.

I was able to preserve a 17-foot section of the star-studded mosaic when my mom sold the house in 1988, and today it hangs in my cluttered home office, reminding me why I wanted to write about sports in the first place. In April of 2020, as we strain to write sports in a world without games, I close the door to my office, sit at a desk, and regularly glance up at those ballplayers from 50 and 60 years ago. I am alternately inspired and saddened when I ponder how many of those heroes I got to know, and how many are no longer with us.

DHL Dan - C

This Wuhan Tang Clan coronavirus shutdown is starting to get on people's nerves, if it hasn't already. It's also a bad time for sports columnists who now need to create fiction just to get by:

A list of the great ‘what-ifs’ in Boston sports

Not to be greedy, but what if . . .

▪ Brad Marchand didn’t leave the ice early in the final 15 seconds of the first period of Game 7 against the Blues last spring?

▪ Danny Ainge drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo instead of Kelly Olynyk with the 13th pick in 2013?

▪ Harry Frazee didn’t sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees?

▪ David Tyree didn’t make the helmet-velcro catch in Super Bowl XLII?

Boston Globe Death Watch - IV

Just in case you didn't think the Boston Globe is run by a bunch of scumbags with an axe to grind against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, this 'news' item, this ought to confirm it. Check out the fucking headline:

Medical workers share concerns about masks delivered by Patriots plane

Isn't that the most astounding placing of blame - not on the masks themselves but the courier who delivered them. Was Kraft himself supposed to inspect all the masks before leaving China?

By the way - the story does go on to say the FDA cleared these masks for use; a bitchy complaint from one Mass. General doctor says they're 'not the gold standard' for use in the ER. Good enough for the Globe to run with, though!

Safe to say that will put a bit of a dent in the circulation numbers of the already battered 1988 Hyundai Excel that is now the Boston Globe.

They Don't Call Him Trollin' Volin For Nothing

If anyone was wondering how Boston Globe sports reporter Ben Volin earned that nickname, it's because of stuff like this:

Hey @Patriots, got your new kicker right here pic.twitter.com/b0TgpYtx4G

— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) April 12, 2020

Better that nickname than calling him Shank Jr. ...

Boston Globe Death Watch - III

When Boston Globe sports reporters like these two clowns start banging on the digital tin cup to try and drum up support for a dying newspaper in a dying industry, it would take a heart of stone not too laugh:

$1 per month for six months is pretty tough to beat. Please subscribe to stay informed and support local journalism https://t.co/mT18y1vFBq https://t.co/HTI4EUA8G7

— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) April 9, 2020

It's bad enough we have multiple elected leaders at the state level that ordered large swaths of the economy shut down for at least three weeks and looks like a lot of them will do so for a few weeks more, but of all the industries most vulnerable to outright seismic collapse because of this is the newspaper industry. With the Globe recently announcing 50 layoffs and 55 buyouts sought, their position is precarious at best. That part I have no problem with, but the self-inflicted wound of economic misery that will likely follow is / was entirely predictable and preventable if only these same politicians from both sides of the aisle didn't hit the panic button like they did and force millions of people to stay at home, get fired / laid off and suffer like they are now. The voluntary social distancing and other measures were by and large happening on their own and this massive overreaction is only being done, in my opinion, to save these 'leader's' political reputations at the expense of the rest of us. As far as this cat's concerned their reputations are as worthless as tits on a bull.

We will eventually look back at this and realize what a galaxy-class fuckup it was to force large parts of the economy to shut down by executive orders. Every one of these assholes that ordered this should be tarred & feathered at a bare minimum.

DHL Dan XCIX - Gold In Them Thar Hills

As our sports world dwindles to looking at lots of old reruns (like I'm sort of doing now with last year's Indy 500) and now that Tom Brady has left the New England Patriots, Shank's saying something nice about him:

Even during a pandemic, Tom Brady is ratings gold, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while channel surfing and deciding between the Thrilla in Manila and the 1968 World Series . . .

Don't you have them on Betamax or VHS?

▪ I am reminded today of John Lennon’s unfortunate interview in 1966 when he said the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus.'' Steering clear of that outrageousness, let’s acknowledge that one cannot overstate the local popularity of Tom Brady.

Tampa Bay’s new quarterback went on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show for a couple of hours Wednesday and managed to make himself a topic of conversation even in the middle of a global pandemic.

Metaphorically chained to a radiator at Gillette Stadium for 20 years, Brady is suddenly talking about his marriage, his relationship with Donald Trump, the size of his testicles, freezing out receivers, race relations in the locker room, and his complex relationship with Bill Belichick.

Brady even said that the story Bob Kraft has been circulating for two decades (that rookie Brady allegedly told Kraft, “I’m the best decision this organization has ever made”) is inaccurate. Asked about Kraft’s well-worn tale, Brady told Stern, "I didn’t say that.''

Would that be like a story from two decades ago about Shank not getting invited to a Patriots breakfast at the Super Bowl and Shank to this day holding a world-class grudge against the team and Robert Kraft?

From there it's the usual grab bag of stuff. Might as well read it - do you have anything better to do?

The Hank Finkel Column

I guess Clive Rush wasn't around, eh?

Ex-Celtic Hank Finkel could give Jarrett Stidham an idea of what he might be in for

Hey there, Jarrett Stidham. Want to know what it’s like to take over the starting job in place of the greatest winner in the history of your sport . . . in front of Boston fans accustomed to championships every year? Give Hank Finkel a call. I can get you his number if you want.

Hank is 77 years old, lives north of Boston, and is uniquely equipped to tell you what lies ahead. Nicknamed "High Henry'' by Johnny Most, the 7-foot Finkel replaced Bill Russell as the Celtics center for the 1969-70 season after Russell won his 11th championship in 13 seasons.

So far so good, right?

Russell didn’t play out his contract and leave New England for Tampa. He flat-out retired. And it was pretty obvious that things were not going to be the same once he left.

Now why do you suppose he said that, other than to just be a jagoff? It's probably that, combined with his continuing animosity of the Patriots and owner Robert Kraft, so saying anything remotely negative suits this purpose.

With no Russell, no Sam Jones (who also retired), a rookie coach in Tommy Heinsohn, and newcomer Finkel starting at center, the defending champion Celtics went 34-48 and missed the playoffs for the first time in 20 seasons. Boston fans were not happy, and Finkel got far too much of the blame.

"When you win in New England, the fans love you,'' Finkel said via telephone this week. "But when you lose in New England, they want to run you out of town''

Are we sure that Shank wasn't working at the Globe in 1969?

The rest of the column is solid.

When The Boston Globe Had Real Sportswriters

I whiffed on this one a few days ago, but Shank actually cranked out a solid column:

Remembering our maestro of the sports department: Ray Fitzgerald

There are no games in these dark, scary days. Here in the toy department, we spend a lot of time looking back. We watch grainy footage of World Series played in 1967 and 1975. We watch Larry and Magic in their short-shorts battling in three NBA Finals in the 1980s. We watch "Malcolm, go!'' and 28-3.

We blow the dust off old books, once again savoring Roger Kahn’s "The Boys of Summer,'' David Halberstam’s “The Breaks of the Game,” and anything by the estimable Roger Angell.

Today I am here to celebrate Ray Fitzgerald, the best sports columnist to grace these Globe pages in my lifetime.

Allow me to point something out:

All of us in this business who were fortunate enough to have read him regularly feel the same way. I grew up reading the Globe and have been lucky to work with a deep roster of Hall of Fame talents, but Ray was the best of those best. Like the man, his columns were funny, thoughtful, sensitive, creative, self-deprecating, and never mean.

The lack of self-awareness in some people is astounding. If Shank was capable of dropping that one attribute from his columns, there's a very good chance this site doesn't exist. Some people are natural born assholes; we now know who one of them is not that.

With that said, I didn't read many actual columns about Ray Fitzgerald, but his reputation was redoubtable. Also, this part is laughable (at least for me):

On the Boston Marathon: "Our city’s contribution to the legend of sport, a day when all America pays homage to the shin splint . . . As someone who reaches the brink of physical exhaustion merely by driving from Boston to Springfield, I find the thought of running 100 miles a week simply inconceivable. You might as well tell me they ride a bicycle to the moon for a bottle of milk.''

Great sportswriter, but a complete driving wimp!

I love driving for the most part - my personal record for a one day drive was 1,013 miles from Sarasota, FL to just outside of Baltimore, MD. I left Sarasota at 11 AM (and I was one very pissed off man when I started the drive, hence the motivation) and got to Baltimore around 3 AM the next day. The one thing that kept me going on that last leg - there was live Van Halen on some FM station and it went on for four hours. Of course, this was a long time ago; I'm not sure I could pull that off now, but I'd give it a shot if I had to. The other good one was from Mt. Ascutney, VT to Quincy in approximately 2 hours, 11 minutes. I charged down I-91 in a 1996 Dodge Intrepid (that car was a fucking beast - really solid V-6 engine and an excellent wheelbase for handling) like no one's business, then took Rt. 2 to Rt. 128, then the Mass. Pike and finally the Southeast Expressway. Google suggests a different route but by my reasoning the more time you spend on interstate highways or something similar, the faster you get there even if total miles is greater than the alternative routes. It also helps a lot to hold 95-100 MPH on that stretch of I-91 about half the time. That car, maybe fortunately, had a governor preventing me from going over 105 MPH, but I-91 was a fantastic stretch of road, no question about it.

Turn On A Dime Dan, A Continuing Series

In his columns about the Astros / Red Sox cheating scandals, it's amazing to see Shank go from 'ban them all for life' to a complete 180 with this lump of horseshit:

Alex Cora back as manager of the Red Sox? Without ever missing a regular-season game?

It’s far-fetched, but it could happen.

Here’s how:

The short answer - pull something out of his ass!

Imagination Used

If reading bullshit like this is what we're going to see from Shank during the Wuhan Virus slowdown, it's gonna be a long stretch of time, and painful to read.

Fantasy baseball: Here’s how I imagine I’d be previewing Opening Day at Fenway

(This is the column you might be reading today if not for the coronavirus pandemic.)

Stunned at being swept by the suddenly surging Baltimore Orioles, the 1-6 Red Sox will face the Chicago White Sox at 2:05 p.m. Thursday in their 109th Fenway Park opener.

"It will be good to finally get back to Boston,'' Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke might have said after Wednesday afternoon’s 4-1 loss to the upstart Orioles. "I’m pretty sure we’ll turn this around quickly when we get home to Fenway.''

Roenicke did not identify the Sox starting pitcher for the home opener.

“Could be Austin Brice, could be Marcus Walden, could be Heath Hembree,'' Roenicke said. "Chaim and the analytics guys will give me a name in the morning.''

Yup - it's that bad, and only gets worse from there. Read it, if you're into limo wrecks and that sort of thing.

DHL Dan XCVIII -

In these difficult times of zero live sports entertainment, Shank knows what ought to happen now:

This would be a good time to release the findings on the Red Sox and Patriots investigations

I think he's right on there - clear the deck of past events and concentrate on what kind of baseball season we're going to have this year. The months of April and probably May are scratches, so alternatives can be drawn up.

But you know Shank's got his own angle on things, right?

▪ Now is a perfect time for MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to drop the hammer on the 2018 Red Sox. The commish says that the investigation has been completed, and nobody is really paying attention, so let’s get it over with and get on with our lives.

The Sox’ transgressions are unlikely to be anywhere near Houston’s trash-can cheating of 2017, but they likely weren’t “nothing” as the Sox have claimed. Best to learn of their punishment now. It will allow them to strike “interim” from manager Ron Roenicke’s nameplate, and we’ll finally learn how long MLB plans to bench Alex Cora.

I bolded the massively contradictory parts - Shank wants to have MLB punish the Red Sox, whose owner pays his salary. That's a big bowl of awkward right there, to borrow one of Shank's favorite phrases. He's arguing for the Red Sox to get punished worse than the Houston Astros were punished by MLB (i.e., a slap on the wrist) even though he readily admits the Sox did far less in the transgressions department.

That's enough bullshit for this cat right there. Further punishment, dear reader, can be borne by clicking on that link.

Boston Globe Death Watch - II

If this is any indication (and I believe it is), ad revenues are drying up:

In an internal memo, Townsquare Media announces it has laid off 65 employees (26 at corporate level) and suspended 401K matching, while 18 executives are taking 10% temporary pay reduction.

— RadioInsight.com (@radioinsight) March 30, 2020

This tweet is courtesy of Boston Radio Watch. He's a sharp, insightful sort who pays serious attention to this sort of thing, and he watches that particular metric (ad revenue) pretty closely, as it's a prime factor into a company's revenue in the newspaper industry. The Globe just shitcanned 50 employees, want to get rid of 55 more through buyouts and now a primary source of revenue is under serious threat. One wonders how long John Henry continues to prop up this money-losing company.

Demanding Dan, A Continuing Series

Every now and then Shank writes the occasional and annoying type of column where he pounds his fists on the table and he wants answers, dammit!

The Red Sox owe us some answers on Chris Sale’s surgery

The Red Sox’ refusal to disclose anything about Chris Sale’s elective elbow surgery in the middle of a national medical-supply shortage is unacceptable.

New York Mets righthander Noah Syndergaard was scheduled for Tommy John surgery Thursday at the Hospital for Special Surgery in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Mets said that team doctor David Altchek would perform the surgery, even though the Florida governor has barred nonessential elective medical procedures in the state.

Doctors in Florida are empowered to determine what is essential, and a Mets official told the Wall Street Journal, "This condition fits within the essential surgery guidelines.''

I'm not disagreeing on wanting the answer, just the semi-imperious manner in which Shank is, um, asking for it.

A little further on:

It’s an unfortunate response while we are in the middle of a global pandemic, with surgical supplies limited and citizens sensitive to the notion of rich and powerful folks receiving preferential medical treatment.

This will work for Shank - he'll complain now, not knowing whether specialized doctors like renowned Tommy John surgeon Dr. James Andrews (who's in private practice) or whoever performed Sale's surgery are required by professional codes to abandon their practices, cancel what may or may not have been previously scheduled procedures in order to assist hospital staff elsewhere. Same goes for Dr. Altcheck, being an employee of the Mets. Maybe they volunteered to help other medical facilities, but I think these are important points to consider. Shank does not because that allows him to piously jump down the throat of the Red Sox. In the case Sale did not have surgery, he will use that to criticize the team and Sale for delaying the surgery and thus Sale's recovery. Either way, he'll also get to bitch more the longer the Sox string this out.

Diabolical trolling genius - Shank's at the top of his game, folks!

There's No Guessing Like Second Guessing

It's just Shank engaging in one of his favorite past times:

The Red Sox’ handling of the Chris Sale elbow situation could hardly have turned out worse.

Boston’s ace lefty needs Tommy John surgery. It appeared to some of us that he needed surgery last summer when he was shut down with elbow pain. But the Red Sox and Dr. James Andrews waited — a decision that appeared to be based on hope more than reality after the Sox signed Sale to a whopping contract extension before the 2019 season.

When Sale again felt pain at the beginning of this month, the Sox waited again after Andrews and at least two other experts viewed Sale’s MRI.

Boston Globe Death Watch - It Begins

I've long ragged on the Boston Globe on this site for many reasons, business model being chief among them in changing times. Industries rise and fall all the time and print media is no exception.

I'm gonna now make the Boston Globe Death Watch official in light of recent events - a tweet from Peter Abraham (below) which I take to be a certain / solid exquisite indication of desperation and loss of business, and now we get this beauty:

NEW: The @BostonGlobe is laying off nearly 50 workers at its Taunton mailroom, and is offering buyouts to 55 more, according to a union official, in conjunction with a plan to outsource its work on its direct marketing business, @globedirect https://t.co/RRaSTTyb1X

— Don Seiffert (@BosBizDon) March 23, 2020

Since financial, employment and other metrics are no longer publicly available, I cannot figure out accurate / ballpark numbers for the Globe. Nor would I care to, because I consider it a waste of time to spend any more thought on a dying company I've hated since the second month I started reading it. Best I care to guess - 15% overall drop, bare minimum. It is clear, however, that they are on a southward trajectory, bleeding slowly from a thousand cuts, or a thousand knives if that's how you roll.

A Picture With Many Possible Meanings

Is this a rallying call? A self-congratulatory pat on the back in this, our most trying of times? The beginning of the latter stage of the Boston Globe Death Watch? Throwing shade at Shank for being a lazy asshole while Pete and the rest of the gang soldier on, bending and never breaking? Is Shank retweeting this because he thinks he's flipping off Pete for ragging on him? A clever way to conserve on wood pulp newsprint by selling newspapers with less paper in it? It sure is a mystery!

Eight-page sports section and 12 staff bylines with no games being played. @BGlobeSports doing our thing. News staff is doing phenomenal work, too. Our digital readership is growing because news matters. pic.twitter.com/Qwues5zFVT

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) March 22, 2020

Turn On A Dime Dan, A Continuing Series

Thanks to Walter R. for pointing out Shank's latest attempt to whitewash what he said a mere four days ago.

First, the column from Monday (link is below, just go down a few stories) about Tom Brady's departure from the New England Patriots:

I doubt it. The longer this goes, the more it feels like Tom isn’t going anywhere. Because nobody wants to pay him $30 million per year for another two or three years.

After Tom Brady signed a contract that's pretty damn close to $30 million per year, Shank's singing a different tune now, in an oh-so-predictable way. Care to guess how, anyone?

Tom Brady is gone, and Robert Kraft should own that

The spin started immediately.

Yes it did, and it only took four words. Congratulations!

As news of Tom Brady’s departure from New England was breaking Tuesday morning, Patriots owner Bob Kraft called ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith during a commercial break to tell Smith that the Patriots would have made a deal work if Tom really wanted to stay. It was part of a campaign by the needy owner, who will always position himself to court favor with Patriots fans.

In reality, of course, none of what Kraft was saying was true. In my opinion, the Patriots did not make a sincere effort to keep Brady. They did everything short of buying him a plane ticket to Tampa.

It could also be that Brady wanted a new challenge. That angle is not considered at all, or even hinted at, in this column. It's all Robert Kraft's fault - Shank has an axe to grind, and grind it he does.

I'll give the last words to Boston Radio Watch, who sums up the situation nicely:

Brady wanted a change. End of story.

Thousands of Americans start at a new job every Monday or move to a new home/city/state every 7 years(on the average - fact, not opinion). Brady is just like everyone else. https://t.co/qM7oOm4ke7

— Boston Radio Watch® (@bostonradio) March 20, 2020

I am increasingly convinced that no one in Boston sports media knows shit about Brady’s divorce from the Pats. pic.twitter.com/5u8H37kM6d

— Boston Radio Watch® (@bostonradio) March 20, 2020

Close Enough

Bill Walton. Lee Alcindor. Then everyone else https://t.co/VrKbFam0xM

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) March 19, 2020

He's Gone !

Allow Shank to shed some crocodile tears:

Red Sox pitcher/outfielder Babe Ruth, a three-time World Series champion with Boston, was sold to the New York Yankees in January of 1920.

One hundred years later, New England woke up on a Tuesday morning in the middle of a national public health crisis and learned that Tom Brady has decided to leave the New England Patriots after 20 seasons that yielded six Super Bowl championships. Brady delivered the news in a goodbye message on his Twitter account at 8:45 a.m.

There will be plenty of days to dissect and analyze why Brady is leaving and where he might be going. We may never know whether the Patriots made a serious bid to keep him or whether they effectively pushed him away with a lowball offer. Or no offer.

I'm 100% certain Shank will follow up with this angle. By Stephen A. Smith's account of things, Kraft's saying 'nope, wasn't me', even though he would have been the person responsible for 'working it out' and he didn't work anything out. This will be sports gossip for a while, and Shank will be fanning the flames.

As suspicions rise and conflicting stories surface, we’ll have slices of blame pie for Bill Belichick, Bob Kraft, Alex Guerrero, Gisele Bundchen, TB12, and all the other influencers in Brady’s life.

Two things - with that sentence, the odds of Shank throwing more gas on the fire went from 'sure thing' to 'it's a lock', and like his fellow Boston sports asshole (Michael Felger), they are overly concerned / obsessed over needing to blame someone for this situation. Some things simply run their course and this is one of them. I'm pretty sure that's all part of their schtick - to spice things up and, in Shank's case, cheap and easy shots against Kraft.

The rest of the column reads eerily like the NFL Network special they had on Tom Brady last night.

He's Gone (?)

A decade after first predicting Tom Brady was on the decline, Shank thinks he may finally be right:

Tom Brady finds out that (almost) no one wants a 43-year-old quarterback

The big Tom Brady sweepstakes is now down to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New England Patriots? That’s the buzz today.

Seriously? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers? The team with the worst winning percentage in NFL history? Tom Brady is going to finish his career with the Bucs?

I doubt it. The longer this goes, the more it feels like Tom isn’t going anywhere. Because nobody wants to pay him $30 million per year for another two or three years.

Because he’ll be 43 bloody years old!

For the last year, it has amazed me that so little is made of Brady’s age. Truly. This is professional sports. Sure, Brady is different and the rules have allowed QBs to extend careers in a simulated bubble, but no athlete is at the top of their game at the age of 43.

This is not a post disagreeing with the notion of a 42 / 43 year old NFL quarterback being eminently marketable; it is my disdain with Shank for reveling so many times on the demise of Tom Brady's professional career.

If I had time right now, I'd go back and do the math on how many times Shank has predicted Brady's end to his career over finally getting it right. We both know that number would be a small one.

Read A Fucking Book, Mate

With all of the coronavirus panic / extreme measures being taken (take your pick there; I'm split 50/50 at this point), Shank asks the evergreen question during these dark, lonely times:

Without sports, what do we do now?

Through the decades the games have been there to distract us from real world problems. Now the games are gone.

What do we do now?

We hunker down in our homes. We make sure we have enough toilet paper and Cheerios. We think about how to open and close doors without touching doorknobs. We avoid checking our 401(k). We pray at home because church is canceled. We dust off old board games (when was the last time you played Scrabble?). We ask friends for recommendations for good TV shows to binge.

We do not watch sports on television. There are no more games on TV. And there are not going to be games for quite a while.

OK, maybe I jumped on him a little quick there! This turns out to be a pretty good start to the column, and the rest of it is promising as well.

This whole exercise with the panic / extreme measures should prove a bit interesting, because as a tax preparer I'm more or less naturally sequestered for the next month regardless of other circumstances. I'll probably pick up more on it because now a lot of other people are doing the same thing. In any event, this stuff will be over sooner than we think (early spring, right around the corner!).

Wipeout, Coronavirus Edition

There's been a ton of recent events related to the coronavirus that makes Shank's previous two whinefests shrink to the insignificance they deserve. Shank ably documents nearly if not all of these recent events & cancellations, and it's a pretty good column which you may want to read more of.

Suddenly, coronavirus wipes almost all of our sports off the landscape

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It is a deadly global threat that has nothing to do with sports. And yet in two days, it has become one of the biggest sports stories of all time.

It is breathless and ever-changing. It moves at warp speed toward . . . the unknown.

And it feels fruitless to say or write anything about it because by the time you read these words, so much will have changed. There is simply no way to keep up with the impact of the coronavirus on our North American sports leagues, teams, and tours.

Our nation’s capital is basically shut down. Kids are staying home from school. College students have been ordered to evacuate. Hospitals are preparing for what could be a dangerous and unmanageable surge. Broadway is dark. Disneyland is shutting down Saturday. Whole Foods has been rendered less than whole.

My biggest takeaway so far from this particular impact of the coronavirus cancellations (which I personally have no problem with whatsoever) is this, which needs to be repeated every now and then - there is more to life than sports.

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.

Classic Media Overreaction

The most charitable thing I'll say about the media with respect to the recent coronavirus cases in the U.S. and elsewhere is that they're grossly irresponsible. It is beyond obvious. The first thing I figured about print media after reading newspapers for two months is they love to scare the shit out of people and this is no exception.

Leave it to Shank to preemptively bellyache about losing precious access to locker rooms for a while. Let's cut to the chase:

In this spirit, I resisted the urge to hug Alex Verdugo when I first approached him in the Red Sox clubhouse Monday morning. Similarly, J.D. Martinez and I eschewed our traditional fist bump. But let’s not create a clear path to eliminate locker room access in perpetuity. Sadly, potential media-restriction policies were greeted with applause over the weekend by a couple of well-heeled sportswriters who insulted a century of hard work by beat reporters while simultaneously promoting erosion of media availability in professional sports locker rooms.

All of two people:

“I honestly don’t think we ever need to be in a locker room,” tweeted the estimable Grant Wahl, a 25-year veteran of Sports Illustrated who covers the US women’s soccer team. “Doing mixed-zone postgame interviews with the USWNT outside their locker room has never been a problem.”

Sopan Deb, who identifies as “NBA culture scribe” and has been with the New York Times for at least a half-hour, quickly chimed in with, "THIS IS 100 PERCENT CORRECT. It is so weird that for decades it became accepted practice for reporters to just hang out in locker room watching/waiting for athletes to get dressed.''

Both writers quickly backtracked. Wahl confessed that his tweet was “dumb,” while Deb deleted his message. But that won’t stop a legion of team-loving, media-hating fanboys from rushing to their keyboards to vilify journalists who fuel the 24/7 programming for our sports talk industrial complex.

Incorrect - some of us 'villfy journalists' because a lot of you are assholes, and Shank in particular is an irresponsible asshole in this case.

You'd suppose that would be the end of end of it and it is, for the most part. He also mentions all the reasons locker room access is a good thing and why, then starts retelling stories he's told six hundred times already. By the end of the column Shank dials back the hyperbole and just 'hopes' clubhouse / locker room access isn't banned permanently. He's talking out of both sides of his mouth with this column.

Kirk Minihane thinks he knows why Shank's all bent out of shape about it:

Written by a guy who spends his precious company time drinking at the EMC Club at Fenway during games. https://t.co/uAchSigsBB

— Kirk Minihane (@kirkmin) March 9, 2020

DHL Dan XCVII - Reusable Columns!

Shank rehashes his Tom Brady column from last week and is milking it for all it's worth:

Still waiting on the Tom Brady situation, and other picked-up pieces

If Brady leaves, it will be the biggest non-game-related story in Boston since Babe Ruth was traded

Picked-up pieces while waiting for the interminable (more than 50 days so far) Tom Brady situation be resolved . . .

■ If Brady leaves the Patriots, it will go down as the biggest non-game-related Boston sports story since Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees more than 100 years ago. Brady leaving is bigger than Spygate, Deflategate, and the LeRoux Coup at Fenway. It’s bigger than the sudden deaths of Reggie Lewis, Len Bias, and Harry Agganis. Bigger than the Braves leaving Boston. Bigger than the trading of Nomar and Mookie Betts. Bigger than Haywood Sullivan forgetting to mail Carlton Fisk a contract. Bigger than Bobby Orr going to the Black Hawks. Bigger than Bill Parcells to the Jets and Ted Williams going off to war twice. Bigger than the trade that brought Bill Russell to Boston. There can be no doubt. Tom leaving will be our biggest (non-game) sports story since the selling of the Bambino.

Gearing up to write another crappy book, Shank?

Shank's Mailbag - No Wait For The Hate

In an occasional series, Shank dedicates a column to him being an asshole:

For a columnist in the digital age, there’s no wait for the hate

Is Shank finally accepting the fact he's in 'the digital age'? That's a start.

We write about sports. You (hopefully) read what we write. Increasingly, you tell us what you think about what we write. In today’s free-for-all, everybody-is-a-columnist age of opinions, there are simply so many ways to respond.

I first noticed this on football Sundays on the road with the Patriots. In the old days, a column offered from the press box in Pittsburgh might trigger a small sack of angry mail back at the old home office on Morrissey Boulevard. It would take a couple of days, but by Wednesday it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that I suck.

Again, Shank is slow on the take or playing dumb oh-so-conveniently. When did you first figure out that Shank sucked, like after the fourth column?

Let Shank explain what we've known for years - he writes his columns ahead of time:

Now I suck on Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh before even leaving the press box.

Let me explain: I am a speedy scribe and sometimes finish ahead of my harder-working colleagues at Patriot games. In some cases, I am done first.

This gives Globe editors back in Boston time to edit and post the column. It gives the readers a crack at being first to call me a knucklehead. By the time all my colleagues are done with their work and ready to carpool back to the hotel, I already have an early exit poll from agitated Globe readers who care deeply about their Patriots.

Might be worth a read, even if it's just to bask in the Shank self-flagellation.