DHL Dan CXXXVII - Old Man

Shank leads off another Picked Up Pieces column about a dugout dustup:

Getting Dennis Eckersley’s take on the Tony La Russa flap, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for Fenway Park to be at full capacity next Saturday …

▪ Dennis Eckersley is the perfect baseball person to comment on Tony La Russa’s dustup with his own player in Minnesota this past week. It was a story replete with themes of old school vs. new, baseball’s “unwritten rules,” and social-media warheads bordering on ageism aimed at the 76-year-old Hall of Fame skipper.

Eck doesn’t necessarily agree with his former boss, but he thinks the barrage of criticism heaped on La Russa is rooted in the manager’s senior status.

“He’s getting killed,” said Eckersley. “I can’t help but think a lot of it is because he’s old. It’s the age we live in.”

Here’s the background: Leading, 15-4, in the top of the ninth inning of Monday’s game, White Sox manager La Russa gave the take sign to Yermin Mercedes as Mercedes prepared for a 3-and-0 pitch from position player Willians Astudillo, who’d been summoned to pitch for the Twins.

Mercedes, a 28-year-old rookie who’s batting .358, either missed the sign or ignored it, and swatted a home run. After the game, La Russa apologized to the Twins and called out his own player, saying Mercedes “made a mistake” and “there will be a consequence.”

Mercedes used the “I have to be me” defense and La Russa was buried from coast to coast, hearing complaints from players around baseball, even some White Sox (Lance Lynn and Tim Anderson).

I'm kind of surprised LaRussa's still around; of course, that might change any day now.

The Dreaded Play-In Game

The NBA has a new way to irritate its fans:

The Celtics took care of business in the dreaded play-in game. Now? It’s Kyrie Irving and the Nets

This was like an Oscar nominee showing up at a casting call for a small part in a B-list film, then being told he or she would have to read for the part. And maybe not even get the job.

The dreaded play-in game.

Nobody wanted the Celtics season to come to this.

The good news is that the Celtics passed the audition. Jayson Tatum, who earlier in the day said, “We believe in ourselves, still,’’ exploded for 23 third-quarter points en route to a 50-point night and led the Celtics to a 118-100 victory over the Wizards to push Boston into a first-round, best-of-seven series with Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, James Harden, and the second-seeded Brooklyn Nets. The Celtics were swept by the Nets during the regular season, losing three games by an average of 17 points.

'Thank you, sir may I have another?'

DHL Dan CXXXVI - Late Festivus

Shank says he's not too happy with the Boston Celtics, so he takes his concerns to Danny Ainge:

Airing some Celtics grievances to Danny Ainge, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while hoping Ed Davis can crack the case at Churchill Downs …

▪ I had an awkward conversation with Danny Ainge Friday morning. In an effort to represent what I consider a large segment of the Celtics fan base (good luck with that! - ed), I started our interview by telling Ainge that I hate the way his team plays. I can’t stand the way they come out flat, fall behind, rally to make it close, then ultimately capitulate.

I told him I don’t believe his players are doing what Brad Stevens asks them to do. Apologizing for my rudeness, I asked him if he felt we’d been too rough on the underachieving 2020-21 Celtics.

“I wish we competed out of the gate more,” the president of basketball operations acknowledged. “I wish our defensive efforts were more consistent. Absolutely. I understand all of those critiques, absolutely. So I think it’s a fair critique.”

What is his level of disappointment in this .500 team that will now have to participate in the “play-in” round just to get into the NBA playoffs?

The Payton Pritchard Column

I haven't been watching too much basketball this year; largely out of a reaction to the left-wing pro domestic terrorist hyping of the Black Lives Matter 'movement'(the organization, not the notion) where, true to form, Eric Hoffer is proven right once again. Anyways, the times I was watching them, especially earlier in the year, Pritchard was on fire with three point shooting and being a pain in the ass whenever possible. Here's Shank on that stuff:

Candid interviews with Celtics are sometimes shown on the video board during timeouts at TD Garden. At one recent game, players were naming celebrities they had been mistaken for in public. Most picked other NBA players. Some chose actors or musicians. Then the baby-faced rookie, Payton Pritchard, appeared on the screen. He was last.

“I don’t know if I’ve been mistaken for anybody,” the 6-foot-1-inch point guard said. “But when I walked into a gym sometimes, especially at Oregon, they would think that I was the manager.”

Some pro athletes would be bothered by such slights, or at least unwilling to reveal them. But Pritchard has never cared how others view his dreams. He is not here because of them.

It winds up being a pretty good story - check it out.

Bandwagon Dan Comes Alive!

The NFL schedule came out a few days ago. Shank once again rips off the Felger & Mazz show from Thursday and gives us this column:

We’ve known that this moment was coming. Now we know exactly when.

Tom Brady and the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be in Foxborough Sunday night, Oct. 3, to play the Patriots on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”

Save-the-date cards are in the mail. Oct. 3 is circled on every New England calendar. Alerts are set on cellphones. Days off from work are being scheduled for Monday, Oct. 4. Game tickets are going for one million dollars. Steve Burton and Dan Roche are planning to live in a trailer on Patriot Place for the week leading up to the game, delivering live “Tom is Back” updates three times per hour.

You know the rest - more forced 'jokes', inane comparisons with other local sporting events, etc. The only things missing are 'Sons of Bill Belichick' and an Elvis / Larry Bird reference.

When Unlikables Collide

After a loss to a potential playoff rival, Shank throws a proverbial monkey wrench at the Boston Celtics:

These Celtics have emerged as one of the truly unlikable teams in Boston sports lore

Only the 2020-21 Celtics could take a nice idea like “Tommy Heinsohn Day” and turn it into “Rick Pitino Day” or “Sidney Wicks Day” with a disgraceful effort on national television in the most important game of the season.

In a game with vital playoff seeding at stake, Boston’s entitled AAU Warriors came out sleepwalking and allowed the hungry Miami Heat to score 79 first-half points Sunday afternoon. The Boston Celtics have been around since 1946 and had never allowed that many points in the first half at home. Boston lost, 130-124.

With 68 regular-season games in the books and four left (including Tuesday night at home again with Miami), these Celtics have emerged as one of the truly unlikable teams in Boston sports lore. And now it turns out that Jaylen Brown, probably their best player, needs season-ending wrist surgery. Yeesh.

I felt like blowing this column off as the usual pre-burial of a local pro sports team before their eventual short and early playoff demise, but he says something interesting, or at least notable:

The team has stars, but no leadership. Players push back when they get criticized and say they don’t listen to their critics. Former Celtic champion Kendrick Perkins says maybe these players should start listening to the critics. Because the criticism is legit.

I'm not too keen on this 'play-in' system for the playoffs, but we'll see how it all sorts out.

On The Road Again?

Shank's wondering about the availability of the Boston Red Sox TV broadcasting crew (NESN) when they're on the road:

You watch the Red Sox on TV and hear the commentators, and it warms you knowing that Dave O’Brien, Jerry Remy, and Dennis Eckersley are ensconced in the broadcast booth at Fenway Park, describing what is unfolding on the great green lawn below. In the tradition of Curt Gowdy, Ned Martin, Ken Coleman, Dick Stockton, Sean McDonough, and Don Orsillo, they are your eyes and ears. They are your boots on the ground at Fenway.

Except during the COVID-19 era, when the Sox broadcasters have been bunkered in Watertown, watching monitors, trying to describe the action unfolding at Fenway or in Fort Myers, Baltimore, and Arlington, Texas.

Summary - it's awkward, the game still sucks with nearly empty stadiums, and they'll be doing road games from the Watertown studios for a while.

Remember - we read him so you won't have to!

The First 60 Point Game By A Member Of The Celtics

Jayson Tatum scored 60 points against the San Antonio Spurs last week, which also capped off a 32 point comeback. This amazing feat ties the Boston Celtics' record of sixty points, set by Shank's buddy, Larry Bird:

Unstoppable and unforgettable: Recalling Larry Bird’s 60-point night in 1985

It was March 12, 1985. Lakefront Arena on the campus of the University of New Orleans. The night Larry Bird scored 60 points in a single game for the Celtics.

Kevin McHale was there. Nine days earlier, he had scored 56 against the Pistons in a Sunday matinee at the old Boston Garden. When McHale went to the bench with a few ticks still left on the clock, Bird urged him to stay on the court. The record might not last long, Larry insisted.

“We had a lot of guys on that team who could get hot like that,” McHale said from his home in Arizona this week. “Max. Tiny. Robert. Larry. And when a guy got hot, we’d get him the ball. That’s what Larry did for me when I set the record, and we were all helping him that night in New Orleans.”

Interesting side note to the story - Bird only hit one three-point shot in that game.

Mystery Solved

I was trying to figure out why Shank tweeted out an ancient column about Ernie Adams, the Patriots' director of football research:

Mysterious Ernie Adams is Patriots’ man behind the curtain https://t.co/31ixIpr1xm via @BostonGlobe

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) May 4, 2021

That's because he's now the Patriots' former director of football research:

Longtime Patriots director of football research Ernie Adams announced his retirement from the organization in a brief statement Monday night. Here’s how the statement reads, via ESPN’s Mike Reiss on Twitter:

“The last 21 seasons with the New England Patriots have been extraordinary for me. I am fortunate to have been part of a team with Bill Belichick, outstanding colleagues, patient owners, and a lot of great players. It is time for me to stop working and join the many wonderful fans who have been here for this run.”

Adams’ first job in the NFL came in New England as an administrative assistant from 1975-78. A longtime colleague and friend of Belichick’s, he served in various roles under Belichick for the New York Giants and Cleveland Browns before heading back to the Patriots as Belichick’s football research director in 2000. Belichick announced on Saturday that the 2021 NFL Draft was Adams’ final one with the team, and allowed him to make the team’s seventh-round selection, Central Florida wide receiver Tre Nixon.

Known for his mysterious nature and football intelligence, Adams was described as a “mythical creature” by Patriots center David Andrews on Tuesday. Belichick heavily credited Adams with having a major role in the Patriots’ draft process over the years.

DHL Dan CXXXV - Making An Obvious Point?

$10 says Shank picked this one up from Felger & Mazz's radio show yesterday:

Expect Bill Belichick to stubbornly stand by Cam Newton, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while shedding a tear and closing the book on Jimmy G …

▪ It took Bill Belichick less than a minute to kill the great buzz that accompanied his fortunate and meaningful selection of Alabama quarterback Mac Jones in the first round of Thursday night’s draft.

Before he was even asked a question, Belichick made it clear that “Cam’s our quarterback.”

So here we go. After 10 billion words about Garoppolo, Zach Wilson, Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Mac Jones, Mac Davis, Zac Efron, Teddy Bridgewater, Bridgewater State University, and Mrs. Fields Cookies, prepare yourselves for obtuse and obstinate repetitions of “Cam’s our quarterback” for the next six or eight months.

It will not matter if Jones arrives with the skill sets of Bart Starr, Joe Namath, and Tom Brady. It will not matter if Cam Newton takes the Patriots to a 1-3 start, throwing passes that die in the dirt or get run back for touchdowns by assorted Bills and Dolphins. It will not matter if Rodney Harrison goes on TV and again says that Newton can no longer play in the NFL.

Hold that thought for a minute...

One of the reporters tried, following up on Bill’s unsolicited declaration of love for Newton Thursday night:

Q. “Going back to your comments off the top, you said that ‘Cam’s our quarterback.’ What exactly does that mean?” (Wow. Talk about walking into one.)

A. “Just what I said.”

The battered, intrepid reporter came back with, “How long does that last for?”

“I don’t know,” said Belichick. “Somebody would have to play better than he does.”

Isn't there a contradiction with this last sentence and Shank trying to tell us Cam Newton would still be the starting quarterback if they went 1-3 in their first four games?

On This Day In History

Shank commemorates the 20 strikeout game by Roger Clemens 35 years ago:

It was 35 years ago, April 29, 1986, and the big story of the day/night was Celtics vs. Hawks at the old Boston Garden in the second round of the playoffs. Those Bird-Walton-Parish-McHale Celtics were en route to a 50-1 home record (including playoffs), qualifying as perhaps the greatest basketball team of all time.

The Celtics-Hawks playoff game started hours after the first round of the NFL Draft, in which the defending AFC champion Patriots selected SMU running back Reggie Dupard. New England’s selection of Dupard was not preceded by one million hours of useless sports radio commentary by fantasy geeks and wannabe GMs. Nobody had ever heard of Jimmy G.

That's because he wasn't born yet, asshole...

Boston’s “minor” sports story of April 29, 1986, figured to be the baseball game at Fenway Park, where the mediocre John McNamara Red Sox (81-81 in 1985) were playing the moribund Seattle Mariners on Yawkey Way before it was haunted. Social distancing was no issue at Fenway that night, as only 13,414 turned out for Sox-Mariners. Because of a conflict with the Celtics broadcast, the Sox game could not be found on AM radio.

While most of this newspaper’s sports staff focused on the Celtics and the draft, I was the Globe’s only reporter at Fenway that night. No photographer was assigned. Everybody was at the Garden. Globe baseball scribe Larry Whiteside had the night off, scored a ticket for the Celtics game, and — in the tradition of all great baseball writers — stopped by Fenway for a free meal on his way to North Station. Sides even stuck around to watch 23-year-old Roger Clemens pitch a couple of innings.

He Has His Doubts

New York Mets pitching ace Jacob deGrom came to Fenway Park last night, and Shank writes a pretty good column about him, albeit in his trademark negative style:

The vaunted Red Sox lineup will face the best pitcher in baseball Wednesday night at Citi Field in New York. It’ll be Boston’s turn to take a shot at the Mets’ Jacob deGrom, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who’ll come into the game with an ERA of 0.31 and 50 strikeouts to go with only three walks in his first 29 innings of 2021.

Reminds me of when Oakland’s 10-1, soon-to-be-anointed MVP and Cy Young winner Vida Blue faced the Red Sox at Fenway Park in May of 1971 (a year in which Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts). J.D. Martinez better have his iPad fully charged for this one.

Acting Mets general manager Zack Scott says deGrom is the best he’s seen since Pedro Martinez. Former batting champ Keith Hernandez says deGrom is the best he’s seen since Randy Johnson.

It’s heady stuff. It’s must-see TV. And like everything in New York, it’s larger than life. Perhaps even, dare we say, a little overrated?

Don’t get me wrong, sports fans. DeGrom is on fire, and for all we know, he might no-hit the slugging Sox. But as I sift through the numbers and press clippings, I can’t get past the nagging notion that hungry-for-a-superstar New Yorkers have gotten carried away with deGrom’s meteoric start.

DHL Dan CXXXIV - Column Template Time

Three weeks ago, Shank trashed the Red Sox for an opening day loss, then ragged on them a few more times until they ran off a bunch of wins. Now it's the New York Yankees turn:

Picked-up pieces while counting the minutes to when Bill Belichick trades down for better value …

▪ Are you taking joy in the Yankees’ horrible start? Picked to win the AL East by almost everyone, the Bronx Bombers lost 11 of their first 18, their worst start since the Stump Merrill days of the early 1990s.

The Yankees went into the weekend in last place in the AL East, ranked 13th in batting (.211) and 12th in fielding percentage. They also had the worst slugging percentage in the majors.

New York’s awful April featured shortstop Gleyber Torres jogging out ground balls, plus epic slumps by Torres, Gary Sanchez, Giancarlo Stanton, Clint Frazier, and Aaron Hicks. They also have the assorted injuries that annually make a mockery of their $210 million payroll. George Steinbrenner would have fired the entire training staff by now.

We know one person enjoying that horrible start, don't we?

You'll Never Walk Alone

Those of you who are familiar with the Boston Red Sox know that the club is primarily owned by John Henry, who also happens to own what's left of the Boston Globe as well as Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League. A bunch of the top clubs in the English Premier League and a few other European leagues tried to form a semi-breakaway league called the Super League, which is primarily a vehicle for these selected clubs (and only them) to play each other and rake in big bucks. It was shot down after two days due to furious fan / supporter backlash from across the pond, there were a few ceremonial firings in the process, and it wound up leaving John Henry looking like a greedy chump.

When I first spotted this column, I half thought 'Oh, boy - Shank's gonna try and talk about soccer' but soccer's the sidebar here. There is something to be said of Shank's ability to write a decent, engaging column when he's able to blowtorch the subject of the column at hand:

A huge victory for soccer fans, a huge setback for John Henry

You’ll never walk alone.

This is the anthem for the Liverpool Football Club. It speaks to fans’ hopes when all seems lost. And defiance in the face of adversity.

Red Sox/Globe owner John Henry has found great riches and success as owner of Liverpool FC since 2010, but today he walks alone at Anfield in the wake of his role in a botched attempt to form a European Super League.

Plans for the elitist, money-grabbing league were unveiled Sunday night, triggering universal condemnation and galvanizing fans against the 12 owners who proposed the tone-deaf breakaway. In Liverpool, Henry endured a fan-driven pummeling 100 times rougher than what happened in Red Sox Nation after he traded Mookie Betts.

The Super League collapsed under the weight of its own greed less than 48 hours after it was introduced, and Henry posted an apology video hours later in which he said, “The project put forward was never going to stand without the support of the fans. No one ever thought differently in England. Over these 48 hours you were very clear that it would not stand. We heard you. I heard you.”

I saw one Twitter comment about that video - 'Turn the sound down - it looks like a hostage video'.

Check out the rest of the column; it's well worth it.

The Self-Explanatory Column

Occasionally, you can figure out right away why a column was written or not:

April has been anything but cruel for the Bruins, Celtics, and Red Sox

It is April of 2021 and the pandemic is reluctant to loosen its grip, but things are looking better for three local sports teams who are in season.

Bruins. Celtics. Red Sox.

So good. So good. So good.

Since the local teams are doing well, that means Shank has fewer things to bitch about, right?

It adds up to so … much … winning. Almost as if there’s nothing to complain about. I think it has me a little off my game.

Bingo!

DHL Dan CXXXIII - The Long Game

At last - some interesting material for the latest Picked Up Pieces column:

Recalling a baseball marathon and a win streak with Joe Morgan, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while begging for April 29 and the NFL Draft to finally get here so everyone can stop talking about it …

▪ April 18 is the 40th anniversary of the Rochester Red Wings vs. Pawtucket Red Sox 33-inning game, still the longest game in professional baseball history.

Walpole’s Joe Morgan managed a PawSox team that included Wade Boggs, Marty Barrett, Rich Gedman, Bruce Hurst, and Bobby Ojeda, all of whom later played big roles in the epic 1986 Red Sox-Mets World Series. Rochester featured a 20-year-old third baseman named Cal Ripken Jr., who would begin his streak of 2,632 consecutive big league games one year later.

The game started at 8:25 Saturday night (delayed because of a problem with the McCoy Stadium lights) and was suspended at 4:07 a.m. on Easter Sunday with the score tied, 2-2. There were 19 fans left in the stands when the game was suspended, but 5,746 (plus 140 media members) filled McCoy when the game was resumed June 23 in the middle of MLB’s 50-day work stoppage of 1981.

Shank Loves Alex Cora!

Now that the Boston Red Sox are enjoying a good recent run, here's Shank to jump on at least one bandwagon:

It’s clear that rehiring Alex Cora was the right move by the Red Sox

There are still pockets of Red Sox Nation where folks are upset that Alex Cora was brought back to manage. Cora is a convicted cheater, and I’ve heard from dozens of loyal Sox fans who are offended and outraged that the Sox rehired him after he served a one-year MLB suspension for his role in the Astros sign-stealing scandal.

Not me. I can be the pearl-clutching “get off my lawn” guy when it comes to PED users applying for admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame, or John Calipari vacating Final Four appearances, but bringing back Cora to manage was always the best move for the Sox.

A reminder - Shank also called Cora a cheater, just six months ago, and now everything's cool.

Forgive and forget, and / or just win baby?

Guilty Conscience?

Nearly two full days after it happened, Shank gets around to one of the most insincere 'congratulations' columns he's ever written, this one involving the University of Massachusetts - Amherst men's college hockey champions of 2021:

A well-deserved salute to UMass athletics and the recently crowned men’s hockey champs

Congratulations to the University of Massachusetts men’s hockey team, which won the NCAA championship, defeating St. Cloud State, 5-0, Saturday night in the final game of the Frozen Four at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

Congrats to coach Greg Carvel, goalie Filip Lindberg, skaters Bobby Trivigno, Anthony Del Gaizo, Zac Jones, Matthew Kessel, Matt Murray, Carson Gicewicz, Jake Gaudet, Oliver Chau, Aaron Bohlinger, Ryan Sullivan, athletic director Ryan Bamford, school president Marty Meehan, chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy and all the other players, coaches, trainers, support staff, alums, and fans of UMass hockey.

Hope you're sitting down for this next part:

Before we go any further, let me also apologize to every member of the UMass Amherst community who feels you guys never get enough coverage or credit. Through the years, hundreds of friends and correspondents from UMass have made it clear they regularly feel disrespected by the Boston sports media, particularly the Globe. We (I) have routinely mocked them as Hooterville, embarrassingly beholden to the corrupt regime of John Calipari, and in 2021 obtusely tolerant of a foolish foray into big-time college football.

Not today.

Today we toast all that is good about UMass sports. We salute UMass’s national champions, skaters who are part of a program that won a Division 2 championship in 1972, was disbanded in 1979, and did not resurface until the Mullins Center opened in 1993. Until this weekend, goalie Jonathan Quick was UMass’s greatest contribution to the sport.

What a fucking gutless weasel. Shank has indeed spent many a column over a great length of time trashing John Calipari (and by extension the University) and he attempts to absolve himself with the use of a single letter (I).It's entirely possible Shank has done the majority or all of the 'disrespecting' of that university in his newspaper. For that, I'd need to a) give a shit about other Globies and b) waste time reading them to know for sure.

My final point - you and I know that at some point down the road, say when Calipari steps in some dog crap again, he'll go right back to 'disrespecting' the school. It's tough to teach an old dog new tricks.

UPDATE at 6:05 PM - Opening sentence was clunky, threw in some words to make it clearer.

DHL Dan CXXXII - Go Through The Motions Much?

Oh, look - Shank bangs out another Picked up Pieces column. How original!

Quinn Buckner of the NCAA’s last perfect men’s basketball team wasn’t rooting against Gonzaga, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while outfitting the entire family in yellow and blue City Connect Red Sox uniforms . . .

▪ Former Celtics guard Quinn Buckner was cocaptain of Bobby Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, the last NCAA team to run the table. Buckner started alongside Scott May, Kent Benson, Bobby Wilkerson, and Tom Abernathy, all of whom went on to NBA careers. Two others players on the Indiana team were drafted by NBA teams. When undefeated Gonzaga took on Baylor in the NCAA championship game Monday, I wondered if Buckner and his teammates are like Mercury Morris and the 1972 Miami Dolphins, openly rooting against any team with a chance to go undefeated.

“I don’t know how my teammates feel about it, but I would have been OK with Gonzaga winning,’’ said Buckner, who works as a color commentator for Indiana Pacers broadcasts these days. “But I will tell you that I have family members who were pulling hard for Baylor to win. Not me. Gonzaga winning wouldn’t change anything for us. We would no longer be the last team to do it, but it’s still there.’'

I don't have the patience to read this garbage - proceed at your own peril.

Definitely A Glass Is Half Empty Guy

The Red Sox have won four games in a row. Here comes Shank to nonetheless take a piss on them:

Red Sox go worst to first? Great! Let’s see where they stand down the road

How could we ever have doubted them?

Worst-to-first. In four short days.

We were ready to run the Red Sox out of New England after they were swept by the Orioles. Drubbed, 11-3, Sunday at Fenway. Before playing their fourth game of the season, the Sox walked a line between ridicule and irrelevance, losing three to the Zer-O’s by an aggregate 18-5.

Thursday afternoon at Camden Yards, the Sons of Alex Cora beat those same Orioles, 7-3, to move into a first-place tie with them in the American League East. The Red Sox have won four straight, which did not happen once in their embarrassing 2020 season.

Shank's been trying to 'run them out of New England' ever since the first pitch was thrown in spring training. Dishonest barely begins to describe this bullshit.

Straight Daddy Ball

Shank's doing what Shank does best - writing a Celtics column after a loss:

Larry Bird vs. Dr. J this is not; Celtics-76ers rivalry is now one-sided

Boston vs. Philadelphia has given us Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird vs. Julius Erving. Tuesday at the Garden we got Tacko Fall vs. Joel Embiid. Yikes.

Embiid (35 points) and the conference-leading Sixers beat the Fool’s Gold Celtics, 106-96, at the Garden Tuesday to sweep the season series from the overrated, back-under-.500 Green Team. There was talk of a Celtic “winning streak” after victories over horrible Houston and depleted Charlotte, but we should all know not to take the cheese on the Brad Stevens Five.

Robert Williams got the start vs. Embiid (115 points in three games vs. Boston this year) and his foul trouble led to Celtic trouble in the first half. With Williams on the pine and poor Luke Kornet getting rag-dolled by Embiid, Philly went on a 21-2 run and Stevens called for Tacko to guard Philadelphia’s behemoth center. It’s never a good sign when it’s Tacko Time in the first half against a team with a 35-16 record. The Sixers are legit now that Doc Rivers is calling the shots from the bench. And Embiid is Philly’s new Chamberlain. Boston’s Time Lord scored 4 points and fouled out in 14 minutes.

Read on if you want to read about Celtics - Sixers from previous decades.

DHL Dan CXXXI - Want Some Politics With Your Baseball?

The state house in Georgia passed a bill this week designed to prevent Democrats from stealing future elections in that state. Major League Baseball has responded by pulling this year's All-Star game from the host city of Atlanta, and Shank's on board with it:

Baseball surprisingly acted quickly in pulling All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while filling out an expense account for the first time in 13 months . . .

Major League Baseball’s decision to pull this summer’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta — a swift reaction to Georgia’s new voting law that many view as voter suppression targeting minorities — was stunning. MLB traditionally moves slower than other professional sports leagues regarding issues of politics and controversy. Not this time. After lobbying by civil rights groups and the MLB Players Association, commissioner Rob Manfred acted quickly.

It’s risky business for a commissioner who rarely takes risks. The decision is bound to offend a portion of baseball’s dwindling fan base — a group older, whiter, and likely more conservative than the fan bases of the NFL and NBA. Corporate pressures will be another matter altogether. Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola voiced displeasure to Georgia’s legislation, but not until after the law was changed.

I'll bet it's a fair bit bigger than a mere 'portion'; at some point everybody gets sick of politics in sports. Any of these commissioners that think viewership (say, in the NBA and especially in MLB) will magically rebound any time soon is misreading their fan base, and now they just threw some more gas on the fire.

Political backlash was immediate. Accusing Manfred of succumbing to “cancel culture and woke political activists,’’ Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, stated, “Major League Baseball caved to fear, political opportunism, and liberal lies.’’ The Braves issued a statement (embossed with their tomahawk logo) in which they said they were “deeply disappointed’’ the All-Star Game was being pulled from Atlanta. Saturday’s Wall Street Journal featured an editorial headlined “The Biden Baseball League,’' stating that MLB “has smeared Georgia’s elected majority as racist and anti-democratic,’’ concluding, “Welcome to the Democratic Baseball League.’’

So, here we go. Manfred and MLB have jumped feetfirst into America’s raging political divide. It’s going to be tough sledding from here on in. There’s a voting law bill on deck in Texas. You know Florida can’t be far behind.

Welcome to the political arena, MLB! Hope you get it, good and hard.

From there, it's the usual grab bag of semi-useless tidbit sized bullshit.

The Obligatory Red Sox Opening Day Column

You knew Shank would trash the team after an Opening Day loss, didn't you?

Baseball. Fans. Sunshine. Peanuts. Beer. Masks. “Sweet Caroline.” Abundances of caution … and another day at the bottom of the American League East for your Boston Red Sox.

On the heels of their last-place disgrace of 2020, the Sox returned to frosty Fenway (37 degrees at game time) and kicked off their 121st big league season Friday with a 3-0 loss to the moribund Baltimore Orioles in front of 4,452 Hub hardball enthusiasts.

Alex Cora’s return to the dugout as manager was spoiled by a lineup power outage (two hits) and shaky defense that betrayed Nate Eovaldi and broke open a scoreless duel in the sixth.

From there it's the expanded game recap, sprinkled with sarcasm.

First Night Out

Shank sort of likes Re-Opening day for the Boston Celtics:

Just getting to the Garden was weird.

There were no flag-wavers selling “$40 for Garden event, no blocking” parking on Friend and Portland Streets. Boston’s Causeway neighborhood featured a lot of dark saloons and eateries. Walking past sad, shuttered “The Fours” on Canal Street, I felt like Bluto in “Animal House” when he shouts, “They took the bar! The whole [expletive] bar!”

The Harp on Causeway Street was open, but had no patrons at 4 in the afternoon. This would have been unthinkable on a normal Celtic game night. When the first customers filed in, they were politely asked to furnish phone numbers and names for contact tracing. This is a night out at a Celtics game in March 2021.

It's a start.

DHL Dan CXXX - Mailing It In Yet Again

It's incredible to marvel at the level of (non) production from Shank the past few months, and the blandness of his columns in particular, and wonder why he's still employed by the Boston Globe:

Picked-up pieces while trying to fit into my clothes as I return to games at the Garden and Fenway …

All yours - I have zero interest in this one.

Setting Up The Bowling Pins

That's the only thing that springs to mind when you read something like this:

Red Sox will be better this year, but irrelevance awaits if they don’t start quickly

There have been other years when the start of the Red Sox season was awkward and critical:

▪ Six months after winning 99 games, Don Zimmer was booed when he brought out the lineup card at Fenway on Opening Day 1979.

▪ The 1987 Sox were urged never to speak of their previous season, in which they advanced to the seventh game of the World Series; they responded with a fifth-place follow-up.

▪ In the wake of the 2012 Bobby Valentine train wreck, the 2013 Red Sox theme was “Please don’t hate us,” and the Local Nine rebounded with a championship season, winning the World Series on the Fenway lawn for the first time in 95 years.

Remember when Shank had a major league hard-on for Valentine? How soon we forget!

Idiot High School Football Gets Shitcanned

Imagine being someone with this kind of mentality...

Duxbury High School should dismiss its football coach after anti-Semitic play calls

Update, 2:47 p.m. Wednesday: Duxbury football head coach Dave Maimaron fired after team’s use of anti-Semitic terms revealed

It’s past time for Duxbury High School to dismiss football coach Dave Maimaron. High school kids have been immature and foolish for hundreds of years, but the notion that a play-calling system that uses anti-Semitic terminology has been tolerated by a veteran coach at a local high school is unacceptable.

Listening to in-game audibles is part of the fun of watching pro football on television. Peyton Manning became famous for hollering “Omaha!” when he changed the play at the line of scrimmage. Jared Goff called out, “Elvis!,” “Tupac!,” and “Ric Flair!” to alert his teammates of a change of plans. The Steelers tried “dilly dilly!” a couple of years ago.

Now close your eyes and try to imagine lining up opposite the Duxbury team and hearing one of the team leaders yell, “Auschwitz!”

What a fuckin' moron - glad he's gone.

DHL Dan CXXIX - Dubious Reasoning

Here's something new and refreshing from the Shankster:

LeBron James being a Red Sox part-owner is a good thing, and other thoughts

Isn't that nice? This is his third picked up Pieces column in one week; he's just going through the motions until Opening Day.

And how exactly is LeBron James becoming a part owner a good thing?

All kidding aside, it’s good to see that James is joining FSG. Baseball benefits when a globally famous basketball star becomes part of MLB ownership. Especially in Boston. Especially with the Red Sox. James’s name on the FSG masthead represents progress for a franchise that admits being haunted by the institutional racism of a previous regime.

So it's a good move for the Red Sox because a long since dead former owner of the team was a racist? That's definitely Boston Globe thinking right there.

Did you ever notice the people constantly and incessantly bringing up the subject of race... are always liberals?

The rest of the column sucks - don't waste your time. UPDATE, 3/25/2021, 6:50 PM - I dropped the ball on this one; will get to his other 'efforts' soon.

A Righteous Rick Pitino Column

Rick Pitino, coaching in his 2,000th college basketball game (or so it seems) gets back into the NCAA tournament yet again. Shank, in one of his better columns in quite some time, pays the proper tribute to the guy who destroyed the Celtics in the 1990's:

Rick Pitino, basketball survivor, is back in the NCAA Tournament

Rick Pitino: basketball savant, basketball survivor.

His name is mud in man caves and and saloons across New England. He is a bad memory of a dark time in Boston Celtics history. I mentioned him alongside M.L. Carr in a column carving up the 2021 Celtics a couple of weeks ago, and Carr objected, saying, “Do not put my name in the same paragraph with Rick Pitino.”

Pitino became a punch line in the college basketball world a few years ago after his latest scandal (this one involving an FBI investigation) got him bounced from a lucrative lifetime gig at Louisville. In addition, his 2013 NCAA championship at Louisville was vacated.

Still, Pitino could not quit, and his Basketball Jones took him to Athens. Like Michael Corleone in fictional exile in Sicily, real-life Pitino coached Panathinaikos for a season while things cooled down back in the States.

Now Pitino is back in the Big Dance with Iona, a school with a 1-14 lifetime NCAA Tournament record (the win was against Holy Cross when Jim Valvano and Jeff Ruland were Iona’s coach and star). Iona was the only NCAA school that would take a chance on Pitino. He is Norman Dale in “Hoosiers,” getting a shot at Hickory after nefarious activity banished him from every other coaching opportunity.

One of the few things I'm with Shank on - some respect for him (begrudging, of course) but definitely a dislike of this guy.

NFL Free Agency Has Begun

...and we all know what that means - time once again to criticize the New England Patriots!

Patriots’ free agency spending frenzy has heads — and theories — spinning

Bill Belichick has put the NFL on notice that the Patriots are back in business.

That was stolen right off of Felger and Mazz yesterday, and the rest of the column is basically copy and paste of the same show. There are other parts of the column that make it wretched as well, like weak sarcasm and analogies, a bunch of Shankisms, a mention of Larry Bird and of course contradicting himself yet again:

In less than 24 hours, while most of the league stood still, the Patriots locked up the best two tight ends on the market (Henry and Jonnu Smith), a Super Bowl wideout (Kendrick Bourne), a receiver from the Raiders (Nelson Agholor), a Pro Bowl linebacker (Matt Judon), a defensive back with green hair (Jalen Mills), a nose tackle from Miami (Davon Godchaux), and a lineman cut by the Jets (Henry Anderson).

“I’ve never seen a spending spree like this,” said former Patriots general manager Upton Bell. “Are the Patriots checking the borders to see who might be coming across?

“They have to do this because they drafted poorly for a number of years. That used to be deadly, but now you can make up for it with free agents. Luckily, they have the money and the cap space.

“Belichick is good at picking up people. The difference is that, in the past, he picked them up to complement what he had. Now he’s signing people to fill positions that were never filled properly.

“Look at their roster. It’s almost like they are the Red Sox, starting all over again.”

There is a Sox-like overreaction to the Patriots’ supermarket sweep.

The critics are being mean. Let’s shut everybody up by overpaying free agents.

How the sports world has turned around here. The Patriots and their fans used to laugh at bad teams that went out and opened their wallets for free agents. Now the Patriots are one of those teams. Je suis Tomato Can.

Shank spent the entire 2020 season ragging on the Patriots for (at a minimum) not spending money on players, only to turn right around and criticize Belichick and the team for doing exactly that.

It's probably just easier to recognize one truth that's been pointed out over and over again - If the New England Patriots do 'X', Shank will find a way to criticize it.

A Pair Of Humdingers

Shank wrote two columns this week - one about not going anywhere for a year to 'cover' sporting events (after being part of the lockdown crowd) and yet another Picked Up Pieces column.

The two are related in one sense - being locked out of stadiumsballparks results in a lot of Picked up Pieces columns because you have nothing specific to write about. Can't wait for Shank to start writing shitty columns about specific games and events again!

Dennis Eckersley - The Covid Column

Shank sits down with the former (and current!) Red Sox ace, who reveals he caught the Wuhan Flu a few months ago:

It began in America one year ago. The Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert got the coronavirus and the NBA shut down. We learned that American icon Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive for the virus while filming in Australia. The world as we knew it was over.

Fast-forward 12 months and I am talking with Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley, a man Red Sox fans love to hear when NESN games are broadcast into our homes. In the middle of a casual conversation about the suspect 2021 Sox, I ask Eck how his winter went and he tells me, “It’s been good, but I got COVID, for [expletive] sake.

“I got it Jan. 4. I was on the West Coast visiting my daughter and her kids. I didn’t see the grandkids two days prior to finding out. It could have been a disaster if I gave it to my daughter or her kids.

Who are at far less overall risk because of their age, but go on...

“I had a feeling. I had been around somebody that had it and he called me and said he and his wife had it. I said, ‘Really?’ Two days later, I felt something. I went in, got tested, I had it.

“I had like a mild fever for 10 days and that’s all I had. It was annoying, but I couldn’t be annoyed because I didn’t have it that bad.

“It wasn’t pretty. I never felt right for a month. But I feel lucky. It can happen to anyone.’’

It can happen to anyone.

A year into this awful thing, that is still the message (from a media dinosaur with zero knowledge of remedial measures - ed), and we cannot let our guard down. Eckersley got his first vaccine shot last Friday.

I still have a serious lack of appreciation / hatred for this purposeful fearmongering. I'd like to know if either Shank or The Eck were taking any of the following during the whole 'pandemic' - selenium, zinc and / or Vitamin D3. Full disclosure requires me to state that selenium started for me by April of 2020, I was already taking zinc by January 2020 and I started taking D3 about two months ago. And why is that? It's because I looked this shit up so I could figure out a way to prevent myself from getting sick, and so far it's worked. Admittedly the decision to start taking zinc looks like dumb luck in retrospect given that I was taking it two months before the start of the panic pandemic, but not the other two. If you're not boosting your immune system, you have worse odds for getting sick by this and other things.

Cheap and shitty panic induction like this doesn't help in any fashion and has been the number one reason I've always disliked and distrusted the media industry. What's left of the Boston Globe's circulation numbers further validates this fact.

DHL Dan CXXVII - Wondering

Jackie Bradley Jr. was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers earlier this week. Shank, never a fan of JBJ, leads off his latest Picked up Pieces column in that precise fashion:

Wondering about Jackie Bradley Jr.’s place in Red Sox lore, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while applying for membership to the Milwaukee chapter of the JBJ Love Society …

▪ What is Jackie Bradley Jr.’s place in Red Sox history? Who was he? Where does he fit?

An epic underachiever at the plate (.239 career batting average), Bradley dazzled in center field for eight seasons at Fenway Park. He probably was Boston’s best center fielder since Jimmy Piersall, and there aren’t many folks around who remember Piersall. If Bradley played in Baltimore, a good comparison would be Paul Blair.

JBJ was overrated locally because of his amazing catches, but he also delivered big hits when he was MVP of the 2018 ALCS against Houston. He was a one-time All-Star and Gold Glover, and has two World Series rings, but was never as good as Johnny Damon or Trot Nixon. Troy O’Leary was a better hitter, but JBJ no doubt is a more important figure in Sox history.

Talk about damning with faint praise! The rest of the column's worth checking out.

Slow On The Take

Who could have ever figured out that prolonged separation from your teammates could have negative effects?

COVID-19 has robbed our young athletes of joys they can never get back

Everything must be viewed in perspective, because there has never been a time quite like this. Those blessed with good health, employment, and family support can’t complain or demonstrate impatience. There’s real suffering all around us, so we all need to suck it up and wait for the pandemic to play itself out.

All that said and understood, please allow me a moment to shine a light on COVID-19′s impact on team sports — a small but critical slice of everyday Americana that’s been erased from the lives of so many young people over the last 12 months. Our high school and college juniors and seniors have lost seasons they will never get back.

He's just figuring this shit out (perhaps because his son & daughters are now out of the terrible environment that Shank writes about). You want to tell me this guy has serious IQ?

The Ultimate Mercy Rule

In case you're wondering just how bad and unbwatchable professional baseball has become, look no further than this column:

Two games into spring training, and we have a solution for the 2021 Red Sox: The Little League Mercy Rule.

It’s a new preseason thing. If you are getting crushed by your opponent, you can stop an inning once your pitcher has thrown more than 20 pitches in a frame. Alex Cora ran up the white flag three times in seven innings of Monday’s 5-3 loss to the Braves and has invoked the slaughter clause four times in the first two games, both losses.

The Sox should petition MLB to make this an option during the regular season. No more jail-break innings. Everybody goes home feeling good about themselves, even on a day when you commit five errors and three times walk off the field before getting a third out.

But wait - it gets worse:

I watched on Fubo because the bosses at NESN have made watching the Sox harder than ever. NESN was dropped by YouTube TV last fall after negotiations between the two parties broke down. This meant that a large chunk of Boston baseball watchers had to scramble, and many steered toward Fubo, which just happens to be the top overall streaming service for futbol, offering 32 soccer channels.

Loyal baseball fans (remember them?) who dumped YouTube TV for a NESN carrier were doubly disappointed Sunday when the Sox exhibition opener against the Twins was not televised on the flagship. Imagine that. You have a sagging last-place team with little star power, aggressively cutting costs on player payroll … and you make it hard for your remaining loyalists to watch the team and perhaps learn the names of some of your faceless new players. Genius.

After paying my new streaming bill, and learning the bells and whistles of Fubo, I navigated around the menu’s soccer smorgasbord and found the Sox NESN broadcast at 1 p.m. I couldn’t wait to get a look at Garrett Richards’s vaunted spin rate.The view of JetBlue Park and the dulcet tones of Dave O’Brien made me warm all over. It was good to hear OB alongside Jerry Remy, who told us it was 84 degrees at the sunny ballpark. For a moment, I longed to be back in Fort Myers, but then O’Brien said he and the RemDawg were broadcasting from their Watertown studios, no more than a mile from where I was sitting on the Brighton/Newton border.

The view of JetBlue Park and the dulcet tones of Dave O’Brien made me warm all over. It was good to hear OB alongside Jerry Remy, who told us it was 84 degrees at the sunny ballpark. For a moment, I longed to be back in Fort Myers, but then O’Brien said he and the RemDawg were broadcasting from their Watertown studios, no more than a mile from where I was sitting on the Brighton/Newton border.

So there you have it - the Red Sox are again expected to be a poor team this year and when you can find the game on a local channel, the booth guys won't actually be at the park, which will be next to empty like they were last year.

Exactly what reason is there to watch baseball anymore?

DHL Dan CXXVI - The Next Grab Bag

I was expecting another semi-weekly mail it in job from Shank with this one, but I see some interesting things already:

Let’s not take the bats out of the pitchers’ hands completely, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether Charlie Baker will dispatch Ed Davis to clean up this vaccination chaos …

▪ Have we seen the last of pitchers in the batter’s box? Is Major League Baseball ready to adopt the universal designated hitter?

“I think it’s time,” J.D. Martinez said in Fort Myers, Fla. “I think everybody knows it’s time. Even the owners, the players, the fans, they know it’s time. Everybody loves offense.”

MLB and the Players Association have yet to agree on a universal DH for 2021, which means the upcoming National League season may be the farewell tour for pitchers hitting. The universal DH almost certainly will be implemented as part of the next basic agreement, which will be hammered out after the 2021 season.

Put me down as one with a fondness for pitchers hitting. How else would the world have discovered Babe Ruth?

It's worth a read - give it a go.

Skid Row - II

Is the panic real, or is it Memorex? You make the call!

The skidding Celtics don’t need patience. They need action

Trade Jayson Tatum. Trade Jaylen Brown. Fire Brad Stevens. Fire Danny Ainge. Take down the banners from the rafters, splinter the sacred parquet floor for a West End bonfire, then tear down the New Garden. Sell the team back to Paul “Thanksdad” Gaston.

It’s time for the Celtics to DO SOMETHING!

No more lollygagging. No more mealy-mouth mutterings from wimps in command. We thought things were at rock bottom a couple of weeks ago, but that was before the 24-point blown lead in New Orleans, the Luka Doncic double dagger in Dallas, and Wednesday’s humiliation at the hands of the immortal Danilo Gallinari and the forever-moribund Hawks.

The entire colum is pure fucking snark and completely unserious. He doesn't offer Clue One about how to address any of these situations; a reasonable sort like Chris Gasper would give that kind of analysis to the Nth degree. It's further possible that this is an extended funk or injury bug to a key player or two (Marcus Smart, etc.) but that's nowhere to be mentioned.

Then again, you could say that a lack of seriousness describes a lot of his columns.

DHL Dan CXXV - Position Overstated

Unable to devote full columns criticizing the Red Sox while otherwise enjoying his normal Ft. Myers winter vacation, Shank instead writes about a lot of little things :

Celtics continue to be treated as if they have won something — which they haven’t — and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while paying homage to the underrated Boston Bruins — the only local team that’s getting the job done in 2020-21 …

▪ Danny Ainge, when asked about losses to the Pistons, Wizards, and Hawks, on 98.5 FM Thursday said, “I don’t think we respect our opponents enough.” That’s it, right there. The Celtics act as if they have won something when they have not. They are not as good as they think they are and that includes Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Brown and Tatum are not yet All-Star starters. This means they are not yet top-10 players. Why does everyone around here treat them like they are top-10 players?

This looks like a classic strawman agument; assert that 'everyone around here' thinks the team and its top two players are the cat's ass. It's based on a rather thin reed:

Also, when did our market go totally soft in its evaluation of this team? I watched the Celtics win a Tuesday game at the Garden against a Denver team that had only four of its top nine players. Friday I watched the Celtics handle the 12-17 Hawks — a team that stunned them two nights earlier. During and after both of these pedestrian wins, folks at NBC Sports Boston reacted as if the Green just beat the Lakers in LA in the seventh game of the Finals. Seriously. How did the bar get so low for this team? It’s like NESN gushing over the last-place Red Sox. I remember when the Larry Bird Celtics went 50-1 at home and barely drew a round of applause. Tommy Heinsohn was the ultimate homer, but the Celtics’ flagship nonsense has only gotten worse since we lost Tommy. Get back, Green Teamers! That means you, Scal.

So, Brian Scalabrine (and supposedly some others at the local NBC Sports affiliate) are the new Tommy Heinson? Somehow I don't find the opinions of a few local sports jocks being the widely felt sentiment of Celtics fans, including this one. It's trademark Shank hyperbole.

From there, he goes on to... complain about pretty much everything; might be worth a read just to marvel at that.

And Now For More Boston Globe Employee Bashing

(Another installment in a continuing series)

Is Kevin Cullen ^* talking about Our Man Shank or Trollin' Volin?

Imagine taking joy in being mocked by a player you did everything you could to chase away from a team you’ve done everything to bad mouth owned by a man who your employer has done everything to see receiving a handjob? https://t.co/maQ5egMSzK

— Kevin Cullen (Parody) (@KevinCulIen) February 18, 2021

^*Parody account!

The Bullshit Meter Is Redlining

For the first time in about five hundred years, Shank does not get to enjoy a Boston Globe funded vacation to Fort Meyers, FL this spring in order to tan his pasty white Irish skin and shit on the Red Sox for a few weeks. It's enough to make you weep, isn't it?

What I will miss about Red Sox spring training

NOT FORT MYERS, Fla. — I miss baseball. I miss the Red Sox being a pleasant diversion and an important topic of conversation at this time of year.

I miss spring training.

Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to Fenway South this week. Player physicals are scheduled for Wednesday, with the first workout for pitchers and catchers Thursday morning. The first full-squad workout is Monday, and the Sox’ Grapefruit League opener is Feb. 28 against the Minnesota Twins at Hammond Stadium.

This guy's been shitting on the Red Sox with regularity, and we're supposed to believe absolute bullshit like this. The more likely explanation is that he doesn't get to escape the New England winter (and lord knows what else) for a few weeks.

DHL Dan CXXIV - Head Scratcher

Shank 'treats' us to another half useless column:

The Red Sox still have us scratching our heads, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering who’ll be the next Boston athlete to leave town …

I wonder if he means 'leave' or him running someone out of town?

▪ There are times when it seems as if the Red Sox front office is trying to turn fans against the hometown team. I can’t remember anything like it. Instead of touting big-name talents and inspiring pennant fever, the Sox peddle payroll flexibility, team contract control, spin rate, and exit velocity while asking fans to be patient and wait for the future.

The Sox have admitted they are not “all in” to win this year and dumped many popular players in a quest to assemble a 25-man roster of nameless, faceless, analytic-friendly castoffs. And there’s no accountability or explanation from above.

He goes on from there to detail what the Red Sox have done (and haven't sone) for offseason moves, so in that sense, the column is useful. If you consider we've had five picked up pieces columns over the past month (from a total of ten), it reeks of laziness, and he spends the majority of the rest of the column ragging on as many people as he can.

Still Debatable

With Tom Brady winning his seventh Super Bowl on Sunday, the debate about him being the GOAT got going almost immediately. Here's Shank's contribution to the conversation:

Tom Brady, the greatest winner ever in sports? Not so fast

We have ceded almost all platitudes. Tom Brady is the best quarterback and greatest football player ever. Better than Johnny Unitas, Peyton Manning, Lawrence Taylor, or Jim Brown.

He is chiseled on our New England Rushmore alongside Ted Williams, Bobby Orr, and Bill Russell. Nobody else is close. Sorry, Larry Bird. And please don’t bring David Ortiz into the conversation (”Ooh, but Papi has three rings and Williams has zero.” Curtis Leskanic has a ring. Was he better than Carl Yastrzemski?).

Events of Sunday night have brought us to a predictable place. And now we wonder if Brady has supplanted Russell as the greatest of all the greats. Is Brady the greatest winner in sports history? Better than Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe, and LeBron James? Better than Jim Thorpe and Serena Williams? Better than Tiger and Jack? Better than Ali? Better than Secretariat?

Or Formula One greats Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, and you could throw in Pele and Lionel Messi for good measure.

I’m saying no. Let’s not rush to judgment based on Sunday night’s sugar high.

Brady is closing the gap, but this debate still starts and ends with Russell, the man won two NCAA championships, an Olympic gold medal, and 11 NBA championships in 13 seasons. At the age of 43, Brady just won his seventh Super Bowl in his 21st season. It’s truly unbelievable, especially in an age of parity, salary caps, four rounds of playoffs, and a 32-team league. But it does not make him a greater winner than Russell.

You think it’s a big deal that Bruce Arians let Brady help coach the Buccaneers? Swell. Russell actually coached the Celtics to two championships while he was busy being their best player.

I called around to make sure this is not just me. I spoke with four people who have seen a lot.

I'm in agreement with Russell still holding the crown, but being a cyclist I can make a solid argument in favor of Eddy Merckx; just look at this guy's resume - eleven Grand Tour wins, former hour record holder (average speed / distance covered - 31 miles / MPH) and won a grand total of 525 bike races. It's estimated that he won thirty percent of the races he's ever entered.

Two things make the whole column better - Shank actually did some serious work with this column and he lets the four (Ernie Accorsi, Bob Cousy, Bob Ryan and Richard Johnson) take over the column from here. It's definitely worth a read.

DHL Dan CXXIII - Super Bowl Recycling

What better way is there to write about tomorrow's Super Bowl than rehasing one of your old columns?

Recalling another high-stakes Brady-Mahomes matchup, and other thoughts

Recalling, recycling - it's all the same!

Picked-up pieces while picking up a Super Bowl sheet cake at Star Market …

▪ Super Bowl LV is easily framed as Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes, quite possibly the top pairing of quarterbacks in the 55-year history of this event. Those of us lucky enough to be at Arrowhead Stadium on Jan. 20, 2019, will never forget the first championship matchup of the GOAT vs. NFL Future.

It was the biggest game in the 47-year history of Arrowhead at that time, and the Patriots cut the hearts out of the frozen local fans by keeping a lid on Mahomes and bolting to a 14-0 halftime lead. New England led, 17-7, at the end of three quarters before a flurry of scoring filled the fourth. Both teams scored twice in the final 3:32 of regulation and it went to overtime tied, 31-31.

The original column can be found here. The rest of the Picked Up Pieces column is the usual stuff - shit on the Red Sox, shit on Curt Schilling, a silly quiz, etc.

Inversion

At last - Shank comes up with a decent column!

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

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

But you know what they do have?

Better teams than we have.

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

How does that taste, Boston?

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

The Dustin Pedroia Retirement Column

Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia finally calls it a career. Since Shank is generally incapable of anything resembling a respectful retirement-type ending when it comes to a local athlete signing off, he wisely turns it over to two guys who know him best, Theo Epstein and Curt Schilling Tito Francoa:

Two guys who know him well have the highest praise for Dustin Pedroia

Theo Epstein and Terry Francona are busy guys with important jobs, not always eager to talk about their Red Sox years, which were important but did not end well.

Just a friendly reminder - Shank was uniquely instrumental in the former's departure from the Red Sox with the infamous 'Dirty Laundry' column. How Shank got Tito Francoa to co-write his book with him after that bullshit will forever be a mystery on par with Jimmy Hoffa's true burial site.

Both responded immediately when I reached out Monday regarding the retirement of Dustin Pedroia.

“It’s a combination of sadness and real appreciation,” Epstein said of a player he drafted in the second round out of Arizona State in 2004. “It’s tough to see someone like him, whose heart would allow him to accomplish anything he wanted, not go out on his own terms.

“But at the same time, it gives everyone an opportunity to think back at everything he accomplished and everything he meant to the Red Sox and how this entire era wouldn’t have been possible without him.

Probably for the best to let them do the talking for Shank, who could not help himself over the years and took some juvenile potshots at Pedroia because of his height. To my recollection, today is the first time he ever put that into its proper context and not made it sound like the juvenile potshot it otherwise is.

DHL Dan CXXII - Next Year's News Today!

In the latest extravaganza of the Picked Up Pieces column, I wasn't quite sure what to expect based on this tweet:

Thanks, Chris https://t.co/Ju8XGZv0i7

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 29, 2021

A few things to point out. Gasper's correct in the sense that being someone's 'foil' can mean 'to prevent something undesireable from succeeding'. That's certainly the case with Schilling, who Shank wanted to put in jail for defaulting on a $75 million loan from the state of Rhode Island. I wouldn't want someone like that as part of the jury pool. Gasper then uses another interesting word to describe part of this column - hilarious'. Unless this is some old inside joke between Globies, does anyone think Shank is funny? Funny how, you may ask? Let's check out the column:

We’re a year away from the wildest Hall of Fame election ever, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while daydreaming about how — in a normal year — my JetBlue flight would be landing in Tampa for Super Bowl Week right about now …

Shank whining about not getting a paid vacation from the Globe to go to Florida for a week? That's not funny. Reading about Shank whining about not getting the free vacation? That's fucking hilarious!

▪ Look for David Ortiz to sail into Cooperstown when the Hall of Fame Class of 2022 is announced at this time next year. Big Papi comes on the ballot for the first time in December, and I believe he’ll easily vault over the 75 percent threshold.

It’s going to be the wildest Hall election ever, which is saying something given events of this past week. Ortiz and Álex Rodríguez are the top achievers among the new candidates in 2022, and they will be on the same ballot with Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, and Curt Schilling (sorry, Schill, you don’t get to withdraw your name), who’ll all be in their 10th and final year of consideration.

Shank thinks Ortiz is a lock (ditto) but Schilling is not:

▪ I’ve sent Schilling’s 1,200-word Tuesday night screed to multiple geniuses and soothsayers, and nobody seems to be able to decode the thing. Curt keeps telling us he’s not a Hall of Famer but anybody who didn’t vote for him is a coward (Schill should have blamed the BBWAA’s Dominion voting machines).

Schilling says he’ll gladly turn his candidacy over to the Veterans Committee, but a quarter of that committee will be media members, and there might also be a few Hall of Famers curious about Curt’s position papers on Black Lives Matter issues.

Let’s also remember that Schilling went out of his way to bury Clemens and Bonds, which never plays well with ex-players.

Nobody can figure out what Curt’s issue is with the Red Sox (”What Mr. Henry and Mr. Werner did to my family and I in my final year …”). In his final season (2008), the Red Sox paid Schilling $8 million for not throwing a single pitch. By this logic, Curt also must be angry at the taxpayers of Rhode Island for what they did to his family.

▪ Got an e-mail from a Hall of Famer who was not buying Schill’s response or his logic. The thrust of this missive was that Schilling is copping out, taking his ball and going home instead of letting voters who have ruled on the Hall since 1936 make a decision on his candidacy.

Schilling always wanted the ball in the big games, so where is that now? This e-mail from a Hall of Famer doesn’t bode well for Schill’s hope to gain points with the Veterans Committee.

Schilling’s request to be removed from the ballot presents as an attempt to avoid a 10th rejection. He doesn’t make the rules, and the Hall should reject his request.

So if anything was hilarious with this column, it's purely inadvertent. That said, this is a pretty good column.

Scoreboard

You just knew Shank would use the win by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday to bash the Patriots, didn't you?

Final score: Tom Brady 1, Patriots 0

The headline says it all...

Forty-three-year old Tom Brady is going to the Super Bowl.

In the immortal words of Bob Lobel, “Why can’t we get players like that?’'

All precincts have reported and it’s official: Brady has beaten Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft in a landslide. Ten months after leaving New England because the Patriots were done with him, Brady showed the world he’s still got the goods. The Patriots, who had no real plan to replace their quarterback, finished 7-9 and out of the playoffs. Meanwhile, Brady is going to his 10th Super Bowl; with the clown car Tampa Bay Buccaneers, no less.

This is like seeing the Red Sox dump Mookie Betts in the name of payroll flexibility, then watching Betts win the World Series after the Sox finish last.

Ouch! I bet he's been saving that line for months now. In any event, you and I know this new found love and appreciation for Tom Brady is world class hypocrisy, wrapped in bullshit. Let's take a look at recent history, shall we?

First up - September 30, 2014 - The Kansas City Massacre::

By the end of the night, the darts and arrows were coming from every direction. Bill Belichick was grilled about his musical-chair offensive line and the notion of starting two rookies in front of Brady in a loud enemy theater. The coach was asked if he might have to “evaluate” his quarterback position; the question from CSNNE’s Mike Giardi elicited a smirk with no comment. There were hysterical calls for out-of-work Charlie Weis to replace Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator. Darrelle Revis was compared to Carl Crawford (OK, that one was me). It was noted that no Belichick defense had ever surrendered 300 yards in a first half. There was a television graphic explaining that the Patriots offense ranks last in the NFL, averaging 4.6 yards per play. We were told that Brady has missed his target more than 25 percent of the time.

July 28, 2015 - Deal With It - Brady's A Cheater:

In a 20-page decision that was released at 2:32 p.m. Tuesday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell upheld Tom Brady's four-game Deflategate suspension. In the day's most shocking revelation, the commissioner revealed that Brady ordered his assistant to destroy his cellphone on the same day (March 6) Brady was interviewed by NFL investigator Ted Wells. Brady did not disclose this development for several months and it was not confirmed until the day of his suspension appeal hearing, June 23.

What do you say now, Patriot fans? Still think the NFL is out to get the Patriots? Still think Tom Brady is clean? Still think this is a witch hunt?

Of course you do. And that is why at a time when you should be embarrassed, you are probably emboldened.

Please. Give up. It's time for local loyalists to parachute down from Planet Patriot and get in touch with reality. Stop twisting yourselves into knots to justify the petty crimes and coverups of the Patriots and their quarterback.

January 3, 2017 - The Patriots Only Win Because Everybody Else Sucks:

Am I the only one?

Is there anybody else out in Patriot Nation who’d like to see the Patriots in a competitive, thrilling playoff game? You know . . . a game where the outcome is in doubt before Hoodie defers on the coin toss?

Guess not. The Patriots are going to get to the AFC Championship game without a serious test of their considerable abilities

February 28, 2020 - Please Go Away, Tom:

I just want it to be over.

And I officially am hoping Tom Brady leaves the Patriots.

Sorry.

I want Tom to go because his history-making time has run its course here. I like sports drama, and it would be a much better story if Tom goes to a new team. I’d like to see what Bill Belichick can do without Brady. I’d like to see what Brady can do for the Los Angeles/Tampa Bay/Tennessee Bradys.

And, with any further Tom Brady guile, luck and / or winning ability, Shank will have one more convenient column that he'll milk into a few more so he can take shots at the Patriots until Draft Day.

And Now For Some More Boston Globe Employee Bashing

Some tweets don't age very well, like this one:

#TBvsGB #GoBucs pic.twitter.com/4qMq3b79OF

— Freezing Cold Takes (@OldTakesExposed) January 24, 2021

Hat tip - Boston Radio Watch

DHL Dan CXXI - The Hank Aaron Tribute

With the recent passing of baseball legend Hank Aaron, Shank's latest Picked up Pieces column details his one home run at Fenway Park:

Picked-up pieces while readying for another Sunday on the football couch …

▪ Hank Aaron, who died Friday, hit 755 home runs, but only one at Fenway Park. On Sept. 14, 1975, working as a designated hitter for the Milwaukee Brewers, Aaron stepped into the righthanded batter’s box and cranked a Bill Lee fastball into the left-field screen. It was the 41-year-old Aaron’s last home run of the season. He would hit only 10 more the rest of his career.

“It would have been the last of his career if he’d retired that year, but they talked him into coming back for one more season,” Lee said from his Vermont home Friday when he learned of Aaron’s death.

He then takes a shot at Curt Schilling (natch), half hoping he won't get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but we knew that already. He also jumps off the Tom Brady bandwagon (ok, he was never on it, but still!) before this next somewhat interesting part:

▪ Some readers wondered whether Sam Kennedy was contentious in our recent interview when he admitted that the Red Sox are not going “all-in” this season. The answer is no.

The Red Sox CEO/president is ever-polite and a true professional. He also is a company man who is carrying out the directives of his bosses.

When I asked him why we have heard nothing from those bosses since Mookie Betts was dumped 11 months ago, he said, “Our owners are available. They are available and accountable and, frankly, they are regarded as the best owners in Major League Baseball.”

When I pushed back on his contention that the owners are “available,” he said, “I’m not going to engage in that.” But he was not contentious.

So what the hell was Shank complaining about in the previous post? He has a problem with another reporter either a) disagreeing with his questioning of Kennedy or b) Kennedy responding to Shank in a 'spirited' manner. Since 'not contentious' strongly implies a lack of 'spirited' debate, this makes me inclined to change my own opinion about it and say Shank's being just a bit thin-skinned here. Then again, it could still be both!

There's lots of little things from that point on.

But You Can't Question Shank

The previous post clearly demonstrates Shank always trying to have it both ways. He does so again today, as he can question people like Sam Kennedy about the Red Sox, but apparently Kennedy's not supposed to 'give it back' to Shank:

Odd that a journalist would have this take on . . . journalism https://t.co/VdXCZw07oc

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 21, 2021

It's clear enough Shank's not really bent out of shape about another writer disagreeing with him, but that the person he's interviewing has the temerity to challenge Shank at all. Because Shank's a fucking weasel he'll not make the clear connection between which specific part of the statement he has a problem with, so that leaves us to draw our own worst conclusions.

He can dish it out but he can't take it.

Plan Questioned

Like clockwork, Shank bitches about the Boston Red Sox' strategy for the near future:

The president and CEO of the Boston Red Sox admits the Sox are not “all-in” trying to win the World Series this year.

“I think it would be inaccurate to say we are going for it with an all-in approach that perhaps we did prior to the 2018 title,” Sam Kennedy acknowledged in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday.

“We cherish that title, and all of them, but the way we built that team came at a price, which included importantly a depleted farm system and some depleted draft picks along the way. So we are building back up, and as we do this hopefully the right way, we’ll have a chance to be competitive in the American League East in 2021, but also for the longer term.”

This is Shaughnessy in a nutshell - advocate for more free agent spending back in the day, and when that finally runs its course in subsequent years (like last year and this year, in a completely shit sports environment) complain that a) the team sucks and b) they're not doing the big free agency spending spree all over again so the Sox can supposedly win it in 2021.

Some people are just born jagoffs.

Who Loves Ya, Baby? - II

In light of Tom Brady making his 14th NFL conference championship game this coming Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, Shank recounts all of them:

Tom Brady is going to Green Bay on Sunday to play in his 14th conference championship game. This will be his first NFC title joust. Brady’s original 13 were played when he was a New England Patriot, and he won nine. Here’s a thumbnail history of Brady’s conference championship games with the Patriots:

▪ 2002 at Pittsburgh. W, 24-17. Brady’s first, and the only one he didn’t complete. The Patriots were underdogs on the road, and Brady came out of the game early with a sprained ankle after he was was taken down by Steelers defensive back Lee Flowers.

Drew Bledsoe, who had been The Franchise, threw a touchdown pass to David Patten almost immediately and managed the game the rest of the way.

DHL Dan CXX - The Long Wait

Shank's latest Picked Up Pieces column is exactly that:

Picked-up pieces while readying to watch 43-year-old Tom Brady return to the site of his first championship when he was 24 years old in 2002 …

▪ Tampa Bay by the Charles Update: The Red Sox wear me out with their inactivity. The trick over on Jersey Street seems to be floating the notion that the Sox are “in on” every free agent and trade possibility … and then doing nothing. This perpetuates the narrative — based on hope more than reality — that they will spend to improve the team.

The Sox were a last-place team in 2012, 2014, and 2015. This feels different. This time they appear content to stay in the basement as support erodes among the loyal fan base.

Funny how Shank spent the past eight months shitting on the team no matter what they did, and now gets to criticize them for sitting on their hands. If only there were a person at the Boston Globe who also owns the red sox that Shank could talk to...

From there it's the usual mix of this and that (the parts about Alabama's bowl win and Doug Pederson's firing from Philadelphia looking like ripoffs of Felger and Mazz themes from Monday & Tuesday), and a good amount of the column's devoted to how many of Tom Brady's playoff games Shank and other people have witnessed in person. Count me out as giving a fuck about that one.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

Is Shank trying to pull the wool over our eyes?

Go Browns. Go Cleveland.

These are strange times for New England sports fans. We are coming into the divisional round of the NFL playoffs — wall-to-wall with big games — and the Patriots are not part of the action. We are in search of a team to adopt.

It’s easy for a lot of you, I know. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski are with Tampa Bay, and the Buccaneers play the New Orleans Saints in the Superdome Sunday night. It’s the marquee matchup of the weekend, and lots of Patriots fans have adopted the Bucs.

Not me.

I am all about Cleveland. The Browns will be playing the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium Sunday afternoon, and they need my love a lot more than Brady does.

Imagine being anything in need of Shank's love - I'll opt for being fed to hungry Australian sharks. From there the column devolves into boring, Shank-like rote recitals of Cleveland playoff futility and hard luck. Let's not forget, however, a time when Shank wasn't all hugs and kisses for our friends from Ohio, like when he Shanked the whole city of Cleveland nearly six years ago.

Better Than '4th And 2'?

Shank's really laying the bullshit on thick with his latest column:

Bill Belichick made a great call on Medal of Freedom decision

President Trump should call Curt Schilling. I’m pretty sure Schill would have no problem showing up in Washington to collect a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the middle of impreachment proceedings, eight days after Trump incited violence against the United States of America.

I challenge anyone out there to point out precisely what President Trump said to incite violence. I've been hearing this line of 'argument' for a week - shouldn't we have plenty specific quotes of violence-inciting rhetoric about this by now?

We haven't, because Trump did not incite violence. Not once.

Given that's the premise of the column, I don't see a need to comment any further, unless you'd like to see Shank take a victory lap of some sort, none of it deserved.

DHL Dan CXIX - Au Contraire

Shank's been a critic of Curt Schilling, to put it mildly. And in another Picked-Up Pieces column, Shank leads off with criticizing Schilling for supporting the 'mostly peaceful' protestors in our nation's capital on Wednesday:

Picked-up pieces while nestling into the couch for the best pro football weekend of the year …

▪ Curt Schilling would help himself if he’d stop spewing hate and claiming he’s being punished by Baseball Hall of Fame voters because of his “politics.” Supporting a racist (really, Shank? - ed) mob that stormed the Capitol is not being “political.” Advocating for lynching journalists, calling Adam Jones a liar when he said he heard racist slurs at Fenway Park, bilking Rhode Island out of $75 million, collecting Nazi memorabilia, and posting anti-transgender material … these are not “political” stands.

Do you think Shank could articulate just what, precisely, was 'racist' about the protestors, aside from them being majority Caucasian? Does that also make Shank, a pasty white Irishman, racist as the dickens? This cheap eight grade name calling, initiated by him in this article and used far and wide by leftists across the land since time immemorial, detracts from the weight of his argument, or it should for most people. I've said before that Schilling has given his opponents plenty of ammunition and he seems to have done so again here. It's much easier to simply point out the massive rank hypocrisy of the Democrats and Shank-type media dorks (by and large the same thing) like this guy does, at least with respect to the local scene.

By the way - I have an English and a German copy of Mein Kampf. Does that mean I collect Nazi memorabilia? Shank wouldn't care unless my last name was Schilling. From there, the rest of the column's okay.

Fine Their Asses!

Shank wasn't happy about last night's game:

Doug Pederson is a disgrace to professional sports.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) January 4, 2021

In fact - he was so pissed off about it he cranked out a column calling for some heads:

NFL should come down on the Eagles for Sunday night’s performance

Maybe they should, but they probably won't.

The Philadelphia Eagles are a disgrace and should be punished by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The Eagles intentionally lost a “Sunday Night Football” game that had massive playoff implications for two other franchises. Philadelphia’s tank job served to improve its draft position from ninth to sixth, so the league should take away that first-round pick. Then fine the owner, suspend coach Doug Pederson, and apologize to all of us for insulting our intelligence and allowing Philly to throw a game.

Remember Deflategate? The Patriots lost their first-round pick, a fourth-rounder, got fined a million bucks, and saw Tom Brady suspended four games just for taking a little air out of the footballs. The Patriots were punished for breaching the integrity of the game. Tampering with the footballs was deemed a competition violation.

Based on that premise, his logic is sound. However, to use Shank's phraseology Deflategate was a bag job of a punishment and doing the same thing here would establish an ability to second guess a coaching decision, which is somewhat defensible were it not for the three pick improvement in draft pick. I'd be on board with that one at least being pushed back to the original slot; maybe taking it away completely would be a useful deterrent for future wannabe tank artists.

The rest of the column's worth reading and it'll be interesting to see what NFL commissioner Goddell does with this hot potato.