DHL Dan CCLIII - Reinstatement

Shank weighs in on the bullshit decision of the current MLB commissioner to undo a determination by another commissioner:

Reinstatement of Pete Rose, others has this Hall of Fame voter wondering why worry about ‘character,’ and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while welcoming Chris Sale back to Fenway . . . and Alex Verdugo, too . . .

⋅ The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball was established in 1920 in the aftermath of discovery that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had taken gamblers’ money in exchange for throwing the 1919 World Series. There was concern that betting would kill the game. In 1921, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was installed as the first commissioner, hired to clean up the sport forever.

One of Landis’s first acts was to banish the White Sox players from the game, making it clear that betting on baseball was something you could not do if you intended to be part of the sport. It was a permanent banishment.

On Tuesday of this past week, commissioner Rob Manfred, at the request of President Trump, made a mockery of the office, reinstating known gambling violators Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and 15 others deceased individuals. Buffered with soft semantics (“permanent ineligibility” ends when you die), Manfred’s message to uniformed baseball personnel seems to be: Don’t worry too much about that rule you were always told was so sacred. It may not happen until after your death, but if you gamble on baseball you will eventually be reinstated by MLB. The commissioner will leave it up to others to decide if you are Hall of Fame worthy.

That's 100 percent right - character is supposed to matter for Hall of Fame eligibility and with respect to gambling on games youre involved with (either for or against your team), they broke written or moral rules, as the 1919 White Sox did. The moral rule, of course, is this - if you tank games and take money to do it, you're a piece of shit and have fully earned your banishment.

Staying Alive, For Now

Yeah, I've been slacking with the timeliness of recent posts, but here's Shank's column from when the Celtics were still sort of, kind of in the 2025 NBA playoffs:

The Celtics heard the rumblings that their season was as good as over and responded loudly in Game 5. Anybody have a bloody sock?

They heard the rumblings about the end of their championship window, and new ownership coming in to break up the band, and the odious prospect of losing a conference semifinal series to the Knicks in five frustrating games.

They knew they’d have to play without their heartbeat franchise forward, Jayson Tatum, who suffered a season-ending ruptured Achilles’ tendon Monday night in New York.

So what did they do?

The defending world champion Boston Celtics came home to their Causeway Street Gym and told the hoop world that they are not dead yet. Summoning their 3-point weaponry (22 for 49), they overcame a 9-point first-half deficit and thrashed the Knicks, 127-102, in Game 5 to move a suddenly scintillating series back to Madison Square Garden on Friday night.

...where they got destroyed because they rely on the three point shot to win games and that style of play finally bit them in the ass.

DHL Dan CCLII - Dark Day Ahead?

That's what the son of a former MLB commissioner thinks about the possibility of Pete Rose's posthumous reinstatement to baseball:

Son of commissioner who banned Pete Rose says reinstatement would be ‘a dark day for baseball,’ and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for the NFL schedule to come out on Wednesday . . .

▪ Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met with President Trump last month regarding a petition to have Pete Rose posthumously removed from MLB’s permanently ineligible list. Manfred is expected to issue a ruling soon.

If the commissioner reinstates baseball’s all-time hits leader, Rose would be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in future voting by a 16-member Classic Baseball Era committee.

Pete Rose’s daughter, Fawn, is among those who’ve met with Manfred to lobby for her father’s reinstatement.

Marcus Giamatti, the son of late baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti — who in 1989 famously struck the deal with Rose after MLB confirmed his baseball gambling while managing and playing for the Reds — does not want to see Rose reinstated.

You Were Saying?

Last week Shank was saying the Knicks / Celtics series should be a cakewalk for the Green Team. A few games later, he's singing a different tune:

What in the name of David Tyree is going on here? This Celtics-Knicks series is beginning to look like a Giant upset.

Shock and awe.

Seriously.

I mean, what in the name of David Tyree is going on here? When did the 2024-25 New York Knicks become the 1978 New York Yankees? When did Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson become Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone?

And when did Joe Mazzulla morph into Grady Little?

The Knicks Wednesday came back from yet another 20-point, third-quarter deficit and beat the Celtics, 91-90, to take a 2-0 series lead back to Madison Square Garden Saturday afternoon.

This means the defending world champion Boston Celtics have put themselves into a must-win game in the second round of the 2025 NBA playoffs. No NBA team has recovered from a 3-0 playoff deficit and the Celtics will be carrying a lot of mental baggage into Madison Square Garden.

DHL Dan CCLI - Must See Basketball?

I think that's what Shank's trying to sell us here:

Celtics-Knicks in the playoffs (for the 16th time) is what Basketball America wants to see, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if the betting odds have changed on Pete Rose’s chances for Cooperstown now that commissioner Rob Manfred is considering lifting Rose’s lifetime ban from baseball …

⋅ Celtics-Knicks. It’s official. Game 1 on Causeway Street Monday night.

It’s a playoff series Basketball America wants to see.

The Knicks’ coach is Tom Thibodeau, who won a ring as one of Doc Rivers’s assistants with the world champion ubuntu Celtics in 2008. New York’s best player — indeed its best player since Cambridge’s Patrick Ewing — is Jalen Brunson (40 points, including a 3-point game-winner with 4.3 seconds left in the clincher in Game 6 against the Pistons Thursday), son of Rick Brunson, who played at Salem High School before playing for John Chaney’s Temple squads against John Calipari’s UMass powerhouse.

The modern-day Knicks can’t beat the Celtics and it bothers them. They lost four of five to Boston last season, went out and reloaded (Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges) in the offseason, then came back and lost four of four to the Celtics this season by an average of 16 points.

In other words, it's shaping up to be a series the Celtics should win with relative ease. Is that really what 'Basketball America' wants to see, or just Celtics fans?

All About Advancing

Shank warps up the Celtics - Magic series:

It took longer than it should have, but Celtics finally found their game and advanced

The world champion Celtics beat the pedestrian Orlando Magic, 120-89, in the Causeway Street gym Tuesday to advance to Round 2 of the NBA playoffs. Boston will play either the Knicks or Pistons in the conference semifinals (New York leads that series, 3-2).

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t wait to get these Orlando bums in the rearview mirror. The Magic are rugged and have some good young players (particularly Paolo Banchero), but they were a 41-41 team and supposed to be a mere speed bump on the Celtics’ road to banner number 19.

It was, therefore, somewhat annoying when the Celtics lost Game 3 in Orlando last Friday.

Making matters worse, the Celtics couldn’t hit a three and fell behind by 9 points in Game 5 Tuesday. Boston trailed, 49-47, at intermission and made . . . zero . . . 3-point baskets in the first half. It was as if Marcus Smart and Greg Kite were back in the house.

The Celtics will have to win more games like that.

DHL Dan CCL - Titletown?

Remember when Boston sports teams were winning all those titles and going deep into the playoffs? Shank sure does:

We’re used to titles, and let’s face it, right now the Celtics are all we’ve got, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while thinking hard about the Celtics, Red Sox, Patriots, and Bruins . . .

⋅ When all four of our main professional sports teams are good, this can be the best time of the year. Remember those April/May/June springs when the Celtics and Bruins were deep into the playoffs, the star-studded, big-market Red Sox were jousting with the Evil Empire, and the Tom Brady Patriots were reloading at draft time, bound for yet another AFC Championship showdown with the Colts, Steelers or Ravens?

We lived so well so long.

The New England sports world is very different now.

The once-stable Patriots are coming off back-to-back four-win seasons, working with their third coach in three years, and selected Will Campbell, an offensive tackle (whee!), with the No. 4 pick in the draft Thursday night. The Bruins just failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 2016, and this fall will have their fifth head coach since 2017 (unless interim coach Joe Sacco is retained). The Red Sox have been a .500 team and finished last three times in five seasons since trading Mookie Betts in 2020, and they go into this weekend one game over .500.

DHL Dan CCXLIX - It Don't Come Easy

In thi week's Picked up Pieces column, Shank weighs in on the 2024 - 2025 Boston Celtics and their chances of repeat championships:

Since the dynasty of the ’60s many Celtics teams have failed to repeat, so this won’t be easy, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if DOGE recruited its staffers from Driveline …

Your 2024-25 Boston Celtics are hoping to win back-to-back NBA championships.

Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale never did it. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen couldn’t do it. Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White couldn’t get it done, either.

No. The only Celtics teams to win consecutive championships were the Bill Russell-led teams of the 1960s.

And they did it a lot.

Put it this way: When I walked into first grade at Groton Elementary School in September 1959, the Boston Celtics were defending NBA champs.

Bailing Out Early

The 2025 Boston Red Sox are off to a rough start of the season. Here's Shank taking a dump on them:

Recovery helps, but I was expecting so much more from these Red Sox, and they’ve been frustratingly bad so far

Feeling any better about these Red Sox?

After beating the Rays, 1-0, Wednesday night, the Sox come home this weekend to play the White Sox four times. As bad as they’ve been (losses of 11-1 and 16-1 since Friday), your Red Sox could be in first place by the time the Marathon starts Monday morning.

I had faith in them this year. After ripping the Sox for five seasons, I took the cheese. Spent nine days in Fort Myers, Fla., madly applauded the Alex Bregman signing, felt good about ownership getting back in the winning business, and picked these goofy guys to finish in first place in the American League East.

After five years of abject neglect, I was convinced that Boston’s absentee owners were back in the hard-chargin’, Lucchino-driven, contest-living that was the trademark of the first decade of John Henry and the vaunted Fenway Sports Group.

DHL Dan CCXLVIII - Joined At The Hip

That would be Shank and former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, and their apprarent shared disdain for Patriots owner Robert Kraft:

Bill Belichick shows no love for Patriots owner Robert Kraft in new book, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering if anybody else is worried about Jaylen Brown’s knee . . .

⋅ Bill Belichick’s new book, “The Art of Winning,” arrived in the mail this past week and I could not wait to pore through it.

Imagine. Two hundred and eighty-nine pages of Bill telling us about the secret sauce of 24 seasons at the helm in Foxborough. I couldn’t wait to read what he really thinks of Bob Kraft and how he’d explain Malcolm Butler not playing in the February 2018 Super Bowl against the Eagles in Minneapolis.

Sorry, it’s not in there.

As an author of many books, I’d estimate this one’s about 80,000 words.

Two words not in the book: Robert Kraft.

OK, this is somewhat predictable, I guess. The obvious snub is yet another demonstration that things often end badly here on the Boston sports scene.

That's right, and sometimes Shank helps out to make that happen.