DHL Dan CXIII - The Usual Crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read on for more of the same.

Kicking The Tomato Can Down The Road

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

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

First we get the 2020 Red Sox.

Now this.

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

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

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

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

Time To Shit On The Patriots

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

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

Are you a sports fan or a Patriots fan?

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

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

You buying that line of bullshit?

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

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

Unforgettable

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

My unforgettable World Series moments over the last 43 years

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

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

Some collectible moments:

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

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

A solid column; go check it out.

He's A Hard Man To Please

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

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

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) October 19, 2020

DHL Dan CXII - Alex Cora Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shank The Scold II - A Continuing Series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Love-Hate Relationship, Explained

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

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

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

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

How many of you are surprised at this revelation?

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

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

Makes one wonder what the other three are...

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

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

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

Shank The Scold, Probably A Continuing Series

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

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

Just what are the risks, you may ask?

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

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

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

Watch the Watergate like accusatory tone that follows:

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

Science!

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

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

Strange Days Indeed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DHL Dan CXI - Pats Lose By 40!

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

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

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

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

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

And now - a serious head case basketball player!

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

On occasion, some people need a serious ass kicking.

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