Another Walk Down Memory Lane

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

Fifty years ago . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shank Roundup

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

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

Awkward... for who?

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

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

That's reasonable speculation / supposition.

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

Dan Shaughnessy, always accentuating the positive!

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

Swing And A Miss

Just found this column from Saturday afternoon - Shank didn't bother to tweet it out and I found it after checking the Globe's website, which I take great pains to avoid. For those keeping score at home, it's Shank's sixth Bruins column on the season.

Bobby Orr does not appreciate sports talk radio jockeys and fans who characterize 42-year-old Zdeno Chara as a defensive liability for the Bruins.

“I’ve heard a lot of crap recently about Chara, about Z,’’ Orr said during a lengthy interview with the Globe Friday. “Are you kidding me?

“I think if you were to ask these critics what they thought of the Bruins coaches, everyone would say they’ve been outstanding. Well, Z is the top ice guy, one or two. He kills all the penalties. When he’s on the ice, there’s just something different.

It's all Bobby Orr quotes, so of course it's worth checking out.

No Heavy Lifting Required

A week in the city hosting the Super Bowl can make it difficult to come up with interesting themes to write about. We have already witnessed Shank overusing the Tomato Can insult a few times this week (like that's a shocker) and now he trots out the overused 'Mount Rushmore of Boston sports' theme one more time, just to make sure that horse is dead, dead, dead!

MINNEAPOLIS — The statues have spoken. The best of our best Boston athletes have voted. And a couple of them are willing to cede the gold medal platform of Boston sports to Tom Brady.

“Tommy will go down as the greatest athlete in Boston history,’’ Bobby Orr said this week. “There is no argument.’’

There is always an argument when it comes to rating sports stars, of course. In addition to Orr, we reached out to Larry Bird, Carl Yastrzemski, and Bob Cousy. Larry and Cooz allowed that Brady might be the top dog while Yaz joined Orr in conceding that Brady is The One.

There's one very curious omission here, isn't there?

Here in the Hub of the Universe, we think we’ve witnessed the best player ever in each of America’s four major sports. Boston’s Jock Rushmore — usually identified as Orr in hockey, Brady in football, Bill Russell in basketball, and Ted Williams in baseball — easily beats that of any other city in America.

Provincial Shank - where have you been?

Williams died in 2002, and the ever-reclusive Russell, now 83, was unavailable for comment (proof of John Updike’s reminder that gods do not answer letters). But Orr, Bird, Yastrzemski, and Cousy, all cast in bronze, were open to the suggestion that Brady might be the best of Boston’s best.

“Boston’s had a lot of great ones,’’ said Yaz, MVP of the American League in 1967. “Larry, Ted, Russell, Bobby Orr, don’t forget Big Papi.

I'm sure Shank wants no part of Big Papi.

In case you're wondering, heeeere's Larry!

Bird, who was MVP of the NBA three times from 1984-86, submitted, “I have played with and against some of the greatest clutch players in sports, and Tom is right up there with them.”

Go read the rest of it if you're interested in this sort of thing, but Shank does this column enough times during a year that just removes the interest in it for me, and probably a good number of other readers as well.

Number Four, Bobby Orr

Shank, as he tends to do with every fifth column or so, takes a look back in time and notes Bobby Orr's first game with the Boston Bruins:

There’s a Gretzky Camp and a Gordie Howe Camp, but around these parts, there has never been any doubt that Bobby Orr is the greatest hockey player who ever lived.

There’s no way to prove it, of course. It’s a subjective sports argument, which is part of what makes it fun. But for those of us who grew up around Boston and saw Orr play, there can never be any doubt. The rest of you can check the videotape, talk to folks who played with or against him, and maybe take a gander at that statue of a flying Bobby after the Mother’s Day goal in 1970.

I raise this topic today not because the young Bruins of 2016 are playing their home opener at the New Garden Thursday night, but because this week marks the 50th anniversary of Orr’s first game with the Bruins at the Old Garden in 1966.

Fifty years. The golden anniversary for the Golden Child. How can it be that a half-century has passed since the night we first saw the crew-cut teen-ager from Parry Sound, Ontario?

To be fair to Shank, this column did look like it took some level of effort; it's not the usual piece of crap he churns out on a routine basis.

He Gets No Kicks from Soccer

The CHB doesn't care for soccer, so he writes a 948-word piece to tell us.

OK, fine, lots of people don't like soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it). But let's look at Shank's rationale:

1. "Soccer doesn’t have much scoring." Watch hockey lately?

2. "How would we have even known the athletic greatness of Pedro Martinez, Larry Bird, Bobby Orr or Tom Brady if they could not have used their hands? Soccer takes our hands out of the game."  Except, of course, that soccer involves running, which requires, you know,

3.Soccer lovers tend to be an elitist, intolerant lot." Those last three words perfectly describe Shaughnessy. Projection!

4. The US hasn't adopted the metric system, therefore we will never adopt soccer.  Seriously; that's his point.)

Shank also takes yet another opportunity to bash Bob Ryan. What kind of lover's spat did these two clowns get into, anyway?

Next week, The CHB will tell us how he doesn't like cooking.

*Larry Bird watch!

Number 4

Shank interviews Bobby Orr, who played for both the Bruins and Blackhawks. It's an excellent column, because Bobby Orr does most of the talking.