Old School Shank

Are you surprised when The CHB takes a thread and pulls it until the entire "I'm Not With Stupid, I AM Stupid" t-shirt unravels?

Not us.

As such, we didn't bat an eye (get it?) when Shank used an otherwise innocuous David Ortiz comment about how David Price should have been suspended for throwing at (and hitting) Red Sox batters after being warned as an opportunity to rehash every insult -- real and imagined -- that Big Papi allegedly has inflicted on the game.

Keep in mind that The CHB, by his own admission, is about the only one bothered by Papi's comments. Shank's anger over Manny Ramirez being feted as part of the 2004 World Series winners must be carrying over.

Ted Williams routinely disrupted his team, played middling defense, defied his managers and ignored baseball etiquette. Carl Yastrzemski attempted to start his own league, publicly ripped his teammates, was fined for not hustling, and used PEDs (greenies).

Here's what Jim Bouton wrote about Yaz in Ball Four:

Yastrzemski was recently fined $500 for loafing and I've been keeping an eye on him. Sure enough, he hit a ball to second base today and loafed all the way to first. I'm afraid Yastrzemski has a bit of dog in him. Always did, and people around baseball knew it all the time. When things are going good Yastrzemski will go all out. When things aren't going so well he'll give a half-ass effort. But he's got so much ability that the only thing you can do is put up with him. 

Sound familiar?

The CHB likes to pretend he's part of the (self-appointed) old school of baseball, guarding the keys to the kingdom and making unilateral determinations as to who is -- and who isn't -- "right" when it comes to playing America's Pastime.

But then again, Papi is Hispanic, and no one in sports today does old school racism like The CHB.

Trolling the 'Trolls'

Saturday's beers turn into Sunday's whines.

See if you can pick out the ironies:

The CHB, complaining about unfounded criticism: "When did anonymous Twitter trolls become a representation of the collective thought of any region? Tough-guy social media cowards are the same folks who used to write on the bathroom wall in high school. It’s a mistake to give them voice and there’s no need for a franchise to apologize for anonymous nitwits who could be spreading hate from anywhere. Stop the madness."

"Nothing against Ty Law and Raymond Clayborn, but Bill Parcells deserves to be in the Patriots Hall of Fame ahead of anyone else currently drawing a breath." Ever heard of Tom Brady?

"The Celtics went 25-57 this year. So why do I keep hearing that just about all of the players are coming back?" How often do NBA teams keep their rosters? (Try never.) How often does Danny Ainge telegraph his intentions? (Same answer.)

"Surprised there was so little commentary last Sunday when John Farrell elected to 'rest' David Ortiz against the Blue Jays.The Sox are having trouble scoring runs." Papi is 38, has no knees, and the Red Sox are built to win with pitching and defense. Toronto, meanwhile, has scored the most runs in the division ... and is in last place.

"[T]he shrinking number of black big leaguers is probably owed to a dearth of college scholarship opportunities more than anything else. College baseball has become the domain of affluent white players from suburban communities. The NCAA allows only 11.7 scholarships for a college baseball team (football gets 85), which means that programs with rosters of more than 30 players are cutting almost all scholarships into partial packages. Skilled high school athletes have betters odds of acquiring full scholarships if they play football or basketball." Basketball gets...13. Do we really think that extra 1.3 scholarships is a difference maker? Moreover, those numbers are for D-1 only. Once D-2, D-3 and NAIA and JCs are accounted for, free rides for baseball overwhelm those for hoops by a count of 24 to 15. Finally, the NBA won't draft high schoolers. MLB does.

"Here’s Larry Lucchino mocking the Yankees in Fort Myers Feb. 21: “They are still, this year at least, relying heavily on their inimitable old-fashioned Yankee style of high-priced, long-term free agents. I can’t say I wish them well, but I think we have taken a different approach. If you compare what we did last year in the offseason with what they’ve done this year, there’s quite a difference." The Red Sox are 31 games into the season and the Yankees actually have the worst run differential in the division. Let's see where they are in September, shall we? 

"This is the trend [in public relations]. Control the message. Grips are overlapping (John Henry, for instance, owns the Globe, in case you had not heard), conflicts abound, lines are blurred, and true independence is hard to find." What's more important: independence or fairness?

"Alert to sports journalists: Time to stop with the “how” questions. They’ve become epidemic even though they are lazy and largely unanswerable." Right. But accusing anyone over 30 who hits a few homers of using steroids is good reporting, right?

Color Him Wrong

In his assessment of the NBA's decision to ban Clippers owner Donald Sterling for making racist remarks, The CHB compares rookie NBA commissioner Adam Silver to that legendary MLB head Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Ironically in a column about judges and judgments, Shank gets both the spirit and the facts wrong.

CHB: "Critics of Silver and the NBA raise legitimate questions about the NBA being late to the party in disciplining Sterling. ... Without the proverbial smoking gun, the NBA was neither encouraged nor empowered to remove Sterling."

Wrong. The NBA began fining Sterling for his various transgressions as far back as 1982, and in November 2009, Sterling agreed to a fine of $2.73 million, plus another $5 million in court and legal costs, to settle federal and local charges of housing discrimination. And that doesn't include the alleged witness intimidation charges leveled by police after Sterling's then-teenage son shot a friend in a dispute over a girl. The gun, it appears, was literally smoking. The bigger issue is whether the NBA wants to be in the business of firing its owners, a move that assuredly will diminish the allure of the franchises, since that it takes an already rare combination of huge egos and huge wallets to even get in the game, and those who attain both are not generally open to being told what to do.

But let's look at the comparison of Commissioner Silver and Judge Landis. Silver, and the NBA in general, have been the hands-down leader in racial integration and acceptance. The first all-black starting lineup? NBA. First black head coach? NBA. First black general manager? NBA. First black majority owner of a professional sports team? NBA. Silver is inheriting a long tradition of embracing minorities in every role.

Landis, by contrast, is probably the single most responsible person for perpetuating the unwritten ban on minorities in major league baseball. Even those critics who argue Landis was not a racist tend to agree that he did nothing to try to change the status quo. All Landis has in common with his NBA brethren, it would seem, is a title.

Given The CHB's well-documented stance on minorities -- "prima donnas" -- it is apropos he wrote this column. Given his track record, however, we're surprised he is taking Silver's side.