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.

And Now For A Slight Change Of Tone

Since it's difficult to rag on a team when they win, Shank wraps up the last game of the New England Patriots' season, a 28 - 14 win over the New Your Jets, and uses a curious word to re-describe the season for the Patriots:

Remember when we thought watching a challenged Patriots team would be fun? Never mind

I really thought the Patriots season was going to be fun. Finally, we would have something different. At long last there was a challenge to win the division. Without Tom Brady, the Pats could not simply roll out the footballs and automatically win the AFC East. They would not be handed another first-round bye. There would be no Tomato Can Home Game in Round 1 of the playoffs. No more tedious palace intrigue involving Bill, Tom, and Bob. No more same-old, same-old.

It was going to be different. Interesting. The thrill of the unknown.

I was wrong. The 2020 Patriot football season was not fun. The Patriots were effectively out of the playoffs in early December and played out the string over the final four games of the season.

Let's just say that, on occasion, Shank likes to rewrite some things. Can you tell from this column or this column if you can detect any notion of Shank thinking the Patriots were going to be a 'fun' team? He describes the first season win (second link) as 'business as usual' for the team, about as far away from 'fun' as you can get. He did enjoy the Seahawks game but that's as close as he ever got on the 'fun' front. He's just full of shit on this point. This is what he's been writing since Week 4:

The local football season was neither interesting nor entertaining. By the time they faced the Dolphins, Bills, and Jets at the finish, the Patriots were just plain bad. They were 2020 Red Sox bad.

Any of you remember the Stupor Bowl at Memorial Stadium back in 1981? That’s when the 2-13 Patriots lost to the 1-14 Baltimore Colts, 23-21, in front of 17,073 fans. The game featured six turnovers, 12 penalties, and attempts by both teams to intentionally lose the game. The Pats finally succumbed when they ran out of timeouts after “driving” to the Colts’ 15-yard line.

Forget the fact that the current Patriots team won a game by two touchdowns; Shank tries to tie them to one of the worst losses in Patriots history and has to go back almost four decades to do it. Other than that, it's a valid comparison!

DHL Dan CXVIII - Disingenuous Headlines

During the Bill Belichick era with the New England Patriots, Shank has never been known as an evenhanded columnist or one to give people a somewhat fair shake, especially this head coach. You can imagine my half-surprise when I saw this bullshit a little while ago:

Coming to the defense of Bill Belichick, and other thoughts

Dan Shaughnessy, our man in shining armor! Picked-up pieces while desperately seeking a better new year . . .

▪ The rush to give Tom Brady all the credit for the last two decades of Patriots success is unfair and inaccurate.

That sounds like a misleading premise, in that Shank implies an undefined but nonetheless solid majority opinion in favor of giving Tom 'all the credit'. Has this been the Boston talk radio theme earlier this week?

At this hour Brady is leading bigly in the “Tom vs. Bill” debate, but none of those six Super Bowls happen without the Hoodie. Week in and week out, year in and year out, the Patriots won because of preparation, coaching, and abject intimidation of the opposition — in addition to talent. In these dark hours along Route 1, it’s a mistake to assign New England’s two-decade dynasty solely to Brady. History will treat Bill Belichick much better than what he’s been hearing from all of us these last couple of weeks. Does anyone ever challenge Red Auerbach’s credentials as a head coach? No. And Auerbach the coach never won a championship without Bill Russell. In 20 seasons on the bench, Red won nine championships, all with Russell on the court. We still built a statue for Red.

All that's true / obvious, but I suspect this is a head fake. Come tomorrow afternoon the Patriots could very well lose badly. I've been a pessimist all year about them, and after the Bills game last week I think this last part of the season will be payback for the past two decades, thus last week's ass kicking and at least a loss tomorrow. At that point you know who's going to come out with guns blazing like the 4th and 2 column and the Kansas City Massacre columns. We're onto your old tricks!

It's a mixed bag from there, probably worth reading.

Stoic

With the passig of K.C. Jones earlier in the week, Shank talks to another Boston Celtics legend about mortality.

Bob Cousy stoically deals with the toughest of losses — his old teammates

They seemed to be immortal, those Celtics of my childhood, forever running the parquet floor, earning easy baskets and hard-fought championships. Bill Russell would snatch a rebound, kick it out to Tommy Heinsohn on the wing, and Tommy would find Sam Jones at the other end for a breakaway layup.

The Celtics of 1963 were in the middle of a run of eight consecutive championships, 11 in 13 seasons.

It was a team that featured nine Hall of Fame players, plus a Hall of Fame coach (Red Auerbach) and a Hall of Fame owner (Walter Brown). John Havlicek was a rookie and Bob Cousy was retiring — like DiMaggio passing the Yankee torch to Mantle in 1951.

The reality, of course, is that our Garden Gods do not live forever, and we’ve been losing them at an alarming rate the last couple of years. Frank Ramsey (86) died in 2018, Havlicek (79) in 2019, and last week we lost K.C. Jones (88), one month after Heinsohn died at the age of 86.

“It’s depressing,” the 92-year-old Cousy said from his home in Worcester this week. “They’re starting to fall by the wayside. I’m starting to look over my shoulder the way Satchel Paige used to say — don’t look back, they might be gaining on you.

The rest of it is worth reading.

And Now For A Goodfellas Reference / Tweet Of The Day

“Well we had a problem. Tommy’s gone. And there’s nothing we could do about it. He’s gone.” https://t.co/cuzYZB5rba

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 29, 2020

Patriots Defensive Woes Fixed

A brilliant suggestion from the Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen^**:

It’s not on Cam, it’s on the defense. If only Sam could teach them how to tackle Buffalo Bills the way he tackled that Brookline Cop https://t.co/izq33Ddnry

— Kevin Cullen (Parody) (@KevinCulIen) December 29, 2020

The 'Sam' reference is, of course, to Sam Shaughnessy.

(^** = parody account)

Worst Case Scenario

Shank had a busy night last night. After the New England Patriots got mauled on Monday Night football by the Buffalo Bills, he bangs out a column about it and comes down heavy on coach Bill Belichick, natch:

Bill Belichick is living a worst-case scenario after moribund Patriots get crushed by Bills

Now we know what if feels like when the Tomato Can is on the other shelf; when the local coach is the one getting pantsed; when the Patriots are the team riding in the clown car.

The Buffalo Bills — Bill Belichick’s and Tom Brady’s personal punching bags for the last two decades — demolished the moribund Patriots, 38-9, on “Monday Night Football” at Gillette Stadium.

It was perhaps the worst night ever for the Hoodie in New England. He watched his special teams get suckered on a fake punt. He got mad and fired a telephone into a wall after getting bad advice on a challenge from aide de camp Ernie Adams. He watched his defense morph into Swiss cheese. And he gave New England the collective finger by sticking with Cam Newton to start the second half after Newton submitted yet another pathetic performance in the first two quarters.

Around the same time this hit the wires, Shank goes on a local sports show to talk about Celtics legend KC Jones' passing and other Celtics stuff:

Tonight on @boston25 Sportswrap at 11:15 @Dan_Shaughnessy joins us to talk stories about #TommyHeinsohn #KCJones and all things #Celtics @Bos25Sports pic.twitter.com/HvmEYp0RpX

— Butch Stearns (@ButchStearns) December 28, 2020

Now there's a face for radio!

DHL Dan CXVII - The Joe Mooney Tribute, Etc.

With little on the immediate Boston professional sports front, Shank drops his usual semi-monthly bag of Picked Up Pieces stuff:

Remembering Joe Mooney, a Fenway original, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting to say goodbye to a horrible year in which we lost so many favorite people . . .

Another Fenway legend passed away at the end of November when longtime groundskeeper Joe Mooney died in Wakefield at the age of 90. For three decades starting in 1970, Mooney had control of the Fenway grounds. Total control. Nobody stepped foot on Fenway’s sacred sod without an OK from Joe Mooney. Woe was any nitwit sportswriter who popped out of the dugout and walked on the grass without Mooney’s permission. That went for ballplayers, too. I can’t prove it, but I believe Mooney was first to utter the now ubiquitous, “Get off my lawn!’’

Definitely go check out the Joe Mooney stuff; the rest is worth punting on.

Dan Shaughnessy, Talking Heads Fan?

Actually I kind of doubt it but if a tweet I spotted a few minutes ago is any indication, we're in for a cliche filled masterpiece after the New England Patriots got stomped on national TV last night, 24-3, to the Los Angeles Rams. Let's count the ways, shall we?

The Patriots are on a road to nowhere after humiliating loss to Rams

There is blood on the tracks of the Patriots’ playoff path in the wake of the Rams’ 24-3 rout of New England Thursday night at SoFi Stadium in SoCal.

Ouch. The Patriots’ playoff map is now the path of most resistance, the road to perdition, >b>the highway to hell.

The Flying Elvises have checked out of their Hotel California and probably the postseason hunt as well. They are 6-7 and very likely will be watching the playoffs on television for the first time since 2008. Three games remain — all against the AFC East — but the Patriots need more help than You-Know-Who if they hope to salvage a playoff spot in this gritty, but lost campaign. Bob Kraft’s best hope might be to blame the whole thing on Dominion and petition the Supreme Court to overturn losses in California, Missouri, Texas, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts (twice).

From there, Shank blames things mostly on Cam Newton, which he (admittedly) stole at halftime from Terry Bradshaw doing the Fox halftime show.

You know the rest of the column already - a standard game recap and a few more shovels full of dirt on the Patriots' 2020 football season.

Another Belichick Masterpiece

Here's Shank's take on yesterday's beatdown win by the patriots over the L.A. Chargers:

This rout of the Chargers had everything Bill Belichick loves about football

They aren’t going to make it to the Super Bowl, they aren’t going to win the AFC East, and they are still unlikely to participate in the NFL playoffs.

But the 2020 COVID-19 Patriots are emerging as one of Bill Belichick’s favorite teams.

Sunday in Inglewood, Calif. — across the street from the spot where Kevin McHale flattened Kurt Rambis in the 1984 NBA Finals — we saw another Special Teams Palooza as the Patriots demolished the Los Angeles Chargers, 45-0, at SoFi Stadium.

This beatdown had all the stuff Bill loves: Blocked field goals returned for touchdowns; punts downed inside the 10; punts returned for touchdowns; Gunner Olszewski, the undrafted guy from Bemidji State, scoring two touchdowns and making a special teams tackle in the fourth quarter. It was a Special Teams Tour De Force that will hang in Belichick’s Leather Helmet Louvre near the Sankaty Head Lighthouse in Nantucket.

You know how it goes by now - positive columns from Shank when the Patriots win, negative ones when they don't.

DHL Dan CXVI - The Recycled Shaughnessy

In yesterday's installment of the Picked Up pieces column, Shank repeats a week's worth of local sports talk themes:

Whether the Patriots will soon make a change at quarterback, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering about the Patriots’ quarterback controversy . . .

▪ Cam Newton or Jarrett Stidham? Tom Brady vs. Drew Bledsoe, this is not. As bad as Newton has been, the belief here is that Bill Belichick stays with Cam until the Patriots are mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. Newton’s horrendous game last week vs. Arizona, coupled with his sudden appearance on the injury report (abdomen) fueled speculation that change is afoot and inspired folks at 98.5 The Sports Hub to conduct a “Who Should Start at Quarterback This Weekend?” poll in which 58 percent of more than 8,000 listeners wanted Newton. It makes for great headline/talk-radio fodder, but Belichick seems unlikely to make a switch at this time. There appears to be no rush to take a look at Stidham, and for all of his incompetence, Newton has the loyalty of his teammates. Belichick probably doesn’t want to do anything to dent morale or cost Newton incentive money. And Bill will tell anybody who listens that he still believes Newton puts the Patriots in the best position to win.

Rest at the link, including a Springsteen reference, of course.

Getting His (Jack The) Shot Off

Now that the unpleasant visual's out of the way, Shank tells a nice story about a Holy Cross / Boston Celtics basketball player who wasn't long for the latter:

Holy Cross legend Jack ‘The Shot’ Foley was aptly nicknamed

Jack “The Shot” Foley was a legend much longer than he was a basketball player.

Jack The Shot died of Parkinson’s disease Sunday in Barre at the age of 81.

Foley was raised in Worcester and set scoring records at Assumption Prep and Holy Cross. A skinny 6-foot-3-inch leaper, Jack The Shot was so good that Red Auerbach picked him in the second round of the 1962 NBA Draft, one round after selecting a kid from Ohio State named John Havlicek.

Bob Cousy, another Holy Cross man, was in the final year of his Hall of Fame career when Jack The Shot reported for duty with the world champion Celtics in December of 1962 (fulfillment of a Coast Guard obligation delayed Foley’s arrival in Boston). Cooz and fellow Crusader Tommy Heinsohn were happy to have another Cross man in the fold, but it was clear that Jack The Shot’s single skill would not be enough in the NBA.

Belichick Porn?

Shank said it, not me:

Special teams, short fields, turnovers, a knucklehead penalty? The Four Horsemen of Bill Belichick’s two-decade reign

It was a game only Amos Alonzo Stagg and William Stephen Belichick could love.

It was not a day of football artistry, not a good day for Cam Newton, not a good day for NFL officials, and not a good day if your fantasy fortunes hinge on big offense and over-the-top passing games.

But it was a win and the Hoodie no doubt loved it the way he loved every Army-Navy game in the 1960s. It was a day for special teams, goal-line stands, crucial turnovers, and stupidity by the opposition — the Four Horsemen of Belichick’s two-decade reign over the NFL.

Patriots-Cardinals won’t be the Face of the Franchise for the next edition of Madden NFL, but it was a special teams bacchanal. Belichick porn.

Nick Folk’s 50-yard field goal as the clock expired gave New England a 20-17 victory over the Cardinals and improved the Pats to 5-6. The Patriots don’t play in Foxborough again until after Christmas. They have upcoming trips to California (Chargers and Rams) and Florida (Dolphins). But in reality, we all know they aren’t going anywhere. They aren’t going to get gifts like this every week.