Scoreboard Shaughnessy

Is this Shank's new thing for the 2020 football season?

Bill Belichick 1.

Tom Brady 0.

We are only one week into a 16-game season, but Belichick on Sunday took an early lead in the silent, subliminal spitting contest regarding who was most responsible for the greatest sports dynasty of the 21st century.

It was business as usual for Belichick as the Patriots beat the Dolphins, 21-11, at Gillette. With no Brady, no fans, and no help from eight players who opted out because of COVID-19, the Pats beat the Fish easily. Belichick is still the greatest coach of all time, the Dolphins are still Tomato Cans, and New England’s new quarterback Cam Newton is a pretty good runner. The Pats are 1-0 in the coronavirus era.

You know the rest from there - boring game recaps we've read (or avoided) for decades now.

The Tampa Bay Bradys?

The NFL finally returns to start their 2020 season and already Shank is acting like a huge douchenozzle:

Are you ready for the first all-Boston NFL doubleheader of the 2020 season?

For the first time since the Boston Braves and Red Sox split the affections of Hub hardball fans, we have two professional teams playing in the same major league.

The New England Belichicks kick off Sunday on CBS at 1 p.m. The Tampa Bay Bradys play on Fox at 4:25.

Are any of you as irritated as I am when Shank says stupid and unfunny crap like this? Does he think he's being clever or witty? Well, I'm pretty sure he's the only one.

The Belichicks, a.k.a. the New England Patriots, open their season vs. the Miami Dolphins at an empty Gillette Stadium. There will be no cheerleaders, no musket men, no Brady, and no guarantee of winning the AFC East for the millionth straight season.

First off - I'd like to continue to point out how god damn lifeless any professional sports event is without fans in the stands, and now we get insult added to injury by not having cheerleaders to boot? Last night's game between the Chiefs and the Texans had 22% of the stadium filled with fans, who were wearing masks, doing social distancing and all that bullshit. The risk that's run by continuing to shut fans out would be to make this situation worse. We now have, from a financial perspective of an NFL franchise, no gate revenue, no parking lot and concession stand revenue and (this is the big one) an all but guaranteed reduction in future TV rights the next time the contract gets negotiated because the suits at the networks will not pay the same level of broadcast fees to the NFL & its teams when the viewing numbers dip or fall off the cliff. How long can the NFL (and team owners) risk a permanent reduction in its fan base and still expect the same TV revenues? It's not going to happen, and something will have to give. That 'something to give' is a fucking no-brainer in my book - start returning to normal, like yesterday.

The Bradys, formerly known as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will play the Saints in the empty Superdome in New Orleans. Playing as the Buccaneers for a half-century, Tampa Bay was the losingest team in professional sports. Most recently, the Bucs have finished last seven times in nine seasons. All that is expected to change now that they are the Bradys.

God damn, this asshole's really pissing me off now...

We will be watching. Both games. This weekend and every weekend.

The problem is - a lot of other people won't be watching and the NFL, like all professional sports franchises, better figure out and fix this problem before the the damage is irrreversible.

Oh - Shank continues on with the Belichicks and Bradys shtick - screw that; I'm outta here.

Gut Check

No, Shank is not talking about his efforts at weight loss but about tonight's Game 7 against the Toronto Raptors:

It’s time for a Brad Stevens team to step up and win a gut-check game. The 2020 Celtics will be defined by what happens in Game 7 against the Toronto Raptors Friday night in the Orlando bubble.

Impressive grasp of the obvious...

Six games have established that the Celtics are better than the Raptors. It’s been clear throughout this series. Boston won the first two games, and led Game 3 by 2 points with 0.5 seconds left. The Celtics were a half-second away from a de facto sweep of the defending NBA champs.

Wait a minute - this is a seven game series, and the Celtics were going to sweep the series with three wins? Am I missing something here?

Oh, it's a de facto sweep - silly me!

OG Anunoby’s miracle three gave Toronto new life, but the Celtics recovered and thoroughly pantsed Toronto in an easy Game 5 win. The Raptors needed two overtimes and some critical calls Wednesday to force a seventh game.

I'm not sure I buy that logic; after all of that they're tied with three wins each.

So here we are. To advance to the NBA’s Final Four, all the Celtics have to do is beat a clearly inferior Raptors team.

This is it. No excuses. No complaining about Nick Nurse complaining (maybe Brad could find his inner Red Auerbach and get in the ears of the officials now and then). It’s time for these Celtics to demonstrate that they are as good as their blindly loyal fan base says they are. Time for the Celtics to put on their big-kid pants and fulfill the great expectations fans have for them.

You may have noticed by now the 4,624th interation of one of Shank's finest column templates - place huge (and perhaps unrealistic) expectations on the local pro sports franchise so you can take the mother of all shits on them if they lose ('they simply aren't that good', etc.). Time will tell but I'm a little more certain of this now than I was when the Bruins bowed out of the playoffs.

Boston Radio Death Watch - I

First, to the proprietor of the Boston Radio Watch Twitter page - I do not mean you! I've been following you for months now, maybe closer to a year and it's one of my go-to sites every day, often a few times during the day.

Second, Boston Radio Watch just linked to a story about the two local PBS / NPR affiliates, which are WGBH and WBUR, respectively. Even with presumably large financial backing courtesy of the American taxpayer, the are in the parlance 'consolidating certain operations':

Rivals GBH, WBUR team up on new podcast with local news

By Don Seiffert – Managing Editor, Boston Business Journal

Boston’s two rival public radio stations, GBH and WBUR, will be working together for the first time on a new daily podcast that combines local and national reporting from across the National Public Radio landscape.

Starting today, listeners in Boston will hear a new version of the NPR podcast, “Consider This,” which comes out in the afternoon and includes both national and community news from that day.

GBH, which recently changed its name from WGBH to emphasize its digital media platforms, and WBUR, which is affiliated with Boston University, are two of a dozen stations across the country contributing to the project.

But only Boston and Los Angeles are in the position of having two stations in the same market working together, according to Pam Johnston, general manager of news at GBH.

Both Johnston and Margaret Low, CEO of WBUR, expressed mutual admiration for each other’s organizations in separate interviews today, while maintaining that despite the partnership, they do in fact remain competitors.

Asked about the rivalry, Low said, “Let me put it this way. Only a wonderful town like Boston could support two such great radio stations…. We may compete in the marketplace, but we’re great admirers of each other.”

Likewise, Johnston said that the two stations “absolutely” remain rivals. “We’re not putting our competitive side aside,” she said. “It’s about being able to reach our public radio audience in a new way.”

Both Johnston and Low are relatively new to their organizations, with Johnston starting in June and Low beginning in her role last November. But the rivalry dates back to 2011, when WGBH first changed its format to more directly compete with WBUR. At the time, then-new general manager at WBUR Charlie Kravetz sharply criticized WGBH for the change, saying “This marketplace did not need to have two public radio stations with the same format… If either station flourishes, it will be at the expense of the other.’’

Jon Abbott, CEO of GBH, defended that decision in an interview last year, saying, “I spent two years after we made the launch in community meetings with my board saying, this is not a nine inch pie plate. It's a 15-inch pie plate, or bigger.… What we know is that the overall number of Bostonians, the overall number has increased in those who are compelled to come and spend time with public radio.”

Neither GBH nor WBUR are adding any extra expenses to create the new podcast.

NPR says that it’s partnering with sponsorship vendor, AdsWizz, to deliver this localized news in the same way podcast publishers deliver any localized sponsorship content.

You know why I copied the entire article? It's because I can - it's pretty easy to get around subscription blockers once you get the hang of it. A larger point - most of you that listen to regular radio are familiar with names of former Boston radio stations - WBCN, WFNX anmd WAAF being just three of the more notable stations that have disappeared over the past decade. One would think WGBH and WBUR by virtue of public financing ought to be able to weather all financial storms, but like their sister organization the Boston Globe (in the ideological sense), none of them can escape the fierce financial gravity of today's media environment.

Boston Globe Death Watch - XII

The end must be near if you're pathetically begging the owner of your corporation for your collective jobs:

Well, @John_W_Henry dumped Mookie Betts and just laid off a bunch of @RedSox personnel. I hope he sees your value, but
... https://t.co/KASfkMq7YL

— Bruce Allen (@bruceallen) September 8, 2020

The level of entitlement on display here is astounding. Learn to code, bitchez!

A Friendly Reminder From Dan Shaughnessy

Shank would like you to know what's happening with the 2020 version of the Olde Towne Team:

Mission Accomplished: At this moment, the Red Sox (15-29 -- .340909) are the worst team in baseball.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) September 9, 2020

As a person who appreciates high-level math, I'm pleased to see Shank carry the 'winning' percentage out to six digits. Accuracy is everything!

DHL Dan CX - The Red Sox Are Really Bad, Aren't They?

Shank has some fun shooting fish in a barrel:

Thoughts on the last-place Red Sox and other topics Picked-up pieces while watching the embarrassing parade of meatball artists the tanking Red Sox send to the mound every day . . . ▪ Does winning four World Series in this century give Red Sox ownership a lifetime pass for biennial last-place finishes and the Triple A product we are seeing now?

Yes. Next question / complaint?

The Sox are about to finish in the cellar for the fourth time since 2012. In 80 seasons from 1932-2011, the Red Sox finished last exactly once (1992 under Butch Hobson). Now the Sox lead the majors in losses and we’re about to see the fourth basement finish in nine seasons. The tanking we’ve seen in the last three weeks is worse than anything the franchise has put fans through since the pre-Yawkey era of 1926-32. And yet still we have NESN feeding us the “Heat Zone” item that features a random “hot” Sox player who has better stats than some slumping Blue Jay. There’s also a Predict The Game app, treating sophisticated Sox fans like 7-year-olds.

Demonstrating once again - if there wasn't a losing team Shank would have nothing to write about. From there, he says nice things about the Celtics, basically calls Patriorts coach Bill Belichick a liar and rags on the Bruins a bit. In other words, the usual stuff

Rewriting History, A Continuing Series

New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver passed away earlier this week. Shank lets his imagination run wild:

Tom Seaver was the prince of New York City. He was the greatest New York Met of all time and there is no close second. He was the Franchise, Tom Terrific, the Hall of Fame ace of the 1969 Miracle Mets. Books were written about him, movies were made, and when it was learned he died this week, all three New York metropolitan dailies ripped up their front pages and started anew with tributes to Tom Seaver. New York, New York. That was Tom Seaver. But he also pitched the final games of his career for the Boston Red Sox in 1986. And if he hadn’t hurt his knee in Toronto in late September, he would have started Game 4 of the World Series against the Mets instead of Al Nipper. With Seaver in the rotation, I believe the Red Sox would have won that haunting World Series.

NOTE - the new verson of Blogger isn't taking line / page breaks into account, thus resulting in one big paragraph. I'll figure out a solution / workaround when time permits.

Don't Count Them Out

Shank gives us an update on the Celtics and Bruins in the 'playoffs':

You’re never as good as you look when you win and you’re never as bad as you look when you lose.

Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver said this regularly back in the 1970s when the Orioles were usually very good. Earl’s wisdom is my takeaway from a weekend watching the Celtics and Bruins.

The Celtics are up. The Bruins are down.

The Celtics demolished the defending World Champion Toronto Raptors, 112-94, in the Orlando bubble Sunday afternoon. It was the first game of a best-of-seven conference semifinal and gave a legion of Green People hope that their team can advance to the conference finals and maybe make it to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010.

A decent column ensues from there. Can't wait for the sudden attitude change if, for example, the Bruins lose tonight.

Standing Small

Recent events compel Shank to criticize the 2020 Red Sox more than he usually does:

In a week of American protest and crisis, the Red Sox stood small

The quaint notion that what has happened in Kenosha and elsewhere this week are mere protests is world class sophistry. These are riots by any reasonable / logical definition. Look at this guy's thread and tell me otherwise. Andy Ngo's by far and away the number one chronicler of these riots that Shank and other media rumpswabs try to pass off as protests. False premises like this need to be taken out back and tossed in the dumpster.

The Red Sox are not only a horrible baseball team, they are also ever-divided. And really hard to like.

After playing a game Wednesday — the day the NBA shut down and three major league games were postponed — the Sox had a team vote Thursday and agreed to stand behind Jackie Bradley Jr., who had told his teammates he wasn’t going to play Thursday. In the early hours after the decision to boycott was announced, Sox outfielder Kevin Pillar and reliever Ryan Brasier made their true feelings known.

Participating in a Zoom news conference, Pillar said, “It was not an easy decision for a lot of us . . . We all have different beliefs. We don’t agree on everything . . . I don’t think right now, as a country, we should be necessarily identifying individual groups of people that need to be uplifted . . . ’'

Worth noting - the presence of these ellipses suggest / confirm that Shank (or the guy he copied it from) is doing what's known in the recording business as sampling; in other words using parts and sections potentially taken out of context and other pertinent and inconvenient facts removed for maximum negative impact. That said, I see nothing incendiary about those two semi-sentences. Clumsy for sure, but that's it.

Not to be outdone:

A few hours after Pillar spoke, Brasier retweeted a video mocking Doc Rivers’s emotional response to the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wis. It’s truly hateful and appalling stuff. See if you can find it. Search Twitter for Hodgetwins — conservative comedians with almost 600,000 followers. Brasier evidently is a big fan. Pinky Higgins would be so proud. Color me haunted.

Brasier’s retweet was discovered Friday by NBC Sports Boston’s John Tomase. Brasier did not respond to Tomase’s request for comment, but he deleted the retweet from his timeline. Ron Roenicke said that Brasier reached out to Bradley and the Sox manager to explain his actions. Wonder what Brasier would say to Rivers, whose father was a cop.

I'm sort of two minds with this guy and what he did - on the one hand, getting in trouble for a retweet seems incredibly petty. On the other hand (and the one I'm going with) is that Brasier's always seemed like a knucklehead to me and this merely provides confirmation. Doc Rivers is a class guy par excellence and that was a no-thought classless thing to do.

No, I did not miss the Pinky Higgins reference / name drop -of course not! I'm not a baseball historian / aficionado like my co-blogger, but the guy sounds like a real winner (please note the sarcasm, folks!). You'll see some other name drops later on that you're going to love...

I spoke with Sox baseball boss Chaim Bloom after midnight Friday.

“I talked to Ryan about this today,’' said Bloom. “He was very apologetic and regretted the timing, and the message that the timing sent. He took down one of those tweets and spent time having a lot of conversations in our clubhouse with people he felt he needed to have conversations with. He was upset and regretful about the entire thing . . . This wasn’t something that we felt warranted discipline. He made a mistake, but once he did I think he took a lot of the right steps to try to make amends.’'

This is so Boston Red Sox. In a week of American protest and crisis, the Sox stood small while so many around them demonstrated dignity and unity. While America paused to take a long look in the mirror, the Red Sox provided division and continuation of a culture that has long plagued the Boston baseball franchise.

Again, these aren't protests anymore; they are riots, complete with bullhorns, looting, fire and physical assault, and they haven't been 'protests' for quite a while to the degree they ever were. Siding with rioters and calling it 'dignity and unity' seems to have things like priorities seriously inverted. Fortunately these riots are largely confined to ten or fifteen downtown areas of certain major American cities controlled by Democrats lock stock and barrel for a period on average equivalent to my age.

“You bring any group of this many people together, you’re bound to have people with different views and different thoughts,’' said Bloom. “Peaceful protests are about changing minds. If we can’t look at progress that gets made towards a goal in a room of people with very different opinions — if we can’t look at that and see progress, then we’re undermining our own goals.’'

“We don’t demand that everyone have the same political opinion,’' added Sox CEO Sam Kennedy.

Good. This is America. You are not obligated to agree with everyone else, and a big league ball club doesn’t release a player for being a dumbbell.

Everyone got that? Now watch this:

But why can’t Pillar and Brasier keep their different views behind closed doors? This was an opportunity to back a teammate without pushing one’s own agenda. Most other teams presented as unified. Would a little unity from the Red Sox be too much to ask?

Pillar was asked a question and presented his own viewpoint, albeit roughly. Braiser? He's a knob and not getting a pass on that - a lot of times shut the fuck up is the better part of valor. That said, Shank just contradicted himself in consecutive sentences, and not for the first time.

I truly wish these 2020 Red Sox could play in front of fans at Fenway. It would expose them to the boos they so richly deserve. And not just because they are 10-22. They remind me of the loathsome Joe Kerrigan Red Sox of 2001. Mike Lansing. Carl Everett. You remember those guys, right?

An awesome blast from the past! Behold, the Bing results from typing in 'curly haired boyfriend' - this post is now writing itself!

These Sox certainly honor the ball club’s time-tested legacy of “25 players, 25 cabs.” They have only one Black player, just as they did when they were baseball’s last team to integrate 60 years ago. And they can’t seem to agree on anything.

Remember last year when the defending world champs were summoned to be honored at the White House? All the white guys went to Washington. With the exception of J.D. Martinez and Sandy Leon, all the Sox persons of color stayed home.

That's because it has become a politicized event, aided and abetted by media members like Shank.

Opening night at Fenway, 2020? All the visiting Orioles took a knee during a pregame presentation dedicated to Black Lives Matter. Six Red Sox kneeled — Bradley, Michael Chavis, Alex Verdugo, and three coaches who are men of color. Everybody else stood.

Now we have the last-place Sox stacking loss after loss like a pile of cord wood, then going public with clubhouse division during a week of protest and reflection by every team in every sport.

After Friday afternoon’s unfortunate flurry, Bradley, Brasier, and the rest of the Red Sox participated in a pregame ceremony at Fenway commemorating Jackie Robinson’s first day in baseball. When all players stood at attention, I couldn’t help but wonder what Ryan Brasier was thinking.

I alluded to this point two posts ago, but it bears repeating and a bit more expansion - there's a big difference between overt, direct acts of racism like barring people from businesses, pro sports teams and the like (which I see little to no evidence of in modern American society today) and in the case of Jacob Blake in Kenosha (which apparently triggered this latest pro sports boycotting this week), claiming solidarity with a black man wielding a knife and roaming around menacing other people and when white cops intervene lots of people freak out and call the cops every fucking name in the book. These two things could not be any more different from each other but here we are with some degree of American citizens accusing law enforcement and those who support them of the most vile and wicked motives and behaviour for the act of doing their jobs.

I'm quite sure we don't need to 'reflect' on the notion that thugs are allowed to rampage certain American cities and call the cops racists for doing their jobs.

Boston Globe Death Watch - XI

I'd call this 'arranging the deck chairs on the Titantic'.

Boston Globe employees were told Wednesday that employees should continue to work remotely through the end of the year, although they may choose to come in to the office for no more than two days a week after Labor Day. What follows is the top of the memo from the Boston Globe Media Partners executive team, which I obtained from a trusted source.

Hello all,

On behalf of the Executive Leadership Team and Safety Committee, we want to provide some important updates and clarification on opening the Boston Exchange Place / 53 State Street office, as well as the Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. offices. We have talked before about how the Boston office would reopen after Labor Day to serve as an optional amenity for people who needed a break working from home, and that it would still be limited to not more than two days per week. We want to emphasize that while we greatly miss being together, not only are you not expected to return work in person, but we do not want or need for you to come in.

We are arranging the office to be safe for people who want to use it on a limited basis, but the preference is that you continue to work from home. We have been monitoring the pandemic and will continue to respond based on state guidelines, but in the meantime, we are extending this phase of limited, optional-only use of the office through the end of the year.

To be clear, we want the Boston offices to be as empty as possible for the remainder of 2020. While we realize that there could be an expectation that managers may want you to show up in person, or that you may miss out on an opportunity if you are not in the office, we want to dispel that notion by emphasizing that managers do not and must not expect you to return to the office for the remainder of the year. If you have concerns or questions about this, please talk to your manager or reach out to your HR partner to discuss.

UPDATE AT 2:12 PM - You see, it's much easier to fire people this way!

The 'Shut Up And Dribble' Column

I don't know about you but I'd rather watch sports without politics being added on. In recent times, this has become difficult if not impossible. Witness the latest iteration of the sports protest:

I’m getting “shut up and dribble” emails these days.

I'm not exactly sure why Shank should be getting these kind of e-mails; maybe better to send them to the players not shutting up and not dribbling? Again, with these e-mails to Shank (I'll say it - if they exist) - you're sending them to the wrong guy. But whatever:

This is what happens when professional sports figures speak up and act regarding issues of social justice and racial inequality:

“My wife and I decided to watch a Sox game on a Saturday night. We waited until 7:10 to start viewing to avoid any political action. We feel sports should be an escape and fun. Sports is for sports. I do not care what their religious, political, or ethnicity is. Bringing signs into the ball park is wrong. Do whatever they want outside, not inside. I do not need to sit for hours watching millionaire athletes protesting. I will try the NFL on opening day but starting at 1:10 p.m.”

My general reaction - 'fine, I'll do or watch something else'. At this point I don't freak out about it or complain too much anymore; I just change the channel.

The Celtics and Toronto Raptors are scheduled to begin their conference semifinal Thursday night in the Orlando bubble, but players from both teams spent part of Tuesday and Wednesday discussing a boycott of Game 1 to bring attention to the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer and subsequent protests and violence in the streets of Kenosha, Wis.

That's all that Shank writes about the latest police incident involving white cops and a black man. This is wise, as additional information and details are coming out about the incident, with that last link (best I can find right now whilst doing a post) coming out an hour or two after Shank's column. These additional facts and details may or may not change one's opinion about the matter.

Celtics stars Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart have been out front on racial inequality issues throughout America’s long hot summer. It’s in the best tradition of the Boston Celtics.

“Shut up and dribble” folks likely will never accept any spillover of real-life issues into professional sports, but let me remind fans of the Celtics that issues of race and equality have walked hand-in-hand with the franchise since Red Auerbach came to Causeway Street in 1950.

Red was the first NBA executive to draft a Black player, Duquesne forward Chuck Cooper in 1950. Six years later, Auerbach exploited racism in the St. Louis Hawks front office, trading two white players for the Hawks’ No. 1 draft pick. Red used the pick on Bill Russell. He knew St. Louis had no interest in building its franchise around a Black center.

Shank goes on with some sad but interesting tidbits about previous Celtics teams joining in on boycotts, and it's worth a read.

I'd like to make the following point / distinction: What Shank talks about are things that directly affect the players and the team, and what current and other NBA players are now boycotting based on what happened to someone they don't know based entirely on the fact that white cops and a black man were involved. They will argue 'systemic racism' and 'police brutality' (or how Shank generically says 'social justice' and 'racial inequality'), but considering what is known so far, I find those
accusations spurious at best. Should the cops simply let knife-wielding men roam around menacing other people in order to avoid being labeled racists and thugs? Sad to see that being a question at all.

Just What The Boston Globe Needs - Another Shank

Bruce Allen has some fun with the Boring Broadsheet:

Must love baseball and be willing to pledge fealty to John Henry. The ideal candidate will exhibit skill in disdaining and trolling readers, football knowledge not required. https://t.co/jQjEYN4SKD

— Bruce Allen (@bruceallen) August 25, 2020

Sorry, Bruce - that position's already taken!

The Once In A Blue Moon Column

Imagine your surprise at finding Shank's latest column actually has a positive, upbeat vibe to it?

How do you feel about a Distance Championship Parade in October? With virtual Duckboats? Are you ready for a million-strong Zoom rally with Zdeno Chara or Jayson Tatum tossing a bucket of Gatorade at Mayor Marty Walsh from 6 feet away?

Close your eyes and imagine Jack Edwards in NESN’s Watertown studio, waxing poetic about the Bruins’ 2020 Stanley Cup champions. Try to imagine Scal standing alone on Causeway Street, waving Celtics Banner No. 18 and insisting Tatum is better than Larry Bird or Bill Russell.

Our winter sports teams are white-hot here in late August (no one has ever written that sentence before), and Boston woke up Monday morning with that old championship feeling.

Not to go Full Rochie on you here, but events over the weekend have me in a happy place regarding the fortunes of the Bruins and Celtics. It might never feel better than it feels right now, so why not enjoy the speculation and the daily playoff action?

I fully expect this attitude to change with a few losses by either team.

Lockdown Dan

I guess it's not much of a surprise to see that strains of health puritanism would make it to the Boston Globe's sports section, as Shank believes the BC Eagles shouldn't play football this fall:

The list of bad ideas introduced to Boston sports fans through the years is long and winding. The Red Sox once tried to sell us Jack Clark. Then Bullpen by Committee. Now they’re all about Payroll Flexibility. TD Garden officials thought it would be a swell idea to reconfigure seating in the lower bowl of the arena last year. Oh, and remember the campaign to bring the 2024 Olympics to Boston?

Now we have the crazy notion that the Boston College Eagles are planning to play their ACC football schedule this fall while our region tries to get back on its feet in the middle of a global pandemic.

For the record, the Wuhan coronavirus is now considered an epidemic, which is a disease less prevalent in a population than it is in a pandemic. I'm certain the CDC downgraded the virus to this epidemic status a month ago, but they don't seem very willing to advertise it explicitly (and easily findable) on their website. In any event, one of the tricks I don't appreciate the media playing is this exact sort of bullshit. By continuing to call it a pandemic they keep doing the media's Prime Directive, which is scaring the shit out of people.

What in the name of Buddy Garrity is going on around here? Who do we think we are — Clemson, S.C.? Odessa, Texas? Tuscaloosa, Ala.?

Seriously. I understand folks who live in football hotbeds going for this. But Boston, a place where absolutely nobody knows your name if you are associated with college football? Boston, a hub of science, medicine, high-tech, and deep thinking? We are going to have big-time college football here on autumn Saturdays in 2020?

So, if it's not popular we shouldn't do it? Like me not reading your newspaper?

We knew Harvard and Yale weren’t going to play this year. Same with the Patriot League, the NESCAC, and all the quaint little schools that play small-time college football. Those were easy calls. Even Division 1 pretenders UMass and UConn had the good sense to pack away the shoulder pads for the fall. Massachusetts high school football is also closed for the season.

But BC is planning to play North Carolina, Pitt, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Louisville in an empty Alumni Stadium. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that BC is going forward to protect its share of ACC TV money. The Eagles’ slice of the ACC pie is in the neighborhood of $30 million annually.

So, you overlooked that league affiliation thingy back there, didn't 'cha?

I won't bore you with the rest of it but he repeats the notion a few times - we're in Massachusetts, not Georgia or Florida and thus they shouldn't be playing. How dumb of an argument is that? By the way, that's the primary argument and health concerns are of a secondary importance. Just look at this bullshit conclusion:

We are Boston. We are about science and knowledge.

This is insanity. And it’s dangerous.

What is insane and dangerous is continued efforts to lock people down and restrict their freedom of association (or movement, at a physical level) and it all that entails in the name of a virus that is slightly more infectious and roughly as non-lethal as many of the others I've lived through. The widespread lockdowns and declaration of sizeable portions of the economy as 'non-essential' and thus forced to close shop is a) unprecedented in my lifetime, b) does have harmful side effects and c) will always be seen by me as a galaxy-class fuckup by those in charge of these measures, most of them fucking Democrats.

But let me instead talk about the players. It's bad enough there will be online courses (they simply aren't the same thing) but for all of them, they are also there to play football and if / when a few of them make it to the NFL or CFL, all the better. My buddy Eddie swears up and down that the experience of hanging in a college locker room getting ready for and playing college sports is like nothing else, and I don't doubt it for a second. Shank's position deprives them of this opportunity. To hell with that - let's get back to our normal lives, the sooner the better.

Guilt By Association

Shank's been on a scumbag tour de force the past few weeks, hasn't he?

“We Build the Wall” board member Curt Schilling with the indicted Steve Bannon pic.twitter.com/ulgDnGLDbS

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 20, 2020

The implication's clear - Schilling's a bad guy because he posed for a picture with someone who was indicted in the past 24 hours. I read the first seven pages of that indictment (link is here) and found that part of the document to be fairly hyperbolic.

To use Shank's 'logic', then, he's as reprehensible as Schilling is made out to be because Sam Shaughnessy was arrested for drunken disorderly, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. Is that how the game's played now?

DHL Dan CIX - The Next Guy Outta Town?

The leadoff subject for Shank's latest Picked Up Pieces column is Xander Boagerts and whether he's going to stay with the Red Sox:

A sweep for Boston, but here’s hoping Xander Bogaerts doesn’t get the Mookie Betts treatment

Pretty good Wednesday. The Bruins closed out the Hurricanes, 2-1, to advance to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Celtics spanked the Sixers, 128-101, to take a 2-0 lead in their first-round series. And the lowly Red Sox snapped a nine-game losing streak with a 6-3 win at home against the Phillies.

Some picked up pieces from three games in front of the flat screen . . .

▪ Mookie Betts. Now Xander Bogaerts? Say it ain’t so, Red Sox.

The estimable Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic floated the trade rumor this week, noting that the period between now and Aug. 31 represents Boston’s last chance to move Bogaerts without the shortstop’s approval. Bogaerts will reach seven years of service Sept. 6, which means he can veto any deal after this trading deadline passes.

Bogaerts is signed to a team-friendly six-year, $120 million contract, but has an opt-out after 2022. If things don’t improve on Jersey Street, abandoning the Red Sox might be an attractive alternative to any good player who’s still here in 2022.

Sox CEO Sam Kennedy and baseball boss Chaim Bloom say no Sox player is untouchable. Kennedy is quick to remind us of the Nomar Garciaparra bombshell from 2004.

And we're quick to remind you about Shank's involvement in that whole shitshow.

The rest of the column is what you'd expect - lots of subjects covered in minute form, plenty of grousing, etc.

Shank Hardest Hit

So much for his next Patriots column:

JUST IN: Court rules secret videos can’t be used in Kraft massage case https://t.co/CI9q6Wevvc

— Boston 25 News (@boston25) August 19, 2020

Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

It's been nearly a week since we've last heard from the local curmudgeon - let's check in to see how his Monday went, shall we?

Pass the remote.

Monday offered a sports smorgasbord for New England fans. Celtics playoffs. Bruins playoffs. Red Sox-Yankees (hold your laughter). All in a single night in August.

The sum total? Two playoff wins for the Hub’s winter teams and another worthless evening for Boston’s boys of bummer at Yankee Stadium. The Celtics beat the Sixers, 109-101. The Bruins scored four third-period goals to beat the Hurricanes, 4-3. The last-place Red Sox dropped to 6-17, suffering a 6-3 beatdown in the Bronx, their eighth straight defeat.

Our late-summer TV feast tapped off just after 6:30 p.m. when the third-seeded Celtics beat the sixth-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, 109-101, in Game 1 of their first-round best-of-seven series in the bubble in Orlando. Jayson Tatum led the Celtics with 32 points and 13 rebounds. Jaylen Brown scored 29.

From there it's the usual Shank column templates - pine for Boston / Philly matchups from the 60's and '80's, complain about lots of stuff (especially the Red Sox), refer to J.D. Martinez as 'the new Adrian Gonzalez and misspell Celtics coach Brad Stevens name three times (that was spotted by a commenter and since corrected).

Milking It, By Dan Shaughnessy - A Continuing Series

Shank manages to write a positive New England Patriots story, if only to congratulate Dont'a Hightower and the start of his and Morgan Hart's family:

FOXBOROUGH — Dont’a Hightower wanted to inspire his fiancée Morgan Hart as she labored in the 17th hour to deliver their first child. She was exhausted, but the nurse said it was time to push.

He started chanting, “28-3, 28-3.” Adding, “Never give up.”

The standout Patriots linebacker laughs as he recalls his delivery-room audible. It’s New England lore to recite the score of Super Bowl LI, in which the Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons, 28-3, with a little more than two minutes left in the third quarter. They rallied to win, 34-28, in overtime in the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history.

Let the record show that Grayson Hightower heard about it in the womb from his father.

Hart, Hightower’s sweetheart since their days at the University of Alabama, says the “28-3″ mantra gave her strength.

An animus free column by Shank about the Patriots (even if it's focused on one awesome player) should be savored like a fine wine.

That first part's really overboard with the 28-3 angle, but it's an otherwise decent column.