No Imagination Whatsoever

I got into my car yesterday around 11:00 AM to run some errands, and I turn on WEEI. What's Lou Merloni talking about? The Red Sox pitchers and all of their injuries. A few minutes later I switch over to 98.5 The Sports Hub. What's Marc Bertrand talking about? Same thing. Later in the day, what are Felger & Mazz talking about? That's right - same thing.

Imagine my surprise when I checked out Shank's latest column:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — The walls are closing in around Red Sox baseball boss Dave Dombrowski for the first time since he took the job in the summer of 2015.

Pitchers acquired by Dombrowski keep getting hurt. There has been criticism of the club’s shoulder workout program. Dombrowski has been having a few testy exchanges with reporters, and he’s getting heat from some of the nonstop sports talk shows back in Boston. (where he got the idea for this column! - ed.)

Dombrowski has been in big league baseball for 40 years. He has won a World Series and pretty much seen it all. How is he feeling about the Boston baseball experience now that it’s getting a little hot?

Shank does this (listen to local sports talk radio and apes their storylines) often enough that it warrants pointing it out one more time. Even Shank's Twitter timeline (posted yesterday around 2:00 PM) supports this. If you listened to any Boston sports talk radio yesterday, there's no need to read this column.

The Obligatory Hanley Ramirez Column

This time around, the column's not all cookie cutter spring training stuff - Shank gets to discuss Hanley's bad shoulder for the entire column!

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Who’s on first?

Not Hanley Ramirez. Not yet, anyway. But he says he still wants to go back there.

The offseason blueprint for the post-Ortiz Red Sox calls for Ramirez to serve as DH against righthanded starters while lefty-swinging Mitch Moreland plays first base. On days when lefties start (there are a lot of them around), the Sox plan to put Ramirez at first while Chris Young DHs.

Manager John Farrell also hopes to use the southpaw days to spell some of his everyday starters while Ramirez plays first.

Unfortunately, Ramirez says his right shoulder is bothering him when he throws, and he hasn’t raised his hand to play first all spring. The Sox open the season Monday at Fenway Park against the Pirates, and Farrell sounds as though he has all but given up trying Ramirez at first in Florida.

One of the Globe commenters thought Shank was trying to create some controversy, which is entirely expected. With today's column, I didn't get an overwhelming feeling of venom or shitting on Red Sox management / ownership, which are prime attributes of a Shank hatchet job, so I don't think Shank's stirring the pot right now. He'll wait until next week to write that column, the first time Hanley isn't at first base for the first couple of games.

The Obligatory Christian Vazquez Column

As the 2017 Red Sox roster takes shape (and Blake Swihart is being optioned to Pawtucket to start the season, Christian Vazquez looks like he'll be starting, and that makes Shank happy.

FORT MYERS, Fla — Get it over with, Red Sox.

Make Christian Vazquez your everyday catcher.

Roll back the clock to where you were two years ago before Vazquez came up with a bum elbow at spring training.

Vazquez is the best catcher on the team. He’ll hit enough. It’s OK to tell Sandy Leon that you loved what he did for you last year. But why waste time when Vazquez is going to end up being the everyday catcher anyway?

UPDATE, 3/27 AT 8:55 PM - Fixed incorrect first name in the title - whoops...

The Obligatory Andrew Benintendi Column

That was a tough call predicting 'one player, one column', wasn't it?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — He is taking over left field at Fenway Park — a precious piece of real estate that was patrolled continuously by Hall of Famers Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, and Jim Rice for almost 50 years of the 20th century. He has played all of 34 games in the big leagues and already he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He is a consensus pick to be American League Rookie of the Year in 2017.

He is Andrew Benintendi, the Next Big Thing in Boston baseball.

The Obligatory Xander Bogaerts Column

Now that Shank's doing his second Florida go-round, expect him to do what he does every year - focus on one Red Sox player when writing a column.

FORT MYERS, Fla. — He’s still only 24 years old, but we think of him now as almost part of the Fenway furniture. There’s the Green Monster in left, the Citgo sign behind the Monster, Pesky’s Pole in right, and Xander Bogaerts anchoring shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.

Bogaerts and Dustin Pedroia are the only remaining veterans from the 2013 World Series roster, and young Bogey trails only Pedroia in continuous service with this Boston ball club.

Just Wondering

Shank was curious about Clay Buchholz's newborn kid:

Clay Buchholz’s brood just got a little bigger. The former Red Sox right-hander and his wife, Lindsay Clubine, have welcomed their third child. Early Tuesday, Clubine, a former “Deal or No Deal” model, posted the happy news on Instagram with a picture of the whole family in the hospital. “Welcome to the world Jax Daniel Buchholz! You complete us!!” she wrote. Is it just us or does Jax Daniel sound an awful lot like the name of a certain brand of Tennessee whiskey?

DHL Dan - LIII

Continuing his non-interest in writing columns about the Bruins or the Celtics, Shank inflicts on us his second Picked Up Pieces column this month.

First, let's go with a few bold predictions:

■ I don’t know about you, but I’m picking UConn to win the Women’s Final Four. What excitement. What drama. It’s almost like picking the Patriots to win the AFC East.

Way to go out on a limb!

Next, let's do some half-assed team comparisons:

■ Let me ask you this, Celtics fans. You saw them dismantle Minnesota Wednesday, right? Al Horford almost had a triple-double, and the Celtics bolted to a 117-104 win over the 28-39 Wolves. Swell. But which roster (including future draft picks) would you rather have for the next five years?

Give me the Wolves. The Celtics don’t have anyone — nor will they have anyone — with the upside of Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins. It’s not even close.

The Celtics are going to win more than 50 games and are only two games behind the Cavaliers in the East, but their ceiling is significantly lower than that of the T-Wolves. It would be much more fun to build around Towns and Wiggins than around Isaiah Thomas, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Danny Ainge’s raft of draft picks.

Since when has Shank ever been about 'fun' things? The Celtics have improved every year under coach Stevens, and Shank claims he'd rather have two 'fun' players than an entire functioning team? Remember that the next time Shank complains about not winning.

■ Still don’t understand the hate for David Price. He won 17 games last season, fourth best in the league. Led the majors in starts (35) and innings (230). Had more strikeouts than any lefty in Red Sox history. His ERA was 3.99. Many highly paid talents have come here and done much less. Let’s not turn him into Carl Crawford or Jack Clark.

Shank has more than contributed his fair share of 'hate' and negativity into the Boston sports media environment, and now he complains about the after effects? What an asshole.

Book It, Done

Shank's pretty sure that the New England Patriots are Super Bowl bound this year:

It’s done. I have purchased my round-trip plane ticket to Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis. I leave on Sunday, Jan. 28, 2018, one week after the Patriots win the AFC Championship game at Gillette Stadium. I’ll be on Delta Flight 2588, Seat 19-D. Delta’s best round-trip fare to the Twin Cities is currently $410.59. That’s nonrefundable with no changes allowed.

No changes? No refunds? No problem. I have never bought an airplane ticket this far in advance, but the Patriots are going to Super Bowl LII, and you should be going, too.

It’s “fire all your guns at once” time in Foxborough. The Patriots are loading up for 2017.

Apathy Noted

A Boston sports columnist who doesn't give a rats ass about college basketball writes a column to complain about Boston's alleged apathy towards college basketball:

There’s an annual three-week party about to start in our country, and back here in Greater Boston, we are pointedly not invited. We might not even watch it on TV. Why bother? It has nothing to do with us.

Selection Sunday is upon us and we are like tobacco-spittin’, old-timey baseball scouts with an unopened invitation to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. We are like “The Biggest Loser” contestants being asked to watch a DirecTV video on the making of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

March Madness? It’s March Apathy on our regional sports landscape.

The only time Shank gives a flying fuck about the NCAA basketball tournament is when his alma mater, Holy Cross, is in the tournament. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Getting Right On The Story

Reader Walter R. sent me this early in the afternoon:

Should I be impressed/disappointed that it took our hero nearly 3 weeks after the fact for Dan to write the inevtiable Lonborg/Brady skiing story?

Get ready for a whole summer of 1967 references.

And sure enough:

Hey Tom Brady, skiing can be a slippery slope

He does have a firm grasp of the obvious!

By now every Patriots fan has seen Tom Brady’s verified Instagram video of a skier, perhaps Brady, crash landing while attempting a ski jump in Montana a couple of weeks ago. On Instagram, Brady got into a short exchange with David Beckham in which he told the soccer star, “Hahaha yeah all good just my left shoulder which isn’t very important to me anyway.’’

Swell. But spending any part of the offseason in a sling is no way for a Super Bowl MVP to enjoy down time. Here’s a little advice for Brady from Jim Lonborg, the former Red Sox Cy Young ace who blew out his knee on the slopes and was never the same pitcher after his breakthrough 22-win season in 1967:

“It’s OK to ski as long as you don’t get hurt.

You don't say?

Let's skip to the amusing / hypocritical part:

Far be it from me to tell Brady what to do in his free time...

So, he devotes a whole column to it! Think he's still pissed about the Patriots winning the Super Bowl? Don't take it from me - take it from the commenters:

linniel03/08/17 03:08 PM

Notice how he always has to get a dig in at a Patriots.."Brady's PAID Weei gig", was that really necessary!

buttfumble03/08/17 03:17 PM

Danny, do you get paid for your radio gig? Never mind, nobody cares. How's your Super Bowl headache? How bout a vacation in Atlanta to get over it?

MCH823195003/08/17 06:19 PM

Since Shank can trash Trump every day he goes after anything Brady or Pats. This is a real stretch Shamk,!but it keeps your Pats trashing streak alive

You Don't Say?

Just doing his thing as a professional sports asshole...

On with @ZoandBertrand today from 11-1. I have a feeling we might be ripping Isaiah Thomas.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) March 7, 2017

And Now For More Boston Globe Bashing - L

Shank retweeted something from former Boston Globe rumpswab Mike Barnicle, the grandfather of fake news:

I have watched 5 spring training games in last 2 days. America has never needed baseball more than it needs it now!!

— Mike Barnicle(@mikebarnicle) March 6, 2017

Whatever that's supposed to mean. Barnicle also licked the ass of a well known local mobster, Whitey Bulger and falsely claimed he kept the drugs out of Southie. What a sap.

Larry Bird Watch

Shank has resumed following the Boston Celtics this winter - it's just not the current Boston Celtics:

Hop into the way back machine to a simpler time . . . a time when a team won a championship on Tuesday night, then flew to the White House Wednesday morning . . . a time when three star players didn’t make the trip to Pennsylvania Avenue, and hardly anybody noticed.

This happened to your Boston Celtics in the middle of a scalding June in 1984 when Larry Bird was king, Ronald Reagan was president, the Celtics were champions, and a trip to the White House was No Big Deal.

I was there. And in today’s 24/7 culture of social media, hot takes, and political polarization, it’s kind of refreshing to look back at a time when Red’s cigar was just a cigar, and nobody really cared that Bird, Robert Parish, and Cedric Maxwell skipped the trip to the White House.

That's because it wasn't due to political theater:

“Apparently the invitation (to the White House - ed.) had been made a day or two earlier to the Lakers that if they won they’d be going to the White House, but nobody bothered to mention it to us,’’ recalled Volk. “I scrambled to get flights [Eastern Airlines, flight 375] and we prepared a memo that we hoped to use if we won.’’

DHL Dan - LII

It's been nearly a week since Shank returned from the Red Sox spring training. Interest in the Celtics and the Bruins seems to be lacking for some reason, which means we get a Picked Up Pieces column! It's like that lump of dogshit you step in when you're raking the backyard...

Picked-up pieces from Houston, Fort Myers, and everywhere in between . . .

■ Boston College is looking for an athletic director in the wake of the failed five-year regime of Brad Bates, who was never a good fit for the job.

That's an interesting observation - as far as I can tell, Shank wrote about him once, never discussing his 'fit'ness for the job. The rest of that section reeks of someone else writing it, or Shank got someone to spoon feed it to him. He doesn't give a flying fuck about Boston College or college sports in general, unless it's to shit on John Calipari or Rick Pitino, the Great Destroyer of the Celtics.

I can't be bothered with the rest of it; I'll just pick two things out:

■ I still say the Celtics should have emptied the vault for DeMarcus Cousins. At the time of the Cousins trade to the Pelicans, he was averaging 27.8 points, 10.7 rebounds, and 4.8 assists per game. According to Basketball-Reference.com, the only NBA players with similar numbers over a full season are Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

I don't necessarily have a problem with a player who's a 'head case'; I would have a problem with someone who's a proven locker room cancer, like Cousins is or Terrell Owens was. It's not just inept ownership in Sacramento that has left the Kings as a basket case of a franchise.

Your laugh of the day:

■ Margot Robbie, a stunning beauty who starred in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” has been selected to play Tonya Harding in a biopic about the former Olympic skater. This would be like casting Brad Pitt to star in “The Dan Shaughnessy Story.’’

No need to put it on film, Danny Boy - I can do it in one sentence. Shank is a petty, vindictive and bitter sports writer.

@CSNNE Not even a contest, the 2nd most bitter human I've ever known. Doesn't make him bad or wrong many times, just bitter. #CHB

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) April 22, 2016

The End.

There Goes Shank's Next Ten Columns

It looks like Curt Schilling is yielding the fight against the fake Indian Senator Elizabeth Warren after giving the heads up to V.A Shiva Ayyadurai, the Cambridge / Belmont software guy who claims to have invented e-mail.

Shank's Getting Bored Already

That's the feeling that comes across as Shank writes his annual column on Carl Yastrzemski .

FORT MYERS, Fla. — His photo was on the cover of the Globe Magazine last Sunday — a 28-year-old Carl Yastrzemski chomping on a cigar, his head swathed in shaving cream, a throng of news photographers and cameramen following his every move.

It was the best of all the days in the best of all the seasons. It was Oct. 1, 1967, a Sunday afternoon, the final day of an epic regular season, and the Red Sox had just learned via their clubhouse radio that the California Angels had defeated the Detroit Tigers in Tiger Stadium, delivering the Boston Red Sox to their first World Series in 21 years.

“I think that was the best moment,’’ Yaz said last week in a telephone interview. “It was Sunday and we were behind and we rallied. That was a big thing. [Jim] Lonborg beating the bunt out. We were going up against a great pitcher in Dean Chance.’’

I'm sure you've read parts of this column before.

Promise Broken, Again

Dan Shaughnessy, October 25, 2015:

I promise never to rip Sandoval for being out of shape or going on the disabled list.

Dan Shaughnessy, earlier this afternoon:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — It was good to see Pablo Sandoval playing baseball again Thursday afternoon. The slimmed-down Kung Fu Panda started at third base against the Northeastern Huskies,
...
The last time we saw the Panda in action was last April, when his belt succumbed to his swollen gut and literally exploded in mid-swing at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.
...
The Panda has been a punch line around here for the better part of two seasons.
...
No. Nothing like that. We watched the Panda’s BMI rise while his OPS fell.
...
In the wake of a second straight last-place finish by the Red Sox in 2015, Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez became Boston baseball’s Pinata Twins — blamed for everything that was wrong with the team. (blamed by...whom? - ed.)
...
He showed up looking out of shape, and no one believed the Sox when they insisted he had only 17 percent body fat (“Did they say 70 percent?” we wondered).
...
We know he’s on a low-carb regimen and he dropped a few lbs. by riding his mountain bike to the park and doing some boxing in the offseason. He says he has something to prove. He says his shoulder is healed. He says he’s OK again from the right side. (surely not trying to create doubt here, right? - ed.)
...
Sandoval played three grueling innings against Northeastern.

Much like Shank's daily grueling one mile run!

Surprise, Surprise

What is this - an actual baseball story by Shank?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — There don’t seem to be any openings in the Red Sox starting lineup. The outfield is flush with young stars, Hanley Ramirez is going to be the designated hitter, and the infield is set with Mitch Moreland and Pablo Sandoval anchoring the corners. Despite what the Sox may say, there is virtually no competition for jobs.

Except behind the plate. Watch out for Christian Vazquez.

Vazquez lost the job to Sandy Leon last season. He tried to come back from Tommy John surgery too soon, struggled behind the plate, hit only .227 in 57 games, and was sent back to the minors. Leon, perceived as a journeyman even though he’s only a year older than Vazquez, had a career year, hitting .310 with 7 homers and 35 RBIs in 78 games. Vazquez played in only six games for Boston after July 2.

Remembering His Good Buddy Pedro Martinez

Hey, Pedro - remember when I called you a diva when I was running you out of town, then continued to talk shit about you later on?

We're good now, right?

Your pal, Shank

FORT MYERS, Fla. — He is Red Sox royalty, a Hall of Fame talent who already had won a Cy Young Award when he first came to the Red Sox from the small market of Montreal in 1998.

The buzz these days is that it takes a year for a star pitcher to acclimate to Boston — Josh Beckett, Rick Porcello, and David Price all come to mind — but it didn’t take long for Pedro Martinez. He was great at Fenway, right from the start.

Then Pedro says...

He signed autographs for 45 minutes after the session, then took a few minutes to talk about what it’s like for an ace pitcher (this means you, Chris Sale) to introduce himself to the Boston baseball market.

“I think it’s having to restart your mind,’’ said Pedro, cradling a baseball in his right hand. “For a guy like Price, he pitched in Tampa, where it is quiet and not a lot of attention. It was the same for me in Montreal. It took me almost a year to finally settle in and finally understand what to expect and what I wanted to do.

You were saying, Shank?

Trying To Create Doubt - III

Shank's still hoping for Armageddon at Fort Myers for the Red Sox this spring:

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Red Sox players sat still for a 30-minute media training session before their workouts Saturday morning at Fenway South. The tutorial was hardly necessary. Most of these young guys know how to present themselves to fans, and how to work with the no-longer-carnivorous Boston baseball media. (my bullshit meter just broke! - ed.)

Seriously. The 2017 Red Sox have a raft of homegrown young stars who are polite, cooperative, and careful with their words. If you are a baseball fan, you see the sound bites on TV every night during the regular season. Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Andrew Benintendi, and the rest of them all sound as if they majored in public relations.

“I think individually we all grew up the right way,’’ said Bogaerts, an Aruba native who first came to the big leagues when he was 20 in 2013. “The Red Sox are one of the top organizations in the game and you’ve got to bring that with you. You can’t be disrespectful or impolite; that just doesn’t fly around here.

Read the rest of the column that harkens back to the old days when the Red Sox and local media were more, shall we say, carnivorous.

And the big finish:

True. Call me a dreamer, but with Chris Sale, Pablo Sandoval, and Hanley Ramirez in the fold, I’m hoping there’s still a chance for some old-fashioned clubhouse chaos here in Camp Tranquility.

He wants chaos so he can rip any player or member of management / ownership who contribute to it. Little wonder trust in the media is at or near all-time lows.