Now I'm A Believer?

That one's for you, Monkeesfan!

Shank sits down with Bill Parcells, who tells Shank what football's all about:

What’s the secret to the Patriots’ success? Let Bill Parcells explain

When you cut through all the analysis, strategy, fame, and gossip that’s been part of this historic two-decade Belichick-Brady dynasty, there’s one football element that’s more important than anything else:

The Patriots win because they don’t turn over the football.

It’s really that simple. The 2019 Patriots are an NFL-best 10-1 (tied with the Niners). Not coincidentally, they have the best turnover differential: plus-19. The next-best team is plus-10. The Patriots have 29 takeaways and only 10 giveaways. It is the annual secret to their success.

I could have sworn that on a number of previous occasions Shank had described Belichick's turnover philosophy as 'obsessive' or some such denigration. Unfortunately, I came up emptyhanded looking for examples and actually found the opposite from an old column:

Zero turnovers in the cold and snow of Chicago is particularly impressive. Absence of turnovers is the ultimate formula for success in the NFL.

It's That Time Of Year

...when Shank pretends to care about high school football.

It is supposed to be the football highlight of a high school senior’s life. You invest a great part of your youth playing football and it culminates in the annual Thanksgiving Day game against a century-old rival. Morning football jousts give way to afternoon turkey, stuffing, and canned cranberry sauce.
The rest of the country has Friday Night Lights. Here in Massachusetts we have Turkey Day bragging rights.
Sweet.
But our ancient ritual has been modified and in many cases, severely diluted.
This is not the fault of global warming, the Internet, or millennial apathy. The change in our traditional Thanksgiving football rivalry games is owed to changes in the MIAA state football playoff format.

It Must Be Passive-Aggressive Week

We're only two days into the week and we see Shank kicking Tom Brady when he's down, and for his second act he's gonna pull a few punches with former Red Sox left fielder Manny Ramirez:

Manny Ramirez is apologetic, contrite, and renewed by his faith

All these years later, Manny Ramirez wants you to know that he loves you and that he is sorry for mistakes he made while playing in Boston.

He is sorry he knocked down Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick over a ticket issue when the Sox were in Houston in 2008. He is sorry for the way he shot his way out of town and got himself traded to the Dodgers later that season. He is sorry he got popped for PEDs three times.

“It’s a mistake,’’ Manny said of his failed drug tests. “It’s like Barry [Bonds], Alex [Rodriguez], and everybody that was in that [Mitchell] Report. We made mistakes. I cannot go back and change it. I think it’s going to be good for young players to see what happened in that time. But when you’re good, you’re good. Those things don’t make you a better hitter.’’

That's as harsh ash Shank gets in the column about Manny. A few sentences later the irony meter exploded:

…
Manny signed an eight-year, $160 million contract with the Red Sox before the 2001 season and made good on 7½ seasons of the deal. He was a latter-day Jimmie Foxx, good for about .312, 40 homers, and 120 RBIs every year. He was MVP of the World Series when the Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. Paired with David Ortiz, he gave the Sox a Babe Ruth-Lou Gehrig combo.

But he also was goofy. Fans loved it most of the time, but “Manny being Manny” sometimes triggered headaches for teammates, managers, and owners.

Readers need an occasional reminder or two or even three in order to keep the record straight - Shank was no friend of Manny Ramirez, until now.

Frustration

That's the theme of yesterday's column on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots after they ground out a 17-10 win on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Tom Brady is frustrated with the Patriots offense, but won’t take any blame himself

The Patriots are 9-1, sharing the best record in football. But the New England sky is falling because Tom Brady is unhappy. And Brady is not taking blame for anything regarding the Patriots’ struggling offense. Evidently, we all need to give Tom a hug and tell him it’s not his fault.

Postgame Sunday, Brady looked as if his dog just died. Frowny face. Mr. Mope.

He came to the podium after New England’s 17-10 rock-fight victory over the Eagles and presented like an 8-year-old about to get a flu shot. He took nine questions and delivered nine clipped answers, speaking a total of 130 words in just over 100 seconds.

A few observations - you can tell right away that Shank's focused on this column by which the half-clever crafted insults are hurled at Tom Brady. It also seems like he's been waiting to write this column (again) since the last time it was all over for the Patriots quarterback.

As befit a number of other Dan Shaughnessy columns, he swiped the prevailing theme from somebody else on Monday and ran with it:

Brady was back with a few more words early Monday when he called into WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show,” fulfilling a contractual obligation he’s had since he became a starter two decades ago.

Hill started by telling Brady that it looked like the QB needed a hug after Sunday’s game. Then he asked if this was the most frustrated Brady had been after a win.

“I don’t know,’’ Brady started. “I think I’m always generally frustrated during football season . . . so, yeah . . . I was very happy we won. But I just wish we played better offensively. You have to go do it. I don’t think it’s about talking about it, it’s about doing it and trying to get the best we can out of our offense to see if we can be more productive and score more points.’’

To which Shank speculates:

Some might take this as an indication that Brady is finally looking 42 years old.

And we know who 'some' is, don't we? Eventually, Shank will be right....

DHL Dan XCIII - Cheatin' Bastards

Shank tosses out another picked-up pieces column while he wishes for another loss by the Patriots:

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether Malcolm Butler will tune in when the Patriots play the Eagles on Sunday.
■ Are sports fans bothered when their teams are caught cheating?

The investigation into the 2017 world champion Astros — triggered by charges from a former Houston pitcher — touches fans everywhere, certainly those who root for New England teams.

Nobody around here liked it much when the Super Bowl-winning Patriots were caught and punished in the Spygate and Deflategate scandals. We lived through years of pushback, denials, and controversy as fans in other regions tried to assign the Patriots’ stunning success to petty crimes and misdemeanors.

Shank's done exactly that numerous times during his stint at the Boston Globe, and that's not restricted only to the Patriots.

UMass Sucks!

At least their football program does, sayeth The Shank:

UMass’s football team, and its brand, are taking a beating

UMass’s football program is an embarrassment. This is not the fault of the student-athletes. It is the fault of the UMass administration and the athletic department. The players are not being put in a position to succeed, and that’s on the grownups and the citizens of Massachusetts who are letting this happen.

Simply put, the Minutemen should not be playing big-time college football. They lose by whopping scores. UMass is 1-9. Here are the scores of the Minutemen’s last five games:

Florida International 44, UMass 0.

Louisiana Tech 69, UMass 21.

UConn 56, UMass 35.

Liberty 63, UMass 21.

Army 63, UMass 7.

At least he's consistent with his purported desire for better collegiate competition.

Dwight Evans, Hall of Famer?

Shank certainly feels that way, with a pretty good column to back it up.

Could this be the year Dwight Evans makes the Hall of Fame?

New England baby boomer sports fans are a romantic lot. In this spirit there are local athletes from the 1960s and 70s who enjoy a lifetime of love owed to accomplishments from 30 or 40 years ago. Not necessarily Hall of Famers, the local legends are routinely showered with affection if they appear at a card show or merely stroll around the corridors of Fenway, Gillette, or the Boston Garden.

These are guys like Luis Tiant, Terry O’Reilly, Bill Lee, Steve Grogan, Freddie Lynn . . .
And Dwight Evans.

Dewey. Best right fielder we ever saw. The man who made The Catch of Joe Morgan’s long drive in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. The man who got the big hits and provided the big moments in those years when the Red Sox annually almost won it all.

Familiar With The Premise

If there's one sports columnist that can write about it with authority, it's Shank:

Face it, Red Sox fans, you are overrating Mookie Betts a bit

All Red Sox fans love Mookie Betts. And what is not to love? He was MVP in 2018, hitting .346 with 32 homers. He has led the American League in runs each of the last two seasons. He is a Gold Glove right fielder, playing half his games in the toughest right field in baseball. He is an electric player and has never done anything to tarnish himself or the uniform.

But he is also a free agent at the end of next season, shows no signs of re-upping with the Red Sox, and, quite frankly, is a tad overrated around here.

Look in the mirror, big guy...

DHL Dan XCII - Another Predictable Shaughnessy Column

The New England Patriots lost to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday night. Shank barely wrote about the Patriots over the past two months, so of course Shank devotes a column to their first loss of the season, half-disguised as a lazy Picked Up Pieces column:

Patriots-Ravens had something that’s been missing all season: competition

■ Sunday’s 37-20 loss to the Ravens was easily the most entertaining Patriots game of the season thus far. Sorry, but I find a game like this more enjoyable than yet another nauseating 60-minute network homage to the greatness of Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, Bob Kraft, and New England’s Boogeyman defense.

Patriots-Ravens was still a 4-point game through three quarters. The Patriots had plenty of chances to come back and win it. Silly me, I find this more exciting than watching a 43-0 blowout at Miami, or seeing the Browns turn the ball over on three consecutive touches in the first half of a beatdown at Gillette. I like it when there’s some big-boy pushback from the other team, when the coach on the other sideline is not genuflecting at the Altar of Bill.

He's only happy because the Patriots lost.

Old School Baseball?

That would be Shank's words, not mine:

Old-school Nationals, at last, are first

HOUSTON — They were born as the Montreal Expos in 1969 and made the playoffs only once in 36 seasons. Montreal’s best team, the 1994 Expos, might have won a World Series, but there was no World Series that year because of a work stoppage.

When the Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005, they were wards of the state, literally owned by Major League Baseball. MLB hired their manager and general manager. Until this year, the Nats never won a playoff series. They were legitimate heirs to the old Washington Senators.

And now they are Faustian champions of the baseball world, with a team that started the season 19-31.

Shank expands on the aforementioned 'old-school' angle:

The Nationals are an homage to old-school baseball. They rely on scouts more than analytics. They still have guys in the front office who chomp on cigars and go with their instincts. General manager Mike Rizzo has a staff that includes six former scouting directors, four former managers, and two former GMs. All of Washington’s scouts played pro baseball. The operation is about people more than numbers. They’ll take a lunch over a launch angle.

The rest of it is game recappage, etc.

Shank On Game 6 Of The World Series

It's pretty much what you'd expect:

This World Series was a dud. Then Game 6 happened, and now we get a Game 7

HOUSTON — Something about Game 6.

Game 6 gave us Carlton Fisk and the home run for the ages in 1975. It gave us Don Denkinger blowing the World Series for the Cardinals with a bad call in 1985. It gave us Bill Buckner and a late Saturday nightmare in 1986. It gave us Kirby Puckett’s walkoff in the Metrodome in 1991.

Game 6 is only truly great when it gives us Game 7 and that is what we now have. Stephen Strasburg and the Washington Nationals stunned the hardball universe Tuesday, beating Justin Verlander and the Astros, 7-2, to force Game 7 at Minute Maid Park.

UPDATE - Fixed the typo in the headline - sorry!

Captain Obvious To The Rescue

Entering last night's game, the Washington Nationals are trailing the Houston Astros 3-2 in the World Series. Naturally, the Nationals need to win game 6 and stay in the series, and Shank is here to tell you again:

It’s up to Stephen Strasburg to extend the Nationals’ season

HOUSTON — Earl Weaver always said that in baseball, momentum is best defined as your next game’s starting pitcher.

This is what the underdog Washington Nationals must believe if they are to win the 115th World Series. Down three games to two after being routed three straight at home, the Nats will turn their desperate eyes to Stephen Strasburg when the Series resumes Tuesday at Minute Maid Park.

Throw in a twist on some lame lyrics from Simon & Garfunkel, and it's a fish wrap.

Shank Gets One Right

Maybe not a really tough prediction, but give some credit where it's due.

Remember him predicting Chaim Bloom's gonna be the next Red Sox baseball honcho? He nailed it:

In his introductory press conference, Chaim Bloom made it clear: his goal as chief baseball officer of the Red Sox is to “build as strong an organization as possible in all aspects so we can have sustained long-term success and so we can compete in championships year in and year out.”

Does that long-term plan include holding on to Mookie Betts or J.D. Martinez? Bloom’s not quite ready to answer that.

The Red Sox’ new chief baseball officer -- on the job for about two hours before his introductory press conference on Monday -- said there are a lot of options for the roster and it would be premature to say what direction the team will move in.

I wonder how long it'll take before Shank starts second guessing him? Probably with Bloom's first trade!

Shank On Game Five & The Rest Of The Series

Pretty good column by Shank, actually:

An Astros World Series championship sure feels inevitable

WASHINGTON — It feels like the old Senators could have done better than this.

The World Series is not over, of course. Stephen Strasburg could mow down the Astros on Tuesday and then anything could happen in a Game 7, right? That’s what Kevin Millar would say.

But a ’Stros championship feels inevitable after watching Houston sweep the Washington Nationals three straight by a 19-3 aggregate at Nationals Park. The Astros hit three two-run homers in Sunday’s 7-1 win.

The Nationals were already having a bad weekend when righthander Max Scherzer awoke Sunday morning with neck spasms and was unable to raise his pitching arm. Already reeling from back-to-back dull losses on their home field, the Nats no longer had their trusty ace available for a critical Game 5 of the World Series.

Shank Still Sucks At Math

Or we might call this one 'wishful thinking' instead:

Is Chaim Bloom the next Theo Epstein?

WASHINGTON — History tells us that the Red Sox can’t go wrong when they hire a young Jewish man from Yale to run the baseball operation.

Theo Epstein broke the mold 17 years ago when — just a few years out of Yale — he took over as the youngest general manager in baseball history. Theo won a World Series two years later. He was the first of a new generation of baseball executives — analytics-driven students of the game who did not play baseball at a high level. Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings today are overrun with bright job seekers well-versed in the topics at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Everybody wants to be the next Theo Epstein.

Say hello to 36-year-old Chaim Bloom, new chief baseball officer of your Boston Red Sox.

Bloom takes over for Dave Dombrowski, who was fired in September, less than a year after winning the World Series. Dombrowski took over for Ben Cherington, who was knifed in the back less than two years after winning the 2013 World Series. Cherington succeeded Epstein, who ignited this whole geek craze back in 2002 when he was named general manager of the Red Sox at the age of 28.

Shank seems to think that one data point (hiring Theo Epstein) indicates a trend; it does not. Furthermore, the announcement hasn't been made yet, and the column doesn't indicate anything about Bloom's hiring - rumors, insider scuttlebutt, etc. It is pure speculation, which of course means Shank could wind up with egg on his face yet again. This is what happens when you nuke your bridges leading into Fenway Park.

That's Because They'll Let Anybody In

48th MLB park for me pic.twitter.com/c9ngvaPB0K

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) October 25, 2019

Reader responses were positive and constructive:

You’ve trolled at 48 parks?

— Johnny Fontane (@JohnnyFontane1) October 25, 2019

It’s all about you Shank

— Gil Aguiar (@GilAguiar5) October 25, 2019

And something negative to say about each one

— DMD (@dmd031474) October 25, 2019

Cut your son off after the the 4th inning cuz; well, you know

— Richard Chavez (@richavez81) October 25, 2019

Is that also the pick number you had at the intern draft?

— Pete (@SawDustMaker88) October 25, 2019

Do they hate you yet?

— Tony Diliberto (@del4819) October 25, 2019

The Bad Old Days

If it weren't for the fact that there's always a losing team, Shank would have nothing to write about.

Is that an evergreen comment or what? While this column's of better quality than his previous one, it's because Shank writes about a theme (losing / being terrible at something) that he's eminently qualified to write about:

Looking back at the bad old days of Washington baseball

WASHINGTON — The World Series this weekend returns to our nation’s capital for the first time since 1933. Like everything else in this town, it’s complicated.

Major League Baseball in Washington is a study in failure and unrequited love. This is a city that lost two big league franchises in a span of less than a dozen years, a city that suffered through 33 summers of Baseball Prohibition after the perennial basement-dwelling expansion Senators bolted for Texas in 1972.

The expansion Senators were a punch line when I grew up in Central Massachusetts in the 1960s. The old adage about the original Senators — Washington, first in war, first in peace, last in the American League — still applied to the 1960s version. We took comfort in this in Red Sox Nation. The Senators were just about the only team annually worse than the Young Yaz Red Sox.

The Provincial Shaughnessy - A Continuing Series

Here's another column template for which Shank has based countless columns on - it's all about Boston!

HOUSTON — The Houston Astros and Washington Nationals are engaged in the 115th World Series and a lot of folks in Boston have tuned out because the games are too late, the pace is too slow and . . . in case you hadn’t noticed . . . the Red Sox are not here.

But the Sox are always here, don’t you know? Everything in life traces back to New England and the Red Sox. So here’s a clip-and-save, handy-dandy guide to how New England and the Red Sox are represented in a Astros-Nationals World Series:

And this is part of what Shaughnessy considers 'representation':

■ If the Nationals win the World Series it might help the Red Sox in their PR campaign if they have to trade Mookie Betts. Bryce Harper was The Franchise for Washington, but the Nats couldn’t re-sign him and then went out and won the National League pennant anyway. A championship for the Nats makes it easier for the Sox to justify trading their best player. They can point to Washington and say, “Look what happened after the Nationals lost Harper.” Meanwhile, if you are thinking about a logical place to trade Betts, consider the White Sox.

■ The Red Sox have David Price in the middle of a seven-year contract that pays him $31 million per season. Chris Sale next year starts a five-year, $145 million deal that puts him on the threshold of Price. This series has Stephen Strasburg (seven years, $175 million), Max Scherzer (seven years, $210 million), Zack Greinke (six years, $206.5 million), and Justin Verlander (two years, $66 million). It also has Houston righty Gerrit Cole, who is a free agent and will be making more than any of them by the time spring training rolls around.

To save the reader some time, these two brief examples purporting to demonstrate how 'the Red Sox are always here' - baseless speculation and player salary comparison that amounts to a huge non sequitur, for lack of a better way to explain the useless nature of that comparison. There are other attributes of this column that make it suck like a bilge pump but you don't need me to point the rest of them out, as you may be familiar with them by now. If he was trying to make a convincing case about this series being 'the Red Sox are always here', he fails poorly.

It's Shetland Pony Time Again - 2019 World Series Edition

As with the Antonio Brown situation, Shank gets into high dudgeon with the Houston Astros:

HOUSTON — Before the World Series even started, the Washington Nationals were America’s team.

It’s got nothing to do with the fact that the Nats play in our nation’s capital. Or that they’ve never been to a World Series.

No, the Nats are the team to root for because the Houston Astros’ organization has framed itself as arrogant, shifty, tone-deaf, stubborn, and completely unaccountable. And that is why on the night of the first World Series opener ever hosted in Houston, the Astros were dodging arrows from across America as they attempted to defend the indefensible.

A little background: On Saturday night, after the dominant ’Stros defeated the Yankees in walkoff fashion to win the American League pennant, assistant GM Brandon Taubman decided to play muscle-flexing, tough guy with three female reporters who were in the clubhouse as the perfunctory champagne celebration was winding down. The 34-year-old Taubman, out of nowhere, turned on the female reporters and started shouting.

Let's cut to the chase:

Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein was one of the three reporters targeted in Taubman’s tirade and wrote a piece about the episode Monday. After initially not commenting, the Astros furnished a statement in the wake of Apstein’s story late Monday. The statement acknowledged Taubman’s clubhouse comments, but said the team was “extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.’’

It appears to me that this 'big stink' Shank and others are making is primarily because Taubman yelled at female reporters and dropped F-bombs in the process. It also may be due to the fact that one of the reporters tweeted about domestic violence and for some reason Taubman decided to be a dick about things after the Astros won the AL pennant. Much like former president Barack Obama, criticism of a black person is somehow defined by leftists certain people as racist, criticism of gay people is now homophobic and, naturally, offending women is sexism.

Again, maybe this guy Taubman's a genuine dickhead but it seems to me that this story doesn't become as big without the female reporter angle and Shank and his fellow media parasites are going to milk this as much as possible, or make Mt. Everest out of the Blue Hills.

Backfire

Presented without comment:

Globe way: Sexually harass interns. Then pretend you didn’t. Protect sexual predators. Then pretend you didn’t. Make deals with Bob Murchison. Then pretend you didn’t. https://t.co/2npFU3dQDj

— Kirk Minihane (@kirkmin) October 21, 2019