Enjoy your irrelavancy. fellas

Bill:
I think this is the first time I find myself glad that the Sox are playing on the road in a dome … You seen the mofo forecast?

 

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Doug:
We had the snowiest wintah evah, now the coldest spring evah and our second "freak" nor'estah in May … Who the fuck knew hell freezing ovah would have such adverse effects on the local conditions?

 

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Bill:
If that's the price we have to pay for winning it all, then let it rain and snow all summah.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, but didn't you get the friggin' memo? Winning the World Series doesn't mean jack until the Sox also win the division.

 

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Bill:
You know you've almost gotta feel bad for columnists like Murray Chass as every day they get sucked further into the black hole of irrelevance with the public.

 

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Doug:
Yeah, Schilling nailed it on EEI when he said, "The writers make the fans believe that writer has insight and expertise on a subject that he doesn’t. These guys don’t know us for the most part any more than the fans do. They talk to us more but that doesn’t mean they know anything more about us than the fans who are watching the games do."

 

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Bill:
I remembah writing Shaughnessy an email back in mid 90s, back when the web was just getting going, to take issue with something he said and the prick writes back, I'll never forget it, he wrote back with "If you're so smart, why don't you get a job like mine and get your own column?"

 

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Doug:
Ah, the hubris of these guys. You think the CHB still responds to readers that way considering that a whole bunch of smart fans did start their own columns by way of blogs?

 

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Bill:
I suspect the egos of these columnists are too lahge to make them realize that these days when I want to read opinion and analysis of the Yankees, I'm not going to look to a Murray Chass but to a Cliff Corcoran.

 

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Doug:
Right, just like we turn to Allan Wood or Surviving Grady or any number of the Red Sox bloggers for our daily dish these days instead of the homogenized, agenda ridden, same old Newsak crap guys like Shaughnessy peck out.

 

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Bill:
Yeah, whether it's Newsweek making up stories about Quoran flushing or someone in the Boston media cherry picking playah quotes to create a fictional storyline, the game is up. Enjoy your irrelavancy. fellas.

 

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Comments

[Bob]

When I first read Chase's article, I thought he was being tongue-in-cheek. He HAD to be right? I mean, beating the Skankees after being down 0-3, then sweeping the Series is an "incomplete" win unless the Red Sox also win the division? You'd think even Yankee fans would admit that's laughable. But the amount of sour grapes coming out of New York since October would be considered a bumper crop in Napa Valley. It's kind of astonishing, really. I thought Yankee suck-ups would be their usual arrogant selves. Instead, they're coming up with these proposterous theories about how last year's victory was somehow unfulfilling. I guess it wasn't a tongue Chase had in his cheek; more like Joe Torre's member.

[El Guapo's Ghost]

Great post!

The mainstream media industry is just $hitting themselves because the demographics are changing. In twenty years from now when the non-internet generation becomes totally irrelevant to advertisers, the mainstream media is either going to have to change their product drastically or they are going lose a ton of revenue.

[SawxSince67]

Nice work, HB...

I had just suffered through (yet again) Chass' column and was prepared to bitch about it on this very website--but you beat me to it!

"...the Red Sox have blown it. "

Oh well, pack 'em up...the season's ovah! The AL East will be decided with about 120 games remaining?

"But have you seen Boston's pitching? David Wells..."

NO mention of Arroyo, Clement, Miller and how the staff has battled through losing the 1 & 2 starters.

No mention of how "journeyman" Bruce Chen is out-pitching the NYY Crown Jewel FA Signing that is the Big Unit.

Shit, even NY Post writer Joel Sherman has a better grip on reality.

tonight, my hope is that the Sox pummel Bush before the BJ's pummel Fat Boy--both are inevitable, it's just a metter of who's left standing.

Bronson goes tomorrow.

Thursday night--Miller v Halladay. Interesting.

[NV in SD]

Lemme get this straight...

"Being the division champion is what it is all about for the Red Sox this season, whether they admit it or not. Which is a roundabout way of saying the Red Sox have blown it. "

So if they lose the division and win the WS (just like last year), then the whole season was pointless. I'm really struggling with how this no-talent ass clown can say that winning not winning the division is blowing it, but surrendering an 0-3 series lead isn't worth mentioning in the same breath. Wow. I'm guessing that if the Yanks get to the top of the division this year, Chass will be saying one thing, and one thing only:
"Biggest Comeback EVER"

What an asshole.

[Allan]

Wow -- thanks for the name check. Guess I should go update my blog now!

Chass is such a fuckin' tool.

I can't wait until we win the East and get swept in the ALDS. That'll be so much better than 1004.

[Allan]

or 2004.

***

P.S. I live in NYC but I still managed to miss hearing about the MFYs 2004 AL East parade through the canyon of heroes.

Anybody have a link to that? Murray?

[Devine]

Oh, thank goodness you were mocking this today, HB. I clicked on the link over at BDD, and was just filled with disbelief. Like Bob, I thought Chass was maybe kidding. Maybe he's tricked himself into believing what he wrote in that column?

Honestly, Baltimore (you know, the team that would win the division right now if the season were a quarter as long as it is) gets a whole sentence or two, and then gets tossed out as a possibility? Shit, Chass, if you're going to talk about the season like it's late August right now for the Red Sox and Yankees (not to mention the White Sox and Twins), then you better just declare Baltimore the winners now and let it go.

The Yankees lost in humiliating fashion last year, Murray, you tool. Deal with it.

Also gotta agree with Sawx on the utter lack of coverage for Clement's and Arroyo's early success, Miller's hopeful start, the way the team handled itself while missing two starters. Clearly they spit the bit while the Yankees were (even more) behind. It's not as though they did it with less than their full deck or anything.

If Boston gets the wild card and wins the World Series, all it will mean is another year of feeling eaten up inside by the knowledge of my team's inability to compete in the division. Really.

[Ryan]

Shoot, Allan beat me to that line of thought. I was going to ponder whether the Yankees felt great about losing the WS to the wild-card winning Marlins.

The regular season is just that, regular, which is just another word for "not so special."

[Devine]

Oh yeah, I meant to ask, was it you that sent such an email to Shaughnessy, HB? Someone you know?

[BigBri]

right on the mark h.b. Winning the division is NOT necessary anymore. Winning the World Series has always been and will always be the goal to shoot for - no mater how you get there.

[illegitimate son of dwight evans]

BigBri agreeing with the Soxaholix? I guess this nor'easter really is the beginning of hell freezing over.

(like it needed to be repeated: right on HB!)

[Tman]

One would think that since blogs have opened up the market to more writers about sports and other subjects, thus causing the dwindling of newspaper subscriptions (ie-hacks like Murray's jobs are at stake) that writers such as curly head and Murray would do their best to try and win back their audiences. Instead of you know, telling them what morons they are.

One would be wrong apparently. Truly a head scratcher H.B. I wonder how long it will be before more people are reading Soxaholix everyday than Curly Haired boy.....

[mr. blackandwhite]

I go out of my way to read this site every day while at the same time going out of my way not to read anything by CHB and I'm sure I'm not the only one...

[pawsoxpop]

Loved today's post. I have read about two Shaughnessy columns in the last 10 years, and regretted it both times. The guy cannot get through any column without A. Referring to somebody as Dean Wormer or some other reference to "Animal House" B. A totally irrelevant lyric written at least 20 years ago by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen or some even moldier song that Frank Sinatra sang; comparing a play int he latest Red Sox game with some other play in a different and totally unrelated Red Sox game that took place 30 or more years ago. I think he used to be good when I first started reading, but I have a hard time remembering that far back. Unlike Gammons, he hardly ever does any original reporting any more; unless you count talking to Babe Ruth's ghost or looking things up in the baseball encyclopedia as original reporting.

[Boston Fan in Michigan]

You do have to wonder why the 'mainstream media' doesn't respond to the, ah, blogger threat by simply making better use of the resources available to them. So far as I can tell the editorial guys especially are being rendered redundant by bloggers with opinions and (sometimes much better) writing skills, so why not take the one route left to distinguish themselves... access. They have access to players and management and we, in large part, don't. Seems like any upset Yankee fan could try to rationalize away last years WS, but only a New York reporter could go out and get some quotes from Steinbrenner or Jeter about it. Yet they persist in putting out articles that most bloggers could write, or write better. Weird.

[pawsoxpop]

Oh I almost forgot. When I used to read him regularly I think he used to do that college drinking contest "name game" routine all the time. You know the one where you match totally irrelevant first and last names. Like Bart Giamatti. Bart Simpson. Jessica Simpson. Or maybe that was Murray Chass or some other tired hack. Hard to keep them all straight.

[Allan]

... and judging from emails posted by various soshers over the last 3-4 years, CHB still responds to emails and letters the EXACT same way.

[pudge]

What's this bullshit about "The one thing the Red Sox have not done in this era of the renewed rivalry is finish ahead of the Yankees in the American League East, winning the division championship, of course."?

The Yankees won the very first Wild Card in 1995, when the Sox won the AL East.

Oh, I see, the "renewed rivalry" only began after the Yankees started winning the division again. :-)

[tessie]

This is one of the few Sox sites I make a point to get to every day. I'm in Cleveland and don't have to see the trash Shaughnessy farts out thinking its 'newsworthy'. Your presentation is BY FAR move informative, unique, and intelligent.

But you know that :)