Finneran: Sports Shorts 2020
Friday, January 24, 2020
Alex Cora PHOTO: Boston Red Sox
- Has any Major League Baseball team ever had a worse off-season than our very own Boston Red Sox? Even the most diehard local fans are rolling their eyes at the cascade of news. Ticket prices are going up. The team will slash payroll and lose or trade talent. The manager has been fired. Scandal taints the magical season of 2018. The team will “compete”, whatever that means. The Cedar Grove Little League would “compete” as well, merely by putting nine kids on the field. I would love to be shocked by a season-long performance of good baseball, but things don’t bode well right now.
- The NFL is as self-absorbed and pretentious as any business I have ever seen. I refuse to buy into the Roman numeral numbering of the Super Bowl. We have two entertaining teams about to play for a championship. Isn’t that sufficient? Roman numerals indeed. Shove that overly hyped crap…..it’s Super Bowl 54. We’ll get about twenty-five minutes of action in return for five hours of advertising. Make way for the Clydesdales (and Toyota and Viagra). I’m praying for a good game, but keep in mind that I was also praying for Mike Vrabel to return to the big game.
- Can the network broadcasters ever shut up for a moment? Most of us understand the game. We do not need an explanation of what we just saw with our own eyes. The occasional silence would be golden. Replay helps us see even more. We don’t need the constant verbal diarrhea assaulting our senses, particularly about obscure references to games played years ago by teams and franchises now totally different from their prior histories. Today’s Chiefs are not the Chiefs of Len Dawson. Today’s 49ers are not the 49ers of Jerry Rice. Research tells me that the broadcast team is Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. I could scream. This will be a nightmare, akin to a clanging five hour MRI of your brain. Buck is the absolute worst.
- Derek Jeter is in the Hall of Fame. Cooperstown is enhanced. Yet some dimwit voter failed to include him on their ballot. Unanimous election to the Hall has always been and should be very difficult. But Jeter was so good for so long at such a critical position that it is difficult to understand the resistance to naming him as one player on a ten-player ballot! I wonder about the intelligence and integrity of the sportswriter involved. What type of chip must he have on his shoulder? And how would such a chip affect his writing and his readers’ comprehension of the baseball scene. Could it be that our scribes are quite fallible, with all the grudges, biases and limitations of the human race? Would such a writer be contributing to a version of “fake news”?
- Speaking of “fake news”, there was a fascinating back-and-forth involving John Henry, owner of the Boston Globe and the Boston Red Sox, and Dan Shaughnessy, one of the Globe’s sportswriters. Mr. Henry essentially accused Mr. Shaughnessy of “making it up” when Dan described a particular exchange with the team. If Mr. Henry really thinks that, shouldn’t Dan be suspended? Is the Globe standard one of acceptance of contrived—i.e. “fake”—news? I happen to think that Shaughnessy is one of the top three sportswriters in the country. He knows his stuff and he avoids being captured by each team’s network of paid cheerleaders. He brings history, humor, and perspective to what he rightly calls “the toy department”, the sports pages.
- In a perfect world, one would have more Dan Shaughnessy and no Joe Buck.
- OK. It’s your turn----49ers or Chiefs? You make the call.
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.
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