"The tenor of the 2 p.m. meeting at The Palace hotel in New York turned ugly almost immediately ..."


... when the players found out no one remembered to send out for fried chicken and beer.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (8/16/2012 2:24 pm)

I read this story.  What a mess.  Makes me glad the Cardinals are not pointing at eachother for what they have lacked this year.

tkihshbt wrote:

I checked out SOSH (the most popular Red Sox forum) and the consensus seems to be that the players need to go.

Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe Artie would know since he probably hears about this stuff more often, but it seems to me that some combination of Pedroia, Beckett and Lester are driving this.

Gonzalez also supposedly has a hand in it, which would be the first leadership role he's taken since he arrived from San Diego.
The Red Sox situation is as odd as I've ever seen, which is saying something considering how dysfunctional that clubhouse used to be. Half the coaching staff won't communicate with Valentine because they're Francona's guys, and the veterans hate him. Which has kind of made Valentine more of a sympathetic figure with the fans. Hard to believe, I know.
Cherington is kind of emasculated because he never wanted Valentine in the first place. And ownership seems more interested in their English soccer team than their baseball team.
The whole thing is a mess.

tkihshbt wrote:

Most baseball fans loathe Boston now from what I can tell, which is unbelievable considering who their biggest rival is. At least the Yankees shut up and just play. You can hate them just because they are the Yankees. Boston, though? You hate them because that entire franchise is up its ass with its own alleged greatness.

There's a persisent theory that the ballpark has always been the root of their problems. Before the FA era, they had a hard time developing pitchers because you can't pitch inside to righties there, especially if you're a left-handed pitcher. Unless Lester has won 20, and I don't think he has, I'm pretty sure the last lefty to win 20 in a Boston uniform was Lefty Grove.
And their fan base has changed. I've always thought their appeal was their futility. Not in a lovable losers way like the Cubs, but the notion that they'd come so close only to fall apart at literally the last moment. Once they won, that kind of romantic mystique went away, and they became just another team.
Because the ballpark is so small, ownership has jacked up the cost of going to Fenway Park to the point where it's almost inacessable to the middle class, so what ends up happening is you sell tickets to rich tourists or affluent men and their Pink Hat girlfriends or mistresses for whom the highlight is singing Sweet Caroline in the middle of the eighth inning. I try to take my son to Fenway at least once a year, but the tickets are always someone else's. I think the last time I actually paid for a ticket to a Red Sox game was when the Cardinals were there in 2003.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (8/15/2012 5:08 pm)

tkihshbt wrote:

Not my thought, but would the Sox be interested in contacting a certain retired manager?

It's a great question. If I'm TLR and John Henry calls, I hang up and then make my number unlisted. There's no upside here. And the media would eat him alive.

tkihshbt wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

tkihshbt wrote:

Not my thought, but would the Sox be interested in contacting a certain retired manager?

It's a great question. If I'm TLR and John Henry calls, I hang up and then make my number unlisted. There's no upside here. And the media would eat him alive.

Oh I don't know about that. La Russa seems to thrive on the media hounding him and I think he would confound them with his goofy moves to the point that he would drive them insane.

There's definitely no upside. I don't think there's upside to manage anywhere if you're La Russa. But it would be very interesting. I'd love to see Pedroia and Beckett pull their shenanigans with him.

His only interaction with the Boston media that I'm aware of was when he did an interview with WEEI during his book tour and mentioned that Renteria wouldn't be a good fit in Boston, and the entire press corps went bananas for an entire week.
I don't mean for this to come off in a snarky I-know-something-you don't-know way, but it's hard to appreciate how brutal the Boston media is unless you live here. It's one thing to feign indignation at Bernie Miklasz during a Tony TV session, but it's another to run afoul of Dan Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy ran Bill Fitch out of town. He ran Wil Cordero out of town. He ran Carl Everett out of town. Every Red Sox manager since John McNamara has hated Shaughnessy. Not disliked. Hated.
And then there's sports radio. Except for the morning show on The Sports Hub, every daytime slot on two stations has at least one host who makes Kevin Slaten seem like a U.N. diplomat.

Last edited by artie_fufkin (8/16/2012 11:15 am)

artie_fufkin wrote:

tkihshbt wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

It's a great question. If I'm TLR and John Henry calls, I hang up and then make my number unlisted. There's no upside here. And the media would eat him alive.

Oh I don't know about that. La Russa seems to thrive on the media hounding him and I think he would confound them with his goofy moves to the point that he would drive them insane.

There's definitely no upside. I don't think there's upside to manage anywhere if you're La Russa. But it would be very interesting. I'd love to see Pedroia and Beckett pull their shenanigans with him.

His only interaction with the Boston media that I'm aware of was when he did an interview with WEEI during his book tour and mentioned that Renteria wouldn't be a good fit in Boston, and the entire press corps went bananas for an entire week.
I don't mean for this to come off in a snarky I-know-something-you don't-know way, but it's hard to appreciate how brutal the Boston media is unless you live here. It's one thing to feign indignation at Bernie Miklasz during a Tony TV session, but it's another to run afoul of Dan Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy ran Bill Fitch out of town. He ran Wil Cordero out of town. He ran Carl Everett out of town. Every Red Sox manager since John McNamara has hated Shaughnessy. Not disliked. Hated.
And then there's sports radio. Except for the morning show on The Sports Hub, every daytime slot on two stations has at least one host who makes Kevin Slaten seem like a U.N. diplomat.

What is it that the media, particularly Curly, does in Boston to drive people out?

Not really what I ment.  By chance if TLR would come back he isnt going to take a below the radar job.  He isnt going to land with a team like of Orioles, Twins, Padres or Rockies.  His ego has bloated past those jobs.  If he were to take a job it would have to grab headlines and be about him and I am not taking a shot at TLR.  He just wouldnt comeback to to start at the bottom.  He would want a "sports center" team.

By Zach Links [August 17 at 8:43am CST]- - -MLB  Trade Rumors

Yesterday, Red Sox President Larry Lucchino took some time to talk to the press in the midst of the team's recent turmoil.  Lucchino told reporters, including Tim Britton of The Providence Journal (via Twitter), that despite the criticism the club has faced in recent weeks, "The cynical, jaded media do not necessarily capture the voice of the fan base."  Here's more out of Fenway and the rest of the AL East..
•Boston has been a desirable free agent destination for the better part of the last decade, but pitcher Jon Lester isn't sure if that is still the case, writes Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald.  “I don’t know,† Lester said. “It’s always been a demanding place to play, but until the last two years, it always was about baseball. Now we’ve got things written and said about guys’ personal stuff as human beings, as people. Now you’re starting to question people’s manhoods. That’s where it gets hard.†  Meanwhile, Lucchino doesn't believe that the drama will dissuade players from wanting to come to Boston.