Barstool Sports is a free paper (a la the Metro) that recently launched. I happen to write a little and wrote a Sox column for a recent issue. It's a general column, with a slight focus on media treatment. If you have time to read it, I would love feedback from this motley crew.
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Silence Is Golden
by Jack Dana/Barstool Sports
The Trinity is not cooperating and there is hell to pay, for the citizens of Red Sox Nation are being mistreated. Thats the rub, my friends, that your friendly scribes want you to be aware of. They cannot bring you the ultimate product they promise because the three brightest stars on the marquee team in this high-voltage sports town will not place nicely with the mass-market media corps. This is wrong, they yell. We are the bridge between the high-salaried player and the fan shelling out the big bucks, they claim. Pedro, Manny and Nomar should be talking to you through us. How else will you know more about them other than what you see on the field? Without their quotes, you may mistake them for a sack of you-know-what, like we thought our big, left-handed DH would be. Shame on them, right fans?
Im not buying it. The Boston sports fan is pretty sharp and has been through a lot. As a whole, the fans in this area are pretty simple: perform like a star and well fawn over you, play like you care and well approve, fail regularly and well boo, embarrass us and well attack. No great athlete was ever downgraded from their appropriate status because of a lack of canned quotes. Ask Ray Bourque about that one. He gave twenty years and nothing interesting to say, just hard work and tireless effort. Same with Neely, Bledsoe and Yaz. All of them loved, none because of their fantastic and eloquent cooperation with the media.
But the Trinity is different. The Sox have never, ever been bigger. The sellouts keep rolling in. The MLB Extra Innings package and the internet keep Red Sox Nation expanding and enthralled all over this country. The interest in the team is immense, yet no quotes are coming in from Pedro and Manny, the Dominican duo, and the cooperation from Nomar is intermittent at best. The reason is simple: a few columnists like to unload on stars in this town. It has always been that way. So the beat writers, a fair and decent group as they currently stand, cant get the quotes they need. The crazy thing is that the fans as a whole dont really care. We know Manny, Nomar and Pedro already about as well as our own brothers.
The fascination with Manny and Nomars lack of on-the-record quotes baffle me. In fact, when Kevin Dupont was on the beat for a while this summer, I think he set a world record in references to Mannys media status in a 7 day stretch. Ive got news for Kevin and the rest of you: Manny has nothing to say. Ever. Did you see his interview with Joe Morgan? He was shy and kind and polite and said absolutely nothing of merit. I guarantee that Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe will continue to produce better in the post game than Manny. So why the obsession? Manny is exactly as advertised: a quirky, loopy, good-natured, absolute beast at the plate who has a plan every time he goes up there and is one of the best right-handed hitters ever. Im sold on him. I guess if I needed him to fill my game recap every night, Id be disappointed too. We the fans just need him to be Manny. He delivers and we know it.
Nomar is quite simply the most popular player to dress in that clubhouse. Ever. Yet, he has never in his life delivered an earth-shattering sound bite on the record. He is Teflon, as evidenced when Steve Buckley tried to undress him last fall. Who won that battle? It certainly wasnt reminiscent of Ward-Gatti. We love Nomar for being Nomar, for coming out of the dugout to clap for us after losing to Cleveland in 1998, for dominating in the 1999 postseason with a broken wrist, for playing the game like we would want our own son to play, for being a little awkward in front of the camera, for scoring with the hot, athletic chick, for being better than Jeter. Nomar has built this through a relationship, a bond that we have from watching him on that field for 900 games, not from his post game quotes. If he never spoke again and played on that field for another 10 years, the bond would only get stronger, not weaker.
As for Pedro, well, its a shame hes not speaking because he has amazing things to say. Hes our little Ali. Go to Kazaa.com and download his post game speech from the Tampa Bay roller coaster when Gerald Williams charged the mound and Pedro then threw 8 subsequent perfect innings at the Rays before getting burned after the cross broke. Hes a master on the mic. Every word is perfect. But when it comes down to it, if hes tired of the potshots about representing his country in the Pan Am Games, if hes frustrated that certain people called out his friend and countryman David Ortiz as a sack of you-know-what before the guy even unpacked his bags, if hes exhausted from the Clemens comparisons that he just cant win just 7 years after that same group ripped Clemens to the core, I dont blame him. To me, hes the same guy that has come up huge constantly, the same guy that has produced insane Koufaxian numbers since he came to Boston. Maybe Im naïve, but Ill take a guy that pitches like that and not worry about much else on the exterior. If thats naïve, I guarantee the naïve are having a better time than the wise.
Manny, Nomar and Pedro arent talking. Yet they are all producing in a very big way and that is ultimately what attracts us to our stars. Boston has, with the exceptions of the Celtics, never been a town of abundant championships. We are a town of stars, large and small: Ted, Orr, Bird, Cousy, Oil Can, El Tiante, Sanderson, Hannah, Remy, Spaceman, Heinsohn, Bourque, Russell the list could go on forever. Some were great with the media, others were not, but the one fact is that in Boston, the fans make the stars, not the press. So let the heavy-hitting columnists keep fighting for justice and the best one-liner to put down Pedro. In the meantime, we will all just keep enjoying three of the best ballplayers this sport has ever seen. It will be our little secret.
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Silence Is Golden
by Jack Dana/Barstool Sports
The Trinity is not cooperating and there is hell to pay, for the citizens of Red Sox Nation are being mistreated. Thats the rub, my friends, that your friendly scribes want you to be aware of. They cannot bring you the ultimate product they promise because the three brightest stars on the marquee team in this high-voltage sports town will not place nicely with the mass-market media corps. This is wrong, they yell. We are the bridge between the high-salaried player and the fan shelling out the big bucks, they claim. Pedro, Manny and Nomar should be talking to you through us. How else will you know more about them other than what you see on the field? Without their quotes, you may mistake them for a sack of you-know-what, like we thought our big, left-handed DH would be. Shame on them, right fans?
Im not buying it. The Boston sports fan is pretty sharp and has been through a lot. As a whole, the fans in this area are pretty simple: perform like a star and well fawn over you, play like you care and well approve, fail regularly and well boo, embarrass us and well attack. No great athlete was ever downgraded from their appropriate status because of a lack of canned quotes. Ask Ray Bourque about that one. He gave twenty years and nothing interesting to say, just hard work and tireless effort. Same with Neely, Bledsoe and Yaz. All of them loved, none because of their fantastic and eloquent cooperation with the media.
But the Trinity is different. The Sox have never, ever been bigger. The sellouts keep rolling in. The MLB Extra Innings package and the internet keep Red Sox Nation expanding and enthralled all over this country. The interest in the team is immense, yet no quotes are coming in from Pedro and Manny, the Dominican duo, and the cooperation from Nomar is intermittent at best. The reason is simple: a few columnists like to unload on stars in this town. It has always been that way. So the beat writers, a fair and decent group as they currently stand, cant get the quotes they need. The crazy thing is that the fans as a whole dont really care. We know Manny, Nomar and Pedro already about as well as our own brothers.
The fascination with Manny and Nomars lack of on-the-record quotes baffle me. In fact, when Kevin Dupont was on the beat for a while this summer, I think he set a world record in references to Mannys media status in a 7 day stretch. Ive got news for Kevin and the rest of you: Manny has nothing to say. Ever. Did you see his interview with Joe Morgan? He was shy and kind and polite and said absolutely nothing of merit. I guarantee that Johnny Damon and Derek Lowe will continue to produce better in the post game than Manny. So why the obsession? Manny is exactly as advertised: a quirky, loopy, good-natured, absolute beast at the plate who has a plan every time he goes up there and is one of the best right-handed hitters ever. Im sold on him. I guess if I needed him to fill my game recap every night, Id be disappointed too. We the fans just need him to be Manny. He delivers and we know it.
Nomar is quite simply the most popular player to dress in that clubhouse. Ever. Yet, he has never in his life delivered an earth-shattering sound bite on the record. He is Teflon, as evidenced when Steve Buckley tried to undress him last fall. Who won that battle? It certainly wasnt reminiscent of Ward-Gatti. We love Nomar for being Nomar, for coming out of the dugout to clap for us after losing to Cleveland in 1998, for dominating in the 1999 postseason with a broken wrist, for playing the game like we would want our own son to play, for being a little awkward in front of the camera, for scoring with the hot, athletic chick, for being better than Jeter. Nomar has built this through a relationship, a bond that we have from watching him on that field for 900 games, not from his post game quotes. If he never spoke again and played on that field for another 10 years, the bond would only get stronger, not weaker.
As for Pedro, well, its a shame hes not speaking because he has amazing things to say. Hes our little Ali. Go to Kazaa.com and download his post game speech from the Tampa Bay roller coaster when Gerald Williams charged the mound and Pedro then threw 8 subsequent perfect innings at the Rays before getting burned after the cross broke. Hes a master on the mic. Every word is perfect. But when it comes down to it, if hes tired of the potshots about representing his country in the Pan Am Games, if hes frustrated that certain people called out his friend and countryman David Ortiz as a sack of you-know-what before the guy even unpacked his bags, if hes exhausted from the Clemens comparisons that he just cant win just 7 years after that same group ripped Clemens to the core, I dont blame him. To me, hes the same guy that has come up huge constantly, the same guy that has produced insane Koufaxian numbers since he came to Boston. Maybe Im naïve, but Ill take a guy that pitches like that and not worry about much else on the exterior. If thats naïve, I guarantee the naïve are having a better time than the wise.
Manny, Nomar and Pedro arent talking. Yet they are all producing in a very big way and that is ultimately what attracts us to our stars. Boston has, with the exceptions of the Celtics, never been a town of abundant championships. We are a town of stars, large and small: Ted, Orr, Bird, Cousy, Oil Can, El Tiante, Sanderson, Hannah, Remy, Spaceman, Heinsohn, Bourque, Russell the list could go on forever. Some were great with the media, others were not, but the one fact is that in Boston, the fans make the stars, not the press. So let the heavy-hitting columnists keep fighting for justice and the best one-liner to put down Pedro. In the meantime, we will all just keep enjoying three of the best ballplayers this sport has ever seen. It will be our little secret.
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This never would have happened if Don Skwar was still alive. Please say hi to everyone back home.-Bill Simmons
