Pink Hats and the demise of the Red Sox
By Matt J. Burke
The frauds have finally been exposed...and I finally get it.
With all the Theo shit going on recently, the Red Sox brass and their fraudulent fan base are finally caught with their collective panties around their ankles...to which their tiny dicks and/or hairy bushes are blatantly exposed for the nation to gasp at.
When John Henry et all bought the Red Sox in early 2002 for the small sum of $690 mill., they embarked on the greatest marketing scheme of all-time. They thought, "the fans of this shit franchise are the most tortured, self-loathing sons of bitches in the history of earth. If we can break the bank immediately and win these miserable bastards a World Series within five years we'll own this city and earn the right to stab anyone in the back for the sake of our bank accounts. We can do fuckin' anything, to anyone when we win that trophy and in the process, make a shitload of cash."
They eventually did win that trophy and in the process turned their collective backs on the real people that made The Boston Red Sox, The Boston Red Sox.
They took the "tortured past" of this franchise and marketed it. Larry Lucchino loved the number "1918" more than any Yankee fan ever thought of. They wanted the fans to starve for that World Series trophy more than ever, so that when they finally did win it, they would have that much more leeway with the community.
With all their faults (and there were 73,487,032,742,347 of them) John Harrington, Dan Duquette, Lou Gorman and the Yawkey trust never even acknowledged "the curse" or "1918." It was nice back then not to hear the name Babe Ruth mentioned every other second. The fact that they didn't ever mention it, created the mystique of the Red Sox. The Curse was urban legend. It was stuff that people only whispered about. It was stuff only Dan Shaughnessy made a fortune off of (more on him later).
It turns out Harrington and the people that preceeded him were terrible business men, because they were sitting on a gold mine. If only they had the "vision" Lucchino had.
When Lucchino started his marketing campaign in 2002, only one person called him on it. Only one person knew he was a snake...Will McDonough, quite possibly the most informed sports writer of all-time.
In the irony of all ironies, McDonough died a couple days after he wrote the infamous "Lucchino file."
No Larry didn't kill him off (or did he?) but one can bet the "new" Red Sox brass were breathing a collective sigh of relief when Willy Mac passed away.
What's even funnier is how George Steinbrenner sent flowers to McDonough's funeral way before the Sox ever thought of and how the arrangement was bigger than the fuckin green monster itself.
This is also the time period when long-time Sox announcer Sean McDonough started to be pushed out of his job, slowly but surely. Not wanting to pay him the money that one of the best announcers in game deserves (few remember that in the early '90's McDonough was the lead play-by-play guy for CBS sports, calling the World Series and major college basketball games), Lucchino was eager to pull the plug.
They soon cut back on McDonough's games, allowing him to call only one game a week (Friday Night Baseball on UPN) while replacing him with a puppet that would never criticize the Red Sox.
One of McDonough's most memorable spats involved the flesh-eating cancer that was Nomar Gariciaparra. While everyone thought "Nomah's betta" (one of the most annoying sayings in the history of earth by the way), McDonough criticized him for being a pouter, which ultimately turned out to be true.
The Sox let him go last year, mainly because he "criticized" the club too much and wanted too much cash. With the bundles Lucchino and crew are making you think they could throw an extra grand or two to maintain one of the best working duos (McDonough-Remy) in the history of broadcast sports. Instead they opted for puppet Don Orsillo.
One of the saddest things I ever saw was following a UConn basketball game that McDonough called, when I was busy trying to kiss his ass in a lame attempt to land an internship at the shit radio station he used to work for (1510 the Zone). An old lady walked up to him, excited to meet a Z-list celebrity like McDonough, and expressed how much she loved to fall asleep every summer night with the soothing sounds of Sean and Jerry making jokes in the background. She told him he made her summers "a pleasure."
McDonough refrained from telling her the truth about his future, knowing he was cooked at NESN.
Maybe her summers are just as pleasurable now with "D.O," but during the hey-day of McDonough and Remy, it was a must-listen. Now it's just Orsillo laughing and snorting at Remy's jokes about that piece of shit Wally the Green monster doll (girls think its cute, I think it sucks). Nonetheless, there's no back and forth between Orsillo and Remy. McDonough's release from NESN was truly a shame.
NESN is owned by the Red Sox and there is little-to no truth in their reporting. They take every chance they get to glorify Red Sox players even if the team is in a major slump. No criticism what-so-ever.
When Theo "resigned" on Halloween, NESN acted as though nothing happened. Sure, it was the most intriguing day the team had had since the day they won the World Series in 2004, but they were afraid to portray the Red Sox brass in a poor light. Their reporting on the incident was as Ho-Hum as it gets.
The Boston Globe was equally as bad. The paper (which used to be respectable until their parent company, New York Times Co., bought a 17 per cent share in the Red Sox when Henry came aboard ) had a three sentence "release" on their website regarding Theo's decision.
The same day they had a story about how the deal was done and Theo would accept the deal. Lucchino and/or his cronies were obviously feeding their "business partners" at the Globe this bullshit.
The day before, "Shank" Shaughnessy (a self-professed Lucchino butt-boy) wrote the column heard round the world (or at least heard round the Epstein household). It portrayed Theo in an inferior light, even bringing up the fact that Theo wasn't a great athlete himself and that Lucchino played baseball in college. What that has to do with anything is beyond me.
The Globe sports section has no respectibility anymore. The writing was on the wall (the Globe would constantly get info straight from Lucchino, leaving the Boston Herald in the dirt), as the journalistic integrity of it all stunk to high heaven. Journalism Ethics courses have fodder for the next century with all this crap.
The Globe sports section is nothing more than a Red Sox PR machine, churning out more sappy "my father can die happy now that he saw the Red Sox win a World Series" stories that even the most nostalgic chump could muster. Somewhere, Ken Burns is crying at a graveyard with a picture of Lucchino in his wallet.
The Globe sports section continually disregards a football team that has won three of the last four Super Bowls all while burying the local basketball and hockey entries. These days they give the Celtics and Bruins as much play as the Everett High field hockey team.
It's a joke and a sham...er...shame.
I suppose Shaughnessy was simply doing his job when he wrote the information he got from Lucchino's pals. But his job now is to rip whoever made Theo leave.
Theo said it wasn't about money, power or privacy. He said that because he's classy. Too classy to work for the Red Sox certainly.
But the question remains, what was the reason he left?
It's because the Red Sox aren't the Red Sox anymore. Not after Lucchino brainwashed many local fans and media.
Because its a whole lot less about baseball now-a-days than it is making money off merchandise and ticket prices. Who cares if Manny doesn't run to first? His uniform is selling.
Who cares if we don't have a bullpen? People won't notice because they're too busy checking out the new "picnic area" out in back of center field.
Who cares if we get embarrassed by the White Sox in the playoffs? We'll just raise ticket prices again and they'll still come. They love us.
Their target audience has become girls that wear pink red sox hats because they're "cute." They think, "if we make Fenway like a giant bar, where girls can drink, pretend like they're a member of a club with their pink hats and Red Sox Nation Citizenship cards, we're golden."
The target audience used to be bitter, middle-aged men who criticize and boo. Was it as "fan-friendly?" certainly not.
But those are the people that live and died with this team. It pains me that these die-hards couldn't get tickets because girls who don't know Dwight Evans from Carlton Fisk went on-line and purchased playoff tickets because it would give them more of a status with the cute guy they sit next to in class.
So Theo's gone and die-hard fans are extremely angry today. Lucchino's self-made fans are buying more merchandise today.
So screw the baseball team. Screw Theo.
The new Red Sox "fan base" is still happy.
By Matt J. Burke
The frauds have finally been exposed...and I finally get it.
With all the Theo shit going on recently, the Red Sox brass and their fraudulent fan base are finally caught with their collective panties around their ankles...to which their tiny dicks and/or hairy bushes are blatantly exposed for the nation to gasp at.
When John Henry et all bought the Red Sox in early 2002 for the small sum of $690 mill., they embarked on the greatest marketing scheme of all-time. They thought, "the fans of this shit franchise are the most tortured, self-loathing sons of bitches in the history of earth. If we can break the bank immediately and win these miserable bastards a World Series within five years we'll own this city and earn the right to stab anyone in the back for the sake of our bank accounts. We can do fuckin' anything, to anyone when we win that trophy and in the process, make a shitload of cash."
They eventually did win that trophy and in the process turned their collective backs on the real people that made The Boston Red Sox, The Boston Red Sox.
They took the "tortured past" of this franchise and marketed it. Larry Lucchino loved the number "1918" more than any Yankee fan ever thought of. They wanted the fans to starve for that World Series trophy more than ever, so that when they finally did win it, they would have that much more leeway with the community.
With all their faults (and there were 73,487,032,742,347 of them) John Harrington, Dan Duquette, Lou Gorman and the Yawkey trust never even acknowledged "the curse" or "1918." It was nice back then not to hear the name Babe Ruth mentioned every other second. The fact that they didn't ever mention it, created the mystique of the Red Sox. The Curse was urban legend. It was stuff that people only whispered about. It was stuff only Dan Shaughnessy made a fortune off of (more on him later).
It turns out Harrington and the people that preceeded him were terrible business men, because they were sitting on a gold mine. If only they had the "vision" Lucchino had.
When Lucchino started his marketing campaign in 2002, only one person called him on it. Only one person knew he was a snake...Will McDonough, quite possibly the most informed sports writer of all-time.
In the irony of all ironies, McDonough died a couple days after he wrote the infamous "Lucchino file."
No Larry didn't kill him off (or did he?) but one can bet the "new" Red Sox brass were breathing a collective sigh of relief when Willy Mac passed away.
What's even funnier is how George Steinbrenner sent flowers to McDonough's funeral way before the Sox ever thought of and how the arrangement was bigger than the fuckin green monster itself.
This is also the time period when long-time Sox announcer Sean McDonough started to be pushed out of his job, slowly but surely. Not wanting to pay him the money that one of the best announcers in game deserves (few remember that in the early '90's McDonough was the lead play-by-play guy for CBS sports, calling the World Series and major college basketball games), Lucchino was eager to pull the plug.
They soon cut back on McDonough's games, allowing him to call only one game a week (Friday Night Baseball on UPN) while replacing him with a puppet that would never criticize the Red Sox.
One of McDonough's most memorable spats involved the flesh-eating cancer that was Nomar Gariciaparra. While everyone thought "Nomah's betta" (one of the most annoying sayings in the history of earth by the way), McDonough criticized him for being a pouter, which ultimately turned out to be true.
The Sox let him go last year, mainly because he "criticized" the club too much and wanted too much cash. With the bundles Lucchino and crew are making you think they could throw an extra grand or two to maintain one of the best working duos (McDonough-Remy) in the history of broadcast sports. Instead they opted for puppet Don Orsillo.
One of the saddest things I ever saw was following a UConn basketball game that McDonough called, when I was busy trying to kiss his ass in a lame attempt to land an internship at the shit radio station he used to work for (1510 the Zone). An old lady walked up to him, excited to meet a Z-list celebrity like McDonough, and expressed how much she loved to fall asleep every summer night with the soothing sounds of Sean and Jerry making jokes in the background. She told him he made her summers "a pleasure."
McDonough refrained from telling her the truth about his future, knowing he was cooked at NESN.
Maybe her summers are just as pleasurable now with "D.O," but during the hey-day of McDonough and Remy, it was a must-listen. Now it's just Orsillo laughing and snorting at Remy's jokes about that piece of shit Wally the Green monster doll (girls think its cute, I think it sucks). Nonetheless, there's no back and forth between Orsillo and Remy. McDonough's release from NESN was truly a shame.
NESN is owned by the Red Sox and there is little-to no truth in their reporting. They take every chance they get to glorify Red Sox players even if the team is in a major slump. No criticism what-so-ever.
When Theo "resigned" on Halloween, NESN acted as though nothing happened. Sure, it was the most intriguing day the team had had since the day they won the World Series in 2004, but they were afraid to portray the Red Sox brass in a poor light. Their reporting on the incident was as Ho-Hum as it gets.
The Boston Globe was equally as bad. The paper (which used to be respectable until their parent company, New York Times Co., bought a 17 per cent share in the Red Sox when Henry came aboard ) had a three sentence "release" on their website regarding Theo's decision.
The same day they had a story about how the deal was done and Theo would accept the deal. Lucchino and/or his cronies were obviously feeding their "business partners" at the Globe this bullshit.
The day before, "Shank" Shaughnessy (a self-professed Lucchino butt-boy) wrote the column heard round the world (or at least heard round the Epstein household). It portrayed Theo in an inferior light, even bringing up the fact that Theo wasn't a great athlete himself and that Lucchino played baseball in college. What that has to do with anything is beyond me.
The Globe sports section has no respectibility anymore. The writing was on the wall (the Globe would constantly get info straight from Lucchino, leaving the Boston Herald in the dirt), as the journalistic integrity of it all stunk to high heaven. Journalism Ethics courses have fodder for the next century with all this crap.
The Globe sports section is nothing more than a Red Sox PR machine, churning out more sappy "my father can die happy now that he saw the Red Sox win a World Series" stories that even the most nostalgic chump could muster. Somewhere, Ken Burns is crying at a graveyard with a picture of Lucchino in his wallet.
The Globe sports section continually disregards a football team that has won three of the last four Super Bowls all while burying the local basketball and hockey entries. These days they give the Celtics and Bruins as much play as the Everett High field hockey team.
It's a joke and a sham...er...shame.
I suppose Shaughnessy was simply doing his job when he wrote the information he got from Lucchino's pals. But his job now is to rip whoever made Theo leave.
Theo said it wasn't about money, power or privacy. He said that because he's classy. Too classy to work for the Red Sox certainly.
But the question remains, what was the reason he left?
It's because the Red Sox aren't the Red Sox anymore. Not after Lucchino brainwashed many local fans and media.
Because its a whole lot less about baseball now-a-days than it is making money off merchandise and ticket prices. Who cares if Manny doesn't run to first? His uniform is selling.
Who cares if we don't have a bullpen? People won't notice because they're too busy checking out the new "picnic area" out in back of center field.
Who cares if we get embarrassed by the White Sox in the playoffs? We'll just raise ticket prices again and they'll still come. They love us.
Their target audience has become girls that wear pink red sox hats because they're "cute." They think, "if we make Fenway like a giant bar, where girls can drink, pretend like they're a member of a club with their pink hats and Red Sox Nation Citizenship cards, we're golden."
The target audience used to be bitter, middle-aged men who criticize and boo. Was it as "fan-friendly?" certainly not.
But those are the people that live and died with this team. It pains me that these die-hards couldn't get tickets because girls who don't know Dwight Evans from Carlton Fisk went on-line and purchased playoff tickets because it would give them more of a status with the cute guy they sit next to in class.
So Theo's gone and die-hard fans are extremely angry today. Lucchino's self-made fans are buying more merchandise today.
So screw the baseball team. Screw Theo.
The new Red Sox "fan base" is still happy.
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