MAX MERCY HALL OF FAME #5

I didn't want to do this, but I feel I owe it to intellectual honesty. Jason Whitlock has to be inducted to the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. It's difficult for me because I really like his writing in general. I was glad to link his piece ripping the Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki for all the whining they did following their collapse against the Heat two NBA Finals ago. But no one can write a sentence like this: "No one in America writes more provocatively and intelligently about football than yours truly."

If George Orwell (who wrote more provocatively and intelligently than any other writer about everything) had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement and look himself in the mirror. If Chinua Achebe (not dead, but my favorite living black author) wrote about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Dr. Martin Luther King had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Frederick Douglas had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. No one who writes about sports can make that statement.

Hell, no one who writes about anything can make that statement. No one with any sense of propriety or intellectual moral rectitude can say that they write anything about anything more provocatively and intelligently than every other writer in America. How big does your ego have to be to make a statement like that?

This is obviously a delicate area for me, not so much because Jason Whitlock is the first African American writer to receive this dubious honor, but because I am calling a writer's ego into question when humility is not one of my virtues and when I have devoted a shocking amount of space in a blog primarily about the Boston sports landscape to defending Terrell Owens who has quite an ego of his own.

I think the difference between TO's man crush on himself and Jason Whitlock's boasting is that TO has to step out on a field and prove his worth against 11 guys on the opposing team who want to rough him up every time he touches the football. Jason Whitlock has to type up a column, get it past an editor and hope emotionally stunted people with social problems stumble across it on the Fox Sports website. There are objective criteria against which TO's performance can be measured to see if he is earning the right to his arrogance. That isn't exactly the case for Jason Whitlock.

The sad thing is, if you took the time to comb through all 194 posts on this blog, I'm sure you'll find instances where I did basically the same thing. Particularly if I'm whining about the CHB or Mariotti being paid handsomely to write garbage whilst I labor in obscurity. Of course, my standard defense is that I abhor all forms of hypocrisy but my own. Even more depressing, I published my 100th post in early March of this year. So in those 5 months and 10 or so days, I've published 94 times. I really need to get a life.

I don't know if you happened to catch any of the Tigers Yankees game this afternoon. I was grievously offended that MLB allowed Clemens to return from suspension and overshadow Curt Schilling's quest to win for the first time since coming off the DL on August 6th. And as for that nifty little play where Clemens struck out the batter at the plate and then Posada deked the runner on third into the third out, that was but a silly little farce. Varitek and any of the Red Sox pitchers could do that at will if they weren't about such tactics which pervert the spirit of the game, or if they had the brains to think of something like that.

Even though every moron and his brother has seen fit to weigh in on the NBA officiating scandal, I still want to put in my two cents. There are aspects of this story that surprised the hell out of just about every American fan. It sort of reminded me of the famous scene from Casablanca where Claude Rains as Captain Renault (the prefect of police) shuts down Rick's under orders from the Germans. The pretext he used is that there was illicit gambling going on in the bar. And as he is claiming to be shocked at that fact, the croupier walks up to him and hands him his winnings.

As a nation of sports fans, we have exhibited the same basic reaction as Captain Renault. We have the nerve to be shocked by this story when we ought to come out and admit that we're really surprised that it has taken this long for an official in one of our major sports to be implicated in a mess like this, or we would be if we weren't so monumentally naive. Officials don't make a lot of money and they have a pretty thankless job. I'm surprised only one of them has allegedly been fixing games.

Another thing that surprised me was Mark Cuban's response to this situation. I would have bet money that he'd have come out in his blog whining about the number of Mavs games Ted Donaghy reffed which featured questionable or controversial calls. Perhaps I was blinded by my hatred. To his credit, the Benefactor came out with a shockingly moderate response and provided a vote of confidence for the league office. I don't agree with him, but I found it to be a not entirely unpleasant surprise.

I don't want us to lose sight of the real victim here. Poor Bill Simmons is now dangerously close to experiencing an identity crisis of epic proportions. For 6 years now, he has managed to walk the fine line between being a wholly owned subsidiary of David Stern and daring to come out of the Commissioner's pocket once in a great while to criticize the league. Now he might have to pick a side, and it might hurt him a little bit.

When I discuss basketball in this space, I think I have made it explicit that I am not impressed with David Stern. He got to where he is today by stabbing his boss in the back. The NBA is falling down around his ears, and the most proactive solution he could come up with is a player dress code. But people claim he's the best commissioner in professional sports today?

The NFL gets better and stronger with each passing year. Their players get involved in ugly off-field incidents and the league comes down with a new player conduct policy. I'm still not a fan of it, but it's a genuine response. Pro basketball players fire into the air outside the strippie, enter the stands to accost and/or assault paying customers and the ratings decline year in and year out, but they have a fancy dress code.

Am I missing something here? Do I need to start smoking dope? How does any sane person look at that and think David Stern is the best commissioner in sports today? So what if the NBA runs a tighter ship than hockey or baseball? Is the constant struggle to attain mediocrity now what a person ought to aspire to?

Here's a thought: maybe David Stern should have been wondering whether one of his officials might have had a gambling problem. Maybe the Commish should have considered the possibility that an official with an alleged gambling problem might possibly come under the thumb of organized crime figures. And maybe one of his officials with an alleged gambling problem and alleged ties to alleged organized crime figures might allegedly take a hand in altering the outcome of games in which he was officiating.

Unless one can solve that problem with a new dress code, Stern could be in a little bit of trouble on this one. I think he might want to put the World's #1 Sports Commissioner mug on the back shelf for a little while. Before I leave this topic, I want to ask a rhetorical question. Every year the NBA playoffs seem to get worse from a fan standpoint. Is it a coincidence that the NBA championship trophy is the Larry O'Brien trophy and said O'Brien is the boss who was stabbed in the back by David Stern?

In other news, Jon Lester was impressive in his debut. And I don't really care. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome that his cancer is in remission. It's just that I wish him good health but professional failure. Also, it doesn't help that I hate the Indians. I had a hard time summoning up the energy to root for them tonight.

Finally, while my people seem to have hit a roadblock in advancing my candidacy for President of Red Sox Nation, it won't stop me from ripping Bill Simmons again tonight. I forgot to mention last week when I linked to his podcast addressing his flap with the Remdawg, Bill Simmons managed to make himself the dean of the Max Mercy Hall of Fame.

Simmons said that he wasn't going to feud with Jerry Remy because he didn't feud with second basemen with a lifetime OPS of less than .660. Which is a pretty damning insult coming from Bill Simmons. Out of curiosity, I went to Baseball Reference to set up one of their statistical comparisons to see what the Sports Guy's lifetime OPS was. And the damnedest thing happened. The comparison engine didn't work. It took me a while to figure out why. Then I realized Simmons never played the game.

Today, the Max Mercy Hall of Fame welcomes its fourth member. It's been a long time since the last such ceremony. It is difficult, though, when almost all of the sportswriters cited in this space frequently (Bob Ryan, Jay Mariotti and Dan Shaughnessy) have been inducted. Jackie MacMullan is safe, for now, because her feature on the travesty that is the Celtic business model was too good.

So that leaves the man, the myth, the loser ... Bill Simmons. You know him in his capacity as the Sports Guy on ESPN.com's Page 2. Of late, when I talk to the handful of people who have followed this blog since the beginning, I've been calling Simmons the Zach Braff of sports journalism. Never having seen any of Braff's films, I draw the comparison from the sitcom Scrubs, where he plays the somewhat less than masculine Dr. John Dorian.

I don't know Bill Simmons, so I might be off base here, but I could see him sitting in front of his computer daydreaming about a floating head sportswriter. In Scrubs, Braff's character daydreams that his head and his body can detach so that he can accomplish two slightly less than masculine pursuits at the same time. I could see Simmons wishing that he could leave his body walking on the treadmill while he watches the View or whatever he watches to psyche himself up to do what he does.

In addition to his resemblance to Zach Braff, I have other problems with Simmons the writer. First, he made himself into the "celebrity" that he is ripping guys like Isiah Thomas and saying some harsh things while he did it. That was fine, but as soon as a blog like Deadspin dares to crack a joke or two at his expense, Simmons starts whining about how evil blogs can slander people with impunity.

Then there is the fact that Simmons continually reminds his minions that he is a basketball expert and has seen every meaningful Celtics home game in person from the mid 70s to 2003. I do not necessarily feel competent to dispute his status as an expert, but I would like to remind those few who will read this that Simmons didn't begin to criticize Ainge and Banner 17 for the mockery of a great franchise that they have foisted on the people of Boston until the tail end of this season. Let's not forget that Simmons didn't always seem to disapprove of tanking games.

So what if none of the sports media figures in New England had dared to/bothered to do same? Does that somehow give Simmons credence because he willfully ignored the dreadful effects of the Walker trade until very recently? I have been ripping Ainge for the benefit of my small body of readers for a year, which doesn't seem very impressive but can be explained because this site is barely 13 months old at this point. I haven't gotten a cookie for my efforts, so I don't think we should give Simmons one either.

For a long time, I've been thinking about bestowing this honor on the Sports Guy. I held back because I thought he was funny, a virtue which covers a multitude of sins for a writer. His most recent effort on the big fight and the announcement of the Yankees signing this weekend wasn't funny, though. I think after all these years, Simmons is now a prisoner of his gimmicks like the unintentional comedy scale and anecdotes about his super-cool friends. Any chance he had to progress as a writer is probably gone by now, so it seems like as good a time as any for his induction.

Bill Simmons has ten reasons he is happy the Yankees signed Clemens. The underlying premise of his list is that he has never forgiven Clemens for leaving Boston in the manner in which he left. See, this all unfolded in the days before Simmons became an online celebrity so Roger Clemens was not informed that he owed Bill Simmons, as the voice of Red Sox Nation, something more than 192 career wins.

Maybe Clemens could have worked harder to stay in shape over his last seasons in Boston, maybe he shouldn't have confirmed for every one that he was in fact mailing it in by coming alive and striking out 20 Tigers at the tail end of a mediocre 1996 season, but he did. Maybe Roger shouldn't have waxed poetic about leaving Boston to play close to his home in Texas before he signed with Toronto, but he did. And when he was traded to New York in 1999, he really hurt Bill Simmons. Red Sox fans have gotten over that for the most part, and it's time Simmons did as well.

I found the repeated efforts to drop so many not even remotely subtle hints that Clemens has prolonged his career through the use of banned performance enhancing substances to be in poor taste at best, and questionable ethically at worst. Leaving aside for a moment that the only link between Clemens and performance enhancers comes out of the Jason Grimsley trial (which makes it sort of like using material from McCarthy's hearings), there is the fact that Clemens has not undergone any inexplicable physical transmutations like Barry Bonds and his gargantuan cranium.

As for the simple question of his age, Nolan Ryan did break down in his mid-40s, but he also threw a no-hitter in the season in which he turned 45. And contrary to popular opinion, Cy Young won all of his 511 games by the time he was thirty. No pitcher has been able to perform in his mid-40s ever, in the history of Major League Baseball. Not even once. Unless they had chemical help.

Hell, did you think that the legendary Satchel Paige pitched as long as he did through good fortune and hard work? Come on. He was famous for saying he kept himself young by swinging his arms as he walked to jangle his juices around. The operative word there is juice.

Also, it was quite mature of a man who spends 90% of his professional life waxing poetic about his various roadtrips and sojurns in the warm summer rain with J Bug and Hench and Joe House to beat to death the joke that Clemens and Pettitte might be more than friends. It's good to see the voice of Red Sox Nation rise above the frat-boy homophobia that so endears Red Sox Nation to mature Americans secure enough in their identity to refrain from making childish jokes.

There were a couple of other gems in this piece. I liked his little joke about Josh Beckett maybe winning 30 games. I, for one, would love to see that. Not so much because it would carry the Sox to their first division title in many years, but because it would hurt the franchise down the road, and hurt it badly. After winning 30 games in 1968 derailed a promising career for Denny McLain, no pitcher will ever challenge that mark again. It's like setting the record for carries in a season by a running back in the NFL. The record might as well come engraved on a tombstone.

I also love the fact that Simmons missed the real error made by the Red Sox in this situation. It wasn't allowing Clemens to get away and sign with the Yankees, it was making an offer to him in the first place. In case you may have forgotten, Schilling is planning to play at least one more year but he is only under contract for this season. So in offering a prorated $18 million to Clemens, the Red Sox may have unwittingly raised the compensation and benefits package they will have to offer Big Schill to retain his services.

I do not mean to imply that Schilling will want to travel on his own terms the way Clemens does. Or that Schilling will wait until a team with deep pockets and a big hole needs to scare up a pitcher in May or June. But he is going to have it in the back of his mind that they offered Clemens a considerable salary and assented to his other demands just to try to keep him away from the Yankees. And there is plenty of space in that massive dome to hold onto simple facts like that, since it's not exactly bumping up against profound insight into the mysteries of the universe.

Then again, if Simmons didn't miss points, he probably would not have made it all the way to the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. Now there is little to do but wait for some enterprising soul to write a companion volume to Simmons' epic "Now I Can Die in Peace". I would suggest "Well...We're Waiting" for a title since he's so fond of quoting Caddyshack.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight isn't a good night for us here in Cincinnati Kid land. It's Friday night, and I'm updating my blog. I am a giant loser, apparently. Of course, I could have done something interesting. I elected to take it easy, since I overindulged myself last night.

Since it's Friday and I don't have anything better to do, it's time to revisit the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. Tonight, we have a double induction. The Globe's own Dan Shaughnessy and all the way from Chicago, the pride of the Sun Times... Jay Mariotti.

What can I say about Dan Shaughnessy that hasn't already been said by the legion of people who hate him. This site also hosts a blog that tracks the CHB's career and highlights some of his "finer points" as a journalist. I don't know anybody who likes him as a writer. And yet he's paid to write. There is no justice in this world.

A lot of people have noticed that the CHB hasn't writing about the Sox much, until the recent departure of Chris Snow. Most people seem to have enjoyed that respite. The optimists I talked to about this situation had a variety of opinions. Some people thought that the years of antagonism and backstabbing had finally caught up with him and shut him out of the clubhouse. A few even thought that the NY Times might have put pressure on the CHB as an employee of their subsidiary to stop attacking the team in which the Paper of Record owns a 17% stake.

I think the CHB confined his "talents" to puff pieces because he was otherwise occupied. I think Dan Shaughnessy has been leading a double life. Not only is he employed by the Boston Globe to strip mine the simple joy a fan should feel watching a grown man play a child's game, but he is also a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey defending the space-time continuum from the Daleks. That's right. Dan Shaughnessy, the hero whom you so callously call the CHB is the real identity of Dr. Who.

(Sorry about the formatting, still learning this stuff)

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, and I probably vaulted myself into the extreme upper echelon of losers throughout the world with the Dr. Who reference. It is, however, something that doesn't seem to have been done before when someone criticized the CHB. In all likelihood I'm wrong, but I tried. I googled it, and everything. I also tried Yahoo! and came up with nothing. Of course, somewhere there is a record of hits on Dr. Who websites that increased by one on a Friday night. Soon the nerds will emerge from their nerderies to drag me off to join them. All I ask is that you who read this tell the world my story. And try to make me look just a bit cooler than I have managed thus far.

But now he's back, with a vengeance.

I could spend hours combing through his columns to find each and every flaw, but I am colossally lazy and I like to pretend I have a life (even though I already fessed up to staying in and searching for Dr. Who tonight). But this article from this morning's Globe has more than enough of the quirks that have made Dan Shaughnessy a favorite among masochists everywhere.

I hope you got a chance to read it, or to click on the link above. Among the many words/phrases which should be grounds for capital punishment, boffo has to be near the top of the list. If you use a word like boffo, you are a douche. The CHB referred to the pitchers' duel between Schilling and Santana as a boffo pitching match-up. Boffo. In the 21st century. I imagine he wrote that piece, he made his way down to the soda fountain to have a malt with Potsie.

The CHB called the Sox the "Henrymen." With any luck, that odious little nickname won't stick. He also referred to the team's principal owner as "Papa Jack." He also took yet another swipe at Manny Ramirez, reminding us that Manny went hitless as the team was swept by the Twins. "0 for Minnesota" was the CHB's blithe epigram to describe the cleanup hitter's failure to, of all things, clean up. Maybe it's ego on my part, but I think mine was the cleverer split infinitive and all.

There was also the recent gem of a column specifically about the pitcher's duel mentioned above. Aside from the constant references to the 16 inning game between Spahn and Marichal as though he'd been there and the Coffee Talk allusion, the biggest problem with this particular "effort" is the mention of the election in 2004. According to the CHB we must: "never forget that [Curt Schilling] delivered Ohio for Geroge (sic) W. Bush in 2004." The typo was there on Boston.com. Check it out if you don't believe me.

I know Schilling appeared at a rally for the president the night before the votes were cast. I'm sure that the president didn't lose to many votes because Schilling appeared on his behalf. In fact, I'd concede that the appearance may have garnered him a few votes. However, the final margin in Ohio was over 100,000 votes. As a pitcher for a team beat out the Indians for the AL Wild Card, it seems unlikely that Schill brought 50,000+ votes to Bush. It seems like nothing more than a mean-spirited attempt to create animosity toward Schilling among Red Sox fans. For all their failings (and they have many), Red Sox fans seem to recognize that the politics of the individual players have little or nothing to do with their effectiveness of the field. The CHB needs to start acting like a man, or stop writing. Better the latter, but I have learned to live with disappointment.

Jay Mariotti and the CHB go into the Max Mercy Hall of Fame together because they're a lot alike. Both seem to have proprietary rights to the moral high ground in their respective sports markets. Both have personalities which make Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy seem like a top of the line sentient being to roll with at cocktail parties. Both have bizarre histories of feuds with the local sports teams (Mariotti vs. the White Sox/Hawk Harrelson, The CHB vs. Theo, Carl Everett and Manny). And nobody I know seems to like either of them (I must admit that I only know a few Chicago fans, but they all hate Mariotti).

For a reasonably accurate sample of Mariotti's writing, you can read this column about the World Cup. This particular sentence (I use that word for lack of a better term) seems like a good place to start: "What the rest of the world calls football, we call soccer, simply because we already have our football and it reflects America's desired macho profile of bleeding, crippling physicality." That is a run-on (and yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy in criticizing another writer when my blog cries out for competent editing). Not only that, but it is preachy, whiny, cliched and devoid of insight.

One run-on is insufficient. The next sentence takes his inelegance a step further: "Our soccer is a fringe sport of moms, kids and diehards, contrary to their football, a life-and-death psychosis that can breed hooliganism, suicide and occasional murder if a player heads a ball into his own net." Another sentence: "To this day, our biggest and best kid athletes play football and kids too small generally play soccer, which could be a metaphor for American life" begs the question who edits his columns and why isn't he/she doing his/her job? Last time I checked, kid isn't an adjective. I'm reasonably sure that nouns aren't supposed to modify other nouns, but then again it's been a while since I last perused the MLA book.

Read the rest of the column at your own risk. Jay Mariotti has achieved the status that every bad college sports writer yearns for in the wee hours of the morning. He's on Around the Horn. His whiny, nasal voice can shout down his fellow disputants. The lions of Chicago sports tremble in their dens at his approach. He is free to pander, to drown readers in strident hyperbole, to wallow in his self-satisfaction like a pig in a sty and to bully his inferiors with impunity. In short, Jay Mariotti is Max Mercy, without the redeeming quality of being a character in a work of fiction.

It is a curious dysfunction in the psyche of a sports fan that makes them want to be set on edge by the people who cover their teams. The CHB and Mariotti command large salaries to browbeat and annoy readers. They're on TV and radio, they have a celebrity status that far exceeds their talents as writers. Then again, we've come a long way since Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner.

Grantland Rice gave us the image of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. He drew his imagery from the Bible. The CHB gave us the Curse of the Bambino. His inspiration...New York Times writer George Vescey. Ring Lardner covered the Black Sox. Dan Shaughnessy brought us Jurassic Carl and Theo-gate '05. Yet again, I find myself glad not to be a Sox fan.

P.S. I am not a Dr. Who fan. I got all that stuff from google. I do remember it, as I'm sure is the case with a lot of people who are old enough to remember the dark days before cable came to town. In the Stone Age, you were lucky to get 2, 4, 5, 7, 25, 38 and 56. Finding something good on TV was, at times, almost a miracle. I also remember when V66 showed music videos and it was such a novelty that normal people would sit and watch something like "Careless Whisper" by WHAM and like it. I had a huge crush on the lead singer from 'Til Tuesday because of the video for "Voices Carry." The difference between myself and you is that I admit this stuff. I have nothing to hide, but my true identity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you might have expected that there would be no post this evening following the unfortunate Tiger collapse. But more important events have induced me to launch the new feature I have been promising for quite some time now. Miami defeated the Pistons and eliminated them from the NBA playoffs. More importantly, Antoine hit a devastating 3 down the stretch, and I saw a sight that could make up for any number of late inning rallies by my mortal enemies. The Walker Wiggle was seen tonight. And, for the purposes of this site, it couldn't have come at a better time. Without further eloquence (or whatever quality I possess that stands in the stead of eloquence)...

THE MAX MERCY HALL OF FAME INAUGURAL EDITION

For those of you who don't know, Max Mercy is the parasitic sports writer from the classic Bernard Malamud novel The Natural ( proper MLA documentation eludes my skill as a writer in the present format, forgive me for not pacing greater emphasis on the title). He is played quite well by Robert Duvall in the film version.

Max Mercy is a weasel, a scumbag (and yes, I'm aware of that word's original meaning) and a jock sniff. For those qualities and more, in my way of thinking, he stands as a perfect avatar for the modern sports journalist. There are obvious exceptions, who may be named later provided that I have more time and am infused with a sudden influx of industry. Furthermore, as long as the Red Sox manage to win more than they lose, there is no place in this site for positivity.

Based on the preceeding paragraph, and the earlier posts (if you're crazy enough to have read them), you might expect the first member of the Max Mercy Hall of Fame to be the CHB. I do have a number of problems with the CHB as a writer, and rest assured he will be enshrined in this pantheon eventually. Tonight's lucky inductee came to the Boston Globe from New Jersey, via Boston College, and that about sums it up for him. He is...
Bob Ryan.

As a writer, Bob's prose style is no worse than any other sports journalist. His voice does have a nasal quality that resembles a dentist's drill in the middle of a root canal. It can be particularly annoying when he forgets to use his inside voice in one of his inexplicably frequent television appearances. All of these are reasons to dislike someone in Cincinnati Kid land (for those of you keeping score at home, that is how I refer my own little corner of paradise, the island of normalcy in Red Sox Nation).

My biggest problem with Bob Ryan, and the reason he vaulted over the CHB (and others who will join them in time), is his delight in kicking someone when he (or she, I can't think of an instance when Bob's done this to a woman, but I'm sure an enlightened gentleman like him wouldn't discriminate based on gender) when he is down.

A case in point is the recent (and long delayed) departure of Nomar. I don't know whether he was the first, but Bob Ryan hinted that some of Nomar's injury problems might be related to steroid use. I don't know whether Nomar did or did not use steroids. I never liked him. I was glad to see him go. I don't miss the braying morons screaming "Nomahhh." I am quietly amused a how quickly the morons who insisted that Nomar was better than Jeter shut their faces.

I still don't like Nomar. But even more than I hated him, I hate it when a guy facing a deadline throws somebody under the bus because they lack creativity and the effort that it takes to do legitimate research (this blog is exempt from that statement, as it is a monument to my misanthropy, bitterness, negativity and above all insanity). That is what our beloved Bob Ryan did with that one, as far as I can tell.

Then there is Butch Hobson. I was too young to remember him as a player. I do remember him as Red Sox manager, and I remember wishing ill on him professionally. I had no real interest in seeing him suffer personal tragedies, I just wanted the Red Sox to lose every game. Then one night, he was arrested for cocaine possession. Here in Cincinnati Kid land, we do not condone the use of illegal drugs, but the man was going through a rough patch.

In minutes, it seemed, a column appeared under the Bob Ryan byline in the Boston Globe. In it, we found out that Butch Hobson the player was not a very savory character. Among his great sins, Butch never seemed to miss a last call. Intead of asking questions like how would Bob Ryan know he never missed a last call, I, good guy that I am, assume that Bob Ryan acquired that red nose of his picking cherries (if you don't know that expression, feel free to look it up) and not frequenting the same drinking establishments that Mr. Hobson visited. Butch had enough problems without Bob Ryan taking his soap box and getting all moral majority on us.

Then there is the case of Antoine Walker. When Danny Ainge is his infinite incompetence traded Employee Number 8 to Dallas for magic beans, of course Bob had an opinion there. He called Antoine a punk. Brave words, indeed, when over a thousand miles intervene. I will not go into a long discourse on Antoine's virtues. Bill Simmons did that over a year ago (I might be inclined to quote him if the ESPN archive fee weren't infinitely in excess of this site's current budget).

I merely offer this as an illustration of how much it meant to Antoine to play in Boston. The day after his trade was announced, he put his ad in the Boston newspapers thanking the fans and the organization. Johnny Damon signed with the Yankees on December 23. His ad ran in the local papers in February. Only a cynic would assume that the erstwhile darling of the Inside Track and the 80 IQ set in Fenway deliberately waited until the weeks between the Super Bowl and March Madness to ensure his artificial display of magnanimity received the most media attention.

Watching Antoine do his wiggle tonight, and seeing him go to the Finals with a new team should have hurt. It didn't. Celtics fans have Wyc and Irv and Danny, a veritable confedracy of dunces. Boston fans didn't appreciate him because he shot a low percentage and complained to the officials (no more than most players, and much less than the more visible stars like Kobe and Dirk). The Boston media didn't appreciate him either, ostensibly for the same reasons he didn't inspire the fans but more likely because he refused to pay homage to the graven image of each individual writer.

This was quite a post, in addition to attacking a famous writer from a major metropolitan newspaper, I think I worked in some nice touches. There was at least one use of the royal/editiorial we in there. A couple of references to myself in the third person brought a lot to the table. But I have to say, I was glad I managed to throw a furthermore and an erstwhile in there. Words like that really dress up a post. Throw in a Warren Harding allusion (he ran for the White House in 1920 advocating a return to normalcy) and you're off and running. Good night and go Tigers.