Category: Boston

Lets Talk About What Nobody Wants to Talk About

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It’s been difficult to write much the last week while the country is gripped in protests, riots, civil unrest, and let us not forget about the coronavirus pandemic thats killed more than 100,000 people. 2020 has been the year from hell and the murder of George Floyd was the tipping point for many Americans.

In times like these we typically turn towards sports to help heal the rawest of wounds. It sounds silly, but it’s true. Sports has always been the unifying force that society uses to bring people of all different backgrounds together, if only for a couple of hours.

I’m torn on this because sports have unified people during horrific times like 9/11 and helped kickstart difficult conversations after tragedies like Eric Garner’s death, but maybe not having sports right now is for the best? Without any sports to speak of theres nothing for us to turn our attention towards. We’re all stuck at home and forced to have the difficult conversations that sometimes we’re all too quick to turn the page on.

The 24/7 news cycle never sleeps, but it seems like as a nation we’re all focusing on the same exact thing right now. We may fall on different sides of the issue, but we’re all talking about the same issue, which is how progress begins.

A lot of people are learning, and hopefully growing, in real time. Drew Brees faced the swift wrath of not just twitter, but his own teammates and peers from around the NFL after he denounced protestors kneeling during the anthem.

…and then apologized less than 24 hours later. Life comes at you fast, Drew. It was a shockingly tone deaf statement from one of the faces of the NFL. It’s been 3+ years since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality, but plenty of people, Drew Brees front and center, still think it’s about the military or “disrespecting the flag.”

I don’t know what kind of reaction Brees expected from these comments during what may be the height of racial tensions in my lifetime, but he has, unsurprisingly, been getting ripped by players across the league including by his own No. 1 receiver, Michael Thomas.

Malcolm Jenkins put out a heartbreaking video directly responding to Brees’ comments and effectively telling him to just shut up and listen.

The McCourty twins eviscerated Drew Brees for leaning on the military as a reason for denouncing the kneeling protestors.

Brees issued a lengthy apology this morning, less than 24 hours after his original comments, but I find it hard to believe he was this glib to begin with so the apology does ring a bit hollow. Hopefully Brees and everyone who sees this exchange use it as a learning experience.

We try to not get too political here, but after hearing the pain in the voices of some of my black friends it would be selfish to not use the minuscule platform we have here to at least say something. I’m a white guy in his thirties so I’ll never know what it’s like to be a black man in America, but one of the main things I heard from friends of mine is to simply see and acknowledge our differences. Saying you “don’t see color” is misguided because that only blinds you to the issues that people of different races experience on a daily basis. It’s important to see, and celebrate, the differences between us all. Ignoring those differences may be done with good intentions, but it takes away from our ability to use any privilege we do have to help, even if its just calling out a friend or a family member on their shit.

I’ll leave you with this video that former Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho put out yesterday: Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

The Boston Marathon Has Officially Been Cancelled

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The Boston Marathon has officially been cancelled for the first time in its 124 year history. The marathon won’t be held for the first time since 1897 and that is a shocking headline. Not because I am a diehard marathon guy (I did lead my track team in points senior year NBD), but because the Boston Marathon is an institution in this city. I don’t know if New York and Chicago feel the same way about their marathons, maybe because they are gigantic cities with multiple professional sports teams and a billion other things to do, but the Boston Marathon is a huge deal in this city and that was only magnified after the bombings in 2013.

It’s something that brings the city together every year, signifies the start of spring, and even lets us celebrate Patriots Day with a few beers at Fenway before noon.

I understand why Marty Walsh and the city are uncomfortable hosting an event that would pack a million people together in the streets. I wish they had waited a little longer to make the announcement, but maybe there was a drop dead date that would have made it impossible to wait. It’s already impossible to predict that everything will be good to go in September.

I’m a borderline germaphobe to begin with so I wasn’t going to be running out to the marathon this year either way, but seeing an event in the city like this would have helped bring some sense of normalcy back to our lives. For now we’ll have to look elsewhere, but it doesn’t seem like there are going to be any large events this summer or maybe even the rest of the year and that is crazy to type.

Obviously I’m fortunate to have the Boston Marathon being cancelled be one of my only coronavirus problems, but shit COVID really has just taken 2020 and broken it’s back like Bane.

To the runners that have been training for months and months to raise money for charity, honor a since passed loved one, or to just challenge themselves with an absurdly long run; keep grinding, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

Am I the Only One Physically Falling Apart From All This Inactivity?

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Since you can only do so many sit ups in your living room, the at-home workouts have fallen off precipitously. Meaning the majority of my exercise comes from walking the dog or a quick (read: slow) mile jog around the neighborhood while I gasp for air behind a mask. So the inactivity has shot way up while physical exercise has taken a nosedive. It also doesn’t help that my iPhone reminds me every other day how big of a piece of shit I am for taking less steps than normal, working out less than normal, and also using my phone for like 7 hours a day.

You would think not working out and lifting heavy weights and hopelessly trying to look respectable for bikini season would mean *less* injuries, but nope. As I often like to say I am aging in dog years and I seem to be physically falling apart due to all the inactivity. I somehow injured my shoulder getting *into* bed a couple weeks ago and I’m pretty sure I just have that now.

Doing some research into why it has become a conscious effort to open a heavy door without destroying my shoulder, the best self diagnosis I could come up with was Bursitis. And now I can’t stop laughing because I never even knew what Bursitis really was when Johnny Knoxville claimed to have it all those years ago.

So thats it for me folks, when the gyms finally do reopen in Boston and they tell us to jump back into our old workout routines, I’ll be sitting here like (old) Steve Rogers at the end of Endgame.

Manny Ramirez is Making a Comeback

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Yahoo – Boston Red Sox legend Manny Ramirez’s time in the majors may have ended in 2011, but he’s not done playing baseball. Ramirez, now 47, told the Taiwan Times he’s hoping to make a comeback in 2020.

Ramirez has set his sights on returning to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, where he spent time in 2013. Ramirez performed well in a 49-game stint for the Rhinos, hitting .352 with eight home runs. He left the team because he missed his family, and because he wanted to try and return to Major League Baseball.

Manny is the greatest right handed hitter I’ve ever seen.

To make that proclamation it definitely helps that he was the No. 3/No. 4 hitter for my favorite team for nearly a decade. But it also gave me the opportunity to watch the guy play every day (Ha!) and rake year after year. Just look at this stat line from his eight years in Boston.

It’s one of the greatest statistical runs a Red Sox player has ever had.

Manny had an absolutely effortless swing that produced moonshots as he hit 30+ home runs 12 times in his 19 year career. He wasn’t just a pure power hitter though as he finished with .312 career batting average. The guy was just never off balance at the plate.

(You’re welcome for the 13 minute loop of Magic Stick)

And nobody knew when a ball was going YABO quicker than Manny. Well, maybe Dennis Drinkwater, but you get my point.

With that being said he could be a childish prick at times like the time he took three straight strikes in a Yankees game back in 2007 because he had to pinch hit after being told he would have the day off.

Or the time he complained about his knee being sore so often and then subsequently forgot which one it was so the Red Sox had him get MRIs on both knees.

Or the time he threw the 67-year-old traveling secretary to the ground for not being able to fulfill his ticket request.

So yea, Manny Being Manny may as well have been Spanish for “baggage,” but my lord could this guy put the bat on the ball. He anchored the greatest team in Red Sox history in 2004. (Thats not debatable, they had a Batting Champion hitting 9th and two HOF pitchers at the top of the rotation) Manny hit .308 with 43 home runs and 130 RBIs that season. He also had a Slugging Percentage of 1.009, won a Silver Slugger and finished 3rd in MVP voting.

Granted that was 16 years ago, but even in 2013 he hit an absurd .352 in the Chinese Professional Baseball League. So do I think he could be a serviceable player in the CPBL right now even at 47-years-old?

But hey if things don’t workout in Taiwan, he can always play for the local independent leagues. Hell, I saw Oil Can Boyd pitch for the Brockton Rox when he was 45 and he was mowing guys down.

Patriots Fullback James Develin Announces His Retirement

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Patriots fan favorite fullback James Develin announced his retirement out of nowhere this afternoon on Instagram. It’s a damn shame because the neck injury that ended his 2019 season after just two games seems to still be lingering.

“Due to unforeseen complications with the injury that ended my season last year, I have decided it is both in my and my family’s best interest to retire from the game of football,” Devlin wrote. “I’ve always maintained a belief that in the sport, the team is MUCH more important than myself as an individual … and that belief still rings true, as I have to prioritize my team at home before anything else.”

Develin retires after a 7 year career in which he helped the Patriots develop a legitimate edge in the running game. Develin was a rarity in today’s NFL as fewer teams even utilize the FB position than ever before. He was an absolute monster clearing lanes for Sony Michel en route to a Super Bowl title in 2018 for a Pats team that leaned more heavily on the run than any team in recent memory.

A real life Danny Bateman with the neckroll and everything, James Develin was a true throwback.

He wasn’t a complete meathead like most fullbacks though, Develin earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Brown.

Develin also got robbed of a Super Bowl MVP, and a potential down payment on a house if you hit the bet, if you remember correctly

Best of luck to you in your post playing career James, you were a blast to watch and we’ll miss ya.

Full statement below:

Some Devlin highlights

Joe Kelly Picked His Top 5 Teammates for a Fight Club. Who Ya Got?

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NBC Sports – To celebrate the second anniversary of the brawl, WEEI’s Rob Bradford chatted with Kelly on the Bradfo Sho podcast and asked the Los Angeles Dodgers hurler to name five current and former teammates he’d want in his Fight Club.

Yadier Molina, Mitch Moreland, Austin Barnes, David Freese, and Chris Sale were his picks.

Joe Kelly will always be remembered fondly for his dominant 2013 postseason, but the man will never be forgotten for instigating a brawl and laying the smackdown on Yankees slugger scrub Tyler Austin. Kelly recently drafted his Top 5 for a Fight Club and it got the wheels spinning in my head. To keep this from spiraling into a 10,000 word think piece I kept my Top 5 to former Red Sox players. So anyone thats played so much as an inning for the Sox was available to draft for my Fight Club.

Adrian Beltre

No. 1 out of the gate for me is hands down Adrian Beltre because that man is a psycho. And not in the way that your skinny friend who wears polo hats says he’s a psycho. No, Beltre is unhinged. Just let someone touch his head and watch the carnage ensue.

Gabe Kapler

My No. 2 is 2004 Gabe Kapler because that man was a walking muscle who happened to play baseball. Remember how he maimed the Yankees Tanyon Sturtze? Sturtze’s pride may have never recovered from that.

Jason Varitek

Tek is a former Georgia Tech linebacker and he straight up bullied one of the greatest athletes of my generation in A-Rod so yea I’m taking the goatee as my No. 3.

Jonathan Papelbon

Every Fight Club needs a wild card and Jonathan Papelbon is that crazy sonofabitch.

Besides being a nutcase from the deep south, this was a guy who relished a fight, even if it was with his own teammate. Hell remember that time he almost ended Bryce Harper just because Harper wasn’t hustling?

Alfredo Aceves

This man may be in jail for all I know, but Aces always kind of frightened me and I only watched him on TV. Larry Walker once compared the guy to Satan for christ’s sake. Imagine this loose cannon hurling fastballs under your chin? This man got into a legitimate brawl during a Canada-Mexico matchup in the WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC so you know he’s just itching for a reason.

Follow the Real Estate: Dustin Pedroia Just Put His House On the Market

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Realtor.com – Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia is hoping to tag a buyer for his luxury residence in Chestnut Hill, MA, an upscale enclave outside Boston.

The two-time World Champ quietly snapped up the home in 2013—the year he helped lead the Sox to a World Series victory. Pedroia’s red-brick Colonial, listed for $8.95 million, is less than a mile from the compound of departing NFL star Tom Brady, which is also still on the market, for $33.9 million.

With 8,500 square feet, the light-filled layout includes seven bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms spread across three levels.

Follow. The. Real Estate.

We literally just saw a very similar situation play out over the last year with another Boston legend. Despite denials from some local media guys that Tom Brady putting his Brookline house on the market had anything to do with him intending to leave New England; he ended up doing just that. So while it doesn’t necessarily mean anything imminent because all of these guys have multiple houses, can afford to buy a new mansion tomorrow, oh and theres no sports going on anytime soon anyways, but pay attention to this.

I don’t think anyone realistically expects Dustin Pedroia to play for the Red Sox again, but I always held out hope maybe he could get healthy enough to suit up as a part-time DH or something. Well this move makes it seem like Pedroia may be ready to call it a career and retire somewhere else. Maybe thats back in California where he grew up, out in Arizona where he dominated in college, or down south just to escape these bullshit winters. I despise Boston winters and I haven’t had multiple grueling knee surgeries so I can’t imagine Pedroia wanting to stick around post-playing career.

Lets not retire his number just yet, but I can’t imagine this is a positive development for the possibility of Pedroia playing again. Retiring as an athlete sucks, being forced into retirement early and having a potential Hall of Fame career derailed because of injuries is just cruel.

So while I think Pedroia may want to lay low for a while, I can’t imagine him not getting back into baseball in some fashion. He has always been positively obsessed with baseball, going so far as to take grounders at second from his knees while rehabbing. Someone with that type of passion and knowledge of the game could absolutely manage or work in a front office, but I think it would be a disservice to the entire country if Pedroia didn’t go into broadcasting. He was never at a loss for words, routinely talked shit to anyone and everyone (including Brady Quinn over ping pong), and was just a blast to listen to so I hope to see Dustin Pedroia in the booth one day.

Today Should Have Been Red Sox Opening Day

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In a serious case of you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, today should have been Opening Day for the Red Sox. The team we’ve all ripped to shreds over the last several months for having worse managerial skills than a Chili’s GM isn’t playing on Opening Day and that is sobering.

I know it’s out of MLB’s hands because we have much more dire issues to face as a country, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like Will Smith wondering when his dad is coming back.

In the absence of real baseball I have resorted to treating MLB The Show more seriously than I probably should. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Hell, Raffy Devers may become the first player in baseball history to win MVP while committing triple digit errors in the field!

To be honest though, a shortened season would most likely benefit a team like the Red Sox, who have a rotation consisting of one legitimate pitcher and a bunch of injury concerns, journeymen, and should be Triple-A lifers. But if baseball doesn’t come back until July like I fear, you could squeeze a bit more out of workhorses like Eduardo Rodriguez (assuming he doesn’t slip on a roll of stockpiled toilet paper and dislocate his knee cap). Granted baseball would like to maintain a regular schedule, if not pack more games in with doubleheaders. Manfred said exactly that on SportsCenter the other night while embellishing just a bit.

“Obviously, our fans love a 162 game-season and the postseason format we have.“

Then you have the absolutely moronic suggestion from Scott Boras to play 144 or 162 games depending on when the season starts and just extend the postseason all the way into December with a Christmas World Series at a neutral site. Really? Imagine the Yankees hosting an ALCS game in the middle of December?

In all likelihood though Rodriguez wouldn’t need to make 30+ starts. You obviously can’t have him making multiple starts per week, but you could eliminate the concern of innings counts and managing guy’s workload in preparation hopes of a postseason run. Same goes for Nathan Eovaldi. It also gives guys like Dustin Pedroia a few more months to recover from injuries and potentially get right for the season.

Glass half full bullshit optimism? Yup, but with no baseball on Opening Day and no games coming anytime soon I think we all could use a little optimism right now.

Tom Brady is Leaving the Patriots

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I can’t believe the day has finally come. Tom Brady is leaving the New England Patriots. Despite days, months, and even years of preparing for this it still doesn’t feel real. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s day off right now; catatonic.

This one hurts. It kind of feels like the Patriots dared Brady to leave and he did just that. As we saw all the potential weapons and upgrades around the league come off the market things started to look worse and worse. Austin Hooper, Deandre Hopkins, Stefon Diggs, Jimmy Graham. Meanwhile the Pats were erasing their cap space with extensions for Devin McCourty and the franchise tag on Joe Thuney so it looks like the team had no intention of bringing Brady back.

We’ll find out soon, but as of right now we don’t know where Brady is going. We can fully expect that he got PAID by LA or maybe Tampa Bay. The numbers will really decide the reaction of Patriots fans towards Belichick and Kraft because if it’s $30 million a year for 3 years then I think people will understand. If it’s even a moderately reasonable deal and the Pats lowballed him yet again then Belichick and Kraft will get roasted for years to come.

The LA Chargers make the most sense in my opinion as Brady wants to grow his brand, he pals around with Hollywood elite already, his wife would love the glitz and glamor, oh and don’t forget the production company he started last week.

Tampa probably backed up the Brinks truck and that team has a *nice* set of offensive weapons, but I just find it hard to believe Brady and Giselle are going to move to the strip club capital of the world.

We’ll have more blogs today as we grieve, but for right now I’m still in a state of shock.

Chris Sale is Getting an MRI On His Elbow. COOL!

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ESPN – Boston Red Sox left-hander Chris Sale is having an MRI on Tuesday after experiencing soreness in his elbow following his first live batting practice session.

Manager Ron Roenicke acknowledged concern as the team awaits the results, which will be sent to Dr. James Andrews for evaluation.

It was pretty absurd for the Red Sox to tell everybody that Chris Sale was getting pushed back to start the season because he had pneumonia, not because his elbow is apparently a train wreck. Then again thats par for the course with this ownership group who seem to think we’re all stupid. Tell me you don’t like my firm. Tell me don’t like my idea. Tell me don’t like my fucking necktie. But don’t tell me that Chris Sale is going to miss Opening Day because he had a bad cold.

It was his first time throwing to live batters since last August and after throwing just 15 pitches he felt soreness in his elbow the next day. Now he’s going to see Dr. James Andrews who hands out Tommy John surgery recommendations like they’re candy so prepare for the worst, Sox fans. In fairness he did go see Andrews last year and avoided surgery after opting for a PRP injection…but he didn’t pitch again until this week. Not good.

So this obviously begs the question of was the Chris Sale extension a good idea or an unmitigated disaster? Well considering the 5 year extension didn’t even kick in until this season and Sale missed huge chunks of time last year and won’t be ready to start the 2020 season….then yes this is problematic. In the interest of transparency, I was all for this extension when Sale signed it because it offered a steep discount for an ace at $30 million per year. The cost of pitching only continues to go up as Sale’s 2020 salary is still behind Gerrit Cole, Max Scherzer, Zack Greinke, Stephen Strasburg, Justin Verlander, David Price, and Clayton Kershaw. However, my enthusiasm for the extension was based on the Red Sox medical staff being pretty confident that whatever injuries Sale had before didn’t pose long term issues. Well, it would seem that was a swing and a miss because he’s had nothing but health concerns since the ink was dry on that deal.

We’ll wait to see what comes out of Sale’s MRI, but this does not seem like it’s going to end well. Welp, the 2020 Red Sox continue to be the biggest shit show in town and they don’t even play a game at Fenway for another month.