Dan Shaughnessy in his Pieces of his mind column this morning reports the following:

Radio legend Eddie Andelman says his WTKK (96.9 FM) Sunday night show Dec. 26 will be the last one of his career. By his count, Andelman has done more than 13,000 shows. He practically invented the genre.

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

31 thoughts on “Eddie Andelman To Host Final Show on Dec 26th”

  5. All you need to know about Andelman's last 10+ years was he was on vacation when the Sox finally won it all. Has added nothing to the sports scene around here for at least twice that long.

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  6. The good news is that Eddie has three very hard-working and humble sons that continue to carry on his legacy of charity and outrageous humor with their wildy popular Phantom Gourmet empire.

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  7. The Eddie Andelman I grew up listening to died years ago. I loved growing up listening to him on the Sports Huddle and WHDH and WEEI in the 80's and 90's when he talked SPORTS. I moved away from Boston for good in the late 90's and then rediscovered listening to him online a few years ago on 1510 the Zone and 96.9 and what I heard sickened me. He talked about anything BUT sports. Constant shilling for advertisers, endless boxing and horse racing talk. But by far the worst of all was the constant political bashing of liberals. Since when was it okay to bring divisive political talk into a sports talk show?? Sports talk is an escape from daily life, so don't bring the real world into it Eddie. You alienate at least half your audience and probably much more when you bash liberals like you do. It sickened me. Is your corporate parent making you do that? Because I've never heard such partisan political talk all over the radio dial in my life. It's sickening. Eddie, sorry to say you are a shell of your former self. I wished you had kept your political crap away from the radio dial because it really pissed me off.

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  8. Hot Dog, that comment almost made me spit my coffee across the room. LMAO. We can say what we want about Eddie but he is the one who started it all. There are a lot of guys in this town, who hate Eddie, who owe their mediocre careers to him: I'm looking at you Deedly-Dale. Eddie's kids on the other hand are talentless trust fund babies.

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  9. My last memories of Andelman?……That period where Bob Kraft was toying with the thought he might move the Pats to Connecticut. I'll never forget, he must have said it 1,000 times. This is "A BIG TIME MONEY GRAB BY KRAFT!!!"…..over and over and over again he said it. Of course in the end he was WRONG (what a shock)……It wasn't too long after that he was GONE…..I never really understood why he was so upset, afterall Connecticut IS NEW ENGLAND. I was a season ticketholder at the time and it didn't bother me that much. I live in Rhode Island, drive to Connecticut?…..drive to Foxboro?……what's the difference? Andelman was just another media BLOWHARD, no different than the rest.

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  10. Yeah Eddie was truely terrible. He was the typical old school sox fan (like Bill Simmons still is) where everything the Sox do is greeted with a negative spin. Eddie disliked Theo and the whole Red Sox ownership because he wanted his buddy to run it. Then like a poster said earlier, the Sox won the world series and he was on vacation. His whole act was being a miserable whining prick and once the sox and pats started winning titles, no one wanted to hear it anymore. Plus Dale Arnold hates the guy, what does that tell you? I listened to the Phantom Gourmet radio show and that was a train wreck as well. Someone please tell his sons that they are truly not funny. No one cares about their lives or if one is skinny and one is heavy. Please go away.

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    1. You are right…Dale Arnold….I think I wanna puke…the Bruins games are so much more fun…and Dale likes hanging with Christian Furia (maybe I spelled the last name wrong but you know who I mean)…first Steve Nelson and now Furia…Dale is a poor excuse for a talk show host…don't ever disagree with him..you get bumped off the air immediately…..time to go Dale….this isn't Papoose Pond…..you act like all the folks on the air with you are buddy buddy and you love the free food the sponsors send over to get a free mention….start something like the hot dawg safari cuz you are a hot dog…

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    2. Jamie, I think you nailed it. I used to love Eddie back in his Sports Huddle heyday, and he did "start it all" around here on talk radio. But his incessant bashing of the Sox ownership because his buddy didn't get the team was nauseating. Even in 2004, after they won it all, in what should have been his happiest moment as a lifelong Sox fan, he was spending half his show complaining about "the limited partners aren't making any money!" Um, we don't care Eddie. The Sox won the World Series. He always let things get too personal IMO. I also didn't like his outright hatred for hockey and his mocking of Bruins' fans, but if you liked the rest of his act (which I did at one point), you put up with it.

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  11. I am a huge sports fan and even own and operated my own sports business since the late 80's….Eddie Andelman had an idea many years ago with Mark and Jimmy,….they took over the airwaves on Sunday nights with the Sports Huddle…I can remember listening to the transistor radio before crashing for the night. He was a Pioneer in sports talk radio and had a great idea and ran with it….we can't be everything to everybody and we don't always have to agree with a person but we can all agree on one thing…sports talk can be fun, entertaining and popular and Eddie was the first to get the ball rolling and we all have to be thankful for his vision and idea. He may be gone but his idea will live on forever. Thanks Eddie.

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    1. Most of us on here would have to admit to listening to the Sports Huddle..besides being able to hear sports talk for the first time, the show was very entertaining..Eddie was never the same after those days, "Anything Goes" was awful!!

      I will agree with Eddie on a very current subject: "SweetCaroline" is horrible..

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  12. Two things stand out in my mind regarding how much of a phony/fraud this guy was/is:

    When the original Schaefer Stadium was built, he used to CONSTANTLY criticize the Patriots on his radio show over the conditions of the parking lots. A few years later, he worked some deal where he became the owner of the lots. When a caller called him out on air regarding how crappy the lots were now that Andelman owned them, Easy Eddie proceeded to chastise the guy by saying, in essence, "Do you know how expensive it is to pave those lots?"

    Back in the early '90s, he went on a rant against Lou Gorman that he needed to sign Jack Clark, who was then a free agent. For days and days — maybe even weeks — all he kept saying was "Jackie Clark is still available." As fate would have it, Gorman did sign Clark, who quickly became one of the biggest FA busts in memory. Andelman's response? He CRUCIFIED Gorman for signing Clark in the first place.

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  13. I think that Eddie's main problem was that he saw people coming in to sports talk radio who were more talented than he was and he couldn't stand it. He felt that because he was the first, he should have been the highest paid and most respected guy in the country. He didn't realize that being first was the only reason for his sucess at all. If he had come along a few years later, he never would have gotten on the air. By the way, Eddie is responsible for Larry Johnson's radio career. Thanks a lot Eddie.

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  14. I actually used to like Eddie. I know he used to talk a lot of boxing and horse racing, but I liked those topics so it never bothered me. I thought he was fairly entertaining. He lost me though starting in 2001 when he inexplicably would continually knock Tom Brady as he was leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl. It took of all people Danny from Quincy to show Eddie how wrong he was on the air. Come to find out Eddie had become good friends with Drew Bledsoe and his dad Mac. Any objectivity had gone right out the window.

    The other issue, as was mentioned by others, was Eddie going on vacation while the Red Sox were about to win the 2004 World Series. For all his bluster about the Yankees elimination party, it was amazing that he would not be on the air during their finest hour. My guess is that WEEI was not too pleased either. I agree with others that Eddie was unhappy that Joe O'Donnell, who I believe he was good friends with, (someone please correct me if I am wrong) did not get the Red Sox.

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    1. Have to correct you on one fact– by 2004, when the Red Sox won the WS, Eddie was long gone from WEEI. As far as they were concerned, he wasn't far enough away from home at that time.

      Giving the man his due, he does "know a little bit about turkey club sandwiches, clam rolls, hot and sour soup, etc."

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      1. You're right Cakes he was at WWZN at the time. Thanks for the correction. I guess when he was at WWZN he made some "lovely" comments about the accuser in the Kobe Bryant rape case. I got this quote from worldlingo.com

        "Kobe Bryant Comments

        On August 11, 2004 Andelman angered many listeners during a discussion of the Kobe Bryant rape accusations. Commenting on Bryant’s accuser, Andelman suggested she was a gold digger out to get Bryant’s money, and that she would be able to make money by posing for Playboy magazine or getting into the pornography industry. He also said “that women ruin athletes by sapping all of their manly strength out of them”. When a female caller called to complain about his comments a heated exchange took place in which he stated: “that when a woman goes into a hotel room and kisses a man, she cannot cry rape even if she says no”. After the woman hung up, he told listeners that the caller ‘was obviously someone who had been raped in the past and never got over it.’ [9] Andelman submitted written apology and made an on-air apology one week later.[10]"

        I'm surprised I had never heard about this until now. Does anybody else recall this?

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  15. As a longtime Eddie hater I would like to bury the hatchet in a barrel of duck sauce and throw it out the back of my Frost Cadillac as I pass by Fuddruckers on the newly renamed stretch of Route 1, The Eddie Andelman Shillway. Hi Howaya!!

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    1. I remember when Sports Huddle first went on the air, Eddie would constantly be shilling for the then new Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers in a waaaaay over-the-top manner — even for him at that time. I could never figure out why. Come to find out, years later I read somewhere either his old man and/or some other relatives were behind that particular development. Figures.

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      1. As Niki Minaj says: "haters you can kill yourself." Eddie was all the things the commentors have said — bombastic, self-interested, vindictive, grudge holding, boxing/horse fan — but he was also a true Boston institution, for better or worse, and for all his bluster and personality defects, we as Boston sports fans owe a debt of gratitude to Eddie and the institution of sports radio that he helped launch.

        And honestly, was Eddie's constant shilling — or his act in general — any worse than Ordway's?

        Eddie and Johnny Most were two of a certain kind. Acquired tastes to be sure and often way over the top, but both were indispensible parts of Boston sports history and deserve to be remembered accordingly.

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  16. Eddie’s prime came during his Sports Huddle days. That show was great but it was from a different era. What was great about it was that Eddie was sharp, funny, and seemingly didn’t care who he ticked off. He also had Mark Witkin & Jim McCarthy with him so he could play off them.

    Later when he got his own show, he was still decent, but not as good because it was just him for 3 or 4 hours.

    The past few years he’s been a shell of himself and probably should have hung it up long ago. Even in his prime though, you had to realize that a lot of his ‘stances’ were tainted due to business or personal relationships, so he could never ever be accused of being objective.

    Still he is a radio legend and was frankly a lot smarter and had more talent to entertain than about 95 % of the guys you hear now.

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  17. Eddie was magnificent in the late 60s and 70s. His telephone calls around the world were funnier than Laugh In, Red Skelton, and Jackie Gleason. He had a magisc with Jim McCarthy and Mark Witkum. I met Jim in early 90s and he said he and Eddie hadn't talked in years. He never knew why. Eddie made Violet a household word among Red Sox lore. I immediately thought of Violet the night the Sox won it all. What she would have felt after all the pain.

    I'll never forget his show the night the ball went through Buckner's legs. He was on till 3:00 am and was practically swearing on the air when swearing would get you kicked off radio. He had us all laughing and begging for more. But, he changed after his friend, I think it was Steve Karp, failed in a bid to buy the Red Sox. His incessant criticizing of the new ownership left a bad taste in my mouth. I saw them as making the park and the team better, all the while Eddie complained. Thanks for the memories.

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  19. i still think the sports huddle was the greatest sports talk show of them all, sunday night from 7 to 11 was one of the highlights of my youth, the show was completly original and edie was very funny, the give and take between edie ,mark and jim was teffific, thanks edie for a lot of laughs over the years

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  20. Where is Eddie now? What is he doing? Is there any possibility of getting tapes of the old SH shows? God I loved them.

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  21. I grew up in the eighties, where listening in bed to the Sports Huddle on transistor radio was something I looked forward to every Sunday night. I still miss Eddie, Mark and Jim whenever I listen to WEEI and Sports Hub. I constantly remember Eddie pitching for a NL ball club to compete with the Red Sox and I recall his ownership of the Foxboro harness track. Who can forget his disparaging of the "Scchmotzy Division" Bruins banners!

    I did not even realize he was still on the air. Might have to listen to his farewell. Thanks for the memories!

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  23. I met Eddie and his lovely wife on a Viking River cruise in France a couple of weeks ago. A really fun guy to talk to. had stories about all my old sports heros.

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