In the first time in quite some time there were no Boston teams in action, or a NBA or NHL playoff game, which made for a pretty quiet Monday in sports. The airwaves were mostly all Red Sox, getting reaction from Buster Olney’s series of blog posts from over the weekend on the “toxic” in the Red Sox clubhouse. The team returns home to Fenway Park tonight for nine games in nine days against the Marlins, Braves and Blue Jays.
The Red Sox weren’t the only discussion point on Monday, there was a little US Open talk mixed in. Felger & Mazz did a golf segment where Felger ranted about what the game is today and how there are too many winners, no elite players and no true rivalries. He noted in the last 15 majors there have been 15 different winners. All this came after Felger didn’t even know who won the Open and couldn’t even get Webb Simpson’s name right even though he and Mazz interviewed him after his Deutsche Bank Championship win last September. Pretty hard to take a guys’ golf thoughts serious when he had no idea who won the US Open the day before.
Speaking of Felger, he and Rob Bradford had an intense debate on the state of the Red Sox on Sports Tonight last night.
Saved situation in Sox’ bullpen– Peter Abraham looks at a much improved Red Sox bullpen.
Lowdown on Lester– Scott Lauber has an up and down, frustrating start to the season for Jon Lester.
Buchholz more vital than ever in Sox rotation– Tim Britton says there has never been a time where Clay Buchholz has been more important to the team than he is right now.
Grumbling, stumbling– John Tomase looks at the Red Sox’ season thus far with a few observations looking at the teams’ “sour” clubhouse.
Valentine proven to be expert talent evaluator– Sean McAdam says Bobby Valentine is still one of the best talent evaluators in the game.
Red Sox: ‘Toxic’ or treatable– Gordon Edes takes a bit of a sarcastic route to say it is too early to call the Red Sox clubhouse “toxic.”
Julien Edelman impresses Blue Jays coaching staff in weekend workout in Toronto– Christopher Price has Patriots wide receiver Julien Edelman helping out a friend over the weekend in Toronto with work outs before their game on Saturday. During batting practice Edelman reportedly belted five home runs.
Roger Clemens belongs in Hall of Fame– Chad Finn says despite being a “lying, cheating scoundrel, as delusional as he is duplicitous and half as smart as he thinks he is, divided by three,” Clemens still belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Injected butt innocent*– Gerry Callahan is not a fan of the ruling in the Clemens trial, which came to an end yesterday.
Boston Sports Media Watch 
On WEEI this morning, a caller mentioned that she can’t get WEEI in NH as you go north, which is true. Any of us here in NH have few options once you get north of around Merrimack and East, without an Internet connection. They have a small repeater in Keene, but it barely reaches east past Peterborough, NH. Apparently, they’re “working” on this, and suggested that she would even be able to get a signal north of Concord, NH.
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Joke from a friend:
Larry Lucchino, “Hey, Buster Olney, do you still beat your wife?”
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A few Random Media thoughts
1) Caught Jeff Howe’s infomercial for Kevin Faulk on 98.5 this am. If that is the type of coverage we are going to get from him then I pity poor Karen G who will be doing all of the important Patriots work at the Herald. Here let me make this simple for Howe to understand. Kevin Faulk is not being given a chance to hook on the Patriots because the Pats staff does not want to waste reps on a player that can no longer contribute. BB and the patriots do not “owe” anything to him. Faulk should have retired two seasons ago. Begging for a job is neither professional nor endearing. If he wants to play get in the best shape possible and either prove you belong at a tryout or go play for another team. In the meantime Howe should not be commenting that he thinks the Pats organization is somehow the bad guy in all this. Faulk’s situation does not warrant sympathy. The Pats are tying to win a SB not make ex players feel good about themselves. If you want that cover the Red Sox, specifically Youk.
2) Caught the Felger and Mazz rant BSMfan mentions in his post. So Webb Simpson goes out and wins the toughest golf tournament in the world. Stares down Tiger and a few other “names” for the win. Instead of celebrating his victory these two morons are out there lamenting the fact that the sport is not dominated by an alleged PED user (woods) or a player who for all his success has had trouble staying focused and often chokes (Michelson). They yearn for the days of old when it was Jack, Watsons, Norman, trevino et all battling each week. Of course they forget that those guys were at one time no names also and they had to build reputations. US Open golf is always compelling. I wish the PGA set up every tourney every week to US Open standards. It would make the pro game that much cooler. it is way better than watching Tiger shoot -18 at Augusta. Absolutely one of the dumbest segments I have heard on a non Andy Gresh show in a while.
3) The single best thing the sports talkers and reporters could do to make Roger Clemens go away is not give any coverage to his situation. Do not give him a forum to rehabilitate his rep. Do not cover the defamation suit. Do not acknowledge he is alive. Do not mention him in the hall of fame debate. Complete silence. Maybe at that point he will get the hint. Instead my bet is starting next week he will do an interview where he claims that being found not guilt is the same as being declared innocent all while laughing at those he has duped.
4) On the Buster Olney story about the sox toxic clubhouse. Really now, the local press is actually shocked that a national guy picked up on the Red Sox dysfunction. Being a .500 team with a $180 mill payroll wasn’t enough of a clue that there were issues. I am amazed over and over again as to what media people, especially the talk guys, find newsworthy.
5) Lastly, both talk stations starting with the Big SHow have now run that call from the lady who wanted to complain about “Manny Rodriguez” and how he, his long hair and drugs are destroying baseball and society. I wonder if in their attempt to paint the woman as a complete and utter buffoon if either station tried to get her on the air live to defend the call?
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3.) Isn’t this like the post-trial Casey Anthony interview situation? All the stations preach that they won’t touch her, no matter how little money she asks for. Everyone celebrates. Then, they get scooped by some outlet like TMZ/NI. Now, since they bit first, the lamestream networks are “ok” about doing it. (If anything, let him suffer by having to spend an hour with Piers Morgan.) So, is it going to be a local station? A national one? Will it require some parameters before an interview?
Something tells me it will be like this…
Oh, and, the other outlets who don’t get the scoop will bitch at the outlets who do for feeding into him, right?
Is there any way to win without going, as you describe, on a complete blackout of him?
Plus, won’t he eventually have a book to push that would be a “cover” to get him on to tell his side of the story?
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I am sure he will find a sympathetic ear (Bob Kostas probably) and I won’t watch. With any luck he will become Barry Bonds and Pete Rose…person non grata. He will occasionally do an interview. No one will care and he will live a life in retirement that he never expected…instead of being the conquering hero on par with Cy Young, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Walter Johnson he will instead be the guy everyone laughs at and whispers at behind his back…he will not be welcome in MLB parks and his ego will need to be massaged at card and auto shows where he sells his autograph to the same people who would bid on a piece of Charles Manson memorabilia.
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Felger complains that there are no dominating golf players anymore. He says golf was better when the same few dominant guys won all the time. That it’s boring now with all the competitive balance in tha sport.
But when it comes to the NBA he says it’s bad for the sport that only a handful of teams seem to win the majority of the champions (Celtics,Lakers) and that there’s no competitive balance in the NBA and that’s bad for the sport. This Felger guy is all over the friggin map. Does he knowingly know when he sounds contradictory or is he that stupid like with his Bledsoe question of whether a lung can magically not be collapsed anymore? I’m going to guess he’s just stupid.
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Did anyone hear Rob Bradford on the Big Show today? Guy threw his back out bending over backwards to make excuses for the Red Sox pitching staff, Beckett in particular. He was trying to argue that Beckett has one one of the lowest ERAs in baseball this season… if you exclude two or three of his worst starts. WTF?? He was dead serious and couldn’t comprehend why this was a totally bogus argument. By that logic, I was valedictorian of my high school class… if you dropped my three worst semesters.
I used to really like Bradford’s writing, but I can’t help but notice his ever-shrinking lack of credibility. He dropped the ball on the clubhouse stuff last year, trying to reassure everyone there was nothing to worry about. He’s continued that into this season and is coming off as nothing more than a schill for the Sox and Josh Beckett’s PR mouthpiece. Even his fellow media colleagues have been starting to call him out on it.
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A total non media take:
Is this seriously 3-1? I haven’t even watched but I’m reading “Willis Reed” to LeBron and something about choking away leads from OKC. So, the Celtics, pushed this team to 3-2 and the Thunder they don’t belong.
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I figure there will be an article today. In “might not be interesting news”, it looks like @darrenrovell:twitter is headed back to ESPN (he joined CNBC from ESPN in 2006).
Search twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%40darrenrovell
If you’re interested.
There was an article today (I don’t have the link) about Skipper/Doria(I forget who) talking about how he didn’t get Twitter but ESPN is clearly “in bed” with Twitter. They have a formal partnership and I would not be surprised, with how big ESPN is, if they don’t help push a few features/test things because of how the world revolves around it.
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In local news, I thought the reaction to Buster’s article was interesting. There seemed to be clearly divided camps among the local media in terms of reaction. Some folks took the traditional route of thinking Buster was stupid/silly/too far from the clubhouse to report. Others believed it fully and seemed to run with it.
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In local news, attached to the Olney article on the sox:
CSNNE’s Sean McAdam did some digging
into the reported issues and reported that many of the team’s problems
can be traced back to “detached manager” Bobby Valentine and an
ownership group that is not aware of day-to-day operations nearly as
much as it used to be.
http://www.csnne.com/baseball-boston-redsox/redsox-talk/McAdam-Red-Sox-a-house-divided?blockID=728034&feedID=3352
Not surprised.
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Probably be the hot topic today on sports talk.
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