YOU spent the last few years defending Ellsbury from the critics! YOU said he was a great player. So now that he’s signed with the Yankees, YOU should be pissed at YOUR team for not signing him! YOU are a hypocrite!

A variation of that has been the theme on Felger and Mazz since the news of Ellsbury signing with the Yankees came out. That, and a Tony Massarotti victory lap for being critical of Ellsbury all along.

Even the biggest Ellsbury fanboy would say that it would not have been a wise move to approach that offer that he ultimately got from the Yankees. Ellsbury was a productive, enjoyable player to watch while healthy during his time here, but there comes a point where even if the team wants the player back, it doesn’t make sense to over-extend, which is what would’ve happened.

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I admired the stand taken by Trenni Kusnierek (@trenni) of CSNNE this week, who initially took to Twitter to protest the repeated use of the word “ladies” to refer to dumb fans by the Felger and Mazz show.

Of course, her tweet also brought out a couple of  the neanderthals of Twitter.

Kusnierek also called into the show to make her point, and got Felger to see things her way.

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Meanwhile, I want to know who in the world said to themselves, Bob Halloran needs more sports radio airtime. The guy has been a semi-regular filling in on the Salk and Holley show, along with Andy Hart (Who I think has been good.) and while Bob is a good guy off the air, he’s incredibly annoying on sports radio. I thought his days in that genre were over, and now he’s back. Whether that is because of Salk, or the new WEEI management, I’m not sure, but wow. I’d rather listen to the insulting pretzel logic of Felger and Mazz than that.

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Your first-place Boston Celtics have gotten a little more attention as of late, but not all of it good. While they’re still only 8-12, there are people who are angry that they’re even that good. The Tankers are upset that the team is blowing their chances for a high enough pick to grab the next NBA superstar.

I don’t get that logic. When you have a team with young players like Sullinger, Bradley, Olynyk, even Jordan Crawford, to me, you need to get them into good habits, and if you believe even a couple of them are a big part of your future, you want to have them get as much competitive experience with the system you’re trying to put into place here, as they will soon be the veterans that the younger influx of players over the next few years are going to look to.

Baxter Holmes talked to former NBA coaches turned TV analysts George Karl and P.J. Carlesimo about the Celtics under Brad Stevens thus far. Both are impressed: Ex-NBA coaches impressed by Celtics’ fight

Get all Celtics coverage at CelticsLinks.com

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The Patriots take on the Cleveland Browns at Gillette Stadium on Sunday at 1:00pm. CBS will send Bill Macatee (play-by-play) and Steve Tasker (analysis) – the network’s 6th team on the depth chart to cover the game.

It might’ve been brought up and I missed it, but Cleveland’s defensive coordinator is Ray Horton, who coached the Cardinals defense to a win in Gillette Stadium last season, and said afterward that he saw a “tell” in Pats’ offense which helped his club defend them.

Get all the coverage at PatriotsLinks.com.

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The baseball winter meetings kick off on Monday, and WEEI is sending two shows down to Florida to broadcast live during the meetings. Mut and Merloni will be there Tuesday through Thursday, while Salk and Holley will be on the air Monday through Wednesday.

We’ll end things for now with the Globe media column:

Analyst: Hard to see Auburn jumping Ohio State – Chad Finn has Brad Edwards feeling like OSU will get get a bump in the BCS, has a look at Nomar Garciaparra leaving ESPN, and a few other notes.

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

13 thoughts on “The Pretzel Logic Continues…”

  1. What is WEEI thinking? Their best ‘baseball team’, and it’s not even remotely close, is Rob Bradford and Alex Speier.

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  2. Felger’s shtick has been transparent for a while now, but this whole Ellsbury/hypocritical Red Sox fans angle is such a stretch that it’s pathetic. I actually respect that he normally tries to back up his contrarian views with logic. But there’s just nothing to go on this time. You’d think he’d realize that. Or that someone in management would tell him to let it go after the first failed day. And the whole Massarotti-called-it thing . . . bizarre.

    Meanwhile, the misogyny stuff reeks of the pompous WEEI days that led to their downfall. There’s a lot of that going on on F&M, though. Again, you’d think someone in management would set them straight. At the very least, let Massarotti know that he’s a short, pudgy, wonky-eyed, no-talent troll with a face for radio and a voice for print who’s in no position to be insulting callers or listeners on any level whatsoever.

    @firemazz

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  3. Marc Bertrand ‏@Marc_Bertrand4 Dec
    @trenni So if you want to be pissed at somebody for being sexist and treating female fans like idiots, go call the Red Sox.

    This is a ridiculous and unbelievable comment from Bertrand, but it shows that F & M (& B) want to be taken seriously. They don’t want people to think that they’re just playing (douchebag) characters on their radio show.

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    2. F+M let Trenni on Friday. I happened to be in a spot where everything else comes in bad so I stopped to listen before turning off. Her ‘problem’ was about the term ‘pink hat’ because it implies both women and weak, and that’s sexist. Did she think about that one before going on the air? She’s lucky Felger clearly did not want to pick a fight with a CSNNE coworker, so he just let it slide and gave her an entire segment.

      He tried to remind her that the term wasn’t ‘sexist’ in nature, nor was invented to label just female fans, since she tried to link the ‘pink’ with ‘women’. Even after this part, she still said something along the lines of, ‘oh.. but it still ‘offends me”. Sigh, she lost many there. If you’re going to be ‘offended’ at everything like this, you lose me, since now you’re like a Peter King, who would devote a 10k-word column to this in some MMQB thing.

      Where she had the issue with, and clearly won, was the ‘ladies’ references they kept bringing up. Look, doesn’t a large company like CBS require some ‘sensitivity’ training? It’s a bad idea for business, as well. I don’t have numbers here but isn’t sports talk skewed male? It still doesn’t mean you need to get vile or offensive (like a morning show might) with sexism.

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  5. Gotta give it to Felger for talking about the U.S.A. World Cup draw today. Credit where it’s due.

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  6. Bobbie Halloran is like sports media hacks everyywhere: They simply have no skills to do anything else in life. Fired from one gig, they whine and moan and eventually dip from view until another identical gig comes up. Do these people have the intelligence and initiative to learn a new craft or skill against a mediocre media landscape that cannot absorb all the hacks that want to still be hacks? I guess not. Bobbie Halloran is Exhibit A.

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  8. Felger’s game on the Pats’ SB chances post-Gronkowski injury:

    1. Everyone in the media is writing off their chances, so Felger takes the opposing view.

    2. Being Felger, though, he can’t take a pro-Patriots stance. Instead, he makes it out to be that the Patriots SHOULD still be able to make the Super Bowl. That is, the rest of their regular season opponents suck, most of the AFC playoff teams are mediocre, and Peyton Manning is a playoff choker.

    So, Felger plays this perfectly. If the Patriots get to the SB, he’s a genius because he called it when everyone else was writing them off. If they don’t, he wasn’t wrong — the Patriots SHOULD have gotten there, they failed, and he has plenty to criticize them for.

    This is how he consistently “analyzes” things. Carefully crafted contrarianism that leaves no room for error on his part.

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  9. Moronic media talking point of the day: “Gronks “playing style” leads to injuries!!”….what a crock of crap. Football injuries are 99% luck (bad luck) of the draw. Jimmy Graham,Tony Gonzalez take that exact same hit, their knee is gonna go too. Gronk caught a pass,what does that have to do with his “playing style”?? That what TE’s do….talk about throwing crap against the wall.

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