It’s May 2nd, and your Boston Red Sox are a half-game in first place in the A.L. East following an 8-7 win at Fenway Park last night.
David Price continued his early season struggles, but again received the run support needed to move to 4-0 on the year.
While the WEEI morning show continues to rail against Curt Schilling’s replacement on Sunday Night Baseball, Jessica Mendoza, ESPN and Schilling continued their dance last night when inexplicably, the network cut out Schilling’s part in the 30 for 30 rebroadcast of Four Days in October last night. Game six, the bloody sock – never happened.
When asked about it, the network responded (somewhat snarkily) that the show was simply edited for time.
I honestly don’t think this was premeditated or some sort of statement from the network on Schilling, but I do think when they were figuring out which segments they could trim for the time requirements, when given a choice between Schilling and non-Schilling, they decided to cut Schilling. Subtly sticking it to him in the process.
When you think of the 2004 ALCS, you think of the Red Sox coming back from 0-3 down of course, you think of the heroics of David Ortiz in games four and five, you think of the blowout game seven, but Schilling and the bloody sock is as memorable as any of those.
For the first time ever, I did not watch a single moment of the NFL draft live. Not a single pick. I saw plenty of what was happening on Twitter, including Kevin Faulk’s all-time classic moment of introducing a Patriots pick while sporting a Tom Brady jersey.
While having Troy Vincent on the stage with Faulk was great, it would’ve been even better with Roger Goodell there instead.
Speaking of Goodell, how do NFL Owners feel having their representative booed endlessly and vociferously, and his response is “bring it on?”
Oh, I forgot. The owners all say Roger is doing a great job. Roger Goodell is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
Meanwhile I saw numerous reports that it sure seemed like ESPN (and sometimes NFLN) was trying awfully hard to not show any of the Patriots picks. Almost makes me wonder if after Faulk’s appearance there was some edict passed down to ensure the Patriots didn’t embarrass the league in that fashion in live TV again. Almost.
Was a little surprised at some blowback I received on Twitter about the job Danny Ainge has done with the Celtics, and whether this season was a failure following the first round 4-2 series loss to the Atlanta Hawks. There seemed to be a common theme among the critics, references to “green teamers” and other Mike Felger references.
The Celtics have steadily improved in the three seasons under Brad Stevens, and have a top pick in the draft in June, and the cap space to attract more than one top free agent this summer. I don’t know what could’ve been done significantly better, especially when you look around the NBA at other rebuilding projects.
Boston Sports Media Watch 
Agreed, vis-a-vis the Celtics. That’s how teams are built in the 21st century. No Eureka! Larry Bird or Dave Cowens picks anymore. Everybody knows how good all these kids are now.. It’s just not gonna hppen in year or two nymore. I think Stephens has done a great job. It would be nice to have won that series, but did anyone honestly think the Cs would contend this yer? This ain’t th Patriots. Patience is the word, now.
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Kirk Minihane on opening day: “This (Red Sox) team is terrible and the organization is in shambles.”
Does Kirk know anything about professional sports or is he just on WEEI to entertain people with his attacks against other sports media professionals?
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Unfortunately, Kirk Minihane has become another blowhard in the sports talk media following the trend over the past handful of years to be focused more WWE-style entertainment than sports driven conversation. Whether it’s online, in print, on the radio or TV, sports talk has become overly salacious and bombastic. That element has always existed, but now it drives the needle instead of being the fun side of a discussion.
It’s a sad to say but you can now predict a program, show, or column’s tone and subject matter before it is on the air or in print. Minihane is the same as they all are at this point. Based on the story du jour I already know what “hot take” I’m going to hear or read before they even happen.
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Kirk’s in a good spot, he knows nothing about sports and he works for a show where his colleagues know nothing about sports.
I know, I know, this is like criticizing the Great and Powerful Oz to the Minihane minions on this site.
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Are there really Minihane minions on this site? If so, why?
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At some point, someone may have said some positive things about Minihane here. For trolls that = Minihane minions.
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Let me qualify right up front: I hate ESPN. I think they have screwed the Pats over for years and the past year & a half in particular, have been filled with outrageous behavior towards them.
That said… this ‘controversy’ over the bloody sock segment being cut out, seems to me, to be the height of paranoia. I think even a few moments of critical thought on this would lead you to the conclusion that there was no ‘editorial’ decision made here. Look, the people who made this decision are not thinking about big picture stuff like Schilling’s ex-employment with them. I’m pretty sure they needed to take out a segment with the same/similar time length as the time shortage and just did it that way. It’s a like a 5-6yr old documentary, it’s not like they were worried about a huge audience getting too deep into it.
Switching gears… I watched the 2nd and 3rd nights of the draft on NFLN (I didn’t tune to ESPN even for a second). I didn’t notice them avoiding Pats picks at all. Once you get to the 4th-7th rounds, they typically run interviews/features while picks are going on and will only go back a few picks and review real quick. If ESPN did what others have said and avoided Pats picks in the 2nd & 3rd round, well, then they’re who we thought they were when it comes to the Pats.
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@Tom I have to disagree because I watched that same episode a week before Schilling got fired and they did several minutes on the bloody sock. I’m more than willing to go with the “edited for time…” but the timing couldn’t have been worse if that was the case.
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Right – NFLN stayed on for the Pats’ picks on Friday, but ESPN definitely did go to commercial for the 2nd rounder with Richard Seymour and for the 3rd round pick where Kevin Faulk wore Brady’s jersey. My guess is it was probably coincidence, but it certainly looks bad. And suspicious. 🙂
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As the Patriots haters like to say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” For them, being able to use that cliche is a combination of a signed confession, high quality video of the crime where everyone identifies themselves, and a positive DNA match. Applying it to the this situation means ESPN definitely has an anti-Patriots bias ; )
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