Category: Sports

The Sons of Sam Horn board is still struggling with the price of celebrity.

The Hartford Courant ombudsman, Karen Hunter, more or less apologized for that Jeff Jacobs column. She also said — I think accurately — that journalistic ethics don’t go away just because you’re in an anonymous chat room. It’s a good, balanced column that shows a decent understanding of the issues involved. That one goes in the positives column for the SoSH crowd.

On the negative side, the Sons have drawn the curtains over their boards. If you’re not a member, you can’t read the forums anymore. It’s undoubtedly partially due to the cost of serving all that traffic, but it’s pretty clearly also because SoSH posts are liable to be quoted nationally, even on the AP wire. You can say what you want about the necessity of such a move, but it certainly means that the SoSH can’t be an unfiltered medium for Red Sox players to communicate with fans anymore.

Which is intriguing, since that’s what Curt Schilling said he liked about the place when he called into WEEI yesterday.

Edit: SoSH is open again; looks like it’ll be open days but not nights in an effort to conserve bandwidth. That strikes me as very reasonable.

Curt Schilling’s online presence really caught a lot of Boston sportswriters by surprise. Bill Simmons went from a guy who wrote about sports on his personal web site to an ESPN columnist and Hollywood writer. That probably should have been a wakeup call; the Curt Schilling chats definitely are. When fans can go to fan-run sites and get news before it’s hit the talk shows and newspapers, that’s got to be at least a little disturbing. I tend to think that most smart writers will embrace the new possibilities, but some are going to react poorly.

Today’s Boston Dirt Dogs front page is a figurative war zone. Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant wrote a nasty little column (user/password: laexaminer/laexaminer) in which he guts and fillets a Courant staffer for being a little too verbose in the SoSH Schilling chat. The offense doesn’t warrant the venom.

“Sam,” writes Jacobs, “still needs to learn which master to serve.” Jacobs makes it clear that he thinks Sameer Ohri, the staffer in question, should serve Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln. I’m not qualified to judge whether or not Sameer violated journalistic ethics, but if he did, I’d say those ethics are a more important master than both his paycheck and his Red Sox fandom.

The Dirt Dogs fired back. I’m going to quote extensively, because there are no archives over there:

So the whole time GSG is posting, he’s just shooting the breeze. At the time of those entries… at the time of those entries Jeff… he has NO idea that Schilling is Schilling. You simply cannot go back after learning that it was Schilling and take those casual soundbites out of chat script later. That is unscrupulous. Irresponsible. Unreal. No proof existed at that time that it was Curt Schilling, making the “record” (gee, hope no one gave it to you 7th hand Jeff, all edited up) of GodSamGod’s entire participation in the chat unusable by an accredited newspaper in any way, shape, or form.

Oh, and newsflash Jeffrey, when a chat window closes on SoSH, the text is gone, it’s like an instant message (know what that is wise guy?). So there is no legitimate transcript in existence unless you are the host site for SoSH. The fiction text you’re holding over our heads is worthless. Who handled it? PeskyPolish17? Or was it BenOgilivy99? Or GradysGhost? There’s no legitimate transcript you goof. No one in the media will run anything or they’ll be the laughingstock of the industry. Wait, ooops, you ran comments from your “transcript.” Haaaa. Haaaa. Haaaaartford.

All the hateful, damning fictitious comments you chose to publish this morning, all those comments were irrelevant. You don’t even know who typed them or when, do you Jeff?

Your incredibly poor decision to print the urban myth mystery chat excerpts was really libelous, unnecessary, gratuitous, mean-spirited, hurtful, and damaging to Sam’s colleagues, family, and friends. For that alone, you should be ashamed. If you don’t get fired, you simply must get a serious suspension. Boston Dirt Dogs, an unofficial fan website, has never been that irresponsible for chrissakes.

And we don’t serve any masters.

The Internet can’t “win” this battle. The readership numbers aren’t even remotely comparable. But it says something that Jeff Jacobs takes Sons of Sam Horn seriously enough to write his column in the first place. I’m waiting to see if he fires back at the Dirt Dogs.

A transcript of an informal chat with Curt Schilling i”s up on Sons of Sam Horn”:http://pub208.ezboard.com/fsonsofsamhornbostonredsox.showMessage?topicID=12304.topic.

CurtSchilling38: and then had an email from someone telling me about the SoSH board
CurtSchilling38: so I dropped by and read up, and it was pretty cool
CurtSchilling38: knowing that an entire “nation” of people was rooting for us to make that decision to come to Boston, and
CurtSchilling38: as i said the other day, I am human, its pretty cool to see people wanting you to be a part of “their” team so badly
CurtSchilling38: so I read around, and saw the chat, figured what the hell and started chatting
CurtSchilling38: after a bit, when I convinced some of them that it was me, it was pretty fun

Lots more good stuff. He’s looking forward to working with Varitek, too.

Looks like it’s a go — Curt Schilling, Advanced Squad Leader owner, EverQuest player, and 20 game winner will be playing for the Boston Red Sox next year. It’s been a pretty surreal 24 hours; first Schilling posted a letter on the official Red Sox bulletin board, and then he dropped by the Sons of Sam Horn board for a live chat or two. Both appearances have been confirmed to a certain degree, although one never knows. The guy’s a computer geek, though.

But hey — the exposure to the Boston fan base appears not to have hurt in the least. Pedro will be better off not having to carry the team on his back. As constructed, this team wins the AL East. They may still add Keith Foulke, and there’s always the potential for a Manny trade. Gotta like this ownership.

Addendum:

“Don’t think for a second that seeing all these threads and reading this stuff didn’t leave an impression, thanks for the emails and well wishes, pretty sure I will be back from time to time, I’d drop in and chat but that rooms seems a bit full atm.”
— Curt Schilling, Internet bulletin board habituee

Man, you’re never gonna be able to tell Boston fans they don’t matter again. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Many, many, many, many, many people have expressed their displeasure with the rules of Quidditch. “Bah,” I have always said to myself. “Games don’t always make sense. Games evolve. The other players are important if the golden snitch isn’t caught.”

After having learned about Eton’s The Wall Game, which has been played at Eton for over three hundred years, I no longer feel any need to defend the existence of strange and nonsensical British schoolboy games. The Wall Game even has a method of scoring points which essentially ends the game in one fell swoop: scoring a goal is worth ten points, as opposed to the more common shys (worth one point), and games are generally scoreless ties anyhow. So if you score a goal, you’re going to win.

And the method of scoring goals is not symmetric between the teams. So quit picking on Quidditch.

Advantage, moi. Well, more or less. Saith the Boston Dirt Dogs, with no cited source so it’s just a rumor:

The real story behind the story:  Manny asked the Red Sox put him on irrevocable waivers and insisted to Theo that the Yankees would claim up… so they called his bluff.

Yes, that is only sort of close to my theory, but either way you’ve got the key element in place: the waiver was agreed upon by both the Sox and Manny beforehand. OK, what else we got?

We got this article, in which Buster Olney goes mildly insane and decides that the Yankees won’t claim Manny because if they did, the Red Sox could go get an overpriced closer from the Astros, which would allow the Astros to sign Pettite. Nah, we’ve got Williamson, we’re feeling good. The rest of the reasons it won’t happen seem legit, though.

We also got this one from Gammons, which further validates the idea that this whole thing was at least partially Manny’s idea.

And I thought I was done with Red Sox bloggery. (On to the Celtics!)

So, the Red Sox put Ramirez on waivers. That’s whatcha call daring and surprising. My first reaction was that it was mildly insane; if the Yankees don’t take Ramirez (and they’re the only team that can), the guy’s going to be unhappy in the Red Sox clubhouse for the rest of his contract.

But then I had my morning coffee and thought about it a little more. What if this didn’t come as a surprise to Manny? What if Theo Epstein sat down with Manny a week ago and asked him if he was serious about wanting to play for the Yankees? What if Manny sees this as the Red Sox offering him a chance to go where he wants to go?

“Manny, we’re gonna put you on waivers so that the Yankees can claim you. We know you’re interested in playing there, and we don’t want to stand in your way. We can’t make a trade with them — they wouldn’t give up anything we want — but we’d rather you go someplace you’re happy even if we don’t get anything in return.”

In that scenario, it’s OK if the Yankees don’t bite. It shows Manny that the Yankees don’t want him, hopefully diluting his interest in going there. It tells Manny that his current employers have his best interests at heart and are willing to take a risk in order to give him what he wants.

And, of course, if the Yankees do bite then they’re saddled with a huge contract and the Red Sox have the freedom to go after whatever big name they like. So it’s a win for the Red Sox either way.

More commentary here, here, here, here, and here.

Jason Giambi has been subpoenaed in connection with a steroid scandal. Now is the time for all Red Sox fans to feel deeply vindicated.

(More seriously — innocent unless proven guilty.)

That’s kind of surreal. The Celtics just traded Walker and Delk to the Mavericks for Rafe LaFrentz, Jiri Welsch, and Chris Mills. Plus a first round pick.

It’s hard to make sense of this one for either team. LaFrentz has a $69 million contract which doesn’t expire till 2008 or so. He also doesn’t represent a huge upgrade at center from Tony Battie, although he’s a much better shot blocker. Chris Mills is just kind of there, and his contract expires soon. Jiri Welsch might actually be something; he’s a 6’7” point guard who played well overseas. But giving up Walker for a handful of potential seems very odd.

From Dallas’ point of view, you lose your starting center in exchange for yet another tweener. Are they going to have Antoine play center? It almost seems like they’d have to be planning something like that.

More trades coming, maybe. Hard to figure out any other explanation.

Batting cleanup, this fall morning:

• Edward Cossette
• Jim Caple
• Tom Boswell
• Eric McErlain
• And A. Bartlett Giamatti:

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoon and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”

Full credit is due, by the by, to Mike Mussina and Mariano Rivera. They both pitched very well. If I were a Yankees fan, I would be overwhelmed with Rivera’s three innings of relief. They didn’t pitch well enough to overcome Clemens’ outing, but they deserve credit for taking advantage of Grady’s Folly.

As for 2004? I still believe.