Perhaps growing more prickly by the day after repeated assaults at the hands of Feeding The Monster’s Seth Mnookin, the New York Times’ Murray Chass (above) has an interesting message for fans of the (partially Times owned) Red Sox. Particularly those crazy enough to actually pay attention to his writing.
You would think that when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, it would have liberated their fans, enabled all of them to smile and laugh.
For whatever reason, however, some segment of that fan base doesn™t recognize a joke when it encounters one ” unless, of course, the writer didn™t tell it that well.
Last week, I wrote a column about Barry Bonds and briefly mentioned J. D. Drew, whose contract with Boston, like Bonds™s contract with the San Francisco Giants, has yet to be completed. Remarkably, the two players continue to be free agents seven weeks after they agreed on tentative deals with their respective clubs.
œIf both contracts were to fall through, I wrote in the last sentence of the first paragraph of the column, œthe Red Sox could sign Bonds to play left field and move Manny RamÃrez back to his original position in right.
It was a joke, a throwaway line, but only one of more than two dozen readers who responded via e-mail messages seemed to figure it out.
œI™m assuming, one fan wrote, œthat your comment about the Sox signing Bonds to play left and moving Manny to ˜his original position in right™ was made tongue-in-cheek.
Give that man a cigar. As for the rest of the e-mail writers, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
œManny RamÃrez in the expansive right field at Fenway?! a New York lawyer and Red Sox fan wrote. œWhy not make David Ortiz the shortstop while they™re at it.
This was from the same lawyer who once vowed never to read another On Baseball column by this writer but then sent a critical e-mail after the very next column about the Red Sox.
œI thought you were never going to read another column? I replied by e-mail at the time.
œI can™t resist reading them, he wrote back.
Nowhere in today’s Times does Chass offer an excuse for what appears to something approaching fabrication in his earlier claims the Dodgers were mulling over a tampering charge against Boston for the latter’s approach to J.D. Drew. I suppose Murray’s gullible readership should’ve taken that as a throwaway column.
In all seriousness, I’m trying to stick up for Chass on this one. I mean, who amongst us doesn’t love The Onion? The Sports Pickle? Afternoon re-runs of “MAD TV”? The comedic stylings of Chris Tucker? The improvisational skills of the young Fred Travelena?
After all these years, it turns out we’ve been dealing with a master satirist, and if malcontents like Mnookin and his acolytes have some hangup about ethical standards, well, they oughta take it up with Howell Raines.
I think that’s gonna be the new black: sportswriters trying to convince their readership that a dumb comment or bad analysis was meant as ‘a joke.’
I do partially blame the retards at Fire Joe Morgan for stuff like this. It’s great when they nail someone like Tim McCarver for saying dumb crap like “at this point, a walk is as good as a homerun” but more often than not these days they’re just using some select stats (and ignoring others) to (barely) disprove someone else’s opinion on MVP races and the like. Last fall, they wrote one Derek Jeter character assassination piece pegged to his gold glove award quickly followed by a glowing piece about his MVP-worthiness. These jokers waffle so often, they should run for office.
Rog,
FJM failed to waffle, using objectivity as proof to Jeter’s MVP worthiness. Not that they need me to defend them against an intelligent dude like you, but they addressed that shit pretty well.