Shaughnessy is a pussycat
By adamg - 7/21/08 - 10:14 pm
Think the CHB is rough on Manny and Schilling? Bruce Allen reprints a portion of a column by Dave Egan of the Boston Record on how Ted Williams set a poor example for American youth - the day before Williams was to leave Boston to serve combat duty with the Marines in Korea.
Comments
I think...
...someone should pay a visit to Van Ness, and place a tie around the neck of Ted's statue. I mean, he obviously was such a bad influence on the nation's kids, that he actually left the game he loved to risk his life on the other side of the world.
He could have been a jackass in person, but he made the penultimate sacrifice, and he deserves respect at least off the ballfield.
Shaughnessy is your bobo doll
not that doesn't deserve it but seriously, isn't this post about Dave Egan's article about Ted Williams?
Bobo dolls
I like that.
Yep, it's really about Egan's article, but my point (and more specifically, Bruce Allen's, I think) is to show that sometimes the good old days were a lot worse than today. While I can't imagine anybody on the Sox signing up for duty in Iraq, I also can't imagine that if one of them did, that even Shaughnessy would write such a vituperative column the day before he left.
Dave Egan Column
I'm not a sports fan, but read the item anyway because Williams was such an extraordinary figure in many ways. (On the last day of the 1941 season, instead of sitting on his already .400 average when rounded up, he went out and increased it...and this in the day when a fly ball that allowed a man on third to score was counted as a time-at-bat.) Yes, the ultimate gravamen of the piece was the fact that Dave Egan was a vituperative, unforgivable piece of human drek. But in those days, Boston had at least three dailies, some in morning and evening editions. Just like in contemporary talk radio, here and there a "writer" tried to make a name for himself by being outrageous for outrageous sake. It appears that Egan's vendetta against Ted Williams was of this stripe.
the good old days
Shaughnessy is the kind of journalist we should give less attention to, not more. Why encourage him? He's kind of a self-serving dick who creates controversy at the expense of others in order to increase his own stock. It's ironic that he covers sports where that kind of selfish behavior is dealt with promptly. Only in the media can one become a star by being an asshole with a sharp tongue to others... but usually its right wing radio and shock jocks.