Continue reading »]]> Interviewing for a job at the Boston Herald, for as life-changing an event as it was, doesn’t hold a particularly sizable chunk of memory bank.

Deduction alone pins it to late August 2010, and I remember live-story editing tests involving UFC 118, MMA’s first big-time foray into Boston. (No. 143, live from Brazil, is a week from tomorrow. Pay-per-view lingers for no man.) I remember quickly deducing the good cop-bad cop dynamic between my two future bosses — one made me laugh, the other asked whether I thought I was “too good” to do the lowly agate page, one of my favorite desk duties then and now. I remember the fascination with the light-sensitive ‘Visitor’ sticker I had to wear, and with the ‘computers’ on which the paper was produced. (When they were replaced that November, I snapped a picture of a back label: “MFG DATE: OCTOBER 1991.” Given their age and the state of the office, I assume they were originally gasoline powered.)

Outside of the above quote, one specific statement rings louder than most. Hank Hryniewicz, the kinder half of the cop drama, assured me if I got the job, I would be around when the paper moved to its new offices. Didn’t know where or when, just knew that moving boxes weren’t an ‘if.’

My first day was Sept. 17, 2010. Moving day is today.

300 Harrison Ave., Boston. Better known as One Herald Square.

Tonight, the normal three-edition Saturday paper will be one edition. A little after 10 p.m., allowing for the usual fudging of first deadline, movers will carry away the boxes that’ve littered the office for weeks. (And, in grand moving tradition, were mostly packed at the last possible moment.) We will pack up the computers on which we just put out the newspaper, with the idea we’ll return to them Saturday afternoon at the Seaport Center, where months of renovations have turned two floors into a wonderland of exposed brick, flat-panel TVs and disease-free surfaces. (My first several weeks at the Herald, I got semi-regular headaches. When they stopped, I considered it less progress than infection.)

The old building won’t immediately be razed, but it will be. At the intersection of Interstates 90 & 93, near the gentrifying SoWa district, it is destined for that greatest of uses: mixed, featuring retail space and comically expensive apartments few of us could ever dream of inhabiting. “Publisher’s Place” or “Traveler Arms” aren’t out of the realm for possible names. At the least, I’m sure there’ll be a small plaque in the lobby, denoting the site’s 54 years as home to Boston’s beloved guilty pleasure.

Boston Herald Sports Department, Jan. 2012 - From left, main floor, "Agate Alley."

The move is, above all else, practical. You may remember the fervor when the Herald outsourced its printing operations in 2008, leading to vandalism on the way out the door by some of the 100+ who lost their jobs. The building’s a shell without all the print workers and equipment downstairs, to say nothing of whatever reductions there’ve been in the newsroom the past half century. Many of the offices that ring the upstairs are empty (though the black mold that’s growing in some of them deserves partial credit for that). The prototypical company that’s slimmed down, but hasn’t bothered to buy new clothes.

The Seaport Center space is a tailored tuxedo. Built to specifications in a marble-lobbied building, it oozes adaptation to a changing landscape. In the shadow of the new convention center, I will now work in Boston’s “Innovation District,” a waterfront formerly full of Frank McCourt-owned parking lots that grows more exciting by the day. Hotels. High-end condos. The Institute for Contemporary Art. A Jerry Remy’s restaurant. I mean, what more could a person ask for? (Me, not much. I don’t have to move out of New Bedford, and I get a Fresh City, a 7-Eleven and a Bank of America within walking distance.)

During our tour last week. Finally, somewhere clean enough for me to bring my Standard-Times Nerf gun arsenal. (M. Biglin photo)

It is, however, a not-too-subtle reminder of what’s happening in media. The Boston Herald is leaving its newspaper building for a nebulous home base where newsprint just feels like it’s going to dirty up the new desks. How could a neat freak not love an upgrade like the one we’re going through.

Well, because I’m newspaper people. I’m a history buff. And I’m watching both of those sink like an Italian cruise ship, something I wouldn’t enjoy even if I wasn’t standing on the deck while it foundered.

The shift from big office to small means an inevitable culling. In a building that’s been home to 50+ years of reporting and commemorating the news of the day, that means a ghastly amount of yesteryear landing in gray trash bins and red recycling racks. Books. Negatives. Newspapers. Signs. Promotionals. Posters. Media guides. Photographs. The sorts of things you might just assume a newspaper keeps handy until you realize, well, they haven’t. The Herald sold most of its photo archives before I got there, and it seems the microfilm of past issues is available at (and thanks to) the Boston Public Library.

Me fishing through the bins became a bit of an office joke during the moving process, the kid with the least seniority trying to vacuum up the most history. The apartment wasn’t lacking for clutter before the Herald days, but it certainly isn’t now. There’s a stack of papers under the coffee table destined to join the ones stacked in the kitchen, that stack sitting on a plastic chest of old S-Ts. Heralds from the Sox in 2004 and ’07. A 2005 season preview, proclaiming “WHY THE SOX WILL REPEAT AS WORLD CHAMPS” above a leaping Johnny Damon. “Miracle Pats Stun Rams.” “Vinatieri Kicks Pats to Second Super Bowl Win.” The Fenway All-Star Game preview from 1999. “FADE TO BLACKO” — the Michael Jackson death cover that apparently brought protesters to the Herald’s doorstep. The extra when OJ was acquitted. The 9/11 issue.

In my trunk, there’s a random paper from 1983 advertising “STAR WARS WEEK.” A couple posters touting newspaper delivery as “not just kid stuff anymore!” (Like most hoarders say, I’ll be getting this framed.) A bag of red buttons from the ’80s, the paper urging kids to “Say No To Drugs!” Several copies of this poster, which makes this spring’s “BEST TEAM EVER” declaration seem a mere typo:

The future was now. The future was also apocalyptic.

Its value is not the point. It is what newspapers were. Not when I started in the business, but when I fell in love with it. All those mornings before school, reading the Union-News the way kids in Eastern Mass. read the Globe or the Herald or whatever. I didn’t know it wouldn’t be there when I got to it, even in high school, when Mr O’Brien’s journalism class cemented that this was the only thing I ever really wanted to do. It wasn’t about writing vs. editing, being in the field vs. being a paginator. It was something I was good at. It was something I loved, for whatever reason I did.

And it was changing. When I got to New Bedford, they were in their new building already, the five-story grimehouse with the press in the basement shuttered same as it is today. I heard the old stories about the elevator with the attendant, the pneumatic tubes to shuffle pages between floors, the times cigarettes set people’s desks on fire, the drinking in the office. I laughed. I lamented missing those days.

The old Herald building offered me a window to them, but just that. It was the movie set after the cast and crew left town. Last night on my way out the door, I walked though some of the gutted areas downstairs, same as I have increasingly the last couple months. I wandered in the engraving room, the only equipment left being drains on the floors and random replating instructions on the walls.

Engraving to the left. Presses uses to be down to the right.

I walked through the empty mail/insertion room upstairs, marveling at how big it was and at the 2008 calendars still there, unchanged. I took stock of the old bumper stickers still hanging around the office — support for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, for the mid-’80s Doug Flutie teams at BC, for some new show (“Married … with Children”) on some new network, for Bobby Orr. Talk about relics to a bygone era. We’ve been told, at the new building, we’re not allowed to put anything on the walls.

Tonight will be anticlimactic in many ways, an excuse to get out of work early and have a couple pops down the street at J.J. Foley’s, at least before college kids fill the place Heraldites have been drinking since their parents wouldn’t be caught dead in that part of town. Saturday will be exciting, if only because we really have no idea what state the office (and those aforementioned computers) will be in when we get there. Apologies in advance to those hoping for insightful coverage of the evening’s NHL All-Star Skills Extravaganza.

I spent a little more than 16 months at One Herald Square. They started with me intimidated, trying to convince myself I belonged at the second biggest paper in the state. I wasn’t sure whether I’d ever get the hang of the old Atex machines, which were already past their prime when I was a college intern doing pagination in Nashua, N.H. (I didn’t. If they didn’t go, I would have.) I wasn’t sure I’d be able to deal with editions, essentially doing parts of the paper 2-3 times per night. (I did. In hindsight, it’s easy enough that it’s stupid I ever gave it a second thought.) I wasn’t aware that the Herald is just like the S-T, the paper in Nashua and the hundreds of others around the country all trying to figure out the same questions.

How do we make this work?

How do we ensure our subscribers never die?

How few people do we really need to do what we do?

Sixteen months from now, by my rudimentary math skills, will be May 2013. The UFC pay-per-views will be scratching the 160s. I’ll be 33 years old. I’ll possibly have a mortgage, a child or both.

I’d be lying if I didn’t wonder if I’ll have a job. That’s no knock on my employer. Just the song of all the people who got into the show far closer to the end than the beginning.

Continue reading »]]> For the Non-Facebook Audience: Far be it for me to start a Photoshop contest, but we’ve heard so much about all the great things Bobby Valentine can do. How come no one’s bringing up the time he ran for president?

And hey, if he fails, imagine how apt the symbolism will be!

Speaking of military history, what about when he helped establish the republic?

Breeches never looked so good.

This is what happens when I have a touch too much free time at the office. I know, I wish it happened more too.

– One more nugget from the reams of articles I dug through before penning my Bobby Valentine S-T column … from July 20, 2002, the story of how Valentine met current Red Sox shortstop Marco Scutaro.

Bobby Valentine was having lunch today at the restaurant at the hotel where the Mets are staying, watching television, when a stranger came up and sat next to him.

“Hey, Bobby. How are you?” the young man said before getting off his stool and approaching Valentine.

“Nice to meet you,” Valentine responded. “What’s your name?”

“Scutaro,” the man said.

When Valentine did not respond, the stranger went back to his seat. Finally, during a commercial break, Valentine asked: “What are you doing here? You live here?

“”No, I just got called up,” said Marco Scutaro, an infielder who was promoted from Class AAA Norfolk to replace Joe McEwing on the Mets’ roster.

The next day, the Times summed it up: “Bobby Valentine did not recognize Marco Scutaro the first time he saw him, thinking he was a friendly fan when Scutaro introduced himself last Friday at a Cincinnati restaurant, where the Mets were playing. Scutaro mumbled his name and Valentine could not understand him, perhaps because of Scutaro’s Venezuelan accent or perhaps because he was unfamiliar with the name.”

Scutaro played the first 27 games of his MLB career for Valentine’s 2002 Mets, among them one notable three-inning stint as a left fielder. (He’s made 18 appearances in the outfield in his career.) As the story goes:

Scutaro, recalled when Edgardo Alfonzo was placed on the disabled list Friday with a strained oblique muscle, played only five games in left field at Class AAA Norfolk, but Manager Bobby Valentine’s reports told him Scutaro was competent to play there in a major league game. So when Valentine used Scutaro to bat for Jeromy Burnitz in the fifth inning — Scutaro looked at strike three — he intended to put him in left.

. . .

In the sixth, Cardinals catcher Eli Marrero reached for a pitch by Reed, the Mets’ second reliever in today’s game, and lofted a fly ball to deep left field. Scutaro broke left, then right, and finally watched the ball land over his head for a leadoff double. “I didn’t have any reason to think he couldn’t play out there,” Valentine said.

The 2002 Mets, everybody. I’m sure Marco’s memories are fond ones.

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Dec. 28, 2001: Exactly zero percent of the people pictured look upon this fondly. Though Mo did make a lot of money that day. (AP)

While preparing my thoughts on Bobby Valentine for a column, I dug into the New York Times archives to read up on Valentine’s incendiary 2002 exit from the New York Mets — until Thursday, his last job in the major leagues. There’s far more to discuss about it than I care to get into here, but I did stumble across one clip that I had to share.

OK, a little more than one clip. Everyone always talks about how Valentine and GM Steve Phillips — the bookends on that Mo Vaughn sandwich up there — clashed repeatedly throughout 2002, with Valentine only cementing his reputation as needing to be the smartest person in the room.

The Mets struggled mightily in 2001, coming off their NL pennant win in 2000, and Phillips sought to change that. Here is a sampling of the free agents he brought in for the 2002 season, with an abbreviated statline for each: Mo Vaughn (.259/.349/.456), Roberto Alomar (.266/.331/.376), Jeromy Burnitz (.215/.311/.365), Roger Cedeno (.260/.318/.346), Pedro Astacio (4.79 ERA, 32 HRs allowed in 190+ innings), Shawn Estes (4.55 ERA in 130+ IP) and John Valentin (Played five positions in 114 games before dying of dysentery in September.).

It’s a wonder Valentine didn’t take to talking to Phillips in a baby voice. My mother might stumble across a better free-agent haul than that.

On March 27, 2002, the Times led a Mets notebook with the following:

Mo Vaughn has played with broken bones, returned from knee surgery in three weeks and played half a season with what turned out to be a torn biceps tendon in his left arm. That is why he is insulted when his ability to lead is questioned. After hearing more complaints from his previous team, the Angels, about his alleged bad attitude in Anaheim, Vaughn was livid.

Using a stream of expletives and disparaging remarks, Vaughn was quoted in Monday’s New York Post questioning the right of Angels closer Troy Percival to criticize his leadership. Vaughn noted that Percival had never played on a team that made the playoffs.

This link appears to flesh out some of the details, namely that Percival said “We may miss Mo’s bat, but we won’t miss his leadership. Darin Erstad is our leader.” A sampling of Vaughn’s rebuttal:

“Let me say this: Who the (expletive) is Troy Percival? What has he done in this game? Has he led his team to a pennant? Has he ever (expletive) pitched in a big game that meant something? This guy talks so much (expletive), and he hasn’t even done (expletive).

“He has the right to evaluate and analyze people, but what the hell has he done to deserve that right? He hasn’t done (expletive) to lead them anywhere. I got hardware, I got playoff appearances, I got an MVP. I’ve been to the playoffs twice. What the hell has he done? Who the hell is he?

“I tried to be cool here. I tried to be nice of this whole situation concerning the Angels all the way around. Ain’t none of them done a damn thing in this damn game, bottom line. They ain’t got no flags hanging at friggin’ Edison Field, so the hell with them.”

Percival proceeded to save 40 games in the 2002 regular season with a 1.92 ERA, then saved seven more in the postseason as the Angels won their first (and to date only) World Series.

Vaughn — who never played in a World Series, who was a career .226 hitter in the playoffs, whose 1995 MVP probably should have gone to Albert Belle and who was coming off missing the entire 2001 season to injury — batted .249/.346/.438 in 166 games with the Mets in 2002-03. A knee injury not helped by his being nearly 270 pounds at the time then ended his career.

As knockouts go, that’s about as decisive as you’re going to get.

Continue reading »]]> Fear, As Motivator: The Arizona Diamondbacks, who would be a great team to call your home team if that didn’t mean you had to live in Arizona, are building their holiday ticket sales strategy around the idea that manager Kirk Gibson is terrifying.

I’m really hoping that there’s a video/commercial campaign to go with this, because that means there’s a chance they can draw inspiration from the Ozzie Plan. And by inspiration, I mean a steely eyed Gibson shows up at people’s holiday gatherings and places of work to wordlessly encourages them to buy Diamondbacks tickets.

And hey, if nothing else, people can drink the water out of the snow globe when things get really bad.

– Julie and I had a nice lunch down by the water on Sunday morning at Fathoms, which I would push as one of the East Coast’s top dining destinations that shares its building with a fishing store and its parking lot with a strip club. (Bonus Points: This happened at the strip club that was there before the current strip club.)

It was quiet, we got a table right by the window and got to look out at the fishing boats while the early football games went on. There’s a tall ship on the Fairhaven side of the water at the moment, likely in for repairs, so that was nice. It was another one of those days that I have down here where I find myself thinking what a bad rap New Bedford gets.

Is it the best place a person can live in the Commonwealth? Of course not. But it’s far from the worst. The scenery’s great. The food’s great. The people, by and large, are great. The downtown, relative to how things were when I got here nine years ago, is light years better. I’m proud to call it home.

This fresh in my mind, I went to work, only to have one of my co-workers come over and inform me, “Hey, one of my buddies got killed in New Bedford last night.”

“A 32-year-old man was shot to death before dawn Sunday outside his two-decker on Locust Street. … Monteiro’s body was found lying on the pavement at the end of his driveway at 120 Locust St. in the city’s West End after multiple gunshots were detected around 5 a.m.”

They’d grown apart since high school, but he knows people who were still close to the guy. Got some hysterical phone calls, etc.

Oh, my flawed city.

Continue reading »]]> Today’s Moment in Card Collecting: Upper Deck, in what’s a pretty solid move compared to the current trend of hacking jerseys to pieces and shoving them in cards, is running a “Day With The Cup” insert in this year’s hockey packs.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to be idling rifling through pictures of hockey players and stumble across this beefcake?

From Savonlinna, Finland. They have a 20.5 percent municipal tax rate there. Thanks, Wikipedia!

I really hope he’s wearing pants.

You Can’t Work Out Anywhere Harder: Spied just off Route 146 on the northwest side of Providence, I give you The Maxx Fitness Clubzz. The “Club Locator” tool, when you have one location, is a nice touch.

I assume this is like when municipalities had to add to the length of their phone numbers due to increased usage … our nation’s fatness can no longer be cured by just one foreign consonant added to the end of words, which can only mean good things for my dream of “erupts” being formally changed to “errupts.”

Doesn’t it just feel more violent? Get on it, Webster’s.

– Friday’s Bruins loss to Detroit was the sort of game that gets talked about for years, and will help establish an attempted television tradition into an actual one. (Think about how good the first Winter Classic was.) Even if the home team lost, it featured some of the sport’s best playing at a high level, back-and-forth action to the final gun and performances that turn people into hockey fans.

Also, Rene Rancourt was there, doing Rene Rancourt things*.

"Oh, hey! That's why my hand felt so heavy!"

* — “Rene Rancourt things” also include being noticeably off-time with the organ music by the end. Not that being so critical is really the point … we’re a forgiving region with off-court icons. Hell, the Patriots radio team is several years removed from even sniffing its prime — please note this post was written in *2007* — and no one really appears to have a significant problem with them continuing until they die in the booth.

Part of that, I’ve long felt, the woeful lack of anyone screaming out as a suitable replacement, but whatever. I’ll deal with a handful of misidentified receivers and “caught … no, dropped”s every week, given the at-hand regional alternatives.

Unrelated, this is crotching.

Technically, it's roughing. Ed Olczyk asking if Rich Peverley got to "carve any turkey" on the holiday was a nice touch, as a "wishbone" reference would have been a little much.

Continue reading »]]> The Latest Project I’ll Never Complete: Assisting Bruins play-by-play man Jack Edwards in his transition into full-on parody by offering up a full list name-specific celebrations to go with “A Johnny Rocket!” for Johnny Boychuk, “Isn’t that Rich?!” for Rich Peverley and “Two U’s, two K’s, two points!” for Tuukka Rask. Reasons for failure will basically be limited to becoming too embarrassed by the list before I can actually complete it.

Understand that I love Jack, both as a guy and as an announcer. His passion is beautiful. I’ve long advocated NESN, which will devote a show to basically anything, needs to start broadcasting the audio feed of Jack watching national games from his couch. These, though … these bring about the bad cringe.

John Sterling is fun in a sideshow sort of way. Although, the fact that his list draws heavily from Broadway shows that the majority of his audience has never seen gives me an almost limitless pool to draw from for Jack.

Stupid Thing People Are Apparently Worrying About: That attending Penn State will cause them to not get a job.

“Our clients are shying away from applying to PSU,” says Craig Meister, president of Tactical College Consulting, a college admissions consultancy firm. “Parents and students I work with are concerned about getting a job with a PSU diploma — with images of Joe Paterno and the rioting in mind. In a tough job market, Penn State is no longer a safe bet.”

You know, because often times employee decisions are made based on the quality of the football program at the applicant’s alma mater. It’s a wonder I got a job at all!

– And really, while I’m here, am I the only one who thinks something called “Tactical College Consulting” seems like a ridiculous waste of money? Let us help you inflate your resume, high schoolers! And this entire paragraph for current college students makes me want to punch a wall:

“Whether applying to graduate school, professional school, or a new position, Tactical College Consulting works with applicants to increase their marketability, and therefore, their chances of being accepted or hired. We help each applicant create a dynamic personal brand that effectively communicates the value-added the applicant will bring to a university or organization. Once clarified, the applicant’s distinctive personal brand is meticulously developed and constantly reinforced through a strong resume, eloquent essays and personal statements, and a convincing cover letter, each specifically created for the audience targeted.”

Marketing! Dynamic branding! It’s all a system to be gamed, people, even though the streets are currently filled with students who went to high-price universities and still can’t get a job. (At least the letters about their college debt offer fuel for the campfire.)

OK, I’m limiting myself to one testimonial:

“I was so tired of nagging my daughter, Michelle, to work on her college applications and finalize her list when I learned about Tacitical College consulting from a friend. Hiring Craig Meister to assist Michelle during her Senior year saved our relationship and resulted in her admission to her top choice school – Northwestern University!”

Damn. I wish I hadn’t already wasted my wall punch.

I’m sure this company does a lovely job at what it does. I’m just as sure the fees they’re paid for services rendered are much better spent elsewhere. Like, say, on the inflated tuition for your listless brat who’s tromping around Chicago majoring in “undecided,” and who’d probably have been just as well off if they’d spent a couple years at community college figuring out you can’t act like a high schooler forever.

Free advice to my future child: You’re going to wherever gives you the most money, just like your daddy did, so feel free to earn yourself some financial aid. He had almost no marketable skills, and he spun that into almost a decade* in the work force!

* — Possibly more by the time the intended audience sees this, but I’m not counting those chickens before they hatch, so to speak.

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Oct. 2, 2010 - Playing out the string against the Yankees. (Julie Couture photo)

In the pantheon of Heidi Watney photos available on the Internet, this has to be one of the worst. And yet, it is the one I think of as she departs for her native California, her inevitable and long-discussed departure somehow making the Red Sox fallout hurt all over again.

Last summer, Julie won an incredible package in a charity auction: two field-box seats for a Red Sox-Yankees game during the final series of the regular season, limo transportation to and from the game, and $200. She was downright giddy. Of course, the Red Sox spent the last three months of the season treading water, rendering the game largely meaningless. Then, the day of said game, it poured.

Julie and her running buddy Dione ended up taking the limo up to the city anyway. Based on photos, it looks like they went to dinner. Also, this happened:

Julie, to the unaware, is one of the few people in the Commonwealth whiter than me.

The game got rescheduled as the back end of a double-header the next night, with Boston’s starting lineup literally featuring all of the following players: Eric Patterson, Felipe Lopez, Lars Anderson, Daniel Nava, Yamaico Navarro and Kevin Cash. Still, she had sweet seats right behind the Yankee dugout, and the lack of a crowd meant she could move around.

About midway through the game, Julie decided to start snapping photos of Watney, who was stationed in the nearby camera well. (I may have expressed some fondness for Heidi through the years that led to this photography attempt, but that’s neither here nor there.) There’s three photos from the exercise: one’s the top half of Watney’s head staring out at the field, the second is Watney starting to turn toward Julie and the third is the above.

“She caught me,” Julie said later. She’d been trying to surreptitiously snap some shots, only to have Heidi notice and basically say, “well, if you’re going to take my picture on this crappy night, the least I can do is smile for it.”

I really shouldn’t be as impressed with this as I am, given Watney’s history as a beauty queen. And yet, I am. It’s just such a nice little gesture that I have no doubt she did hundreds of times in her stretch with NESN, and fits completely with everything I ever witnessed. For the first three of Watney’s four years covering the Red Sox, I was still full-time on the beat for the S-T. (“Full-time” being a very relative term.) At no point did I ever see her be anything but genuinely gracious and approachable and nice. To everybody.

Given how easy (and consequence free) it would have been to not be, that says something pretty good about her.

For what it’s worth, Heidi and I may have spoken twice during those four years, and it was in the most basic of forms. This should surprise no one who knows me, since I’m frequently unable to handle even basic social situations with people I know, never mind ones with sharp-dressed beauty queens whom I may have referred to as “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in person.” Watney responded to a tweet I wrote once and I almost blacked out.

Perhaps this simply amazes me because I’m not pretty people, meaning I look upon their world with slack-jawed amazement (when the brightness doesn’t force me to avert my eyes). But I can’t even count the number of times I recall people shouting stuff at her of various taste levels, or taking her picture from afar, or taking a dozen pictures of her while she waited outside the clubhouse trying to work. It made me uncomfortable, and I’m sure I was only seeing a sliver of the worst of it.

To say nothing about her being romantically linked with basically every member of the organization at one time or another. (Something Watney probably didn’t help when she appeared about town with utility man Nick Green a couple years back, and something — if the most persistent rumor is true — that punches a bit of a hole in my thesis about her being a thoroughly decent person.) I’m sure, just that I didn’t see the worst, that she didn’t handle it all with aplomb.

But she did more than a lot of people probably deserved. And you know, she did make an effort to do her job well, though that requires a qualification. This past season, you could basically be guaranteed that almost every Red Sox broadcast would feature Heidi Watney talking to the opposing team’s pitching coach and/or manager, Heidi Watney finishing every one of her reports by kicking it back up to the booth with a flat “Don,” and Heidi Watney eating some sort of ridiculous ballpark concession. (OK, the last was more of a once-per-series thing.) She was not, on the whole, going to tell a reasonably informed New England baseball fan something they didn’t know.

Just bear in mind we’re talking about someone who, in her first days on the job, asked Terry Francona about “double balls” when she was trying to ask about “double-play balls.” Her job was to not ruin and occasionally enhance the broadcast. Unless you’re a real stick in the mud, we can agree she absolutely did that, and she heads to the Lakers sidelines or whatever she’ll be doing in L.A. infinitely more qualified than she was when she got here.

Life will certainly go on without her for the same reason that NESN continues to exist at all: They have the Red Sox and Bruins games. No matter who they staff or what strange coverage decisions they make or what awful show they put on to fill time, if you want to watch the games, they’re the only place to turn. The Internet is already rife with articles pondering possible replacements, if only because it’s a good excuse to post cheesecake shots of other beauty queens*. I would do that if I was any good at the Internet.

But since I’m not, I’m simply close with this: Heidi, fare thee well. You were overwhelmingly decent in everything that entails, and you made my wife smile. I could not reasonably ask for anything more.

* — The past couple days, I’ve started to become more aware of the fact that TV stations sure do hire an awful lot of beauty pageant girls for on-air jobs. Not that I’ve ever not known, it’s just one of those things that’s come up a couple times of late, most recently in the case of Jackie Bruno. She’s working at the NBC affiliate that used to employ the Mrs., and I ended up on her Twitter page (which includes a rundown of her pageant history) after the beloved Falcons tweeted about Bruno covering one of their games.

I’ve seen Jackie anchor the news a handful of times when I’ve been home, and could never place why she looked familiar. Well, that triggered it … she’s a SouthCoaster and a BU alum, and the S-T’s full-court press coverage of her through the years led to a blog post on Aug. 12, 2003. (It’s about three-quarters of the way down the page. Along the way, you’ll pass the Kelly Osbourne photo and caption that I think of absolutely any time I see Kelly Osbourne.)

If I only could get this place back to the magic of something like semi-live blogging the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Continue reading »]]> The Bruins, In Brief: Tuesday night’s Bruins game was about as exciting as one could expect for a game in November, and for one that didn’t feature what happened in their previous game:

A little goalie running never hurt anyone. Except, perhaps, the goalie who got the concussion. (Icon Sports Media)

Excellent play in goal, end-to-end action, several lead changes and a Bruins victory. Also, we were sitting next to a girl who actually knew and gave a crap about the game she was watching, which was a definite plus. (She became very angry at Johan Hedberg for playing so well midway through the third period.)

She also unleashed this soliloquy toward the end of the evening:

“The other night, Mike and I went to the Purple Shamrock. They wouldn’t let him in because they said he was too drunk, but they let me in and I was totally more drunk than he was.”

I am far too entertained by stories like these. Also, no bar that hosts as many drunk college kids as the Purple Shamrock should have a Web site this organized. Damn you, Glynn Hospitality Group.

• Since I’m now looking at the above mentioned umbrella site, I should point out it’s not terribly surprising that Jose McIntyre’s is “the city’s ONLY Irish-Mexican restaurant and bar.” That sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch come to life.

Logo-wise, however, Loco Leprechaun in the Cleveland suburbs appears to have better captured the dash of racism I would expect from such a sketch.

“The actual restaurant felt warehousey and sterile, not like a pub or cantina. It felt more like a storefront in a strip mall with murals of Leprechauns wearing sombreros painted by a Kent Stater busing tables over the summer. We also found little cards on all the tables telling us to ‘ice your friends.’ The slogan, accompanied by photos of hambones drinking Smirnoff Ice, had recently entered our world, but we weren’t sure exactly what it meant. … Basically, hambones make other hambones drink Smirnoff Ice to humiliate each other when in public. Loco Leprechaun is that sort of place. Yeah.”
– From Yelp review of ‘Loco Leprechaun,’ dated Jan. 10, 2011

The next review is literally all about farts.

Irish-Mexican has a long way to go from displacing my favorite ridiculous fusion cuisine, however … Chinese-Mexican, frequently sampled in the Herald thanks to the building’s proximity to Lee Chen’s of South Boston. I don’t eat there often, but I’m told their General Tso’s burrito is very good.

Also, it’s light years better than the Chinese-Mexican that briefly opened in Whale City. It marked one of the few times in my life I’ve simply thrown a meal out rather than trying to eat it … it should be a rule that if you’re going to try and combine the cuisines of two cultures, you should be somewhere near competent at executing one of them.

Continue reading »]]> “I shouldn’t have showered with those kids.”
– Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky,
to Bob Costas on NBC’s “Rock Center”

Far be it for me to start throwing around pronunciations from the mount, but I think it’s safe to say there’s never a point in anyone’s life where they’re going to get disagreed with if they say “I shouldn’t have showered with those kids.”

Feels like a pretty safe assessment of a situation, no matter the situation. I dare say that it should be the last thing one considers before getting into a shower with kids. Not that towel slapping and soap fights aren’t a ton of fun and all.

Oh, and hey, good thing nobody rushed to judgment on assistant coach Mike McQueary’s involvement in the whole thing. If there’s one thing we can be sure about, it’s that at this point in time, we have absolutely every fact surrounding the case available to us and must immediately rush to judgment on the character of all involved.

Also a safe assessment: Baseball fans have a far worse whole picture of who Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is than they probably should. His terribleness appears to be limited to franchise running.

(I apologize to Dan Duquette for squeezing this reference to him at the bottom of a post about child abuse. Given he’s spent much of the past decade running a youth camp, I’d rather no one get any ideas.)

Continue reading »]]> Back in the old days, I would often break out posts for BU hockey coverage, coming as close to writing professionally about the beloved Terriers as I really have much care to do. (I’d overcome my bias issues, but it’s much more fun not to.)

I was not at Sunday’s game*, which is a tragedy. So, you just get this.

Wade Megan, pretzel goalie. Pretzel goalie, Wade Megan. (Boston Herald photo)

That’s still pretty damn good though. The first time BU has shut out BC since March 1, 1983. (Or, more than six years before goaltender Kieran Millan was born. Christ, his parents might not even have met by then.) I went and dug up the game notes upon reading that because it seemed impossible, but sure enough.

* — By the time I got to work and had a chance to check on the score, it was 4-0 good guys. That was the same score it was in the only time I’ve ever actually seen a game at BC’s Conte Forum/Kelley Rink: Jan. 8, 2000. Yeah, it didn’t end 4-0 good guys.

Sadly, that game predates the blog**, so I didn’t accurately capture the old man BC fan who started screaming “YEEEEAAAHHHH! YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH! YEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” like an unhinged lunatic at the small group of us after the Eagles tied it with half a minute to go. My instincts were to hide. One of my pal’s instincts were to fight him. Neither happened, which seems the best possible outcome.

** – I did find a post from 2001 making reference to said game, but I threw around “we” several times in reference to the Terriers. I suppose it’s sort of OK given I was actually attending the school at the time, but best leave it buried given my strong feelings on the matter.