Boston Sports All Overrated List
There was something about the Red Sox Opening Day this year... it might have been the ring ceremony, or they way the Sox honored the greats of the other Boston teams, or the new improvements to Fenway... maybe it was while I was sobbing like Dick Vermeil watching “Rudy” while watching Johnny Pesky raise the flag...but I got to thinking about how good we have it right now. And about the incomparable success we’re being spoiled with in the John Henry Era. And it got me wondering why the hell we ever tolerated anything less from the previous owners. More specifically, it got me listing the Most Overrated Boston Sports Institutions of All Time:
1. The Yawkeys . It’s possible that no one in the history of Boston was more admired, lauded and honored without actually doing anything admirable, laudatory or honorable than Tom and Jean Yawkey. In 1933 Tom, having grown bored with spending his ridiculous inheritance on fishing, hunting and putting down Darkies, bought the Red Sox. From then until Jean’s death 60 years later, the Yawkeys did pioneering work in the field of Fan Unfriendliness. Fenway was a seedy, decrepit Section 8 tenement of a ballpark. They served prison food at concession prices. The bathrooms were a walk-in petri dish of communicable diseases and the only place in the developed world where one could find horse trough urinals. The front office and dugout were populated by a succession of cronies, rumpswabs, hangers on, rednecks and drunken racists. For most of their tenure the Yawkeys built a team around slow, one dimensional sluggers on the downside of their careers. On the odd occasion when, in spite of themselves, they did build a young, dynamic team (i.e. the mid 70's) they managed to destroy it with their more familiar star system and bitter, unnecessary contract squabbles. Say what you want about John Henry’s ticket prices, but in four years he’s had more championships (two) than Tom & Jean had in sixty. Oh, and the Jimmy Fund? Nice work there, but it was invented by the Braves. The Yawkeys merely picked up the mantle when they moved to Milwaukee. Prior to that their big charity was the KKK.
2. Harry Sinden. Like Yawkey, Harry took a record of perfect, championship-free futility and massive shameless profiteering and rode it all the way to the Hall of Fame. Granted, he did win a Stanley Cup as Head Coach, but that was with a team he didn’t build that was so laden with talent an elementary school gym teacher could’ve done the same. He then moved to the front office and the Bruins won again, but with virtually the identical roster. In short order, Harry built the team consistent with his own vision, which was one beloved superstar and 19 interchangeable, cheap replacement parts. For two generations and through zero championships, he ran the team in this manner, and he drained the Bruins fans loyalty like a reservoir, bottled it, sold it, and sent the proceeds to his bosses in Buffalo, NY. All the while having his praises sung by his shameless ballwashers in the Boston media.
3. Yaz. Around the time Carl Yastrzemski retired in 1983, and was sent into Cooperstown on the first ballot in ‘88, suggesting he was overrated would’ve been received like an anti-Mohammed Op-Ed in the Mecca Gazette. But time has brought some perspective. His career numbers, upon which his ticket to the Hall was punched, were cumulative. His 162 game averages of .285, 22 HR, 90 RBIs, were less Ted Williamsian than they were Kevin Millaresque. In addition, the image of Yaz as the admired, respected leader seems like a media creation in the wake of the 24 years he’s spent chain smoking in Florida and making the occasional uncomfortable, sour-pussed appearance at MLB events.
4. Steve Grogan. OK, I admit this is bordering on sacrilege. Grogan was everything Bostonians love in a player: tough, gutsy, classy all the way. The fact is, he simply didn’t accomplish much on the field. You loved him, I loved him, but fans in other cities regarded him much the same way as we do say, Jon Kitna: a run-of-the-mill NFL QB. Sure we all loved Grogan’s iron balls, the way he could “take a hit”, but don’t you prefer a QB who can avoid the hit and complete a pass instead? I mean, what was it we admired so much about 3rd & 27's? And besides, Grogan for all there was to admire about him, won as many playoff games as my wife and went to as many Pro Bowls as my mother in law.
5. Nos. 3, 10, 19, 22, 23, 31, 35, “Louscy.” These are eight of a redonkulous twenty-two numbers retired by the Celtics. I actually think I’m being conservative by saying there are only eight that are... to put it politely... questionable. You could make a case they shouldn’t have more than 10 or 12 numbers, tops. Dennis Johnson, JoJo White, Don Nelson, Ed Macauley, Frank Ramsey, Cedric Maxwell, Reggie Lewis and Jim Loscutoff were good players all... I guess... but do any of them deserve never allowing another player wear their number? The team sports equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor? Not hardly. Using this standard, they never should’ve given Walter McCarty’s No. 0 to Leon Powe.
6. Trot Nixon. Another tough, gritty, fiery guy we all liked. Liked so much in fact, that virtually all of us were against the notion of trading him even up for just-entering-his-60-HR-a-year-prime Sammy Sosa. No question Nixon earned our admiration early in his career with some big hits, particularly against the Yankees and especially off of Roger Clemens, who so had Nixon for a Daddy he should’ve been collecting child support. But over the years, even as it became clear that between injuries and his inability to hit lefties, Trot was good for about 70 games a year. And I’ll wager with anyone that for every boneheaded baserunning move or unforgivably dumb fielding disaster committed by Manny, Nixon had at least one to match it. But his uniform was always dirty so he got a pass the insanely productive Ramirez just could never get.
7. “Bill Buckner.” Note the quotation marks, because I’m not talking about Buckner the player, but Buckner the supposed symbol of Red Sox futility that reputedly has tortured Sox fans to the point we allegedly “drove him out of town.” Look, I’ve never lived in Bill Buckner’s shoes. Maybe he took tons of crap, I can’t say. For sure the media made an industry out of holding him up as this icon of failure. But flat out, real Fenway fans, the people who make the turnstyles spin and buy the $8 beers, were never anything but nice to the guy. On my children’s eyes I swear to you that on Opening Day of 1987, Billy Buck got a Standing O. We sure blamed McNamara for having him on the field in the 10th inning, we blamed Schiraldi for his Scooby-Doo-in-the-haunted-house-level of fear he showed in Game 6, or Rich Gedman for letting Stanley’s “Wild Pitch” get by him, but Buckner got a free pass.
8. Dan Shaughnessy. To large segments of the national sports press, Shank, with his horrible writing and contempt for us all, is the authority on what makes Red Sox fans tick. See No. 8, above.
9. Drew Bledsoe. Bledsoe wasn’t a bad QB by any means. And he deserves the credit he gets for helping to bring the Patriots to respectability. But he makes this list because there are still plenty of people who consider him a great QB, Hall of Fame-worthy, which he most definitely was not. I should know; I was one of them. It took two years of watching him in Buffalo before the veil was lifted from my eyes and I could see what others had been trying to tell me. Like a girlfriend who was bad for you and your buddies tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. His inability to avoid the rush. His utter lack of awareness in the pocket. His career 77.1 passer rating (54.9 in the post season). His 5/4 TD/INT ratio, which didn’t get better as he matured. Bledsoe, who was making the same mistakes in his last season as he had as a rookie, had a career learning curve you could use as a carpenter’s level.
10. The Marathon. As an idea, the Marathon is swell. A big international event where the eyes of the world... at least the eyes of the part of the world that enjoy one particular obscure, boring, solitary sport... are focused on our town. The Marathon is basically the Head of the Charles on pavement. People hate when you say it’s not a sporting event, but it’s really just an event-event. Like a parade only faster and without bagpipers. Be honest; can you name last year’s winner? The year before that? More importantly, will you remember this year’s winner ten minutes after you hear his name? No. And you can’t wager on it, therefore it is not a sport. It’s athletic, but so is your wife’s jazzercise class and the local stations aren’t doing wall-to-wall coverage of that.
I know I’ve mocked some sacred cows here and I’ll no doubt cheese some people off with this list. They’ll say I’m jealous and a bitter, envious crank. And they’re right. Just know that I’m doing everything I can to make it so someday Barstool will be the most overrated institution in Boston.