Applegate is Already Inspiring Terrible Columns
Mike Vaccaro, NY Post – Let Boston have the Duck Boat parades, the crowded trophy shelves, the relentless conveyor belts of championship teams and championship contenders. Forget for a moment that since 2001, New England has won at least one title in all four major sports, has won 10 in all (compared to three for New York).
We have something else.
We have something better.
We have the moral high ground! …
We know what you’re saying friends, cousins, neighbors: if you can’t keep up with us on a diamond, a rink, a gridiron or a court, then the only thing you have left is to try to muddy us up, dirty us down, and that’s really all this sign-stealing business is about. …
Look, no matter how egregious this thing turns out to be — and there is clearly something afoul here, even if the good news is somebody finally found a useful purpose for the Apple Watch. …
Surely, that will calm the always-percolating outrage of New York when it comes to Boston’s nefarious ways and the always-simmering fury of Boston when it comes to New York exposing Beantown for running the occasional — shall we say — ethical end around. …
(Which is why Spygate cannot be challenged no matter how bad this turns out to be. That one was Michael Corleone spying for the Tattaglia family. This one … well, just seems like nerds trying hard to show the cool kids on the playground how to spell “BOOBIES” with their calculators …)
Really, it makes sense that when They try to get away with stuff, We catch them. New York City is home to Andy Sipowicz and Lenny Briscoe, to Popeye Doyle and Jhn McClaine and Francis Reagan — and to Frank Serpico, who wouldn’t only have busted the Red Sox but sham-shame-shamed them, too.
You think Spenser can match up with that roster?
You think he’d even want to? He’s waiting for the next Duck Boat parade, along with everyone else in New England. What’s a bent rule or three compared to that?
This really takes me back. Hard as it is to believe, it’s been 10 years almost to the day since Spygate came out of nowhere. Honest to god, when Dave and I first started blogging about it, I thought it would be a story for a day or two. A week at most. The thought of it still being a thing a decade down the road was unimaginable to me. But what this column does is remind me of something lost to memory in all the games, scandals and gallons of sweet, sweet liquor I’ve consumed since. Just how bad the writing was.
Holy shit, does a little sign-stealing ever bring out the worst in writers. Preachiness. Snark. Terrible puns. Forced pop culture references. Allusions to crap nobody cares about. Anachronisms. Old men yelling at clouds. And reading this felt like I was back at my old state job in 2007, reading the Post one of the old guys left behind in the employee bathroom.
I’d like to apologize for how long that excerpt is, but every sentence I cut out diminished the effect. It was all I could do to leave out the part about how the 1951 Giants stole signs from Ralph Branca. But what I left in is just one flawless gem after another. Seriously, it’s so perfectly bad that it might actually be a parody piece and the joke’s on me. Shitting on Apple Watches. “Nefarious ways.” Beantown. For real, fucking Beantown. That butchered Godfather reference. BOOBIES on a calculator, which probably killed them at the NY Sportswriters’ Association Dinner in 1979. And if you don’t get the Spenser reference, don’t feel special. Zero percent of the population under 50 and maybe 10 percent over would. Wow. I just stand in awe of anyone who can produce hackneyed dreck on a level like this and still get paid by the world’s greatest newspaper.
Here’s hoping Applegate doesn’t just disappear. That has some legs to it like Spygate did so we can continue to watch these old time masters perfecting their craft. I’d forgotten how much I missed the awfulness.