Tag Archives: Sports in Boston

The decline of Boston sportswriting

Alan Siegel explores the reasons for the plummeting quality of Boston’s sports scribes:

The Boston sports media, once considered one of the country’s best and most influential press corps, is stumbling toward irrelevance. The national media not only seems to break more big Boston sports stories than the local press, but also often features more sophisticated analysis, especially when it comes to using advanced statistics. To put it bluntly, “The Lodge”—as Fred Toucher, cohost of the 98.5 The Sports Hub morning radio show, mockingly refers to the city’s clubby, self-important media establishment—is clogged with stale reporters, crotchety columnists, and shameless blowhards. Their canned “hot sports takes” have found a home on local television and talk radio, but do little but suck the fun out of a topic that’s supposed to be just that. And we haven’t even gotten to Dan Shaughnessy yet.

Ah, Dan Shaughnessy. Someday, when I have more time, I’ll devote a longer post to the enormous pile of rubbish that constitutes his writing portfolio. I just don’t have time today.

A spoiled Boston licks its sports wounds

Eric Wilbur takes stock of the city’s last decade in sports:

This was the fifth year in the past decade in which Boston didn’t claim a championship.

Bummer.

It began with heartbreak in Indianapolis, where the Patriots choked away their second-straight Super Bowl. It didn’t get any better for the Bruins in April, when the defending Stanley Cup champs lost in seven games to the Washington Capitals in their first-round playoff matchup. A few weeks later, the Celtics gagged against LeBron James and the Heat, who went on to win the NBA title. Meanwhile, the Bobby Valentine experiment tossed one of Major League Baseball’s most storied franchises into new levels of embarrassment.

By all accounts, it was not a banner year for Boston sports.

The Cannons lost their only playoff game. The Revolution stunk.

Mike Napoli came and went. We think.

Maybe.

They cheered in Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami, and… at some point, Los Angeles. In Boston, there was little but angst and disappointment. The Celtics are an enigma, the Red Sox are in total disarray, and the Bruins are mixed in a web of greed that could ultimately ruin the NHL.