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Dan Shaughnessy has a new nemesis
By adamg on Sat, 03/14/2009 - 3:23pm
And this time, it's professional. Jerry Gutlon, author of It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement and the Curse of the Bambino, has joined the roster at Dan Shaughnessy Watch because Shaughnessy has gone public with his whining about his "unfair" treatment in the book:
... In subsequent postings I'd like to endeavor to illustrate how Dan never saw fit to correct the many, many pieces of misinformation in his tome, The Curse of the Bambino, even though it's in it's 21st printing (at last count), and Shank's gotta know that much of his fairy tale is flat out wrong! ...
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Comments
let's not forget Howard Bryant
Sports journalist Howard Bryant covered this topic as well in his excellent 2003 book about the Red Sox and race, Shut Out.
Had no idea there's a blog devoted to Shaughnessy. Cracks me up!
thanks for mentioning Shut Out
I was just about to say, some of this territory has been covered before, but I couldn't remember the name of the book. thanks.
I never got this Boston meme
It was always quite clear to me that the only curse on a sports team is a bad owner. Yawkey, for all his philanthropy, was a racist and an incompetent chooser and manager of baseball front office talent.
Besides that, why on God's green earth would Babe Ruth have cursed the trade? He liked to live large, a lifestyle more suited to, accommodated by, and possible in New York. Not provincial Boston.
No, No Nannette
Speaking of bad owners ... it would have helped if Frazee hadn't sold off Ruth to pay for a stage production.
Not that it was Ruth's transfer so much as Frazee's generally poor business decisions that set things on a bad course.
There is little doubt that a subsequent owner's refusal to draft top talent due to bigoted premises kept the team down for many more years.
Nothing like reading someone
Nothing like reading someone from the deep minors attempting to critique major leaguers. Where did this guy work,anyway? Any markets in the top 100? top 50?
About me ... Big Harry ... and Howard Bryant
Let's see...do two years in Boston (No. 6 broadcast market in U.S.) and eight years in Worcester (No. 58 broadcast market in U.S.) count? Oh, and I've spent roughly 27 years in news and sports, both print and broadcast.
I've covered the Red Sox, Braves, NASCAR, Pats, Bruins, Falcons, UGA ... and on and on.
Does that qualify me to write a book about the Sox? If not, then you need to get a new life.
Harry Frazee produced No, No Nanette two YEARS after he sold the Red Sox, and five years after he sold Ruth.
And I lauded Howard Bryant in both my book and the acknowledgments for his landmark work, Shut Out.
For an excerpt from It Was Never About the Babe: The Red Sox, Racism, Mismanagement and the Curse of the Bambino, click here:
http://sportsreporter16.tripod.com/id4.html
not to worry
Jerry, I think every comment until that of "anon (not verified)" was not meant as a criticism. Mine about Howard Bryant's book certainly was not -- it's just that his book was the first to introduce me to the racial history of the BoSox.
If you hang around this blog long enough, you'll see that for the most part, the most snarky and uninformed cheap shots come from the "anon (not verified)'s."
So, I wouldn't sweat that last one. Good luck with the book!
and p.s.
I just read your excerpt. You pull no punches! How very unBostonian of you when it comes to how this town treats its icons. You've made a sale.
A few years ago (but after the Red Sox won the series), I attended a fundraising dinner for the Boston Center for Community & Justice where John Henry was among the honorees. He, too, downplayed the Curse of the Bambino and talked about the Curse of Jackie Robinson. Good for him.
It Was Never About the Babe
David...
Thank you for your clarification.
Bryant's Shut Out and Stout & Johnson's Red Sox Century were key to my compiling It Was Never About the Babe.
The idea simply was to completely debunk the so-called "Curse of the Bambino," once and for all.
I can't understand why someone who hasn't been enmeshed in the Boston media for thirty years cannot make some salient points about hos badly this franchise was mismanaged over the years...
I never claimed to have originated most of the points I made. I simply compiled all of them into one place!
connecting-the-dots
Jerry,
Indeed, you're right. We need writers to connect the dots in a way that refutes the Red Sox hagiography (perhaps an ironic term to use for a franchise that found ways to muck it up until 2004).
I teach over at Suffolk U. Law School, and one of my courses is Employment Discrimination Law. I've used the past and present example of the Red Sox to illustrate the costs of systemic exclusion of an entire group of people based on race when others are hiring from that pool, as compared to what happens when you open your roster to everyone who can play. I see a mix of irritation and heads nodding when I make that point!
Indeed, with a bit more inside info, I could probably teach an entire labor relations course just based on the Red Sox....
Anyway, you've definitely piqued my interest, and I enjoy sports books anyway, so I'll be looking for it the next time I'm in the bookstore.
It Was Never About the Babe -- was this book proofread?
I'm enjoying your book so far, but stopped short when I read this on page 11:
His name is spelled Rupert Murdoch, and he doesn't own either Boston daily. He last owned the Herald in 1994, fifteen years before you published your book.
Whoa!
That was in a book?? Good cripes, what the hell is happening to our publishing industry these days?
also, what is considered a Boston daily?
Later on that page, he refers to BostonNOW as a failed attempt at establishing a third daily newspaper. But if you're going to call that a daily, what about Metro, which existed before BostonNOW and still publishes today?
Mistakes in manuscript
I am already in the process of compiling corrections and revisions to the manuscript.
As I told Ron in response to his e-mail, I will make certain that the changes are made before the book goes to press again (although I think I missed the deadline for its third printing already).
Katherine Powers, in her Sunday Globe review...
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2009/04/05...
...also picked up on another error I made.
Having spent the vast bulk of my adult life in both broadcast and print news and sports, I take factual errors very seriously, and apologize for whatever mistakes I've made. The publishing process for the book was long and tortuous but ultimately I am the responsible party.
I assure you that, unlike another journalist who wrote a book on the so-called "Curse," I will make whatever corrections I need to...
Any other corrections
For those of you intersted, an excerpt of It Was Never About the Babe can be read on my website, here:
http://sportsreporter16.tripod.com/
And, should anybody else spot errors in the manuscript, feel free to e-mail me at:
[email protected]
Thanks!