He has all the who, what, where and hows of the draft, and is always up for some quality draft talk. In the dugout, Sox manager Terry Francona winked at Roberts. Case in point is his focus on pitcher wins as the metric by which pitchers should be judged. He was said to be the basketball guru in America and also was recognized as 'the quintessential American sportswriter.' He started his career as a sports intern with 'The Globe'. Strengths: Edes doesnt let his ego get in the way of the story, which can be a rarity in this market. Shauhnessy Got to absolutley love the contraian "curly red-head".!!! All the Boston teams did back in 2002 often in spectacular fashion. It doesn't get much better in sports writing than Peter King. Players love him, fans love him and other journalists love him. Tight end Aaron Hernandez offered this enlightening bit of pablum: Weve still got one more to go to get to the big dance, so weve got to keep playing and come to play next week. And defensive standout Vince Wilfork was captured saying, Its sweet playing in the AFC Championship. Another big shocker. Strengths: Tenured reporter with excellent contacts. As my wife can relate, given that she had to step in and do the talking once I trailed off, stammering. Weaknesses: The move to CSNNE has lowered his visibility for this fan. He's a highly respected journalist. His wit and snark and brutal honesty had my attention from the first column. Ron Guidrys velocity wasnt what it had been, so Lou Piniella took eight steps from right-center toward the right field line. He also mentioned Ray Fitzgerald (I think) holding up a note in the press box during the 8th inning of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, with two men on and two outs and the pitchers spot due up, that had the words Bernie Carbo scribbled on it, and then he said both of them nodded at each other from across the room. These days, theyre all trying to be loud and provocative so they can become fixtures on TV and radio. Hes transformed himself from a sharp Patriots reporter for the Herald into a contrarian media personality. His radio cohost, the former Red Sox reporter Tony Massarotti, has done the same thing, if somewhat more shrilly. When Will McDonough, Bob Ryan, and Peter Gammons began showing up on TV, they evolved from working writers into celebrities. Jim McBride Retweeted. One of them was Eruzione, the teams irrepressible captain. I maneuvered my way onto the field, 20 feet from Tom Brady, who, hands atop his head, looked incredulous as confetti fluttered onto his jersey. Some sportswriters just cover the draft or just cover the games, but Brooks can literally do it all. Michael, his mother scolded him when her son emerged to board the team bus, youre gonna give me a heart attack.. what, no mention of Joe Giullotti? So, a focused Cowens responded with a stellar 28-point, 14-rebound game as the Celtics prevailed, 102-87. But in 1976, at 10-3, they had already clinched a playoff spot and were headed to Tampa Bay for the final regular season game. Love him or hate him, Deion Sanders is actually a pretty good football analyst for the NFL Network. . Not include Tim Horgan.Are you nuts or just too young to appreciate a good writer.Look up some of his columns.A great writer who never distorted the facts.He was the vboice of the fan in his era.Ray Fitzgerald was also another great writer. Nothing good in sight now it's all TV illiterates and the worst of all, the ESPN circus. Maybe Tim Horgan doesnt deserve to be considered, so dont include him, there are no rules here other than they need to be the best. Meanwhile, the Globe has continued to employ a number of longtime veterans, like Cafardo, who seem to have hung around forever. Honorable mention too to John Updike, who only did two, but man . . The commentary that accompanied each pick was hilarious. He also covers NASCAR for the paper. Since columnist Michael Holley left the paper for a radio gig at WEEI eight years ago, its hard to think of a single distinctive voice the paper has developed and held on to. This would help eliminate the legions of nitwits and cowards who shred anything and everything in their path while hiding in their mothers basements. Michael Silverman is an American journalist and sports business reporter. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Later that week, the New-Hampshire-based sports-media critic Bruce Allen summed up the entire episode. Former Boston Globe sports writer and foreign correspondent Steve Fainaru, now with the Washington Post, received the International Reporting Pulitzer for his stories on private security contractors in Iraq. Another Pulitzer winner with New England ties is Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein, who won for commentary. While Brian McCarthy isn't technically a sportswriter, he definitely acts like one on Twitter. On the plus side, hes got excellent context for the market, having covered it for so long. As one of their top NFL analysts, Clayton is always up to date on the biggest happenings around the league. Not only are his relationships within the organization extensive, his understanding of the clubs history relative to individual players is of real benefit, because much of whats happening with the Red Sox at present is the product of multi-year planning cycles. Montville and Ryan. Good guy, struggled recently with a huge personal loss, and still sticks to his beliefs. But sad to say, the quality of the current scribes is uneven. Here's how they voted, and why. He also happens to be rather hysterical on Twitter. Jason La Canfora is as honest as they come as a writer and he doesn't lose any of that honesty on Twitter. he wrote for the traveler and herald. Weaknesses: Leans towards the traditionalist, and apart from his periodic video work has shown little inclination to evolve his approach. Erudite, clinical, and with a wide range of interests beyond baseball, which he wasnt afraid to bring to the column. As a former NFL player, Matt Bowen has the great ability to give you information regarding what NFL players are thinking. The list is sort of subjective, so I didnt include Peter Gammons, as I think of him more as a baseball writer than a general columnist, while Will McDonough did mainly focus on football, but wrote columns about all sports as well, so hes on the list. 1. If I have a concern regarding Abraham, its his New York ties. My list of those inducted on the first ballot would match yours Montville, Fitzgerald, Ryan. His pen dripped blood, more often than not Ted Williams blood. There must be someone out there in the sports writers fraternity who remembers The Colonel. Now you have to wrestle with whether what youre doing is interesting, Speier said, or a bit of a nuisance., Its not as though the local sports press exists in a total time warp. Minutes earlier, I had stood in the back row of the Superdome as the St. Louis Rams roared back from a 17-3 deficit to tie the game. Dave Egan of the Record-American known as the Colonel. The first two rounds were a slog, with Boston struggling to win each in seven games against the Hawks and the LeBron James-led Cavaliers, respectively. As an NFL writer for the New York Times, Battista specializes in news regarding the New York Giants and New York Jets. The US hockey team was about to play the Soviet Union in the Olympics but their countrymen seemed ready to go to war. Ryan probably sneaks on the list for consistency, if nothing else, but Im just a fan of his writing style. And while hes not in the camp attacking statistics, neither has he embraced them the way that peers like Speier have. Boston Globe Magazine Annalisa Quinn. I never really considered McDonough a columnist, but more of an information guy. And how we would re-double our efforts. Could this get any easier? Shaughnessy wrote. Feel free to include any stories or reasons why you feel the way you do about your list. McDonough and Gammons for super inside knowledge. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe had his moment Saturday as the 67th winner of the Spink Award. He'll tell you exactly what he thinks about a situation, which is usually correct, and he does a great job at interacting with followers. He does a fantastic job covering the Patriots and the rest of the information he provides is generally awesome also. The 2004 Red Sox never lost another game. Glenn Stout, the editor of the Best American Sports Writing series and a longtime New Englander, says, a place like the Globe hasnt had a turnover of voices in 20 or 30 years.. Enter a Crossword Clue Sort by Length Seriously, move onto the next slide already. and the Bruins. Still miss that Sox postgame show he, Upton Bell, and Joe Fitzgerald used to do on 38. For my part, Ive always appreciated the measured tone which hasnt, for the most part, been impacted by the impatience and urgency of Red Sox Nation. I once interviewed him for my high school newspaper, in about 1966. very nice guy. He's. My time will be spent elsewhere, on writers with more substantive agendas to pursue. More perhaps than any of the other writers on this list, Abraham gets the difference in tone between traditional outlets and blogs. On a glorious October morning in 1978, I grabbed my Olivetti and briefcase and began the walk through the Fens. LOVED reading his work. I have little patience, however, for those overtly displaying hostility towards numbers or the sabermetric side of the game. Ray Fitzgerald. It was full of tid bits and humor and occasionally an inside scoop. It was the final crescendo to a season in which the Red Sox and Yankees, two historical rivals, ended with identical records. Don't believe me? It sounds absurd looking back, it was! You're likely to get a big kick out of his tweets. Gammons and McDonough were reporters to me, not columnists. Like his more experienced colleagues, has not actively embraced statistical analysis although he has not taken a line against them, either. Dont know if I could pick a third, but if I had to, it would be Egan or Ryan. Third, want to pick someone current so I pick Reynolds from the ProJo because he reminds me of Roberts although several of his Saturday pieces relate to RI only folklore. Borges, a Globe sportswriter for 24 years who was named Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year four times and is a regular guest on a local sports radio station, was also barred from broadcast. Youre gonna get a letter in the mail from the little fat ones mom as soon as he tells her about this slight. Since he was one of the best to ever play the game, he has loads of knowledge about what really goes on inside the world of the NFL. He is so classy and so informative that following him on Twitter is something that absolutely needs to be done. Its bad enough that media outlets still overpaginate their content in an attempt to articifically inflate viewership metrics, but when the payoff for that click is a few words, well, you become the definition of a poor customer experience. Weaknesses: Stubborn and hostile to non-traditionalist thinking. The playoff run was tougher than the teams 66 regular-season wins might have suggested. With the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the sixth, Thurman Munson signaled for a slider down and in on Fred Lynn. Bob Ryan is the standard bearer but Peter Gammons, Will McDonough and Dan Shauhnessy are soooo ever so close as well it's a tough call. Its good to have him back from the national beat. Strengths: Tomase shows some creativity, rather than just rehashing news that has already been covered by one of the dozen other media members in market. Which is to his credit. I still can see him vaulting over the dasher, heading for open ice, taking a pass from the corner, and scoring the shocking goal that capped off the Miracle on Ice. As a result, the list of young, talented sports reporters who have moved on from Boston media grows longer every year: There's the NHL executive Chris Snow (the Globe ), the NFL Network's Ian. It's a great way to keep up with all the major NFL commentators just by simply following Silva. The extra staffing is important to help the paper fulfill what Sullivan says is its mandate in this digital age: to serve the Web and print at the same time.. Clockwise from left: Marvin Hagler; Dave Cowens and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; a crowd; Kevin Garnett; the 1980 Miracle on Ice; and Dave Roberts' iconic steal. But Bostons defense limited the Lakers to 33 points in the second half and they took a 3-1 lead. When Houston did get to Brady, he was 0 for 5 on completions, but those occasions, the site reported, were rare. Winning titles was nothing new for John Havlicek and Don Nelson, but for Cowens, veteran rebound ace Paul Silas, and young backcourt stars Jo Jo White and Don Chaney, it would be a career first. i remember those columns as being classicwould love to re-rea that one from 84. I finally unfollowed Abraham on Twitter because I didnt really want to read about Yankees on a Boston beat writers Twitter feed. However, when you need a good break from your day and need to know if Tom Brady was mentioned more than Eli Manning on SportsCenterlast week, Deadspin is the place to go. This search result is here to prevent scraping, On the Market: A Rustic-Chic Home on a Ski Trail in Vermont, On the Market: A Newly Built Farmhouse in Concord, Silver Dove Afternoon Tea Opens in Downtown Boston, The Real, Essential Backstory of the MLK Statue The Embrace', Widowmaker Brewing to Expand from Braintree to Brighton in 2023, What the Boston Athenaeum's $17 Million Renovation Looks Like, Careers and Internships at Boston Magazine. 8 Frank DeFord - Sports Illustrated. The players, who called him "Scoop," alternately respected and resented the Boston Globe writer. Priority on this list, with a few exceptions, is given to writers focused exlusively on the Red Sox. When the team added stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to go along with Paul Pierce before the 2007-08 season, there was suddenly hope to hang up banner No. The truth is that Massarottis primary role, at present, is to generate controversy. The truth is that ESPN does a fine job at covering the NFL and their analysts, like John Clayton, provide great information on Twitter. TV, radio, and the Internet all have a big presence in the media landscape. Boston sports fans have seen broadcasters come and go over the decades, but only some are remembered as legends, the guys who we let into our homes like knowledgeable uncles who can talk. Usually, sports reporters give more. Will McDonough Fabulous, witty, candid, funny, yet called it VERY much like is was.I miss this guy! My parents made me a Red Sox fan, but it was Peter Gammons that made me a baseball fan. Brownes coverage is credible if non-differentiated. I grew up in the Montville, Fitzgerald, young Ryan, young Shaughnessy and so missed the older guys like Keane and Claflin.