Join Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy in a special edition of CLNS Media as they sit down with Gary Tanguay to discuss their illustrious careers in sports journalism. Bob Ryan's journey from a summer intern at the Boston Globe to covering the Celtics, alongside Dan Shaughnessy's experiences with the Orioles and transition to Boston, sets the stage for a nostalgic reflection on their paths intersecting at the Globe.
0:00 - Celtics owner selling team
9:03 - Philadelphia 76ers as a threat
10:56 - LeBron's future plans
13:30 - Chris Paul's new team
20:41 - Germany's defending champion
30:50 - Best books mentioned
37:19 - Working with Earl Weaver
40:51 - Transition to Celtics beat
46:55 - Rise of sports writers on TV
50:25 - Intense baseball coverage
54:41 - Fond memories of covering sports
1:00:00 - Mispronouncing Derek Darche's name
1:03:19 - Sports media pinnacle in the 80s
1:10:21 - Nick Cafaro's humor
1:13:19 - Power of media coverage
1:15:11 - Boston Globe's influence
1:20:33 - Pedro's diva behavior
1:30:37 - Jim's successful career
1:32:22 - Holding people accountable
1:37:53 - Dealing with criticism
1:40:10 - Disagree respectfully
1:45:57 - Red Sox narrative
CLNS Media is Powered by:
Prize Picks - PrizePicks.com/CLNS
Download the app today and use code CLNS for a first deposit match up to $100!
Gametime - https://gametime.co
Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code CLNS for $20 off your first purchase. Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. Terms apply.
0:00 - Celtics owner selling team
9:03 - Philadelphia 76ers as a threat
10:56 - LeBron's future plans
13:30 - Chris Paul's new team
20:41 - Germany's defending champion
30:50 - Best books mentioned
37:19 - Working with Earl Weaver
40:51 - Transition to Celtics beat
46:55 - Rise of sports writers on TV
50:25 - Intense baseball coverage
54:41 - Fond memories of covering sports
1:00:00 - Mispronouncing Derek Darche's name
1:03:19 - Sports media pinnacle in the 80s
1:10:21 - Nick Cafaro's humor
1:13:19 - Power of media coverage
1:15:11 - Boston Globe's influence
1:20:33 - Pedro's diva behavior
1:30:37 - Jim's successful career
1:32:22 - Holding people accountable
1:37:53 - Dealing with criticism
1:40:10 - Disagree respectfully
1:45:57 - Red Sox narrative
CLNS Media is Powered by:
Prize Picks - PrizePicks.com/CLNS
Download the app today and use code CLNS for a first deposit match up to $100!
Gametime - https://gametime.co
Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code CLNS for $20 off your first purchase. Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. Terms apply.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00Time for the Bob Ryan Gary Tangway podcast here at CLNS, brought to you by Price Pitch,
00:00:28the exclusive daily fantasy partner of CLNS Media Network. Pick more, pick less with Price
00:00:34Pitch. Okay, Bob, big news with the Celtics, and they totally believe in the theory, sell
00:00:41high. So while this team is at the pinnacle, Witt Grosbeck and his father, I think people
00:00:47need to remember Irv is a big player in this, have put their portion of the team on the
00:00:52block. Your thoughts about that?
00:00:55It blindsided me. And of course, now, we ran a feature story in the Boston Globe during the
00:01:03finals, in which Witt comes off as a thoroughly lovable owner who has endless deep pockets,
00:01:13willing to spend what it takes, and told us that they are not into making money, they're into
00:01:20parades. And then this happens, they win the championship, and then a couple of days, a week
00:01:27later, he's telling us he's going to sell, going to cash in. And it doesn't make him a hypocrite,
00:01:35but I'm a little disappointed, you know, in that regard. But it makes business sense, obviously,
00:01:42for him and his family. But the one reason that we see that we were given had to do with family
00:01:51issues and, quote, estate planning. Well, of course, this is way over our heads at that level
00:01:57that none of us here have any comprehension of what it's like to live at that level, and what the
00:02:01stakes are, and all the ramifications, etc. I understand that. We've seen other sports teams
00:02:08have problems in this regard, okay? Historically. So they don't want to be the latest victim,
00:02:15if you will. I totally understand that. I'm just surprised. I wasn't ready for this. But
00:02:21then you step back from a business sense. Well, why not? If you're ever going to do it,
00:02:26you're going to cash in here. He has been a terrific owner, an ideal owner. And the first
00:02:32thing, now we're worried about who's going to replace him. Now, Steve Pagliuca, who's equally
00:02:41laudable as an owner from a fan standpoint, is still here. And who knows what's going to happen
00:02:48there in terms of whether he's going to buy more into it, or whether it's going to happen. Anyway,
00:02:53we got to say Wick has been a laudable owner. Absolutely.
00:02:58Oh, there's no doubt. I think that when you take a look at Warren Buffett at the age of 93,
00:03:04where 99% of his fortune is going to be in a charitable fund run by his kids,
00:03:10so the kids get 1%, and I'm sure they'll be fine. I think you look at Irv Graf Speck,
00:03:16and I was there at the beginning, and I remember how this whole purchase went down. Irv is a big
00:03:21part of this. He's 89 years old. They don't have heirs. The Krafts, I think the Patriots are going
00:03:28to be in the Kraft family for a long time. I think Jonathan and then Danny, and they have
00:03:33sons and so forth, I think it's going to be handed down. The Graf Speck children, and there are two,
00:03:40I don't think they have an interest. They're not around the team. You would think it would
00:03:44be with dad learning the ropes. That's not the case. So there's nobody to give it to.
00:03:50And when you get in a situation, and you're 89, and you have that kind of money,
00:03:55there's a lot of ramifications that are above our head.
00:03:58Oh, way over mine. I know that.
00:04:00Mine too. So I don't want to put words in people's mouths. I don't know if Wick wants to
00:04:07sell it. I think that the fact that he can be the man until he's 67 years old, I think is great for
00:04:15him because, look, Wick has been mad at me. He's been mad at the pundits. I love him as an owner.
00:04:21He put, they put their money, they paid, look, they spent money, and they bled green. It's all
00:04:27you can want. So you're right that the article was a little, you know, why do you do it then?
00:04:34But hey, look, maybe the guy wanted his own publicity. Maybe he wanted his time to shine.
00:04:39Good for him. He put his money where his mouth was. Cuban did the same thing.
00:04:44He sold out to a Vegas conglomerate. And I think we're getting to the point, Bob,
00:04:48where these franchises are so expensive and the salaries are so expensive, a family can't own it.
00:04:55Interesting. And one of the things here on the side here is that they just handed it out
00:05:01to Whopper contracts that the next guy is going to pay.
00:05:05Right.
00:05:06The next guy is going to pay them. Not this guy, not this one.
00:05:09Well, that was it. It was like, yeah, we're going to give you $600 million, but
00:05:12not our problem.
00:05:17So it's just interesting timing. But I just don't want anybody to get
00:05:23sour or in any way try to sell me their record. The record is very good here.
00:05:31Everybody should have an owner like this. So I don't have any issue there. So that's the big
00:05:36story. But boy, I wasn't ready for that one.
00:05:38Can you think about it, Bob? I mean,
00:05:40billions. These teams are worth billions, $5 billion, $6 billion, which just blows my mind.
00:05:49It's a high level that none of us understand. So that's that one there. We'll see how it goes down.
00:05:58And hopefully now, I think that PAGS and the AVI group and so forth, the existing owners,
00:06:03Jimmy Pallotta, there's a lot of money there. Maybe they'll try to buy them out.
00:06:07I don't know if they're going to be able to do that.
00:06:10I'm really concerned about who's coming in.
00:06:14Well, you have to worry. The odds are they're not going to be anywhere near as good for
00:06:21all of everybody and the fans as this guy's been. So we congratulate him.
00:06:30But that was a blockbuster.
00:06:33Game time is the authorized ticket marketplace of Major League Baseball,
00:06:36which makes getting tickets faster and easier.
00:06:40Prices on the game time app actually go down the closer it gets to the first pitch.
00:06:46So it's really easy. Just download the game time app.
00:06:49OK, now to me right now, the Red Sox are the ticket you want.
00:06:53So go to a Red Sox team. There's nothing better than going to Fenway Park or going to a baseball
00:06:57game, period. So what you do is you download the game time app, create an account, use code CLNS
00:07:04for $20 off of your first purchase. Again, redeem the code CLNS for $20 off. Terms apply.
00:07:13Create an account and redeem the code CLNS for $20 off.
00:07:19Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed.
00:07:23Now let's get to the stuff we think we know something about.
00:07:28After we've had a chance to digest the season with the Celtics,
00:07:30who do you think right now is their biggest threat next year?
00:07:32When I was going back a few weeks or a month or so,
00:07:36I definitely targeted the Knicks as the team, the next threat coming up.
00:07:42Fully recognizing that Isaiah Hartenstein wasn't going to be there,
00:07:46but that they would figure something out in that regard. But we'll see.
00:07:50But then they've traded with Mikkel Bridges, even more strengthening the thought process there,
00:07:56that the Knicks are a team of consequence. And they are going to be a team of consequence,
00:08:01but are they the threat? However, Philadelphia clearly has to be the one to think about right
00:08:10now. Because not only did they sign Paul George, who gives them a star player on the wing to go
00:08:17with a center or whatever you want to call them, a four and a half, five minus, but a great player
00:08:25and an MVP level player. And one of my favorite new players in the league in the last several
00:08:32years, Maxie, as you probably know, I've been a charter member of the Tyrese Maxie fan club
00:08:37going back to Kentucky. But they did take a little MB insurance and Andre Drummond,
00:08:45as long as they're not asking too much from him, and Eric Gordon in the backcourt,
00:08:50and re-signed Kelly Oubre. And they should be smiling. I think they're feeling pretty good
00:08:56about themselves right now. And now our colleague, Jeff Goodman, where he's here,
00:09:03I'm going to speak on his behalf, would say, maybe Paul George isn't temperamentally suited
00:09:09for Philadelphia's microscope, as opposed to the Lakers and the Clippers being the little brother
00:09:17out in L.A., you know, in terms of the fan interest. I don't know. But he can play. He's
00:09:23got credentials. He's going to get an upgrade there. They lost Tobias Harris. They're not
00:09:28worried about that. You know, they got Paul George. And so are they feeling right now in the east?
00:09:34Well, if the big guy stays healthy, I mean, that's one of the things that the Celtics,
00:09:38excuse me, they had an amazing run, but they were fortunate. Butler was hurt. Embiid was hurt.
00:09:44The Bucs weren't healthy. Halliburton got hurt. Yeah, right. Yes. Oh, the pace was right. He got
00:09:50hurt. So, and even against Dallas, you know, the big guy, he wasn't 100%. If Embiid is healthy,
00:09:59that changes everything to me. And when you know that, he can't. I mean, that's the deal.
00:10:04And hey, he's giving them problems. Well, of course, that was before
00:10:08Brzingis. But, you know, I'll never forget the game he played two years ago. He got 50,
00:10:11and it looked like it was a clinic. It was absolutely clinic. No, I respect him. You know,
00:10:17keeping him around the court is always an issue. But boy, when he's there, he can do some good
00:10:21things. So that's that Philly for sure. Now, meanwhile, other thing, Donovan Mitchell signed
00:10:30three years for 150. And he's locked up in Cleveland. And yeah, they had to do it. Just
00:10:41the numbers blow your mind. But all these numbers blow our minds now.
00:10:44Look, I mean, hey, White got 115, 120, you know.
00:10:46Yeah, yeah. And that's a big story. LeBron, you know, the whole-
00:10:53Yeah, what about the LeBron? What about son and dad playing together?
00:10:56LeBron coming back for two years at 50, 104, 52. And he'll be 42 years of age when those
00:11:08playoffs roll around in 2026. And so that'll be interesting. The whole LeBron-Brownie thing,
00:11:15you know, it's, you know, it was one of those abstract concepts that I don't know about you,
00:11:20but I kind of laughed at. And it's here. And whether what role and whether he'll even be on
00:11:28the regular roster, despite the fact that they've given him a guarantee, LeBronie will have,
00:11:35we'll see. But it's here, and we'll see how it plays out. They're still not a threat,
00:11:41the Lakers. You know, they need a lot more. They're not a threat in the West. They're a
00:11:46borderline playoff team. That's all, no more, no less. A couple of interesting moves, though,
00:11:51for people out there. Certainly, Klay Thompson- Right.
00:11:55After leaving, you know, in a, I won't say acrimonious, but not a completely
00:12:01commodious departure from the only team he's ever played for. Didn't end in a pleasant way,
00:12:07the way everybody would like to have done. But he's out of there, and he'll be well paid
00:12:13going to Dallas. Now, he wasn't the Klay Thompson of, you know, your, but he's still effective.
00:12:20And I think that's an important addition, as long as they don't overplay him. Maybe give him a
00:12:25little Al Horford treatment, you know? Fine. You know, if they can do that, because the key is,
00:12:30have him ready for April, and May, and June. And that's got to be the goal. But they are,
00:12:37right away, they got an upgrade there, and they got another addition. So that's very good.
00:12:43And the other intriguing one, at least maybe you can suggest something, too, is Chris Paul.
00:12:50Who is going to go to OKC, who needed some direction. And the idea is that he'll get home
00:12:58and win the ball. And as long as he's willing to accept, you know, if they cut his minutes and,
00:13:05you know, don't treat him like a Hall of Famer, but as a useful adjunct, and he's okay with that,
00:13:11that should work out pretty well. But he's 39. I mean, he can't have that much left. He still
00:13:17can make an open shot, and he still knows how to play the game. And he might be a good guy for them
00:13:22to have on the floor in those final five minutes of games. And so I think that's an intriguing
00:13:26place for him. Both circle for him. Yeah. Right? Forgot. Yeah, Chris Paul. It's been that long.
00:13:34Yeah, he's moved. Yeah, for a Hall of Famer, he's moved around a lot. But, you know, and he is a
00:13:38Hall of Famer. He's a first batter. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh boy, but he came on strong. I
00:13:42remember. Well, New Orleans had to move to Oklahoma. They were off and running.
00:13:46PrizePix is America's number one daily fantasy app with over 5 million active members.
00:13:51It is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps on
00:13:56PrizePix, it's just you against the numbers. Get in on the daily action with your friends.
00:14:02Become part of the PrizePix community today. All you do is pick more or less on two to six players.
00:14:08Their staff projections and watch the winnings roll in. You can now win up to 100 times your
00:14:13money on PrizePix with as little as four correct picks. You could turn $10 into $1,000.
00:14:21PrizePix is available in more than 30 states across the country, including California,
00:14:25Texas and Georgia. Now, here's something that you can think about. What you can think about
00:14:31here with PrizePix. Here's an example of something you could. This is the whole idea behind the
00:14:37concept. Caitlin Clark for more than three and a half three-pointers made. And Brianna Stewart
00:14:42for more than 23 points. See, it's that simple. Download the PrizePix app today and use the code
00:14:48CLNS for a first deposit match up to $100. That's code CLNS on PrizePix for a deposit
00:14:55match up to $100. Pick more, pick less. It's that easy. Isaiah Hardenstein, though,
00:15:04they probably overpaid him. But that's interesting because of what it meant to the Knicks and what it
00:15:11meant to them. That gives him a major physical presence up front. He can step outside and shoot
00:15:17a little bit. He's a good rebounder. I certainly am learning all about him because who knew about
00:15:24him? He didn't play college here. He's from Germany. We didn't know anything about Isaiah
00:15:28Hardenstein. And that's a good pickup for them. So I think they're smiling fairly
00:15:34broadly right now about their chances of catching Dallas. But meanwhile, Dallas is
00:15:39on paper a better team than when we last saw them right away. Yeah, they are. They are.
00:15:44That's good. Any others catch your eye? No, I mean, you know, there's plenty of stuff.
00:15:49That's a big one. Those are the big ones. Yeah, those are the big ones. The one thing I have
00:15:53noticed is that the young guys all seem to be very happy with their teams. We don't have a lot
00:15:58of disgruntled superstars. We don't have LeBron wanting to move here and here. We don't have Durant
00:16:06wanting to move here and there. We have older guys who are going to places to be complementary
00:16:11players to take a last bite of the apple. Kevin Love going back. Kevin Love is going to be back
00:16:21for another year. There you go. So the big stars, the true mainstays, are with their teams and
00:16:27they're not going anywhere. Everybody's happy, Bob. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we're going to
00:16:34have the entire team back. I know. I know. Unless the Lucids aren't tied up with Sam Houser yet.
00:16:42Where does that stand? I have not seen anything, but I can't imagine it's a problem. If he does
00:16:47depart, it could be that our number one draft pick is in fact an absolute replica of Sam Houser.
00:16:56Yeah, but we know that Jeff Goodman loves the guy. Yeah, and I'm impressed. I saw him in the
00:17:02Big East, the upperclubs and personal. Of course, we got obviously a heavy endorsement from his
00:17:08original coach, Eric Henderson at South Dakota State. But I think that's a really fortunate
00:17:15draft pick at 30 on paper right now. But meanwhile, everybody's bad. They have 15 guys under
00:17:22contract, I believe right now, including everybody that matters. And I just double check
00:17:27on exactly what Houser's status, but everybody else is back. I'm just saying it says Houser's in.
00:17:33I have missed it, but the Celtics are set to bring back, trigger low money options,
00:17:41agreeing to a one-year deal with Luke Cornett. Yeah, I got Luke Cornett back as well.
00:17:46Triggering a low money option with Sam Houser, so that he's back.
00:17:49Tillman back. And you know what? He's Al Horford insurance, number one. And he's a little bit of
00:17:58five insurance too, but this guy's no stiff. This guy's a useful player, I think. And that's why
00:18:04when I said very categorically that not only were the best one to five and the best one to eight,
00:18:08but they were the best one to 10 in the league. And no one can match your roster. And I'll say
00:18:14it once again, everybody else would trade their entire roster for the Boston Celtics roster and
00:18:19hand it over to their coach, whoever their coach of choice, and say, don't drive this Ferrari off
00:18:23the road. And this is what Joe Majula has to do, is keep the Ferrari on the road. And he was able
00:18:31to do that and look what happened. I'm curious already about next year, but let's enjoy this.
00:18:41I've already cautioned people, let these guys strut around for a month. They're worried about
00:18:45number 19. What do you think about the Olympics? That obviously, we've got a veteran laden team,
00:18:52obviously, and the guys. And then the big question though, was whether Embiid would play
00:18:58enough on Philadelphia should play. And I know there are people out there who don't think he's
00:19:02wise to play and Philadelphia should do everything they can to try to dissuade him from playing
00:19:06because of his historic fragility, you know, but we we need a big man. If you tell me who's the
00:19:13next best American born big five man, it's Bam out of bio as far as I can tell. And after that,
00:19:23you know who I think wouldn't be out of place on this team? Brook Lopez at 36.
00:19:29Oh, wow.
00:19:30Because he has, you know, he's always, you know, he's now he's a three point shooter,
00:19:34but he's experienced. He's a good defender. I wouldn't mind him being a backing up, you know,
00:19:39Embiid on this team. But Bam's there, I believe. But we don't have that many
00:19:46American born fives or bigs of any consequence.
00:19:48Well, the game is the game doesn't want it. I mean, you even saw in college,
00:19:53you know, we had a couple of big guys, but.
00:19:56Well, one of them is a Canadian. And I wonder if Zack Eadie, you know, what role, if any,
00:20:00they plan for him, because Canada's got some talent and including a starting backcourt of
00:20:07Shea Gillegis, Alexander and Jamal Murray, assuming that will be there and it should be
00:20:13their backcourt. And that can match up with anybody in the world, starting with us,
00:20:18that backcourt can match up, no question. And they got some, you know, they got some peripheral
00:20:23talent, Wiggins and Barrett. And I'm forgetting a few people. Helio Linnick should be on their team
00:20:28as a useful utility man. They've never meddled. And they've been kind of in a position to do so
00:20:36for a few Olympiads now. So maybe it's just a year to, you know, I would think their goal,
00:20:40I mean, obviously you want to win, but you got to tell me their goal is to be on that podium
00:20:44and to get a medal finally. And now Germany is the defending, is the champion of the world
00:20:51championship team. And the Ritz brothers are back and Schroeder and Hartenstein, I assume,
00:20:56is going to be on that team. I don't know. Dennis Tice, Daniel Tice. But so Germany,
00:21:03we still should win. I mean, come on. I'll be rather shocked if we don't win.
00:21:12So that's that. I'm looking forward to it. But just my own personal interest beyond that,
00:21:18as I just said, I'm curious about Canada. I'd like to see them medal. I'd like, for the good
00:21:24of Canadian basketball, I hope they can medal. Give hockey a run for their money. And box lacrosse.
00:21:30France, you know, they were a finalist last time. But, you know, Wembiana, now they got,
00:21:39they got, I don't know about the backcourt. Evan Fournier is still going to be on that team,
00:21:43shooting threes. Nicholas Batum, I'm forgetting some people. But now I don't know whether these
00:21:50new young draft picks are good enough to be on their team, that, you know, that Riccazzi and
00:21:55Alex Sarr. But anyway, we're still the favorites. We're the nominal. Now they get rolling this
00:22:00weekend, practicing. And I know that people in Philly are very antsy about the NB's presence.
00:22:07So we'll see. Well, Bob, listen, enjoy the holiday break. I have to tell people that there is a
00:22:14two-part special over the next couple of weeks on CLNS with Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy together.
00:22:20I was happy to host it. And it's a career retrospective about the globe life of Bob
00:22:26Ryan. And the same for Dan Shaughnessy. It was great. I mean, I had heard some of the stories
00:22:32and I'd love hearing them again, but then there's a whole slew of new ones,
00:22:36but it's really good. So you want to check it out at CLNS media and clns.com and on social media.
00:22:43Bob, we're brought to you by PrizePix. Sorry, long day as I lose my voice.
00:22:48Exclusive daily fantasy partner of CLNS Media Network. Pick more, pick less with PrizePix.
00:22:53Bob, enjoy the holiday. Talk to you soon. This special edition of Bob Ryan and Gary Tangway
00:22:58on CLNS is brought to you by PrizePix, the exclusive daily fantasy partner of CLNS Media
00:23:03Network. Pick more, pick less with PrizePix. As you can see, we're joined by our friend Dan
00:23:08Shaughnessy. And this show is all about the careers of Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy. I find
00:23:13these two gentlemen fascinating. I read them in the Boston Globe in the deep woods of Maine,
00:23:18which Bob now calls his vacation home, being one of those Massachusetts sites that travels to Maine
00:23:24every summer. And to have known them and work with them has been an honor, but I find their lives
00:23:30in their profession fascinating. So I want to talk to them about what they've accomplished
00:23:34in their careers because it is immeasurable. Okay, guys, I want this just to be a conversation,
00:23:40free flowing, and I think you guys will be okay talking about yourself. I think you'll be all
00:23:45right. Bob, I'm going to start with you. When did you start at the Boston Globe and why did
00:23:50you want to be a sports writer? I started on June 10, 1968 as a summer intern. I had applied
00:23:58for it probably in late February. I don't know. I don't remember the genesis of that
00:24:04necessarily, but I was an unusual intern in that I was a graduate. Most interns are undergraduates.
00:24:10It's like after their junior year or sophomore year, not after their senior year. But anyway,
00:24:15I was taken in by the Globe. And on that day, there were two other fellow sports interns,
00:24:21one of whom was a guy named Peter Gamitz from University of North Carolina and Groton School.
00:24:28And we kind of hit it off right away. And that was a few years ago. Yes, that's how I got started.
00:24:34And I was a summer intern. Then I was also in the Army Reserves. I enlisted in March,
00:24:41and I was going to have to go on active duty. So when the summer, when the actual internship was
00:24:46over in late August, early September, I asked him if I could stick around till I went on active
00:24:50duty in late October and hang around and do whatever they wanted as an office boy or whatever.
00:24:55And they let me do that. And as such, I covered high school football on Saturdays and Sundays for
00:25:01the Globe for $25 a shot. And the public leagues played, schools played on Saturday. But in those
00:25:09days, the Catholic, there were two Catholic conferences, the Catholic Conference and
00:25:13Catholic Central, they played on Sunday. So every weekend in that fall, I was covering high school
00:25:18football. Now, I first remember Dan Shaughnessy. I was actually, we were looking at the Sunday Globe,
00:25:25because in Maine, you didn't really read the Globe every day. It was always the Rumford Falls Times
00:25:32and the Lewiston Daily Sun. And then the Sunday Globe, that was a special event. And why I remember
00:25:39this, I don't know. But I was with my friend, Rich Kimball, who you guys have been on the radio with.
00:25:44And I remember Rich, he said, who's this guy, Shaughnessy? Because Gammons had been doing the
00:25:49baseball thing. That sticks out in my mind. And you were new to us, because up in Maine,
00:25:56you had been in Baltimore. So Dan, tell us about your journey to the Globe.
00:26:02Well, I think they had, a big thing for me was my dad subscribing to it when I was probably,
00:26:12you know, eighth or ninth grade. And I think the Globe probably was trying to fan out in the mid
00:26:17late 60s and have a wider circulation beyond Route 495. And Groton, we didn't have access to a lot.
00:26:26I delivered the Lowell Sun and all that. I was very immersed in sports, not quite as much as
00:26:33young Bob Ryan probably, but a lot. And then when we started to get that Globe every day,
00:26:39boy, that was life changing for me, just gobble it up. And then when I was at Holy Cross,
00:26:46they had correspondence in the colleges that were not in Boston. So you had a kid at Providence or
00:26:52UMass or Dartmouth or Holy Cross to call in football stuff and occasionally write a byline
00:26:59story that they weren't staffing, because the Globe did a lot more colleges in those days.
00:27:05So my first byline is in 1973 or four. Yeah. And then I got to come in the summers and do
00:27:16Boston Neighborhood Basketball League, which they sponsored, you know, keep the peace,
00:27:20keep kids off the streets. And then like Bob did high schools, it was up to thirty five dollars a
00:27:26day in 1975. And I did that with Kevin DuPont and Leslie Visser right after we graduated.
00:27:33We were Divisions 2, 3 and 4. And then we just I had to go to Baltimore for five years to
00:27:40make my my bones there and cover the Orioles, which was great.
00:27:45And then I came back full time in 81 and have been back ever since.
00:27:48You know what I've been believing, I think I've told you this over the years,
00:27:51that Baltimore Orioles experience, it affected you to where nothing's ever going to measure
00:27:59up to that again for you. The guys you dealt with, the characters, the personalities,
00:28:05one of whom you're very friendly with now, Jim Palmer, a.k.a. Cakes. You can tell people where
00:28:10that comes from. But, you know, I just think it affected you so much. Nothing's ever measured up
00:28:17than that experience in terms of baseball experience as covering those Orioles teams.
00:28:22It was quite a way to start. And all those Hall of Famers and, of course,
00:28:26Earl Weaver, the manager, that's the guy you rely on every day. And we had the best guy in
00:28:30terms of taking care of the media. So it was a great way to break in. I was 23 years old,
00:28:34much like yourself. So, yeah, it's a good way to start.
00:28:38Can you elaborate on the Baltimore experience, Dan, in what specifically in what Bob's talking
00:28:44about? Mention, I remember some of the players, the Radicchies, the Lowensteins,
00:28:48obviously the Jim Farmers and the Earl Weavers. But for those who don't know, just kind of give
00:28:52us the details. Well, you know, they had been, you know, they won the World Series in 66
00:28:56when I was in junior high. And then in high school, they're in it three times,
00:29:0069, 70, 71. They only won it once. They won all three. They won all three, 109, 108 win teams.
00:29:07But anyway, so they were it. And when I got there, it was Brooks Robinson's last year and
00:29:13Eddie Murray's rookie year. It was like Cousy and Havlicek. They had both had this for a brief
00:29:19time. They were both there the one year. They all said, you know, Jim Palmer, of course, the manager,
00:29:24Cal Ripken Sr. was the third base coach. His son was playing high school soccer in Aberdeen. I
00:29:29wrote a story on young Cal. And then Frank Robinson came up as a coach a year later after the Indians
00:29:37fired him. So we were surrounded by all these Hall of Famers and greatness. And then you had
00:29:41the core of young people. And I was lucky because Mark Belanger was from Pittsfield
00:29:45and Mike Flanagan was from Manchester, went to UMass with all my friends. And then Bike ends up
00:29:50winning the Cy Young Award my third year in the beat. And he was a Manchester guy. So it was just
00:29:56all around me. I mean, legends and then New England guys and characters. And, you know,
00:30:03they were the last day of the season. Even by 70 standards, it was very friendly and very media
00:30:10friendly because this didn't happen in Boston. I had been around the Red Sox in the 70s,
00:30:14working for Associated Press with Dave O'Hara. And I knew this was different. So the last day
00:30:19of the season, 77, they gave us a sheet of paper with every player's home phone number and address
00:30:26in case you want to talk to Jim Palmer during the offseason.
00:30:30Yeah, there's so many things that access are different, but that tops this. That's
00:30:37chart stopper right there.
00:30:38How do you think, Bob? We just heard how Dan got his start and how those five years formed him.
00:30:47If you read your book, Scribe, which, by the way, I want to say that the two best books you
00:30:52both have written, one is Scribe and the other is Senior Year, which I'll get to Dan in a moment.
00:30:58If you read the opening of Senior Year, if you don't cry, you're not a human being.
00:31:02I know everybody thinks it's about the curse of the Bambino and all that. But
00:31:05Senior Year for me is the book as his curse. So what made you, we just talked about Dan,
00:31:11how those five years in Baltimore kind of helped him. But what made you you
00:31:15in your early years at the Globe?
00:31:18I really think I was allowed to be myself. I entered the Globe at a point in time in which
00:31:25Tom Winship was the editor. Tom Winship was one of the great American editors of the 20th century.
00:31:32And he wanted to elevate the Globe at that point in time. It was on an upward swing
00:31:39and an off basis. He was not particularly knowledgeable about sports, but he recognized
00:31:46sports importance in the Boston community and in New England. And he wanted the Globe to have
00:31:53a superior sports staff. And so the resources were available to the sports editor to send people
00:31:59wherever we needed to go and things like that. But you had support. Also, the Globe was a writer's
00:32:06paper. Now, there's two kinds of publications in the English speaking world that I know of,
00:32:11writer's papers, writer's publications and editor's publications. And Sports Illustrated,
00:32:17for example, has historically been an editor's magazine. You have nothing but writers complaining
00:32:23about their copy being mangled when you get to know your friends from Sports Illustrated over
00:32:27the years. That's when it mattered. It's done now, what we know. It's on its legs. And they
00:32:32got internal strife that's just horrible. But anyway, and the Globe encouraged writers. They
00:32:38encouraged us to take some journalistic liberties, if you will. Peter Gammage and I were allowed to
00:32:43be ourselves. And there was a great copy editor named Art Heifer kind of reigned me in a little
00:32:48bit when I got a little too crazy. And I'm very grateful for that. So in terms of just the writing
00:32:55and being able to express myself, and the fact that I was handed basketball, I was thrown into
00:33:02the deep end of the pool, the way I got the... It's a story that people probably today can't
00:33:06believe in the business. After I was a summer intern, and I went on the Army, I came back
00:33:12in February of 68 to the Globe as an office boy, which meant I was, you know, Monday through Friday,
00:33:19I was an office boy. But I did a few little writing things. And I was given a verbal promise
00:33:26that I would get an opening on the staff when it was available. So the month, March, April, May,
00:33:32June, July, September, and now we're in the middle of October. And Fran Rosa, the morning sports
00:33:37editor comes up to me one day, I believe it was on a Wednesday that week, and it could have been a
00:33:42Tuesday, because it's important in the story, and said, you probably thought we forgot all about you,
00:33:46but you're going to be on the staff. Bob Sayles, who was the guy who was covering the Celtics for
00:33:50several years, is leaving to go to news. Sayles was a frustrated columnist. He wanted to be a
00:33:56columnist. We didn't have an opening. And he said, hell with this. And he went in the news, and he
00:34:00later became the sports editor of the Herald, by the way. Anyway, oh, and by the way, he said,
00:34:05you're covering the Celtics on Friday night, the opener, home opener. The opener.
00:34:09What year was that? And who was on the team?
00:34:101969. And so this is the first year post Bill Russell and Sam Jones. This is the
00:34:16new look Celtics. Hank Finkle. Henry Finkle. We didn't even know he was Hank then. We knew him as
00:34:23Henry. And so I had not, obviously I had no exhibition games. I had not met the new coach,
00:34:29Tom Heinsohn. I'd never covered an NBA game in any fashion. But they knew that, I guess it was,
00:34:35well, the kid likes basketball. We'll see what he can do. You know, it was kind of desperation.
00:34:39Now, actually, Peter Gammons and I split that job for about the first month at home. We didn't go
00:34:44on the road at all. And they gave it to me. And Peter wound up doing what he should have been
00:34:48doing ultimately, which was baseball. But not that he wasn't good at basketball, but his first love
00:34:54is baseball. So that's how I got started. And the people I dealt with made it possible for me to
00:34:59flourish. Tommy Heinsohn was very good with me. Now, here he was, a rookie coach. I never coached
00:35:05a thing in his life. And, you know, so to his advantage to have a good relation with the most
00:35:11important media representative, the Boston Globe was far and away the most important entity to
00:35:15cover the team. Local television had no role whatsoever in those days in terms of coverage.
00:35:21And we were the premier paper in town. And then for me, it was obviously important to get the
00:35:27coach and to learn the nuances of the NBA. My orientation had been college basketball. Yeah,
00:35:31I went to Celtic games when I was at BC. Yeah, I didn't go to Celtic games. It was the Gossam
00:35:35Garden, for God's sake. They were the Celtics. But my heart and soul was in college. And the
00:35:40NBA is a different game. So I had been learning the nuances of the NBA. Well, I had some mentors
00:35:44named John Havlicek, Don Nelson, and Tom Sachs Sanders, among others. That's on one side. And
00:35:50the other side of his guys, I was the same age as the rookies. I was the same age as Don Chaney
00:35:54and Joe Joe White and Steve Kiburski, the young guys. And the next year, I was one year older than
00:35:58Dave Cowens. So socially, it was a good fit. Even the veterans weren't that much older than me,
00:36:04late 20s. So that's how I got started. And they treated me well and gave me access. I went to
00:36:11practice every day. I learned the plays in due time, knew all the plays in a way that nobody
00:36:18does today because nobody gets to go to practice. Yeah, it's all close practice. Yeah, because it's
00:36:22super top secret in the nuclear science that they're doing there on the floor.
00:36:27Game time is the authorized ticket marketplace of Major League Baseball, which makes getting
00:36:32tickets faster and easier. Prices on the game time app actually go down the closer it gets to
00:36:39the first pitch. So it's really easy. Just download the game time app. Okay, now to me right now,
00:36:45the Red Sox are the ticket you want. So go to a Red Sox team. There's nothing better than going
00:36:50to Fenway Park or going to a baseball game period. So what you do is you download the game time app,
00:36:56create an account, use code CLNS for $20 off of your first purchase. Again,
00:37:03redeem the code CLNS for $20 off. Terms apply. Create an account and redeem the code
00:37:10CLNS for $20 off. Download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed.
00:37:18Danny, so before I want to leave your Baltimore story, can you just tell us what it was like
00:37:25to work with Earl Weaver? And for those of you who may not know who I'm talking about,
00:37:30you have to Google this guy.
00:37:35They were very successful. I mean, he is one of the great winning percentages of all time. They
00:37:38won 90 just showing up. And he could do it with veterans or with young guys. He was a master.
00:37:43Ahead of his time, he was doing the matchup numbers before other people. And it was very
00:37:47primitive. They kept index cards and things like that, but had all that. And he understood our job.
00:37:54And he would give you, if you hung around, he'd give you a different story. After everybody left,
00:37:59he'd give you something else. And to the point when we were on the West Coast, I mean, we traveled
00:38:03with them, as Bob knows. And we were on the planes and the buses and some charter, some commercial,
00:38:10but the bus left an hour after the last pitch, whatever. And we had to get downstairs, get some
00:38:16quotes, go upstairs, finish up the story, and still make the bus. The bus waits for no man.
00:38:21That was the mantra. And they meant it. But they wanted you on there, so it wasn't a pain.
00:38:28And so, Earl would give us the quotes before the game on getaway day on the West Coast.
00:38:34He'd say, well, if we win, I'll say this. If we lose, I'll say this. And whoever gets to winning
00:38:39here, I'll say, that's what we're paying them to do. And it was just very, very lax that way.
00:38:45And you travel with them. I mean, I was, again, I was 23. It was an eye-opener. I
00:38:53was from Groton. I had never been on a plane. I had never done anything. And here I was
00:38:58traveling with the Orioles, seeing America, and seeing all these magic cathedrals that I saw on
00:39:03black and white TV, Tiger Stadium and Cleveland and Chicago, Comiskey Park. It was a big thrill
00:39:11for me. And just they treated me very well. And as Bob said, I was younger than most of the
00:39:17players, but I was the same age as Eddie Murray, Scotty McGregor, Richie Dower, young guys that
00:39:22were on the team. So how did you end up at the Globe? And was it a hard decision to leave Baltimore
00:39:29even though this was your hometown paper? Well, my papers kept going out of business. It's just
00:39:33the thing that it was a precursor of what happened to the whole industry. But I went from the Baltimore
00:39:38Evening Sun to the Washington Star to cover the same Oriole team. So it didn't change what I was
00:39:44doing. But it was a larger paper. It was in the nation's capital, going up against Tom Boswell
00:39:50of the Post. And I just thought it was, you know, I knew the editor. It was Dave Smith, who had been
00:39:54Bob's first boss at the Globe. So yeah, that was, and then the Star went out of business in the
00:39:59summer of 81. And at that point, I had a lot of choices because when you're 28, you've been doing
00:40:05Major League Ball for five years, you're single. In those days, every newspaper wanted to hire you.
00:40:10So I had a lot of options. And Boston was home. And I had always wanted to work for the Globe. And
00:40:18much like with Bob, they didn't even have a beat or position. They just said,
00:40:22we'll take you because we know you got to decide. And I came back and, excuse me, within a year
00:40:30coming back, young Bob Ryan went to television, foolishly, and then opened up the Celtic Beat.
00:40:36And they said, well, why don't you fill in for, you know, fill in for Bob, keep the chair warm.
00:40:42So I did that for four years. And then Bob came back, Peter Gammons left. I went back to baseball,
00:40:49and everybody was happy. Yeah, I got to ask you, because I got to ask you, because after all these
00:40:54years, I had you guys over to our house for dinner. And I remember giving you an encouraging
00:40:59pep talk to take this job. Did you need persuasion? What was it? Do you remember the genesis of that?
00:41:04Were you hesitant? Were you not sure you wanted to do this to Boston? Yeah, take the Celtics beat
00:41:10when I take the Celtics beat? Well, I just, you know, you were you were the problem, you know,
00:41:15following you is not, I just felt very intimidated by that I had been. I had been out of touch with
00:41:21the NBA and with the Celtics. I you know, obviously, Larry Bird had come in, they won that
00:41:25championship in 81. But you were the commissioner of basketball at that point. And I just I felt
00:41:31ill equipped for that having just done five years of MLB to go to the Celtics, but I grew up with it.
00:41:41That helped a lot, you know, because when I was a child, they won the championship every year was
00:41:45like the the the pacifia blooming in the springtime. So I knew all that stuff. And that
00:41:51was helpful. And there they all were in the flesh, you know, read our back and, and then you'd see
00:41:58Collins to come back and john Havlicek. And, and yeah, but I think the problem of following you was
00:42:04the most daunting part of it for me. Bob, what was your Did you know Dan prior to him coming here in
00:42:1181? Were you familiar with him because of his prior stint with the globe? And what was your
00:42:15impression of him as he was coming on board? No, we, we didn't really because I was on the
00:42:19baseball beat one year in 77. That full time. And then I got off it. After you'll be when Peter
00:42:26Gammons, who factors in both our lives, came back from the sports illustrated, took his job,
00:42:31which is which was proper. I had no problem with that. Anyway, so now we got to know each other.
00:42:37Maybe we did have some kind of I don't remember Dan about having much of your action when you
00:42:42were very, you were very helpful to young people. And the year you were on baseball,
00:42:47we interacted quite a bit. Because you'd come to Baltimore. And you didn't know that many people
00:42:52there. So we'd hang out a little bit. And we went to Hawaii together in 1977. Baseball meetings.
00:43:00Oh, yes. Okay. That sounds very good. Okay. That's, you know, I remember that those meetings
00:43:05very well. That's when they made the big trade to get Jerry Remy, Jerry Remy. Exactly. We were
00:43:10at the baseball meetings. Okay. Any Mai Tai's consumed at those baseball meetings? We did. We
00:43:17went out once or twice. But I do remember distinctly, though, that I wanted Dan to
00:43:22take the job for me. And I said he was the logical person to me at the Globe at the time.
00:43:27And so I had him over to the house and gave him a pep talk. That's all I can tell you.
00:43:34So you're there in 81. Now, to me, and you guys can correct me if I'm wrong,
00:43:40but in the first time I remember seeing Bob Ryan on television, I don't know why I remember these
00:43:44little nuggets. And I've told Bob this before. First time I remember seeing Bob on television
00:43:48is he did a hit, Dan, for CBS, the NBA on CBS in Milwaukee, probably right outside of Goolsby's,
00:43:58right, Bob? He did a hit for CBS with the Bucs Celtics final with series in 74.
00:44:08Yeah, I believe that's what I remember. So, you know, when this, you guys were becoming rock,
00:44:17you guys were becoming rock stars. I mean, you really were. You know, I don't know, Bob,
00:44:21maybe you could talk about this a little bit. When did you notice where God, I mean, Willie,
00:44:27Will McDonough, you, Peter, then Dan came on board. You mentioned Leslie Visser. She went to TV.
00:44:34When did you start to notice that you guys were becoming more than just Boston pundits?
00:44:41OK, first of all, in Boston, the pioneer was Bud Collins. Bud Collins in tennis was the first
00:44:48writer, sports writer. This is unarguable. He was the first sports writer to make a regular
00:44:55presence on television in Boston on Channel 2 at various tennis things. And eventually,
00:45:01Bud went into television full time and writing part time. And but then he's known to the world
00:45:09as a television writer. But he's one of the great sports writers of all time. Anyway,
00:45:14here's what's happening. First of all, ESPN came into being in 1979. WFAN came into being on radio,
00:45:21full time talk radio for sports around the same time. And we were starting to get more and more
00:45:28local talk radio at one point. You know, way back, it was only the Voice of Sports on channel
00:45:33on HDH. And then there was Sportscope with Leon and with Eli Schleifer and George Benton, Ted
00:45:40Sullivan on the end of the dial at 1600 UNR. Anyway, there's more of a need for expertise
00:45:47for people who who know what they're talking about. And the source of expertise for these
00:45:51people to interview were writers. We're the ones that were traveling. We were the ones that were
00:45:54going around. You know, the local TV people didn't do anything of that nature at that time.
00:45:59And and so and this is and nationally was the same thing. ESPN needed people for talking head
00:46:05shows and writers were a natural source of it. And and so that that's how it all happened. And
00:46:12so the thing is, if you're any good, you know, some people and talk radio, some people are
00:46:17naturally comfortable in front of the microphone or or the television and some aren't. Some very
00:46:21good writers weren't very good on television. And they're not that great at marshalling their
00:46:25thoughts quickly or they're not just not comfortable in that. They don't feel right.
00:46:30Well, I have I call it the ham factor. If you have the ham factor, you're OK. I think I had
00:46:34the ham factor thing. And yeah, you know, and that's it. I was, you know, I think the ego
00:46:40thing, I liked it and I was comfortable with it. And so for me that it worked. But but I think
00:46:46the answer to your question is they needed people who knew what the hell they were talking about,
00:46:50who would actually be doing stuff to to to shed light on the topics of the day.
00:46:54And that's how it all got started. Danny, for you, when did you notice? Obviously,
00:46:59you were taking over for Bob Ryan. And then, you know, we perceived you as the guy that replaced
00:47:04Gammon's. I mean, whether that's accurate or not, how that lines up. But that's what I remember.
00:47:10How did you deal with that? And how do you think your life would have been
00:47:14different if you had stayed in Baltimore as opposed to Boston?
00:47:16Oh, I mean, I love Baltimore. It was perfect for five years and people were great, but I wasn't
00:47:24going to finish up there, live it out there. I mean, Boston was, you know, I wanted a bigger,
00:47:31bigger market because I want to be home. So I turned down Chicago and Chicago was the one
00:47:37that was closest, you know, most tempting for me when I had my free agent period there. But
00:47:43in Boston was home and I just had so much reverence for the globe. And part of it was
00:47:46like I was the guy who thought Gammon's and Ryan were rock stars, you know, so I'm
00:47:50I'm coming up seven, eight years later. And they were so influential in everything I did,
00:47:57the way I covered the team, the way I wrote, write and try to write snappy leads,
00:48:02keeping data, having connections, Sunday notes, columns. I took all that with me to Baltimore,
00:48:08Washington, and then brought it back with me and then end up replacing both guys, you know,
00:48:13replacing Bob on the beat in 82 and replacing Peter on the beat in 86. And that was in both
00:48:20cases really hard because the readers were used to these guys who were the best there ever was
00:48:25at what they were doing. So that was a lot to do. It was I was somewhat uniquely equipped for it
00:48:32because I was from here and I knew a lot about both teams and I had been reading both guys for
00:48:37a long, long time. But it was it was, you know, you're never going to be them. And it was a lot.
00:48:43So we all it ended up really, really, really great. I I've stayed in Boston, you know,
00:48:50the whole time since coming back in 81 and, you know, turning down things that in every time I
00:48:57stayed here, I ended up being really glad. So just there's no better place to do what we do.
00:49:03I mean, Bob's from Trenton. He didn't even grow up here. But I had the the addition of
00:49:08growing up in central Massachusetts. And if you're a sports commentator.
00:49:14And at the time we've lived in the last 50 years, there is no better place than to do it here.
00:49:19No, there's no doubt because we're all doing this from our house and over 10,000s of people
00:49:25are going to watch this podcast. Yeah. Which isn't say, Bob, go ahead.
00:49:30I I've been saying now one of my little mantras when I'm speaking or is that I'm glad I did it
00:49:37when I did it and where I did it. And I echo Dan on the fact that there was no better place. Dan,
00:49:41I don't know if I ever told you this, maybe. But by the way, I after the end of my first year on
00:49:46the beat, I actually did interview with Bill Tanton at the Baltimore Sun. And they make a
00:49:51little pitch. And I decided that, no, I I thought Celtics bullets. I don't think so. You know,
00:49:56and I mean it really. And and I was not I had no interest in leaving, but it was flattering. You
00:50:02know, you're flattered. Somebody wants you. How great. And the only other time I had any serious
00:50:06flirtation with anybody was after I'd done the baseball or as during that somewhere in that 77
00:50:13era of L.A. Times. And the thing about it that put me off on them is because L.A. was kind of
00:50:20enticing. That was, you know, it was was that they the way they covered the team was was the
00:50:26wall to wall. I mean, spring training to the last day of the World Series, the 162 that engulfs your
00:50:33life. Whereas we had I did maybe what I did, the 130 games in 77. And I then I did I did spring
00:50:40training and I and 130 games. You had a life. You still had a chance for something of a life
00:50:47which you would not have had if you're if you're if you're doing a wall to wall baseball from the
00:50:51beginning of February to October. And I wasn't for me. And not to mention it really was sideways.
00:50:59Anything from the Boston Globe is sideways in sports, period. It's not there's no improvement.
00:51:06It's only sideways. There's no doubt. There is absolutely no doubt. It's a Hall of Fame roster.
00:51:12Bob, when did you feel that you were home here in Boston? Because I always forget you're from
00:51:17Jersey. Well, having a girlfriend that you met the second or third day, we have this raging argument
00:51:24that goes back to 1964 that on campus at Boston College kind of got you into Boston, too, with
00:51:31her father, who was a lifelong Bostonian, a Brookline resident, born and raised. And, you know,
00:51:38that and I and yet but the real the real thing that cemented me was the covering high school
00:51:48football and having to drive to these new places. And the way I would know or find out where I was
00:51:52going to, because, you know, no GPS like that. So you call the police. I would call the police
00:51:59station, say, where's the football? Where's the football field? Where's the high school?
00:52:02Tell me where it is and how to get there. And I would go to these towns. So I do that. I drove
00:52:08around covering high school football for about five years. I was still I was covering the Celtics
00:52:14right. And except I was also covering high school football in the fall at the same time.
00:52:19And and, you know, nobody thought anything odd about that. But so, I mean, I that I just
00:52:27got soaked up in the atmosphere of the history of Boston sports. It didn't take too long. But
00:52:34you know, right away, I had a local girlfriend and that seemed kind of meant something. I think
00:52:38that's something to do with it. It always comes down to money or love, Dan. Money or love. That's
00:52:43it. OK, let's. Before we're going to talk about the 80s, but before we get to that, you both
00:52:49have mentioned the high school sports scene. And in retrospect, you know, I did the Exeter High
00:52:54School football Blue Hawks play by play, you know, from the top of a van with a microphone and a
00:53:00headset and a roster, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it was great. It's not that we wanted to do it for
00:53:06the rest of our lives. Now, there have been some people like Danny Ventura for the Boston Herald.
00:53:11God love him. You know, he's great for the kids. He's great for the schools. You know,
00:53:16the globe had their people, but I the name escapes me. But like Dan, the high school,
00:53:21it was fun. You didn't want to do it for the rest of your life, but it was so much fun and it was
00:53:25pure. I think it's a great way to make your bones in the business, and it's fun to do it
00:53:33when we did it for the Boston Globe in the 60s, 70s, 80s, it really meant something to those kids
00:53:40because, you know, getting your name in the paper back then was a big deal. It's not anymore,
00:53:45but it was then. You go do a story on the high school quarterback and you change the kid's life.
00:53:50So people cared about it. And the Globe's really been good at that. You go back to
00:53:56Neil Singlet, Larry Ames, Bob Holmes, Craig Larson. These guys have just, you know,
00:54:02Danny's been continuous at the Herald. And it's important. It's how you cultivate young leaders.
00:54:08And it's also enjoyable. It's great grassroots sports. It's the reason we got into it in the
00:54:14first place. You know, we played, Bob and I both played high school sports. And there's some of
00:54:20the best times of your life. And I always like going back to it. One of my daughters coaches
00:54:25high school now. And to the point, Gary, I wrote a book about it when our last one was a senior.
00:54:33I knew I was going to miss this so much. It's kind of an indulgent project. So I kind of had
00:54:38to get it all down. And I do miss it. So yeah, I like revisiting that. I was just writing about
00:54:44the 50th anniversary of my BNBL days. It's going to be in the Globe next week. You know, it's 50
00:54:49years ago. Dave Smith called me up. Do you know anything about basketball? We got to cover this
00:54:53thing because we're sponsoring it. You know, can you do that? Yeah, I can do that. You know, and
00:54:59PA Mike at one summer there. I mean, next thing you know, that was my start, Gary. They put me in
00:55:06the Globe fleet of Dodge Darts to drive all around the city and find these 2400 kids playing
00:55:12basketball to calm things down during the busing crisis. And the bad part was you drive into
00:55:19Charlestown or Mattapan or whatever, and everybody hated the Globe because they had come out in favor
00:55:25of busing for desegregation with moving kids across town. Nobody wanted it. And then the Globe
00:55:33cars had a big stencil on the side of the door, Boston Globe. So I'd come tooling in from Groton
00:55:38like get out of here. So even then I was scorned. We all have our memories of stuff. I remember
00:55:44covering the North Shore Jamboree before one season and up in Fraser Field in Lynn. And the
00:55:53two things I remember are A, when I came out of the game, somebody had broken off my car aerial
00:55:59and B, in the payphone dictating the story back to the Globe, people banging on the side and saying,
00:56:05are you going to be through? When are you going to get out of there? And, you know, you have to
00:56:11laugh. But covering football was the big one because you kept your own stats. You had a
00:56:20clipboard and you wound up it down the sideline. Every play you recorded the guy's number and how
00:56:24many yards. And you had that's how you kept it. And you knelt down in the snow or the mud,
00:56:29you know, if you had to and did it. And you just did. But I remember one day I'm covering,
00:56:37they sent me to Swampskate when they still were on their winning, big, big winning streak. A lot
00:56:41of some people here will know about this, you know, ask dad or uncle Edward about Swampskate,
00:56:46by the way, if you're. Lynch, he knows about it. The stand by the leverage era. OK, so I'm up there
00:56:52and they're playing St. John's and St. John's beats them. And I called the Globe right away,
00:57:02Saturday afternoon, of course, it was during the World Series 70, I believe it was. I called the
00:57:07Globe right away. I said, hey, Swampskate lost. And damn, if they don't put the story on page one
00:57:13of the Globe, A1, C1. I mean, so, you know, stuff like that. I remember it very well. And
00:57:20I remember it. But the first game I ever covered was at Brockton before they built Marciano Stadium.
00:57:25We're talking about their original field. And the first game ever was that I covered was
00:57:30Ziverian at Brockton. And Ziverian was moving up from class C or whatever to B or something like
00:57:35the old class. And and this is their first game against an A team. And Brockton was mighty and
00:57:41they beat them and they beat them. And I got to cover that game. So these things are memories
00:57:48are stuck in my mind. I did basketball. I remember Ronnie Lee. I'll tell you right
00:57:52categorically right now is still the best high school basketball athlete that I've ever seen,
00:57:57player. He was a man's body at age 15. And he's still, you know, the best, my opinion,
00:58:03still my favorite best high school player that we've ever done the same years that we've had.
00:58:07But my experience, never forget seeing Ronnie Lee for Lexington High School. And Ronnie Perry
00:58:12is a freshman. Best 14 year old I ever saw was Ronnie Perry, Jr. I can tell you that right now.
00:58:17And I go on and on and on. Dance could tell you going on with his too. But these are important
00:58:22part of our foundation as sports writers that I'm sure people don't do it anymore.
00:58:26The way we did it, it was a rite of passage. It was a necessary rite of passage. Preseason
00:58:31previews. Oh, my God, calling all those coaches up and all those leagues and doing those previews.
00:58:36And I mean, that's that consumed us in late August and early September, you know, but,
00:58:42you know, you did it and it was in and you're in a better and you're much better off for it.
00:58:46Now, one drawback, one drawback, which was, and I bet Dan will not disagree with this one.
00:58:52It of all the people you deal with high school parents still can be the biggest problem.
00:58:57Utterly unrealistic. And, you know, if you write a nice speech about a team and mention a kid and
00:59:03then, you know, you think you've done something nice and then somebody calls up and say, what
00:59:07about my kid? He works hard, too. You know, you know, you can't win with high school parents.
00:59:13Well, my my story there is when I was doing the high school football games in Exeter. And again,
00:59:17I'm on top of the van with a mic and I'm the whole I'm the whole shebang. I'm the engineer.
00:59:23I'm the statistician. You know, I'm everything. And we did one game up in Rochester.
00:59:28There were no lines on the field. It rained the night before.
00:59:33Lines on the field. And it reminded me of the Kurt Gowdy story where he did a game when he
00:59:40started his he started his career. There were no numbers. One of the teams, there were no numbers.
00:59:46So he made up the names. So, you know, when you do it. So and I'm the stat guy, too. So I used to
00:59:52make up the stats, you know, he's got a hundred, you know, but if you get a kid's name wrong now.
00:59:58There was I'll never forget this. There was a young player and I always pronounce his name
01:00:03was Derek Derush. And I pronounced his name Derush because in Mexico and Rumford, Maine,
01:00:08the Derush family pronounced their names Derush. D-E-R-O-U-C-H-E. Bummy Derush was my summer
01:00:16basketball coach. I had a crush on his sister. All that small town stuff. Right. It was Derush.
01:00:21Well, no, you know, so I just went Derek Derush with a touchdown. They pronounced it Derush.
01:00:27Oh, I should have checked with the coach, but I thought it was a no brainer.
01:00:33You thought they were ready to throw me in the clink. But anyways, I can relate.
01:00:38Go ahead, baseball. 1971, I cover baseball, high school baseball. I pick the All-Scholastic team
01:00:47by myself. And that's a responsibility. I'm 25 years old and I'm picking this team. Two of my
01:00:54pitchers made the big leagues, by the way, and Mark Bombeck and the other ones come to mind.
01:01:02But here's how I found out. I was intimidated. After it was published, I found out that as a
01:01:08result of the All-Scholastic, one of the kids got a college scholarship offer that would not have
01:01:14come if I had not given him the prominence of Boston Global All-Scholastic. That was kind of
01:01:18sobering. But my first baseman, the name might mean something to say, but Glenn Tufts. Glenn
01:01:23Tufts, yeah. A sluggish first baseman. And I remember Jerry Mondato and Bunky Smith. There's
01:01:30a name you can't forget. Oh, wow. And Paul Flanagan. I mean, they're coming back to me now.
01:01:35And oh, oh, oh, my other pitcher, Ace Adams, who wound up pitching batting practice for the Red
01:01:42Sox for so many years. I started at the University of Michigan, Ace Adams, and Mark Bombeck was my
01:01:48pitcher. Well, I wish you'd been doing it in 2005 because Sam Shaughnessy was a junior at
01:01:53Newton North and he made the Herald All-Scholastic team, but did not make the Globe team.
01:02:02Oh, that's funny. So baseball too, you know, I traveled around to these games and
01:02:08yeah. Danny, I have to ask you, Bob, I'm going to ask you, how old are you?
01:02:1678. I'm 70. Dan, are you amazed at Mr. Ryan's recall? No. No, I see it every week. I've lived
01:02:27this my whole life. So, I mean, it was amazing when I was 20, but I'm used to it now. It's
01:02:33amazing. He's a computer. I mean, an absolute computer. I mean, it's fascinating. Okay. So,
01:02:40now we're going to move on. Unless you guys want to mention something for the 70s,
01:02:44I want to get to the 80s because I think that's a big decade for both of you guys.
01:02:49The 80s, money, cocaine, not that anybody did it, parties, BMWs, the Celtics, Larry Bird,
01:02:59the Red Sox, 86, the Patriots in 86. Danny, I'll start with you and just the beginning of the 80s
01:03:09because that's what I remember with this explosion from the Globe as being the pinnacle for sports
01:03:18media. It's all true. I mean, it was the most flush the newspapers were. The teams were still
01:03:26good because we had a big gap, as you remember, after 86. Nobody won around here for a while.
01:03:31Right. But you had the Patriot run to the Super Bowl. Red Sox run to the seventh game of the
01:03:36World Series. And in the Globes, in the Celtics, obviously winning three championships in the
01:03:41decade. Bruins were in cups. So, it was all happening in the 80s. And for the Boston Globe,
01:03:49it was all happening. That's the height of the deepest depth that the staff had. That's when we
01:03:56had people like Jackie McMullin and Ian Thompson being interns and trying to work their way up to
01:04:02the staff. Leslie Visser was still in the staff. Willie's at the top of his game. Bud's at the top
01:04:07of his game. Ryan and Gammons were at the top of the game before Peter left. I had come in. Kevin
01:04:13DuPont comes in. We had Ron Borges. Of course, Monfield, Rafe Eastgerald, we had just lost.
01:04:24That was it. Jack Craig invented television sports coverage. I mean, I'm going to leave
01:04:30somebody out, of course. But, you know, I mean, Fran Rosa, they're all in the Hall of Fame
01:04:35in their respective sports. And it was the golden 80s for newspapering, for the Boston Globe.
01:04:42That's where the overlap, where the young people are coming in and the old people are still
01:04:47there. And in my view, it was the greatest sports section of all time.
01:04:51There's no doubt in my mind. I mean, Bob, I just have to interject. I knew I had made it
01:04:55when Jack Craig ripped me. I say it was about to trade Bork or not trade Bork. And I was working
01:05:01at EEI on the weekends. And I don't even remember if I said trade him or don't trade him. But Jack
01:05:06Craig said, this Gary Tangway doesn't know what he's talking about. I was like, yes.
01:05:10Now, I've got to admit, I had a converse feeling when Jim Baker ripped me.
01:05:16When I was at Channel 5, Harold's guy, Jim Baker, who I had known.
01:05:19Thanks. Something else.
01:05:22What about the 80s, Bob?
01:05:24Well, the Globe was at its zenith in every way. And the times were different. And the
01:05:29newspapers reigned supreme. And the Globe was flushing. And I remember during that decade,
01:05:36I went from covering the Celtics to leaving, as you know, for 19 months, although I was writing
01:05:41a column for the Globe for 17 of those 19, which is why I consider myself to be continuous at the
01:05:46Globe since 1968 until 2012. And when I came back, it wasn't as to beat me. I came back in 84
01:05:57and was a general NBA at-large and general feature writer until I took the torch from Dan in 86,
01:06:06when Peter Gammons once again features in our life. In January of 86, Peter Gammons decided
01:06:12he's going back to Sports Illustrated for a second time and vacating baseball. Dan was covering the
01:06:18Celtics. But his passion and first love has always been baseball. And of course, he raised his hand
01:06:23for that naturally and properly and got that job. And guess who got the job? Reluctantly, as it
01:06:29turned out, by the way, I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to cover the beat. But after we interviewed
01:06:34a couple of people and they didn't give the job, I don't know how I said, OK, I'll take it. And
01:06:39it was the happiest decision because it was the 85-86 team. And when he handed the team over to
01:06:44me in February, as well as they had been playing before, they started playing even better. The last
01:06:50two and a half months, they were the most invincible team I've ever seen in the NBA.
01:06:54So that was part of it.
01:06:57And now gave birth to Dan's great book. I wish it would have lasted forever.
01:07:01I wish it would have lasted forever.
01:07:01That was a quote from Bill Walton.
01:07:02Scoop Sean, as he used to call them.
01:07:04I did get to finish the job. I'm happy to say so. I'm kind of, you know, and to see him get it all
01:07:10done anyway. And then I covered the team for two and a half years until I had a book out with Larry
01:07:15Byrd and they didn't want me to have the book while the book was out. You know, conflict of
01:07:20interest, you know, which is a lot of nonsense. But anyway, and I went back and in 89, we both
01:07:26became columnists. 89 is a big upheaval in which the National came into being and our sports editor
01:07:36left to go. Lee Montville left the paper to go to Sports Illustrated. And in order to replace him,
01:07:44they wound up hiring both of us and replacing Montville. So Montville can say,
01:07:48took two people to replace me. He can say that with me.
01:07:50I just listed all those.
01:07:54So if you're listening, I have to do this. I just listed all those people. I didn't even say
01:07:59Montville. They're the 80s. He's the columnist of record in the 80s. He's the guy. That's how
01:08:08good we were.
01:08:09And unique. I always say, I don't know what Lee Montville does, but he does it better than
01:08:13anybody. And he's writing Shakespeare. The guy Shakespeare sideways way. So anyway,
01:08:18the Globe was was awesome. I keep pointing out to people that at one point there were
01:08:24the four people most associated with the Beats at one point in time,
01:08:30Will and football. Randy Rosa was the hockey guy. Then Peter was the baseball guy. I was the
01:08:35basketball guy on their respective Writers Wings Hall of the Hall of Fame of those sports.
01:08:41And of course, Dan joins us, joined decent baseball.
01:08:45The baseball beat alone.
01:08:48Gammons, Whiteside, myself and Carfardo were all there in the 80s.
01:08:53That's right.
01:08:54But all four of those guys were in the Hall of Fame. I mean, it was like that.
01:08:58That's no papers.
01:08:59Everybody had to keep this bench. We get in the playoffs and we're in basketball. We got
01:09:03people like Mike Madden and Leslie writing sidebar, Ian Thompson writing sidebars, you know,
01:09:08that that that is in the world sports journalism. It's almost unthinkable today. There's no nothing
01:09:14remotely comparable, never will be. And all that will never happen again, obviously.
01:09:18No, it's not the same, but we do say so ourselves.
01:09:23Right. Well, it's just going to happen differently. But like
01:09:26Ian Thompson, a Renaissance man, wasn't he working for a paper in Paris?
01:09:31Well, he went to the International Herald Tribune after he left the Globe. Yeah,
01:09:35he worked for the International Herald Tribune for several years in Paris. That's true.
01:09:39So it's like you have all of these people like Bud Collins.
01:09:42You know, didn't Bud also do, he wrote, did he do theater reviews or something or?
01:09:47No, you know what he did? He did a column on Sunday. It's called Bud Collins Anywhere.
01:09:50It was a travel column. It was about his travels all over the world.
01:09:53And he wrote in the Sunday non-sports, you know, he wrote.
01:09:57Right. So, you know, you were very, it was a very eclectic group, but a very deep group. And
01:10:02I'm glad you mentioned Nick, because I do want to. What a sweet man. I mean,
01:10:08I remember meeting Nick and just such a. I mean, that was a damn shame when it just a damn shame.
01:10:15So I'll ask you guys to each tell a story about Nick Cofardo. Dan, we'll start with you.
01:10:20The last, the World Series, when I won an 18, you know, you might remember that
01:10:27the game three or four, it was, it was the 18 inning thing. And I remember that was a long,
01:10:37we were at the park forever and they just kept, you know, and we're going from like
01:10:43we're going from like any 16 to 17, you know, Dodgers don't score again.
01:10:48Here we go. And, you know, I'm a little exasperated and Nick just turns to all of
01:10:54us and goes, isn't this the greatest, you know, and that was Nick. And then
01:11:00he was gone less than six months later. It was so funny. He had worst days of all time.
01:11:05Oh, it's terrible. He was so funny. He had such a great sense of humor
01:11:09and the way he would get stories. I mean, Bob, I think you told me the story or one of you guys
01:11:14told me, didn't Willie McDonough say, Hey, this guy at the Ledger's killing us. You better hire
01:11:19him. You know, people forget, you know, at the time, okay, we think about it for baseball and
01:11:28we should, he was a terrific football writer. Very good. I mean, and he had, Nick was a master
01:11:34of context. I mean, Nick's, his personality, his enthusiasm, his knowledge. He cultivated
01:11:42great sources. He had great sources in football. Terry Glenn. Terry Glenn told him the whole
01:11:51story. I mean, he was on top of the Terry Glenn story. Like it was incredible. He would kill him
01:11:54with kindness. So we remember Nick a far too fondly. So I kind of veered off there a little bit.
01:12:01When you were working for the Globe, Dan, when did you feel or notice that you had power? Because
01:12:09I saw it. The Globe guys were the Beatles. And when I say guys, I mean, guys and women,
01:12:15you guys were the Beatles. When did you notice that?
01:12:17Well, I mean, again, people read newspapers then and people read sports. In our town,
01:12:25they paid attention to what we were saying. I saw power. I've written this a million times when I
01:12:32came back and I was, I would hang around Bob Ryan to learn how to cover the NBA. And Bob would sit
01:12:38down by the visitor's bench and we're sitting down by the Bullets bench. And they had Ruland
01:12:45and Mahorn and McFilthy McNasty. And Bob had given some paragraphs to this in his Sunday column about
01:12:51how dirty they were. And they called a ticky tack foul, I think, on Mahorn in the first half.
01:12:56And Gene Hsu, the coach of the team, wheels around and started blaming him. They said,
01:13:00Bob Ryan, that foul is your fault. That's your fault. Because even the referees,
01:13:06even the referees were reading it. So it was clear right then. But I know that
01:13:11when I covered the Celtics, I mean, like you could tell what guys would get pissed off.
01:13:17They were they were reading the paper. I said that when Buckner was near the end,
01:13:23you know, he was a wonderful guy, but his skills weren't great by the end. He's a little out of
01:13:28shape. And he was he was hanging on. And I wrote a just a it was a throwaway sentence late in this
01:13:35game story that Buckner played like a man with no clue. And oh, man, Maxwell, Max still calls
01:13:43him Inspector Clouseau because of that. They were practiced the next day. They're like a man with no
01:13:50clue. It's like they paid attention to what was written. The players did. And Larry did not like
01:13:57the way I encapsulated the there was a fight when he was one of the bad ones when he was held back
01:14:04and Barkley was holding on to him from behind. And he took a couple of shots and and he didn't
01:14:10like the way that was characterized. And he told me in no uncertain terms and how much it matters
01:14:15what we write. And that's what people that's people's takeaway is going to be from that. So
01:14:21again, that's power that they don't have today. And it's a small little thing. But when you're
01:14:27around it every day, you take that seriously because it what we wrote matters. I know that
01:14:34during that period of time with the Lakers in 84, 87, and the L.A. guys would come in and some of
01:14:42them were really amazed at the reaction that we got in the garden. People knew who we were
01:14:48because in L.A., the company town is Hollywood. It's not sports, even as big as sports are.
01:14:54At least it was the way. I don't know how much things may or may not have changed,
01:14:58but that was definitely the way it was in the 80s. They felt anonymous. And we were obviously
01:15:03far from anonymous at the Boston Garden. Here's how non-anonymous we were in the 80s. Well,
01:15:09this carries into the 90s, but that Super Bowl in New Orleans, the Parcells one, when he left the
01:15:14team. We had a team dinner in the French Quarter on Saturday night before the game. They're playing
01:15:19the Packers the next day. Everybody's mad at the Globe because Willie said Parcells was leaving
01:15:23after the game. Willie was right, of course, but it ruined our week for all the fans who were there.
01:15:30We're walking to the French Quarter with Bill Weld. We had had a couple. What a surprise.
01:15:37The governor, Bill Weld.
01:15:39Yeah. Just so people understand who are listening to this, the Boston Globe Sports
01:15:45Department is having drinks with the freaking governor. That's the magnitude of what they did.
01:15:51And it's the night before the Super Bowl because Curtis Wilkie had a place in the French Quarter,
01:15:56big-time national reporter. We're walking to dinner, like 18 of us from Curtis Wilkie's
01:16:02apartment to the restaurant in the French Quarter. Night before the Super Bowl, French Quarter,
01:16:06drunken Patriot fans, drunken French Quarter people, Mardi Gras people, whatever.
01:16:12A clown is coming toward our group. He was in full clown regalia outfit. He doesn't even stand out
01:16:18that much in this crowd. The clown was just mixed in with everybody. As the clown passes, the clown
01:16:23goes, Shaughnessy, you suck. I said, yeah, well, you're a clown. It was just, but where else is
01:16:32that going to happen where you're a lowly sports writer and the freaking clown in New Orleans
01:16:36knows who you are and how much you suck? That's phenomenal. Bob, an example of you when you
01:16:42realized the power and was it ever intoxicating? I can't specifically pinpoint anything.
01:16:54I was getting the reaction. Gene Shue yelling at you during the game.
01:16:59Gene Shue, of course. The Gene Shue story is hilarious. Earl Strom, no, Ritchie Powers,
01:17:04who actually was very friendly with the great referee of the time, Ritchie Powers,
01:17:07and here's a funny story. I'm sitting there down near the visiting bench. It just so happened,
01:17:16same place where I was when Dan tells the story about Gene Shue. Okay. There's a foul called by
01:17:22Ritchie Powers on the Celtics. Then there's a timeout before the free throw. Okay. They call
01:17:29timeout. He comes back. They come back on the court. The other team goes to the line. I thought
01:17:37it was going to be a side out of bounds. I went up to nobody in particular. He wasn't shooting.
01:17:45Ritchie comes over and says, shut your mouth. I'll get your phone out of here.
01:17:49I don't know what that means. No, I'm kidding. That was in the days when the building wasn't
01:17:56full. We're talking in the early 70s. You're on a sideline. You're by the official stage.
01:18:01Yeah, under 10,000 people. Voices could carry. Sometimes you could hear Johnny Most down on the
01:18:07floor. You could hear him from upstairs. As Gary referenced, we're sitting at courtside,
01:18:12the seats that are now sold for billions, but we're sitting next to the bench at the table
01:18:17on the court. There was access. Dennis Johnson one time, Larry had just done something
01:18:24great. Bob was pontificating, raising his voice, arms flapping, the usual,
01:18:30and making a deal about Larry's greatness. DJ was coming up the court. He didn't like to rush
01:18:37it up the court. He was a pounder. He's walking it up over half court. He dribbles over toward us
01:18:44and says, keep it down, Bob. We got a game going on out here. That's power.
01:18:52That's a story. With that, do you have any regrets? Bob, I'll start with you. Do you regret
01:19:01writing something? I think I may have. I have to go double check this, but I've got intimidated
01:19:08into suggesting that in the aftermath of the Reggie Lewis death, that Southwick's
01:19:21be given a draft choice. Either that or the biased one, which was stupid. Other than that,
01:19:30I don't really regret. You can be wrong. One of the things about being wrong
01:19:36is I love the apology columns. They're very easy to write and fun when you can be self-deprecating
01:19:43and make fun of yourself. I remember one I wrote about Ray Williams. Ray Williams came
01:19:47because we all wanted to know part of Ray Williams. He actually played pretty well that
01:19:53year for them. I wrote a column about totally inventing a scenario where somebody came in and
01:20:01stole my typewriter and wrote a nasty column about Ray Williams, put my name on it,
01:20:05that kind of thing, something like that. Anyway, you can be wrong, but admit when you're wrong.
01:20:12Don't dig in and double down. That's the way to go. Other than that, but I do think I said
01:20:19something stupid and they should be given a pick. Dan? In general, it's just too harsh
01:20:30on some guys. I think oil can. I think Pedro to a degree. I didn't enjoy Pedro as much as
01:20:40I should have, like how great he was, because I was a little caught up in the diva stuff and
01:20:45special treatment. He's so great. He deserves it, I suppose. I think just not seeing how
01:20:55the wonderfulness and those 80s Celtics and being a little too harsh. It's funny Bob referenced
01:21:03Reggie Lewis because July 27, 1993, when Reggie dropped dead at Brandeis, there had been a lot
01:21:14leading up to that, as we all know. I was adamant about the Dream Team and sticking with what they
01:21:22knew. When he went out and found Gilbert Mudge, I didn't like Dave Gavitt embracing this because
01:21:30they knew what the Dream Team had told them. I thought this was litigious. Now they're out from
01:21:35under it and they can blame the doctor. They welcomed him back to basketball. I didn't like
01:21:41it at the time. Then when Reggie dropped dead, I just went off. I wrote a very angry column
01:21:49on page one. It was just too soon. I've always compared it to when
01:21:58the young divorcee leaves her kids at home and goes out on a date and the house burns down.
01:22:06That's not the day to write it's her fault that the children are dead. It's too soon,
01:22:12even though it's true. In this case, I was really harsh toward Gavitt and the Celtics for
01:22:18allowing him to think he was coming back. Leading up to that, I just thought it was
01:22:25unnecessary death and it was horrible. I thought the litigiousness got in the way of that.
01:22:32That was a tough one for everybody. It wasn't a good day. It was not one good day
01:22:37ever in that story. From the moment he dropped in the Charlotte game right up to the funeral,
01:22:44everything was bad. That night, Dan, the game starts. I'm sitting behind the basket then.
01:22:50The game starts. In the first period, he was running around like a crazy man. That's just
01:22:56not what he does. Remember, he was just smooth and effortless. He was a glider. He wasn't a
01:23:03frenetic player. He was out of sorts in that first period. Finally, it happens that the ball goes up
01:23:09and there's a rebound. The nine guys are riding to the other end of the court. He's sitting about
01:23:1410 feet in front of me on the floor with a look on his face that says,
01:23:18what is happening to me? That was Reggie Lewis. That's how it happened. I'll never forget that.
01:23:23Bob's right. Pre-game, it was Charlotte, right? Yes.
01:23:29They had Wingate and they had two of the high school Dunbar boys.
01:23:34Buggsy. Yes. I remember going to both rooms to talk to these guys who had played together in
01:23:40high school. It was interesting. He had three teammates all in the playoffs. Fast forward,
01:23:46three high school teammates. What are the odds of that? I remember Reggie, I'd never seen him more
01:23:53amped up. He was bouncing on his heels. You'd say Red Bull or something, but whatever. It wasn't
01:23:59natural. Go look at the video. There's balls. He'll fire up in the right corner. He'll rebound
01:24:05the left corner. He was a pinball out there. It was very unusual. I know for me, Dan,
01:24:19I got in this business because Bob knows I also love acting. I got in this business to be
01:24:27on TV or radio and talk about sports. I was not going to be a coach. I was going to do something
01:24:33in the electronic media. You guys got in this business to cover sports. One of the things
01:24:39I thought I was going to be, I was going to try to be the next Bob Lobel where I just read
01:24:42highlights and everybody's happy and you say something snappy to Liz Walker and everybody
01:24:46loves you and you go home. I never adjusted to the part of the job of covering something like
01:24:52Reggie Lewis or where sports radio has really gone over the top and being critical. In that
01:25:00situation, Dan, talk about how you didn't get in the business to cover stories like that.
01:25:07A lot of it, we're ill-equipped for it. For me, labor was always the worst for that.
01:25:13I walked in to cover the Orioles and then there's the baseball strike of 81 and all this stuff with
01:25:18Marvin Miller and Donald Fear and Ken Moffitt and NLRB. You're out of your depth. You don't
01:25:28ask the food writers to cover Vietnam War. I didn't like contracts. I still don't know what
01:25:36the second apron is. I don't want to know. No, I did not get into this for money, labor, crime,
01:25:47or death, those things. We're out of our depth in a lot of that stuff. No question.
01:25:53I totally and 100% agree. We're the same person in that regard. As we were speaking, Dan, I'm
01:25:57thinking about there was one guy of our acquaintance who loved that. It was like, oh, God,
01:26:02they're going to play a game. I have to waste my time at the game? Murray Chess at the New York
01:26:08Times. He lived for that stuff. That was his expertise. Oh, no, they're going to play? Oh,
01:26:14well, all right, get it over with. Yeah, and I totally agree with you. I didn't get in for that.
01:26:20I got in the business to write. That's the whole thing, writing, writing, writing, writing,
01:26:24writing. I love words. I love writing. I like rearranging words. I like reading,
01:26:28and that's what I wanted to do. I love sports, but I always said it's my speak. It's two-part
01:26:36words. Sports and writing is a two-part word. The first part is the easy part. You just live
01:26:41your life. You're a sports fan. You play. You grow up. You're a kid. You learn sports. You play
01:26:45sports. It's in there, and it's natural, and it's always there. When there's millions of people that
01:26:50can talk sports, but not that many can write sports and put it and do it and make it readable
01:26:56and literate and insightful. Do it quickly, and do it quickly. Do it in 45 minutes. That's right,
01:27:02and then if you're lucky, an hour after a game. That's why I got in,
01:27:08and I fortunately lucked into the right place to do it.
01:27:13One of the reasons I thought the Globe writers were so good, specifically you two, was I could
01:27:18read it, not know the byline and know who wrote it. When you read a Bob Ryan column, Dan,
01:27:25I can hear him. This is before I knew him. I could hear him.
01:27:30When you read, this is inarguable. That's probably Ryan.
01:27:35That's Bob Ryan. Yeah, and then when I'm reading a Dan Shaughnessy column, Bob,
01:27:41it's not so much I hear Dan, but I feel him because Dan is not really a loud guy,
01:27:47but I kind of feel him. I feel his presence. Bob, I want you to describe Dan's writing style,
01:27:53and then I'll ask Dan to describe Bob's writing style. Bob, go ahead.
01:27:58Well, that's a good question. I think he's just a facile, which is a smooth,
01:28:08knowledgeable person. It's built on expertise as well, and knowing what you're talking about.
01:28:17Also, I like to think of myself the same way. I think he thinks like a fan. His reaction to
01:28:23the current Red Sox is, I think, the way a caring fan thinks that they're going on the wrong path
01:28:34and is resentful of that. Who are they trying to tell us? Why are they acting like a small market
01:28:39team or mid-market team when we know damn right well they have the resources? Why is this different
01:28:44than it used to be? I think that's a fair question. Asking the questions or postulating the
01:28:49theories, I think, of what a fan could do. I like to think I do that, and I think that's part
01:28:55of it. Just the fact that he's a good purveyor of prose. He writes beautiful sentences, and
01:29:01it's always a fun read. Dan, on Bob.
01:29:05It's easy. Ryan brings you passion, encyclopedia, knowledge of sports, and delivers it in a very
01:29:15clean literary style. It's almost as if he was Jesuit trained. He knows how to put it together,
01:29:24and that goes to BC. It goes to Lawrenceville. It goes to the Ryan household, and we're all better
01:29:30for having that in front of us. I think the Mercy Nuns started with the Mercy Nuns at St. Joseph's
01:29:35School. It was sticklers on grammar. It was sticklers on grammar. I can still see Sister
01:29:41Mary Sebastian diagramming the sentence. We were brought up diagramming sentences,
01:29:47and that's my foundation. It started right there, so that when I took an entrance exam
01:29:51for Lawrenceville, I aced the English easy. That was the easy part.
01:29:55Dan, you don't know this, but my son, Van, played a lacrosse game at Lawrenceville,
01:29:59and I was looking for the Bob Ryan building. That place is a factory.
01:30:07Bob, did you see my Jim Wah paragraph last week?
01:30:09I did, and I loved it. Absolutely, and it just so happens, yeah, over the weekend,
01:30:14I was in North Carolina, and the subject of Seth, his son, came up. He just resigned as the PGA head.
01:30:21Anyway, I loved that, and I loved the idea, the poker playing with Bill Shaughnessy.
01:30:24Unbelievable.
01:30:26You never told me about the curveballs before, though.
01:30:29Yeah, well, I did a little dive on him, but Gary, just quickly, we'll not bore your listeners, but
01:30:34there is one man who connects Ryan, Gammons, and Shaughnessy in this instance,
01:30:39and it is Jim Wah. His son, Seth Wah, ran the PGA for the last six years. He used to have that
01:30:44Tiger Woods golf thing in Norton. Big, rich guy, Deutsche Bank, all this stuff, very successful,
01:30:50and the old man was Jim Wah, who somehow had a life and a career where he taught Peter Gammons
01:30:56at Groton School, taught Bob Ryan at Lawrenceville, and played cards at the VFW Hall with my old man
01:31:02in Groton, same guy. That's amazing.
01:31:08Gary, he was a publishing poet, and I loved this sport. He was my assistant basketball coach,
01:31:14and he was the head baseball coach after I left, and they named a baseball field after him right
01:31:18now. When you went to Lawrenceville, you would have gone to the Jim Wah field had you gone to
01:31:21a baseball game, and indeed, Seth is his son, but a fascinating guy. Oh, my God.
01:31:29He would have also coached and taught Huey Lewis and Armond Hill, correct?
01:31:33Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Huey Lewis was a great, his real name, Hugh Craig,
01:31:40by the way, folks, C-R-E-G-G. He was a right-hand pitcher for Lawrenceville, class of 67.
01:31:46Unbelievable. There's the encyclopedia again. Okay, I want to talk about your styles. When I
01:31:53read Bob, and you could tell that he holds people accountable, but he's still a fan.
01:32:01With Dan, I want to know where this came from, because when I tell people that Dan Shaughnessy
01:32:08is like the nicest, calmest, one of the most cerebral people I ever met, like if you talk to
01:32:14Dan, he's like really chill, but there's something in you, and I wonder where it came from. I don't
01:32:18know if it's coming from a small town. I don't know if it's something in your family, but when
01:32:21you see an injustice, you have a calling. Where did that come from?
01:32:31Bob and I have been around the bend on this. There's a little bit of a fork in the road.
01:32:36Oh, I agree, but what makes you different is what makes you great.
01:32:42We do come to it as fans generally, but I've been able to separate, like Bob's a seasoned
01:32:48ticket holder, and he invests his money in this, and his wife likes the games. It's been a great
01:32:54thing in his life. I love sports. I love the competition. I love the playoffs. I love all that
01:32:59stuff, but I've somehow been able to step back and just be that whole thing about rooting for
01:33:07yourself and being not tied up in whether the local team wins or loses. I know it's good for
01:33:15us if they're winning. I know that, but if things aren't going well, or if the owners or whoever,
01:33:23we're representing the fans, and if things aren't being taken care of business, then
01:33:28I'm going to call attention to that in a very, sometimes, harsh way. I really disagree with what
01:33:34Red Sox ownership is doing right now. I can't support this winning that they're doing.
01:33:39Six games over now. Good for them. The people in uniforms, God bless them. They're doing great,
01:33:44but the notion that they've been abandoned by their ownership and getting no support from above
01:33:49and that bottom line has become more important than being stewards of the franchise, I'm not
01:33:55okay with that. I think it's not fair to the fans who are loyal and great, invest their dollars at
01:34:00very high levels and deserve that love in return. I want my owners to not care about bottom line
01:34:05year to year. I want my owners to, Bob Craft's a perfect example. He cares about that team and
01:34:11that team only. That's what I want my owners to be, and I don't feel the Sox are getting that
01:34:16right now. It's interesting, this is coming up because of the Celtic thing where they said all
01:34:22those things about, we get paid in championships and we don't care about making money, and now
01:34:26they're selling at the highest time they can to get the most money. Whatever, it's always business
01:34:31with them. As one who chronicles this, it's our obligation to represent the fans there,
01:34:37and that's what I try to do. Don't you feel, Bob, it's good to have a variety of styles,
01:34:43and that's what we saw with all of the people at the Globe. The one thing, I think Dan,
01:34:48I know you write once a week, Bob, and so forth, but Dan's still writing now. Unless I'm missing
01:34:53something, Dan's kind of the last guy holding people accountable because the style has changed.
01:34:59Yeah, no, Dan's tried and true in that regard. I was thinking, I've always thought when I was
01:35:05full-time that the readers benefited from the two of us and the different tack, the different
01:35:14style, the different approach, that's the word I want, the different approach. The readers benefited
01:35:19because we definitely aren't the same in that regard, and it's much to the benefit of the reader.
01:35:25The point where we could cover the same game, and we did this a lot, we'd cover the same game,
01:35:30there was no duplication of effort here. No, but that's what you want.
01:35:35Right, well, that's what they got. It worked out great. Just in terms of myself, I've said
01:35:43continually, my whole thing is rooted in being a fan and love of the competition. I still like the
01:35:49games. I hate it, I laugh when people say, well, I don't care about who wins or loses, I just write
01:35:57about people. Well, guess what? Writing about people is the layup drill of writing. If you are
01:36:03supposed to be a writer, which means you've got command of the language, you've got experience,
01:36:09you've got compassion, you've got humor, you've got so forth, writing about people is a layup
01:36:15drill. It's making chicken salad out of you-know-what on a crappy game in the middle of
01:36:21February, or August, or October, no matter what sport we're talking about. That's the skill to
01:36:29make that interesting, and to make that readable, and to make that relevant. That's the skill.
01:36:34With me, it's rooted in I still love the games. I like the competition. I get involved in all
01:36:39kinds of competition. I watch every second of that England-Slovakia game the other day,
01:36:44because I appreciate international soccer. I've never been to a revolution game. I'm a
01:36:5127-year-old now. I've never been to a game. I love the international feel in the world.
01:36:56There's no question. It's very theatrical.
01:36:58I follow the World Cup. I follow the European. That game with Slovakia and England, that's going
01:37:02to be one of my highlight sports events of the season, of the year, the calendar year, 2024,
01:37:06when it's all said and done. I'm going to remember that game, and the way it ended,
01:37:10and the bicycle kick that tied it up, the whole thing. Anyway, I like competition.
01:37:14The Olympics are coming up. I'm looking forward to the Olympics. I love the Olympics. I did 11 of
01:37:20them, six summer and five winter. Anyway, I still appreciate that. It's carried me,
01:37:27and it's still carrying me. ED HARRISON Daniel, enjoy this.
01:37:31Ron Borges told me, I think he did Borges room with you in Seoul. Was he with you in Seoul?
01:37:35RON BORGES No, Barcelona.
01:37:36ED HARRISON Barcelona. Bob's heard this story. Borges said to Bob,
01:37:40you know this dream team basketball, I don't know what the big deal is. He said,
01:37:43Bob went on for a week. Borges said, Bob just took off and went on for a week. It's what makes
01:37:50him great. Okay, now, as we get close to wrapping things up here, at times, I felt this. I haven't
01:37:55handled it well. I don't like it. It may have been a detriment to me the way the business has gone,
01:38:03but I'm okay with that because I think the sports talk hosts of the world right now can
01:38:08handle it better than I could. There are times you're on an island. Dan, there are times that
01:38:16everybody thinks your life is great, and believe me, it has been, but you get a player mad at you,
01:38:23then you leave the building, and you got somebody says, Shaughnessy, you suck.
01:38:27How did you deal with that? Because sometimes in the media, you're on an island. You're the
01:38:33lost boy, if you will. Everybody has to be true to their own selves and your convictions, and I'm
01:38:42not trying to be provocative or contrived or get clicks or whatever, but it's rooted in how I feel
01:38:51at that time, and it's also only sports. It's not like writing about the real sensitive things.
01:38:59Bob and I get together every week in this group, and we do not talk about politics because it just
01:39:04doesn't serve any purpose, but we can have fun arguing about sports, the whole Mathis or Sinatra
01:39:10thing. That's all we're doing here, and that's sports. You like Manny. I don't like Manny,
01:39:17whatever. It doesn't mean we can't have a beer and talk about it and have fun, so I just can't
01:39:23get caught up in that kind of emotion about disliking or being personal to the other
01:39:29commentators because we have a disagreement about how we approach this, so let's try and keep it
01:39:35there. You get heated and like this. Nobody likes to be told you suck all day. Sometimes,
01:39:40you're reading the comments of your inbox, and it's like, boy, I really suck. I just had six
01:39:44hours of reading this stuff. Not fun, but ultimately, we are blessed to have the jobs we
01:39:51have. We get to go to Star Market and load up the cart because we talk and write about sports,
01:39:57and that's God bless America, and God bless Boston and the Boston Globe in our case. I'm very
01:40:04grateful for that. At the end of the day, it's entertainment, it's sports, and I think we should
01:40:09be able to disagree and not get personal about it. BOB KAHNEYS Well, I've really been blessed,
01:40:16I think. I don't have too many examples of real bad vitriol that I can tell at all.
01:40:26Now, it doesn't mean I didn't take any stands, but Dan's right. You're settling arguments that
01:40:34are, I'll paraphrase the great late Robert B. Parker about baseball. He said, baseball is the
01:40:41most important thing in life that doesn't matter. You can extrapolate that for us. Following sports
01:40:48is the most important thing in life that doesn't matter. Well, in that sense, obviously, we know
01:40:53that the lives are at stake and livelihoods and so forth. You know how I've gotten on this stick
01:41:01for guys for the last several years about why sports is not entertainment, it's different.
01:41:07Entertainment is, for the most part, sports is spontaneous for the most part.
01:41:11It's the great unknown that makes it fun and anticipation and moments in games, three,
01:41:17two-pitch banked inning, bases loaded, block running down, fourth and goal. Gee, should we
01:41:23give the ball to beast mode or not? That kind of stuff. It's not going to make the three-pointer.
01:41:28Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Why get upset about it? I had one this week. My last column,
01:41:40I tried to slot the newly minted NBA champions into the hierarchy of Celtic championships.
01:41:46There's 18 of them now. Where are they? I made a judgment right away. I got to identify that
01:41:52there were five separate groups that won going back to 1957. I want to get them all involved.
01:42:00Right away, I'm only going to pick one from the 60s, one from the 70s, one from the 80s,
01:42:04plus the last two, which are distinct in their composition, the 08 and this one.
01:42:11You're not going to please all people, but a couple of people got upset because Russell didn't
01:42:16get there. What about 69? You know what? They're right. I probably should have done 69 instead of
01:42:2065, which would have been a better team, but 69 was a romanticism about they weren't supposed to
01:42:25win. It was Russell's farewell, blah, blah, blah. In retrospect, yeah. I tell people that write me
01:42:31about that. If that's as heated as it gets about sports, it's just about sports, that's pretty
01:42:38good. For the most part, I don't get involved with people in that passionate way where it's
01:42:46really serious stuff. It's about this fun stuff. As we wrap things up, guys, I want to ask you just
01:42:52to give me your feelings on the two teams that you're associated with. Bob, even though you're
01:42:57a baseball fan, you told me first, but you are the commissioner of the NBA. That's just the way it is.
01:43:05I'm going to ask you to give me your thoughts on your relationship with the Celtics as a whole,
01:43:09and then I'm going to ask Dan about the Sox. Let's start with you.
01:43:12My so-called career is built, and I am grateful to, on Boston Celtics and the NBA. The fact that
01:43:20I was handed this team as the NBA was going to turn upward and eventually went from a mom and
01:43:27pop store, which had 14 teams when I started and there's 32 now, and has an international presence
01:43:35that didn't exist. I've ridden that wave. I know my identities with basketball, and I'm proud of
01:43:42it. I owe it to the Celtics for being the vehicle. You need a vehicle, Dan. There's great riders out
01:43:48there that people don't know about that don't have the vehicles that we have had, the Boston
01:43:53Sports machine, and the Celtics in particular for both of us at times. Yeah, absolutely. I'm
01:44:01very grateful. I'm very proprietary toward the NBA. I don't mean I like it as much as I used to
01:44:05because the three-point shot has ruined the game of basketball. Well, we can have that discussion
01:44:08some other day, but it's altered the game of basketball. No one can deny that. Whether you
01:44:13like it or not, it's altered it. I happen to not like it. Anyway, it's still the best basketball
01:44:19in the world, the NBA, and I care about it. I'm totally grateful to what the Celtics have done
01:44:26to advance my so-called career. Absolutely, it was built on the NBA. There's no doubt about it.
01:44:33Dan with the Red Sox. Right. Baseball has been very good to me, and that's true,
01:44:40always true, and very grateful for having this narrative to track.
01:44:48So growing up with it when the team wasn't very good here in the 60s, but I was immersed in it.
01:44:54I knew so much then when I was young, way more than now in terms of who's on what team and this
01:44:58and that. Then having the privilege to be around that team and cover them every day and
01:45:06be there for 86, be there for 78, be there for 75, be there for 86. Then I started writing
01:45:14books, and I wrote The Curse of Bambino in the late 80s, and it became kind of a
01:45:19monster of its own. Oh, it is a monster of its own. The title was so good, and it was co-opted
01:45:28by everybody. The Red Sox appropriated the title as part of their mission statement with the new
01:45:32owners in 2002. Then that 2004 Red Sox, still the greatest sports story ever told, and we were
01:45:40right there at the epicenter. It's a biblical narrative unlike anything else. Nothing will
01:45:46ever be the same, and nothing has been the same since then, but we were there every day for it.
01:45:53So that was a great honor and privilege for me, and I feel very blessed to have been around it.
01:45:58It was good for business, as Bob said. It made people want to sign you to book contracts and
01:46:04write books and go on TV and comment about it because we were there. I was there for every day
01:46:11of it. Do you remember specifically what you were thinking walking out of the ballpark on Saturday
01:46:16after 19-8? Like everybody else, and I wrote it. I said, it's on the front page of the Globe.
01:46:23The Red Sox are not going to win the World Series for the 87th consecutive autumn.
01:46:28That has never been corrected by the ever-vigilant Boston Globe front page desk.
01:46:33They need to correct that statement. It was printed, and it was not true. They did win,
01:46:39and I said they were not going to. I remember specifically thinking,
01:46:43you remember the big narrative was they wanted to play the Yankees. Fans wanted to play the
01:46:47Yankees, right? I said, you wanted to play the Yankees? You're happy now? You're happy now?
01:46:55I've had that whole dust-up with Millar where we're talking about, he's yelling at me for
01:47:00calling them frauds. I said, well, if you do lose this like this, you are frauds. It was true then,
01:47:06it's true now, and now it's some rallying cry. I never got my World Series share,
01:47:10but I'm starting to think I should get credit for that. If Kev's going to keep pushing it,
01:47:14that's what triggered the comeback because they won eight straight games after 19-8 in Game 3.
01:47:19They were a freaking wagon and just could have went into the, it was amazing.
01:47:25They went from 19-8 to 11 nights later, sipping the champagne.
01:47:29What a story.
01:47:30No one's ever done that, eight straight games in LCS and the World Series. They ran the table
01:47:36after 19-8. Tito, I did the book with Tito too, and he said, in those days,
01:47:43he had to get in a golf cart from the dugout around center field to the left field corner
01:47:49where the door is. That's how they got him to the room so he didn't have to go walk through
01:47:53the underbelly. He said, that golf cart ride, people are throwing shit at me and everything.
01:47:59It was bad. No one thought they were going to win at that point, to the point where high school Sam
01:48:05Shaughnessy gave up his ticket to Game 4, did not even go Sunday night. Did not want to see the
01:48:12Yankees celebrating on the Fenway lawn. That was real. It was real and it's still forever the
01:48:18greatest story ever told in sports. Tito, if you haven't read Dan's book with Frank Kona,
01:48:23it's tremendous. I think, Dan, the funny story you told me is when you jumped in the car with,
01:48:29didn't Terry pull up to your driveway and you jumped in the car with him and he said,
01:48:32it's a good thing my windows are tinted? He met my wife, who is not a sports fan. I introduced
01:48:38her to the ex-manager of the Red Sox. He said, nice to meet you. My first stop is going to be
01:48:43to get my windows tinted so people don't see me driving them around. My agent, who's very good,
01:48:51suggested that book the day Tito was fired. My agent had brokered the Joe Torre Yankee years
01:48:58with Tom Verducci. He said, you can do that same book for the Red Sox and Tito. I said,
01:49:03yeah, but he hates me. Well, send him an email anyway. So I sent him an email, Tito,
01:49:07sorry you got fired. You want to do a book? No, and not with you.
01:49:13It's a great book. Oh my God, it's such a great book. Gentlemen, it has been an honor. I don't
01:49:19want to make this sound like a eulogy, but you guys are great. I love you both. This has been
01:49:25tremendous. Thank you for doing this. It's going to be a two-part series on CLNS Media and just
01:49:33good health. And I'll talk to you again next week, Bob. Dan, if you need anything, let me know.
01:49:38Bob Ryan, Dan Shaughnessy, Hall of Famers, a look back at their life at the globe and in sports.
01:49:45Brought to you by Price Picks, the exclusive daily fantasy partner of
01:49:48CLNS Media Network. Pick more, pick less with Price Picks.