The headline in Wednesday’s Globe sports page proclaimed “Team: No Beer in the Dugout”. The story by Peter Abraham goes on to talk about a report on Channel 7 that the Sox “big three” pitchers would fill cups of beer in the dugout as early as the sixth inning and that “the practice would become more frequent later in the season.” The report cited two “unidentified team employees.”
This is getting utterly ridiculous. Sources are used by most writers, but this junk coming from the Sox is just too much. I would bet that if I wrote in this article that Terry Francona was a drug dealer in the offseason, I could find two team sources to confirm it. There seem to be more leaks now than in the Watergate years. Perhaps the Sox should hire the grandchildren of Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt and recruit a group of “plumbers” to stop the leaks and give them an office in the basement of Fenway Park.
In my years of follwing the Sox (54 and counting), I have never seen anything like this. Even in the early 70’s, when a Sox player claimed that Carl Yastrzemski was getting two pairs of sanitary socks while everyone else got one, the accuser was named as Billy Conigliaro. Michael Silverman wrote in the Herald that the Globe piece about partying in the clubhouse during games was a “hatchet job” on Francona. I don’t totally agree, but it is now going too far.
Writers and TV people are only hurting themselves. If the Sox keep losing and the fans stop caring, there will be less hunger for stories and less need for reporters. Are any of them considering this possibility?
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