Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe talks Red Sox, new Orioles ownership and legacy of Bill Walton
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
year, red sox, baseball, team, money, players, talking, great, bill walton, dan shaughnessy, nestor, baltimore, orioles, dan, game, boston, win, covered, ownership, minutes
SPEAKERS
Dan Shaughnessy, Nestor J. Aparicio
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
Foreign. Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, AM, 1570 Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore. Positive. We’re positively taking the Maryland crab cake tour and the Maryland oyster tour for our 26th anniversary out on the road in September. You can come down and see us at Fauci leafs for a delicious crab cake. Next Friday, we will have scratch offs in the Maryland lottery, the Gold Rush, sevens doubles, I’ll have the Raven scratch offs by then. Also brought to you by our friends at Liberty, pure solutions, keeping my water crystal clear. Got well water. You need them, as well as Jiffy Lube, multi care, putting Luke out, knowings, mills and then down to Camden Yards this weekend, my guest is a defending champion and one time Baltimore sports writer. He has become a legend in Boston for reversing the curse and the Bambino and covering all sorts of sports and still apart. And it’s been, it’s been a minute since I’ve had Dan Shaughnessy on, but Dan, before I even begin your health and how you’re doing, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about baseball and on the field, off the field, but since the last time I had you on, we lost someone in the world that I think was a friend of yours, based on the time that the only time I ever had this person on the show. And I know you don’t remember this, but at the 1999 Super Bowl in San Diego, it was the it was the Denver it was 98 Super Bowls in 90 it was 98 Super Bowl. 97 season, the Denver Green Bay Super Bowl. Bill Walton came onto my set when you were on my set, and you knew each other sort of warmly in some Celtic way. And the only time Bill Walton was ever on my show, you are a part of it talking about John Wooden and the day he died, I found the tape and I played it, and I think it was around the time I reached you a couple months ago, but it is good to have you back on but your voice was on the airways here with one of my I’m happy doing this 33 years. It’s a top 100 all time piece for me to have spent time with Bill Walton, and you were a part of it. So thanks for making that memory,
Dan Shaughnessy 02:01
man. Well, I appreciate that. We miss him every day, and I still have a lot of I’ve recorded some of our conversations and interviews, just to have that big, booming voice tell you how great you are. He was, he was a beauty. And can’t believe we lost him, and just a huge loss, and just a wonderful man in every way he
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:22
he’s a guy. And when Clem Florio died here, I had Vinny Perrone from the Washington Post on to eulogize Clem who, I think you knew, right. And he said there was something about his energy that felt like it could never leave, that there’s an energy like Jimmy Buffett. I haven’t come to terms with Jimmy Buffett’s loss yet. I just haven’t like, like, they’re so alive. And Bill Walton was such a a spirit of energy for everyone he ever touched in that 30 minutes with me, with him in San Diego, talking about my aunt Jane, who lived in San Diego, and talking about Ted Williams and you and Celtic championships and Cowans and just bird all of that stuff. He just had an energy about him that feels like it’ll never leave. You know,
Dan Shaughnessy 03:09
that’s true. He and He loved talking about the Celtics. And, I mean, we’re almost the same age. He was a year older, but, you know, I grew up with he was that mystical guy in California and UCLA, and certainly one of the top three to five college players in the history of the sport, just based on the accomplishments. And then he was kind of a remote, again, mysterious guy with with the clippers and and even Portland, when they did win. Then he came to Boston. He was like, we couldn’t shut him up. He was just like he just loved being here, loved playing with Larry Bird. Had the four little boys living in Cambridge. He really. He lived it to the fullest here, and he got his last championship. And we
Nestor J. Aparicio 03:52
wasn’t the greatest player when he got to you, right, he was running bad wheels and everything,
Dan Shaughnessy 03:56
right? We thought it was over. We thought they were getting nothing. But he managed to be Sixth Man of the Year. And he played 80 games in the 1985 86 season, which, in my view, was still the greatest NBA team of all time. Front courts. Robert Parrish, Kevin McHale, Larry Bird, Bill Walton, four Hall of Famers, idiot. Dennis Johnson, I mean, they went 50 and one at home. Nestor, and they were just so I’ll put them up against anybody. I wrote a book about him, and he was very he named he titled The book. It was wish it lasted forever. That’s title of book, because that’s what Bill Walton said about
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:27
it. Dan Shaughnessy is our cast. How are you? Before I get to anything other that’s important in our your relationship with Bill Walton, in my 30 minutes with him that you know, how are you? I mean, I you know, you’ve, you’ve had your own health issues in the last year or two, and it’s good to have you on. It’s good that you’re doing well. Man,
Dan Shaughnessy 04:44
yes, I’m on the road to recovery. I had a quadruple bypass in February, which was sort of unexpected, to not have a heart attack, but they didn’t like the blood flow, and it was kind of emergency situation, and recovery was hard, but I’ve had, you know, I’m in Boston. Man, we got nine. Not to rub it in, but we got the greatest medical care in the world. And, and I was very grateful for that. And and starting to get my hand back in, causing trouble, covering the Red Sox and the Patriots and Celtics and Bruins and I managed to get back for the NBA Finals, which we’ll see in. The Celtics get that 18th banner and and looking at them on my wall here, all the front pages from 13 championships in this century for New England. So not to rub it in, but Yep, got it going pretty good here in New England. Any
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:27
Baltimore stuff on the wall in there at all? You got anything in there at all? Is that purple in
Dan Shaughnessy 05:31
the closet? I I’m so old. I covered Brooks’s last day in the big leagues in August of 1977 it’s my first year with the evening sun and Brooks he won Homer that year off of left hander for Cleveland. But anyway, in August, they in DFA, and they made him bullpen coach, and they needed a spot for Rick Dempsey to come back on the roster. He had broken his hand, and brooksy graciously stepped aside. They had thanks. Brooks day a few weeks later, in a home game against the Red Sox on a Sunday, and that team won 97 games. Finished two and a half out. But in those days, Nestor, you win 97 you go home. Not like that anymore. Little
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:14
Nestor was out in Section 16 with his dad for thanks. Brooks day and the Norman walk Rockwell and the ride around the gravel at Memorial Stadium. So you and I were in the same place at the same time without realizing all these years later. So Dan, I’m gonna put this to you, because I have now been excommunicated by both of the teams here after 33 years of being a media member here. And I have my My name’s NES. So I had a thing called column Ness, because all I ever really wanted to be was Oscar Madison. You know, my 40th anniversary documentary came out this year, and all I really wanted to do to be was Steadman, or Jackman, in your case, one of your colleagues and a guy was like a father to me. Phil was a crazy father to me most of the 1980s which is why I probably turned out a little wacky, because he didn’t have any sons. You were a part of this Baltimore thing. You went up to Boston to do your thing. There, we don’t have real columnists anymore. And in the case of new ownership, and under new ownership here, after whatever the hell that was, the last 30 years, with the Angelos family right on down to embarrassing our Governor and pretending there’s a lease and there wasn’t. Then, screwing over the governor, screwing over people that were in line, making the deal behind everybody’s back, throwing it out in January. And now Rubenstein’s bought the team. He’s got his 1.72 5 billion under the hood, he’s now hiring the Katie Griggs, who Major League Baseball sent out to Seattle if you’re here, or if Junior Ken Rosenthal were back, coming back to be at the evening sun, or any of the great pascarellis, the great baseball people we had here writing about baseball with this team. I mean, this team’s interesting as hell. You know, the minor leagues the trading deadline, the injuries the manager, Gunner Henderson, Adley rutschman, but more than that, the potentiality little Deepak Chopra drop on you, the pure potentiality of the Orioles brand and a new owner and Cal Ripken still being alive, this would be an interesting time for me recruit you here into the banner of the sun, to come down here and be a baseball columnist. Where would you begin from the baseball perspective of what we’ve been through for 30 years, and what you’d be looking for here if you were a columnist, there’s
Dan Shaughnessy 08:32
just so much to embrace right now. I mean, I value those old days. I mean, I even growing up in New England being I was with the Orioles when I watched them win in 66 against the Dodgers. I remember that, and that was a big deal, big upset, and I was thinking about them last night. They’ve only won three World Series because they got that. They got 70, of course, 83 but overdue for another one if they make the playoffs. I pledge to get back there and cover. And I would love to, yeah, I’d like to be around a lot, just because, as you say, they’ve got the tradition we know all that, still having some of those names. They’ve got the ballpark that reinvented the way ballparks were built, thanks to Larry Lucchino. And of course, they’re having a service for Larry at Fenway Park tomorrow. Jan and Marie Smith will be there. I’ll see all them tomorrow, and that’ll kind of bring a lot of it back. And, you know, Larry’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:22
everything in Baltimore, right? Like this building here, yeah, you just mentioned the two names. Like, there is, there is no modern Oriole baseball here without them. Thank
Dan Shaughnessy 09:32
you. Might, might be time to put him in that Oriole Hall of Fame. I don’t know about you, but that seems a little bit of an oversight. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, changed everything. And just, you know, he was all about winning and winning now and urgency and clean ballparks and city ballparks and changing city landscapes and and just all those great things, which, which, you know, you guys are still reaping the benefits of that so. And now you get this young team with all these great players from, you know, from being bad a long time. Drafting Well, cultivating that. Really happy to see it. And I just, I just hope they get a deep run in the playoffs this year. That was too bad. It was so, so quick last last fall. Well,
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:10
I mean, you come at it from the Curse of the Bambino era of baseball and free agency and the Red Sox having some money, but playing in a limited ballpark, and then the explosion of salaries that really happened late 90s and ballpark money and and sweet money and modern media money and cable television money running through five or six states up in your area, where a serious regional brand, the Red Sox boy, we’re in Baltimore, where we were all that 30 years ago, and Peter sat over with me at the bar and drinking high balls. There will never be a team in DC. Then the team we got a team in DC, we’re going to make all the money. We’re going to be able to field the team. He’s dead now. He’s gone, and this is all left to modern money management guys who were, you know, hedge fund dudes who like dancing around and giving out hats and dancing on the bullpen like all of that. They have enough money to do whatever they want. They can afford Adley rutschman. They can buy out Scott Boris. They can they can do all of that. But then there’s the question just where’s the business of baseball? The business of baseball’s changed in your market, from we’re really loaded, in essence, great and all that stuff to Oh, cable television fell apart, and we have to figure this out too. And Theo’s not here anymore, and Larry’s not here anymore, and you know, Tito’s not like all of that’s gone, and you have to refigure it out. Baseball always has to figure this out on a local level, in a way that that’s not a problem Bob Kraft has with the football franchise right now, even if they only win four or five games,
Dan Shaughnessy 11:41
right? I mean, I just, after all these years, I’ve come down to, I just want my owners to be guys who really love being owners of that team and don’t need to make money off that team. You know, if you own the team, your capital gains, whatever. But make this your your fun hobby. Have fun with it. I mean, I know the Mets haven’t won, but I like what covid is doing there. I think, I think that’s the way to do it. And the guy in Philly, he doesn’t care if he makes money year to year. He just wants to win. And they you don’t always win. It’s, it’s hard to do, but that should be what it’s about to serve your fans, in my view. So and Bob Kraft, I make fun of him all the time, but we know he cares about that team. We know he doesn’t have a million other teams to worry about, or think about it, acquiring assets he’s trying to win for the football fans in New England and for himself. I want that honor in every sport in every town, and we don’t have that here in Boston just now.
Nestor J. Aparicio 12:35
Well, and again, you are a little more spoiled on the baseball side. Just we’re comparing apples and vegetables, really, when you’re talking about Bob Kraft, who, other than him cheating and having a cheating coach and a cheating quarterback, which, that’s another segment, all little things like that. But allegedly, the payroll was the same that he wasn’t promising Tommy another 10 million later for personal services down the line. But football, hockey and basketball have all managed that. The Winnipeg Jets can theoretically compete with the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins. Baseball is different, and I don’t know what this is. And to your point, the Padre owner died trying to keep up. Illich played that game in Detroit. A little bit that you overspend. Peter Angelo’s bought the Orioles. They said it was 173 million. It wasn’t. It was 145 million. It was and it was 29 million in cash. Is what he put up to get that to get control that team. 30 years ago, his kid, he’s dead. His kids are fighting over $1.7 billion they made so much money every year off of that television deal. The first 10 years, they were just pocketing money that never went near either one of the teams. The Poison Pill didn’t allow them to ever give themselves more money, because they would have to give more money to the national so they lived in all this, and they still made $1.7 billion for owning for screwing the team up for 30 years. Like, to your point, what’s another 30, 40 million onto the payroll every year over 30 years? But I don’t know that Rubenstein, a guy who’s made all of his money by thinking about nothing but making money, whether he’s going to say, well, I want to have $180 million payroll Boston can do that, because the math supports it. I don’t know this thing is so depressed. I mean, I had, I had Kurt battenhausen off of sportico talking about valuations. The Orioles are the only modern team ever to go backwards in an annual valuation for one year during the plague, five years ago. But he said it was a bit of a fire sale, that it was depressed franchise in so many ways, because I’m here and I don’t know where the money’s coming from for baseball regionally, and that does make it harder to compete with the Red Sox, where there’s a little bit more built in, and certainly with the Yankees and Blue Jays in the country, the Orioles have to figure that out. And I think that’s the most fascinating part of the next five. Five or 10 years from my perspective, as a column this year. Well,
Dan Shaughnessy 15:03
good luck with that. I mean, I just, like I said, you got the good young players new ownership. I’m I’m all for it, and I look forward to the playoffs, and I hope they figure out all that money stuff for themselves. How the Red Sox doing? It’s bad, you know? I mean, they haven’t. They have a good core of young players, I mean, and some of them have come to the big leagues now, you know, Rafael’s rookie of the year candidate, CASAS was on that track, got hurt. He’ll be back. The catcher’s not bad. Connor Wong, they got him in the bet steel. He’s okay. I just think you know that this kid at bra, you in right field, they got in the Houston deal with Vasquez a couple years ago. He’s a good player. And Duran has he was MVP, the All Star game. He’s having a career year. He’s 28 years old, so it is his time. And you know, just a guy hits triples, hits homers, hits doubles, plays every day. He’s been a star for them this year. So what they don’t have Nestor is pitching, and they’ve not cultivated it. They’ve not drafted and developed it. It’s ongoing. Little bit of a better bump now with cutter, Crawford, Tanner, Houk, Brian Baio, but there this year, I mean, they started off great, and the era has gone up every month. It’s like nine or 10 for August. They’ve lost four in a row. They’re eight and 13 since the break. They’re three behind Kansas City in the wild card. There’s six games over. They shouldn’t even be talking about playoffs. They’re, you know, it’s a miracle they’re not in last place. So good for them. They’ve gotten over achievement. Good management by Alex Cora, interesting team. You’ll see him this weekend, but I you know the ownership has done nothing to help them in a year or so. They signed Louis G Alito in the off season, which was a lot of money, and then he got hurt right away. They signed the Japanese kid, Yoshida two years ago. He’s been kind of a soft player, and then that’s it. They just, if you look, they have two players who were released by the White Sox this year, on the team that’s coming this weekend, Gonzalez, the outfielder, infielder, and one of the pitchers, Barrett or Barnett. I forget we got a menace. You know, two guys released by the White Sox. You’re the Boston Red Sox. They are the dumpster divers of all time. They call the waiver wire for cheap, cheap, extra guys. And it’s just embarrassing. Well,
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:22
when new ownership comes in and new leadership comes in, and we have all this promise here, and the team’s good, I still want I think of the Red Sox, and even think of having you on. I don’t want to be flipping, but I’m thinking, what have they done since they let Mookie Betts go out the side door right to some degree, and the notion that here the fans, and I hear it. They want to fire Brandon high today. Like, literally, like the like, all the craziness, the zealotry of the fandom that I stopped taking phone calls 10 years ago this month, and that I don’t get that, but I see it out on the toilet of Twitter, the thought that how ownership is going to behave. And here it’s, they gotta sign rochman, they’ve got to sign holiday they’ve got to sign Henderson. They’ve got to sign burns, you know, and burns is going to be the first thing that comes up for them, because I don’t know how they think if they’re not going to win the World Series this year with Rodriguez and all the injuries they’ve had with Bradish and wells and means who’s long since forgotten about, as well as Bautista last year that paying for players happens right away from Mr. Rubenstein, who are you going to pay? Who are you not going to pay? And I think to some degree, the modern Red Sox have been defined by who they didn’t pay.
Dan Shaughnessy 18:37
Absolutely. I mean, it’s saying goodbye to bets. It’s, it’s 100 years later, the Babe Ruth thing, and it’s a tragic mistake and bad read. And again, they can afford the player. If you’re going to own the Boston Red Sox, you got to pay market value. You got to, it’s the cost of doing business. And we know they’re overpaid. We know that the last three, four years of those long contracts are always crap. We understand that. But you got is, if you’re in this market and you’re charging the prices they pay, and you’ve got the loyalty of this long fan base, I’m telling you, things just change here. They won four World Series in this century, and that’s on that. That’s all due credit. That’s pretty no one’s no one else has done that, not even the Giants. But something pivoted in 2019 and they have become need to make money every year team and not supporting the product on the field from above. Well,
Nestor J. Aparicio 19:25
I mean, so now you we, we’ve lived long enough that you come on the show. We’re the, we’re the we’re the ones with, right, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, and year after year, I’d be calling you. We’re getting our ass kicked. And no matter what error it was through all of this smart baseball people and and owners who support that. It’s imperative in baseball, where there really isn’t a whole lot of margin for error because of the money and football, it’s all funny money once you stick into a player, whether it’s Chris Davis, you know, you. Hurt. You’re stuck. And if you sign the wrong guy, especially in the wrong market, and we would be that Pittsburgh, Kansas City, these other places where it feels like it falls off a cliff. It never should have fallen off the cliff in Boston, I guess is the way I feel about it. Yeah.
Dan Shaughnessy 20:14
Well, I feel the same way. And I the the capital gains, exponential value of the team, going up every year. That’s, that’s that should be enough. Now this, this operating in the black year to year. That’s Baloney, in my view, not if you’re the Boston Red Sox they, I don’t think they get away with that, not on my watch.
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:31
Dan, I’m watching the Major League Baseball network on trading deadline, because it was a big deal around here, not, it hasn’t been for a long time, and they’ve added eight more players and did all this stuff, but it was amazing to me. The early deals, I kept hearing about the threshold, the threshold, the threshold, and I’m like, oh, like, the giants are dumping players so that they don’t have to pay the syntax, that’s where, you know, that’s not my gaming the system. You know what I mean? Like, that’s where we are. That’s how esoteric it is for fans to try to understand that in my market where, with Angelo, those words were never brought up around here, you know, yeah,
Dan Shaughnessy 21:07
and it’s not the kind of language that I choose to get into. That’s not why I became a sports writer. I just, I have no interest in that. I’ve never learned the second apron in the NBA. I don’t plan to, not going to learn the second apron. What’d you think of
Nestor J. Aparicio 21:20
the Olympics? Man, I know you’re a basketball story. I’m gonna have your compadre. Bob, Ryan, I’ll talk a little bit too. But boy, the Olympics, my wife couldn’t the minute it started. I couldn’t get the pad away from her. She’s carrying it everywhere all day, every day in the Hey, did you see who won? Do we won? We won? I’m like, it’s one in the afternoon. Leave me alone. It doesn’t start to Rico and come on. Oh, eight o’clock. But the Olympics captivated this country in a way that I don’t know that I would have seen that coming a month ago. I
Dan Shaughnessy 21:45
love it. You know, it’s just, it’s just always on TV, especially if you’re vacationing, you just have it on. If you’re coming in from the beach, or you’re folding laundry or whatever, it’s just on. So just keep it on all day, and you know, something for everybody. And we had guys who fencers. We had guys around our vacation, we were fencers, and they were telling us what was happening with the fencing. And again, I didn’t do a lot of appointment TV on that. I did want to watch the gold medal game on Saturday at 330 so we had an issue here because Tatum wasn’t playing, and that was kind of a thing, so wanted to see if he’d get in the game. And he did, of course, getting to see curry make those shots against France at the end. And you know, the four and two minutes and the last one, one of the greatest basketball shots we’ve ever seen. So yeah, that was fun. And yeah, you’re what we become experts on sports we know nothing about. You know, all that stuff goes on every four years. So I’ve covered three of them in person. And they’re, they’re very refreshing. And it was, it was a great event, and Paris pulled it off. Good for them. I
Nestor J. Aparicio 22:43
always love reaching you because you have this wisdom that cannot be replaced, certainly in chasing or weaver around Memorial Stadium back in the 70s as well. Dan Shaughnessy, I, we were never colleagues. He was at the evening sun, but we, we were colleagues with other colleagues that we’ve shared. I found this old picture. We had an old guy at the News America to passed away about a month ago, a guy named rich Petro who covered racing. And you know, my early bylines in 1984 were on the page eight, where the racing forum was and all that. And I kid Dick Girardi about that all the time up in Philadelphia. But there’s just something about that fraternity of old. We have a picture on the wall about 35 people at this sports or Bernie miklas, Jeff Gordon, just John Hawkins, who went on to write at the golf night. Just these legendary people, I miss old newspapers. Dan, and as Eisenberg always says when he comes on, you’re not Jerry, John. I had them both on recently, but John always says, The Golden Age of sports writing, you know, that’ll always be your your calling card. Dan, yeah. I
Dan Shaughnessy 23:40
mean, you know, we don’t sit around being at the moon, wishing it was this or that or, you know, but we do tell old stories, and I’m just happy I got to do it when it was really fun. And it was really fun. And being in Baltimore and 77 into the early 80s, it was never more fun than that to see what the way things unravel there unfolded, I should say, there. And people were just so nice to me. And and seeing the Orioles, really, you know, get to a million fans a year, and then way north of that, and the young, popular team they had, and 90 wins a year, just showing up every year. And and end of the year, the team would give you the sheet of paper with all the players home phone numbers on in case you wanted to call Brooks during the off season. So, I mean, it was, it was nutty, just so friendly, so great baseball and Hall of Famers everywhere you looked. And I really cherish that time in my life. Yeah, I
Nestor J. Aparicio 24:26
was gonna say, What the hell happened? But we all know what happened. Money Can’t shaughness, he’s here. He is still with the Boston Globe, writing the good writings, and back on his feet, feeling great, just in time for the Red Sox to maybe make a playoff run. Hey look, man, Arizona, and Texas look like they stunk last August, too. So I don’t put it past anybody if you got a couple of starters, um, you know, but it is been a really fun summer. Dan, I can’t begin to tell you, because I know you know you came in here when it was crazy, and there’s 45,000 Red Sox fans running around to have baseball sort of back again as a daily part of the conversation. Uh, it’s almost like having the Colts back, but that that’s for another day. We had Joe Flacco for that. Dan, good health. Um, thank you for always being a good partner to the program. And next time I have you on, we’ll talk about the the parade that happens here and all that good
Dan Shaughnessy 25:12
stuff. Thanks. Nestor, enjoy it. Take care. Shaughnessy, the Boston Globe defending champion, uh,
Nestor J. Aparicio 25:17
reversing the curse, and feel a little healthier. The Orioles and the Red Sox getting together this weekend at Camden yads. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S, D, A of 1570 toss to Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore. Positive. You.
