Sportswriter Hero Worship

Boston has had some great sportswriters manning their typewriters in the press boxes of Boston Garden and Fenway Park and Schaeffer Stadium. 

Peter Gammons started as a Boston Globe writer and every Sunday I would grab the sports section, lie down on the floor in the sun by the sliding glass door and read his brilliant baseball notes column.  (These days he seems a little more bemused than brilliant in his gig as sometime ESPN analyst.)  He was a no-brainer hall-of-famer.

Will McDonough was, I think, also a hall-of-famer, for football in his case.  He not only created great news stories, he also spawned my favorite Red Sox announcer of all time.  (Sean McDonough was great, and it's sad that NESN fired him and replaced him with a cheaper sound-alike in Don Orsillo.)

These days, the Globe isn't doing quite as well.  I generally agree with Bob Ryan but he's not quite as interesting.  Dan Shaughnessy is occasionally amusing, but generally on the wrong side of every argument, and I'll never forgive him for the way he ran Nomar out of town.

But, in Bill Simmons, Boston once again has the greatest sportswriter around.  It's a testament to Boston's sports power that he writes for a national publication (ESPN.com) but almost entirely from a Boston point of view.  I'm not sure if non-Boston fans would even bother to read the guy, but I think he's the funniest sportswriter ever.  He is consistently hilarious and almost always bringing out real truths but from the fan's perspective.  But he's not really just playing for laughs -- he does know his stuff.

And I'm not saying all this just because half the time he writes stuff I was thinking.  (Like how much Casey Blake's homerun off Wakefield looked like the Boone homerun in 2003, or matching Jhonny Peralta and Dwyane Wade as brothers-in-name-stupidity.)

Anyway, if you're reading this and you like sports, especially Boston sports, you should absolutely be reading Bill Simmons.

Start with these:

On the Patriots last win, and how they are now the team everyone else hates and wants to see lose.

Liveblogging the last Red Sox game, and ripping on Tim McCarver, Dane Cook, and that awful Chevy truck song.