This Is Just A Tribute
The ChiSox were only 46–60 when manager Don Kessinger was fired and La Russa was summoned from AAA Iowa, two-thirds of the way through the 1979 season. The White Sox played .500 baseball for the rest of the ’79 campaign, and La Russa’s career was launched. He credits Paul Richards with first inspiring him to believe he could succeed as a major league manager. He was named American League Manager of the Year in 1983, when his club won the AL West but fell to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship Series. The White Sox fired La Russa after the club got off to a 26–38 start in 1986.
When Ballplayers Were Men
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW OR WHAT YOU’VE DONE, BUT HOW YOU RELATE
At the conclusion of Dan Rea’s WBZ gubernatorial debate, he asked the three candidates—Deval Patrick, Charlie Baker, and Tim Cahill—a series of “yes” or “no” questions. In their responses, there would be no pontificating, no straddling both sides, just yes, or no. At one point, Rea asked, “Do you pledge to run no negative ads?”—not the best question, given the fact that all candidates had run a negative ad against their opponents at one point or another during the campaign, and, given the ugly and nasty nature of Massachusetts politics, would undoubtedly go hardcore negative over the final six weeks.
Just Words
Some of you may recall Deval Patrick’s memorable 2006 speech, two weeks out from election day, titled “Just Words” (BHO also lifted this speech for his 2008 presidential run).
It was the nail in the coffin for Kerry Healey’s campaign, which had argued that all Deval Patrick had to offer was flowery rhetoric and “words.” Of course, Healey’s campaign was also bogged down by her negative attacks, and snarky and dismissive (as opposed to optimistic) rhetoric (sound familiar?)
Here’s the speech:
It’s a wonderful speech—thoughtful, inspiring, aggressive—and yet, after a bumbling first term, and a second term marred by companies fleeing the state (taking jobs with them), an overseas “trade mission,” and a book tour, this speech may forever be relegated to the annals of Massachusetts political history exactly as the prophetic Healey warned:
Just words.
Ill Crew Goes For #18
Who is Barry Soetoro?
Today, Joan Vennochi wrote a column about Willard Mitt Romney and his missing birth certificate.
Listen, bitch, if you’re implying that Romney is an ancestor of Xenu’s intergalactic DC-8 transport that brought people to Earth some years ago, you’re totally messing up your facts. Scientologists, not Mormons, believe in that. So screw off.
