You Had Me At Hello

I mean that seriously Boston Globe. You really did have me the second I met you.

Half the reason I write is because of The Boston Globe, specifically their sports section. I'm not sure when I began reading The Globe as I'm sure I had to be a bit older, but I can clearly remember the Sunday baseball notes section written by Peter Gammons was the first in the history of my required readings. We'll get back to Gammons in a second, but before that, a few other thoughts.

There are those older than me that absolutely shudder at the thought of the Boston institution known as The Globe potentially being shut down. But for those of us right around my middle aged 35 years, it is equally devastating.

If you are 32-40, you are a media tweener like me. I text, I read all sorts of online publications, IMDb has literally changed my life (I know no longer have to scroll through the credits to who sang a catchy song I loved... I can just look it up in the IMDb Soundtrack Listing). But I also have five magazine subscriptions, would die before I used a Kindle, and love, love, LOVE my thirty minutes at night where I get to read The Boston Globe.

I know I can get all the same stuff online, but I'll never be able to make the transition. Reading boston.com seems like work. The real, actual, physical paper still seems like enjoyment and leisure. There is nothing better than perusing every section of The Globe and stumbling across a great story. As Dan Shaughnessey (we'll get to him in a moment too) said on FNX yesterday morning, you can't do that with boston.com and I completely agree with him. An online newspaper is not friendly to surfing and finding something you would have never found. And there's something to be said for that because when you find and read about something that you were absolutely clueless about you... You know... Learned something.

And that is something else I owe to The Globe: Learning.

As we get older, it seems like we get dumber. We don't have much to challenge our minds and we become specialized at our jos. But if you read the paper everyday, you can learn that Somalia is even worse than it was post Black Hawk Down , you'll be reminded of how wild The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museuem robbery was, and there is a drinking problem at UMass (actually, maybe I didn't need The Globe to get that info).

And every part of The Globe brings something to the table. Everyday, I have something to look forward to, be it Coupling on Sundays, Luke O'Neil's Barcode on Thursdays, Devra Frist's salty restaurant reviews on Wednesday, the ease of the Monday crossword puzzle, and Wes Morris's hilarious film reviews on Friday. I don't know if I'd enjoy these that much if I read them online and I'm serious.

But what really always made me a loyal Globie (can I make that happen?) was the sports section. As I've aged, I've become far less interested in sports, never more so that now. My football aversion is well documented, the Sox are painfully white, Cam Neely is now President of Player Personnel (when the hell did he stop beating the shit out of Ulf Samuelsson and move up to the front office?!? I guess I missed that.) and any BC coverage has always and will always make me want to vomit.

But I have still always found a place in my heart for The Globe sports section. They have run out a bastion of all stars over the years. Will McDonough virtually made the NFL. I hated boxing, but read the boxing notes because Ron Borges was so awesome. Michael Smith and Michael Holley got their starts their. Kevin Paul DuPont and Peter May cover hockey and basketball as well as anyone. Back in the day, Leigh Montville was as good a columnist as their was (I still clearly remember his final article, titled "I Remember," which I once went back and read on microfiche because I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered. It is.). And their is nothing funnier than the dude who writes "The Picks" section on Friday's during football season.

Then, there are Bob Ryan and Dan Shaughnessy. Hating these two has become a right of passage for any Bruschi shirt wearing, PJ Stock loving, Pedro hating, Masshole. If someone tells me the hate one of these two (particularly Shaughnessy), I immediately want to fight them. Ryan has created more tangible controvery over the years with his slightly racist sounding use of the word punk to describe Antoine Walker and his dispicable and idiotic comments about Juwanna Kidd. But the guy always brings it. He is still super relevant and may be the best NBA writer in the country. Even as he ages, his connections, opinions, and stories are still always relevant. And there's no better writing than his emotying out the sports desk drawer of the mind.

Back to Shaugnessy. The never ending hate is quite simply lunatic. Especially annoying is when half wit, wannabe bloggers (I'm talking to you El Pres of Barstool Sports) who can't write for shit dump on Shaugnessy. Even more annoying than that is when The Big Show dumps on Shaughnessy. Didn't he leave WEEI like, ten, twelve years ago? Why you still hating Big O? You sound like a scorned ex-boyfriend. Let it go. Like my girl Emily Giffin said, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

Hate all you want you fools, but Shaugnessy is awesome. And it boggles my mind how people continue to not understand him. Almost everything he says is toungue in cheek and as a columnist, you are SUPPOSED to have an opinion. Well an opinion, he's got. You don't always have to agree with him (I often do, I must admit), but you cannot disparage his writing. Does he mail it in from time to time and write a puff piece? Most certianly. But how many times did you mail it in this week at work? Rip his opinions and shred his ever growing cynicism, but do not discredit his writing. Between blogs and message boards, EVERYONE thinks they are a writer, but few are as amazing as my boy Dan. And if you disagree with me, then you are a moron who knows nothing about the art of writing. He's the second best Globe writer there ever was.

The best? Well that's easy. Peter Gammons.

Peter Gammons virtually created everything that we love about baseball. Hisstatistical analysis and trade coverage are the reason why fantasy leagues exist and why there is omething called The Hot Stove. He is responsible for countless front office jobs throughout the game (don't believe me? Google "Theo Epstein on Peter Gammons" sometime) and his name is attached to a baseball sub culture: The Gammons Youth.

Before there were Fantasy Baseball magazines, the USA Today and Sports Illustarted Baseball Previews, holds, WHIP, fnatasy baseball sights, Baseball Tonight, and Bill James, there was Peter Gammons.

As I wrote above, he was must reading on Sundays between the ages of about 8 and 28. In fact, the two worst words in the history printed media occured when you opened the Boston Sunday Globe and saw the byline in The Baseball Notes column read: Gordon Edes (I like Gordon by the way, just not as much as Gammons). And while Gammons seems old and often has weird love affairs with young guys who aren't that good (I kept drafting Bobby Fuckin Crosby in fabtasy leagues because of you Peter!!!), he is still a must listen or a must read. While roughly 92% of the trades he has proposed in his thirty year career have not come to fruition, you ALWAYS believed them and thought about them when he brought it up. And in a time before the internet, he was the only guy you could get SPECIFIC information from. What I mean by this is the back of a baseball card always gave you the stats of a guy, but they never gave you who had the best outfield throwing arm (Mark Whiten back in the early 90s) and who had the best breaking ball (Tom Gordon when he first came up with the Royals). Gammons came along and told us this on a weekly basis. And when Sportscenter starting hitting it's stride in the late 80s and early 90s, he would give us his Diamond Notes and that two minute clip was pretty much a televison orgasm.

It's more than the nostalgia I have with The Boston Globe though. It is a tremendous newspaper with great reporting. And as I said before, I am convinced that reading the paper makes you smarter. Is this a certified scientific fact? Absolutely not. But I feel that pushing yourself to gain multiple views and potentially learn new words and stay up to date on the issues HAS to make us smarter, doesn't it? And that's why I find it so important to having a paper in this city that I love.

These days, it seems to be the cool thing amongst conservatives to hate on The Globe and hope for it's demise. Strangely, the most positive articles I have read about The Globe have come from The Herald, which has been wildly refreshing. But for those conservatives laughing at The Globe, it is one more reason to hate you. Why would you hate something that makes you smarter? And that is good? Forget the politics for a second and ask yourself, what would you read? The Drudge Report and Fox News can only give you so much. Don't your prefer to have a bit more diversity to your learnings (since you're conservatives, probably not, huh?)? And is there sports page about poltics? How about the G Magazine and the Help Wanted section? They political? While we can get all sorts of information in all sorts of places, it is difficult to argue that for less than a buck a day (with subscription) you can basically get the whole world.

I know The Globe has fucked up and I know the newspaper industry is in flux to say the least. The whole industry seemed to be painfully behind the times with the transition to the electronic world. But not everything can be blamed on something as simple as that. As a society, we are reading at historic lows (This is true, believe me. The book industry is getting shellacked if your title does not contain the words Harry, Potter, or Twilight in them) and we have less time to read the paper (the number one reason subscribers cite as their rationale for cancelling their subscription). I also think that people read more online because it is easier to get away with at work. If I'm on hall duty, I look like far less of a slacker if I am in front of my laptop as opposed to thumbing through the sports section, even though I'm doing the exact same thing on the computer. Also, young people haven't embraced the paper. Yes, I sound like an old bag, but when's the last time you saw a kid reading the paper in class or on the T? Remember those days in collge? Everyone killed time by reading the newspaper. Now, they listen to their iPods and surf their wireless Macs.

God did that sound old.

But if The Globe really does go the way of New Coke, I'll miss my paper.

It completes me.