OT: Remember when this was a Red Sox town?

[Rob0729]

Listening to the radio the other day, I came to the realization that even the hosts and callers don't want to talk about the Red Sox anymore. They seem to bash them and then quickly move to one of the other teams. Right now, you can make the strong argument that the Red Sox are the fourth imporant/cared about team in this town right now.

For long standing listeners of sports talk radio in this town, the irony is thick and heavy. Back in the early parts of the Patriots Dynasty, there was an arogance of the Red Sox beat writers and analysts and hosts on sports radio that this is a Red Sox town and will always be a Red Sox town and the Patriots, Celitcs, and Bruins need to take a back seat to them. Any little news of the Sox would take priority over any other team's monster news in terms of discussion on the shows.

I remember in the 2003 season when the Pats were racking up wins and were like 10-2, the only talk allowed on WEEI were A-Rod trade rumors and callers giving ridiculous trade offers by callers. Yes, the rumors and then the trade that was blocked by MLB were big news and deserved to be covered extensively, but that was all the covered. Nothing about the Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins got any air time. And if I remember correctly the trade didn't even happen until after the NFL season ended and they were in the playoffs. If I remember correctly, the Pats winning the Super Bowl didn't even get much air time because A-Rod was traded to the Yankees like a week or so later. But any caller trying to call in to talk the Patriots were ridiculed for wanting to talk about the Patriots when there are twenty callers waiting to get on the air to pitch their ridiculous A-Rod trade.

And I also remember NFL draft weekend in like 2003 or 2004, Steve Buckley admonishing callers who called in on Sunday morning wanting to talk about who the Pats' drafted claiming this is a Red Sox town and they are only going to talk baseball.

I may sound bitter or petty, maybe I am a little, but I am more fascinated by the fact that in a relative short period of time this town has gone from all things Red Sox to them being an after thought.

I wonder if this could happen to the Patriots. I tend to doubt it since the NFL is so dominant. Maybe in several decades, but not in the immediate future.

 

[TheRainMaker]

I'm sure this is how it is in most towns. It's always been Lakers/Dodgers in Southern California, but the they will shift to whoever is relevant at the time. Anaheim Angels had their brief moment in 2002. Then USC during the Carroll years felt like a pro football team out here. The hype was pretty insane and the players were treated like celebrities. Then the Kings had their brief moment during their Stanley Cup run where all of the sudden everyone was a fan.

But it always comes back to being Lakers and Dodgers.

 

[chasa]

The problem with the red sox is they brought in a guy to basically gut the team. Henry has been trying to play Oakland athletic and tampa bay rays style of baseball where he spends as little money as possible, but hes ****ing terrible at it.

So he brings in a GM that is really bad at scouting talent, and then he lets his home grown guys walk and signs lesser talent for just below what the home grown guys would have gotten, and everyone they bring in is absolute trash

It results in a team with no identity, and no reason to root for them. The players we like get shipped off, and the players they bring in are like walmart brand replacements.

 

[DarrylS]

If you listen to Sportstalk Radio these days, which I do less and less of, they focus on the Patriots mostly. With a smathering of the Bruins and sometimes Celtics, nary a mention of the Red Sox. The RS have been relegated to #4 and with the advent of Chaim Bloom rightfully so..
Sportstalk focuses on how bad the Patriots daily, how they continue to make piss poor moves, how bad BB is blah, blah, blah rendering that medium unlistenable, so I listen to Pandora..

 

[Patriot Missile]

I love all 4 teams but Patriots are #1 because the sport of football isn’t completely broken like the other 3 so it’s easier to follow and judge success and failures.

Basketball is financially broken, big 3’s go to the highest bidder, salary cap, but no salary cap as long as your team is rich and can afford the luxury tax. Wtf is that all about? Breaks the fairness with baseball and basketball right away. Red Sox team has been part of that with the big dollar free agents and now living off twins A’s like mentality.

Done with hockey for awhile. Great sport, fun to watch live and play. However, the playoff system is just too squishy. Rarely does the best team ever win. The loss this year was devastating considering what they accomplished. Done.

Again, football is king and there is no question about it.

 

[FortressX]

WEEI hitched themselves to the wrong carrier modulation.
WEEI Hitched themselves to the wrong team.
Ha Ha.

Having little competition back then they could be Pro Sox.

 

[TomPatriot]

I'm sure this is how it is in most towns. It's always been Lakers/Dodgers in Southern California, but the they will shift to whoever is relevant at the time. Anaheim Angels had their brief moment in 2002. Then USC during the Carroll years felt like a pro football team out here. The hype was pretty insane and the players were treated like celebrities. Then the Kings had their brief moment during their Stanley Cup run where all of the sudden everyone was a fan.

But it always comes back to being Lakers and Dodgers.

No surprise. Dodgers were a popular and successful franchise long before they made Chavez Ravine home.

 

[FCB02062]

back in 2001 etc, the early part of the Brady dynasty, there was a resentment of the Pats amongst Red Sox fans....and in the media as well.

 

[Kdo5]

Less and less people watch or care about baseball nowadays. The other three sports are all a far superior product.

 

[RobertWeathers]

For me, the tell was 2018. Sox were a juggernaut. They steamrolled through the regular season, the playoffs and the WS. One of the best teams in baseball history. They had every right to take victory laps in this town for months.

......2018 was all Josh Gordon, Gronk, Tom's contract, etc. Pats dominated the news and the psyche of the region

Once late Oct rolled around...the Sox were relegated to the Living & Arts section of the Globe.

 

[Dingleberry]

I used to root for the Red Sox when I was a kid. It's just what you did.

As I began to realize baseball was as exciting as straightening your pubes with a curling iron, I began to opt for the Yankees to lose and was mildly interested if the Red Sox succeeded. But not really.

Once the **** stains at the rag known as the Boston Globe became obvious with its jealousy and attacks on the Patriots, I turned on the Globe Sox. Now I want the Yankees and Globe Sox to tie for last place.

Can't name a single player on that team anymore, and maybe a handful in the entire league.

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

It's always been a fine line and I would never call Boston a "red sox" town even though these things come in waves.

Boston, specifically, like actual Boston. More than anything was a Bruins and Celtics town. Sox had their times but those two ruled the decades more than anyone else.

 

[borg]

Didn't Kaiser Soze once say..."The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world MLB is a sport and not a 6 hour food court where lemmings pay hundreds of dollars to eat and play Candy Crush on their phones while "athletes" scratch their nuts and spit"

 

[Tunescribe]

Baseball is an anachronism not even the pitch clock can save (that's something they should've adopted 15 years ago, too little too late). It just doesn't appeal enough to young people.

 

[JarOfMayo51]

Listening to the radio the other day, I came to the realization that even the hosts and callers don't want to talk about the Red Sox anymore. They seem to bash them and then quickly move to one of the other teams. Right now, you can make the strong argument that the Red Sox are the fourth imporant/cared about team in this town right now.

For long standing listeners of sports talk radio in this town, the irony is thick and heavy. Back in the early parts of the Patriots Dynasty, there was an arogance of the Red Sox beat writers and analysts and hosts on sports radio that this is a Red Sox town and will always be a Red Sox town and the Patriots, Celitcs, and Bruins need to take a back seat to them. Any little news of the Sox would take priority over any other team's monster news in terms of discussion on the shows.

I remember in the 2003 season when the Pats were racking up wins and were like 10-2, the only talk allowed on WEEI were A-Rod trade rumors and callers giving ridiculous trade offers by callers. Yes, the rumors and then the trade that was blocked by MLB were big news and deserved to be covered extensively, but that was all the covered. Nothing about the Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins got any air time. And if I remember correctly the trade didn't even happen until after the NFL season ended and they were in the playoffs. If I remember correctly, the Pats winning the Super Bowl didn't even get much air time because A-Rod was traded to the Yankees like a week or so later. But any caller trying to call in to talk the Patriots were ridiculed for wanting to talk about the Patriots when there are twenty callers waiting to get on the air to pitch their ridiculous A-Rod trade.

And I also remember NFL draft weekend in like 2003 or 2004, Steve Buckley admonishing callers who called in on Sunday morning wanting to talk about who the Pats' drafted claiming this is a Red Sox town and they are only going to talk baseball.

I may sound bitter or petty, maybe I am a little, but I am more fascinated by the fact that in a relative short period of time this town has gone from all things Red Sox to them being an after thought.

I wonder if this could happen to the Patriots. I tend to doubt it since the NFL is so dominant. Maybe in several decades, but not in the immediate future.

As someone that played baseball for 9 years, was on numerous all-star and jimmy fund league teams, etc... the sport SUCKS to watch, i didnt even watch a single game of the redsox the last time they were in the world series

Ill sometimes turn on NBA, but thats as far as my sports watching goes.. i cant watch baseball or hockey. Baseball to me is such a p*ssy sport, full of overpaid athletes that would get smoked in virtually any other sports league. It was a fairly boring sport to play (i was center fielder, shortstop and pitcher), but there are no words to describe how boring of a sport it is to watch... i joke with my parents all the time how much of saints they were to bring themselves to watch me at my baseball games for NINE YEARS!!!! I cant even imagine how terrible of a time that was, beyond just there to root on their son... that is some dedication

**** baseball and the red sox

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

Besides a brief spot in the late 90's - early 2000's the Sox never had this city. Ted Williams was taking at bats. It took the Sox 100 years to win a chip. Boston barely noticed bc Tom Brady was just done with the first of 3 HOF arcs.

I love the Sox but all things being equal. All 4 teams are in/hunting for the playoffs. Sox are taking a back seat whether it's the 70's or present day.

 

[Hyped]

Comments:

1.) Right now the Bruins and Celts are contenders, the Patriots play in the most popular North American professional sports league, and the Sox are at .500 halfway through.

2.) Yes, I remember when the Patriots were second fiddle to the Sox here….but think that has a lot to do with the older sportswriters/radio guys being replaced by online coverage/hot take guys to fit the short attention span fan demographic.

 

[Family]

It's directly related to demographics and societal changes.

Young people do not want to invest the amount of time it takes to follow baseball. It's like a part-time job. When there was no internet and only channels 4/5/7 what else was there to do? Slowly, as more options became available, the interest in baseball as a spectator sport has waned.

It's not the Red Sox. If anything, they were the last baseball team to continue to capture a town.

The audience is aging out.

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

Remember the old saying, "How did it fail?", "Slowly and then all of a sudden". Baseball has been slowly dying for years. One thing that adds interest is that there are no other major sports in June and July. But baseball is dying, very few under 35 watch it.

 

[Ivan]

Listening to the radio the other day, I came to the realization that even the hosts and callers don't want to talk about the Red Sox anymore. They seem to bash them and then quickly move to one of the other teams. Right now, you can make the strong argument that the Red Sox are the fourth imporant/cared about team in this town right now.

For long standing listeners of sports talk radio in this town, the irony is thick and heavy. Back in the early parts of the Patriots Dynasty, there was an arogance of the Red Sox beat writers and analysts and hosts on sports radio that this is a Red Sox town and will always be a Red Sox town and the Patriots, Celitcs, and Bruins need to take a back seat to them. Any little news of the Sox would take priority over any other team's monster news in terms of discussion on the shows.

I remember in the 2003 season when the Pats were racking up wins and were like 10-2, the only talk allowed on WEEI were A-Rod trade rumors and callers giving ridiculous trade offers by callers. Yes, the rumors and then the trade that was blocked by MLB were big news and deserved to be covered extensively, but that was all the covered. Nothing about the Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins got any air time. And if I remember correctly the trade didn't even happen until after the NFL season ended and they were in the playoffs. If I remember correctly, the Pats winning the Super Bowl didn't even get much air time because A-Rod was traded to the Yankees like a week or so later. But any caller trying to call in to talk the Patriots were ridiculed for wanting to talk about the Patriots when there are twenty callers waiting to get on the air to pitch their ridiculous A-Rod trade.

And I also remember NFL draft weekend in like 2003 or 2004, Steve Buckley admonishing callers who called in on Sunday morning wanting to talk about who the Pats' drafted claiming this is a Red Sox town and they are only going to talk baseball.

I may sound bitter or petty, maybe I am a little, but I am more fascinated by the fact that in a relative short period of time this town has gone from all things Red Sox to them being an after thought.

I wonder if this could happen to the Patriots. I tend to doubt it since the NFL is so dominant. Maybe in several decades, but not in the immediate future.

If they were winning they be would be getting more attention, but even my most diehard Red Sox friends are completely turned off by them right now. Ownership isn’t willing to pay to keep their best players, despite clearly having the means to do so. They need new owners and a new stadium if they want to get back to the top.

I love classic stadiums but Fenway simply can’t accommodate the number of fans that want to attend games when they are in contention.