Tony Massarotti's Airing Of Boston Sports Grievances: Wade Boggs, Pats' Missed Opportunity And NFL Officiating
By Tony Massarotti, 98.5 The Sports Hub
BOSTON (CBS) -- We have Christmas and Hanukkah and we have Festivus for the rest of us, and so now we have our annual airing of grievances.
And so as the Patriots head to New York for this Week 16 meeting with the Jets, I go back to Week 13, back to the Eagles game, and lament the stupidity with the Patriots played and coached, because the Pats gave away a game they shouldn't have.
And because, as a result, the Patriots may be forced to play both Weeks 16 and 17, on the road, when they could have been resting bodies and gearing for the playoffs after having secured the No. 1 seed.
Good grief.
But we digress.
Wade Boggs was as pure a hitter as there has ever been, the possessor of a .369 career batting average at Fenway Park, without question the best there has ever been at utilizing the Green Monster as his very own training wall, in a way no one else ever has.
But if anyone suggests Boggs was one of the greatest Red Sox of all time, they are badly missing the point.
What Boggs was, after all, was a symbol of the flawed Red Sox of old, of selfishness and eccentricity, of 25 players and 25 cabs.
And of being entirely unclutch.
Which reminds me:
Speaking of clutch, I think it's cool that Malcolm Butler made the Pro Bowl.
But back to the griping.
Is it just me, or is NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino issuing apologies and mea culpas on a weekly basis now?
The latest, of course, is Blandino's admission that Odell Beckham Jr. should have been ejected from Sunday's game between the New York Giants and Carolina Panthers for acting like a complete out-of-control lunatic, no matter the threats or slurs that the Panthers aimed in his direction.
Which brings us back the officials.
If the Panthers were calling Beckham gay slurs on the field, should the officials have been throwing flags?
What game were these clowns watching?
We still don't know who or what the Bruins are, but if this keeps up, team officials are going to have a very interesting decision to make come the trading deadline: do the Bruins further invest in this team and, say, trade away one of their two first-round picks, something they were unwilling to do last year?
Do they stand pat and ride it out?
Or do they trade off a valuable piece like Loui Eriksson and further fortify themselves for the long term?
Decisions, decisions.
Celtics forward David Lee cannot be happy with 15.8 minutes per night. He just can't.
Denver Broncos coach Gary Kubiak can play it as straight as he wants regarding quarterbacks Brock Osweiler and Peyton Manning, but we all know the truth here: Manning can't throw anymore, foot injury or no foot injury, and the Broncos' best chance to win now and win in the future is by turning over the team to Osweiler, who at least gives the Broncos a chance.
Which brings us to this:
If the Broncos have the best defense in the league, shouldn't they be able to close out a 27-10 lead on the road?
The Steelers have the best passing attack in the NFL right now. The Seattle Seahawks might actually be second. The Patriots are … where?
Since the start of the of the 2013-14 NBA season, the Philadelphia 76ers are 38-156, including a record of just 1-29 this season, during which the team's only victory was a 103-91 decision over the Los Angeles Lakers, who are just 5-23 this season (the second-worst record in the NBA) and a combined 53-139 over the same stretch of time.
This, folks, is taking tanking to an entirely new level.
And there ought to be a rule against it.
The Dallas Stars currently have the best record in the NHL and Tyler Seguin (plus-15) is tied with teammate Jamie Benn for second in the league in scoring, putting Seguin on pace for a 108-point season and bringing Seguin's career totals in Dallas to 207 points in 186 games.
But if Seguin and the Stars continue to flounder in the playoffs, well, the Bruins can still say they were right.
Or at least partly right.
This is very unscientific, but someone who just came back from Las Vegas tells me the Red Sox are currently 9-to-1 to win the World Series, which, dare we remind you, is perilously close to the 10-to-1 odds the Sox had at roughly this time last year, when many regarded them as World Series favorites.
Happy Holidays, folks.
See you in 2016.
