He should save his criticism of the Yankees for when they really deserve it.

For me, that would be every day. I think Caple needs to worry more about covering baseball that's not on the East Coast than on his Yankee-hating.

couldn't agree more. i used to read his columns, now just his name on the byline means i won't touch it. it's not jounalism, it's a personal journal entry. there should be a difference when you write for a major sports network.

Buster Olney and Murray Chass are also two writers that I've turned off from because of their inability to analyze the Yankees in a reasonable, objective way.

Buster Olney and Murray Chass are also two writers that I've turned off from because of their inability to analyze the Yankees in a reasonable, objective way.

Caple's problem is his over-reliance on schtick, which has hastened his descent into hackery and self-parody. For instance, since Game Six of the NLCS, he seeming can't go a column without dredging up Steve Bartman (he managed to make it as far as the second paragraph in the linked column before his inevitable Bartman reference). It's almost to the point where you could devise a Jim Caple drinking game -- "Drink once for every gratuitous Yankees slam! Drink twice every time Caple makes a snide comment about 'Moneyball!'" -- would it not result in an epidemic of liver disease and drunkeness among the nation's baseball fans.

Maybe this made Dan very popular in Boston

If you use Boston Sports Radio or popular forums on projo.com or Sons of Sam Horn, Dan "CHB" Shaughnessy is not very popular in beantown.

Most Red Sox fans (see SOSH, Royal Rooters, etc.) would find your comments about Shaughnessy pretty ironic. He is at best/worst an equal opportunity digger. The reality now is that he's pretty self-absorbed and lazy. As long as there is status quo (Yankees ahead of the Sox), he can keep recycling the same crap over and over. He may die from stress of having to come up with original prose if (I mean when) the Sox win the WS.

I agree with you about Caple -- there's just nothing special there.

"it's not jounalism, it's a personal journal entry. there should be a difference when you write for a major sports network. "

Actually, it's a column, which means it doesn't follow the normal "fairness" requirement of journalism and is more akin to a personal journal entry.

Having said that, I find Caple neither funny or particularly insightful, whether he loves or hates the Yankees.

Other than repeating the same joke about Don Zimmer / Bob Shepard a half dozen times, I tend to think Caple's columns are very funny. But other than "blasting the Yankees", where's the error in Caple's claim? The Yankees _have_ lost the majority of their 2003 starting rotation and despite the additions of Vasquez and Brown, we know they thought they were keeping Wells, probably didn't envision Clemens signing elsewhere and can't be consider better for the loss of Pettitte. Caple is hardly the only person to take issue with this --- many of those moaning long and loud about his very point are Yankee fans.

I'm a little confused on this whole Yankee bashing. And yes, I'm going to use a lot of IFs here.

But Andy Pettitte is no better than Javier Vazquez.
Mike Mussina is still Mike Mussina.
If Kevin Brown is healthy, he gives them their best starter in years.
Jose Contreras shows that he is turning it around, and at the very least is better than the average pitcher Clemens has become at this age.
Jon Lieber is supposedly throwing better than he did before busting up his arm.

A lot of these statements aren't backable. However, you can definitely back this--the only real loss the Yankees had was Pettitte. Keeping Clemens or Wells around would also be a loss, because their value is depreciating.

steve - > the point i was trying to make (albeit poorly) was that writers for any newspaper, regardless of the type of column they write, have editors. this should, I would at the very least hope, make his columns a little stronger, and would perhaps get him to ease off his venom for the Yanks. Perhaps he does get a terriffic response for the anti-yank, steve bartman a week, mentions, otherwise i suppose he wouldn't continue to harp on it.

who knows.

Jim Caple has gone crazy. It's not just the Yankees he hates but most things related to them. He managed to put down New York during the huge blackout ordeal, saying that the media ignored everyplace else ignoring the point that the New York city area and suburbs is like 30 million people and New York is a super national/strong media outlet unlike other places like Detroit or Cleveland. For my part I lived Los Angeles during the blackout and I thought the media given the limited circumstances tried to go different places in the US to find the reaction during the crisis.

Jim Caple's problem is that he hates the Yankees professionally, not medically like I do.

i am actually getting tired of jim caple's anti-yankee comments and i am no yankee fan myself. it was funny at first, but now is tiresome. like comedians who overuse a joke or f-bombs. but i am definitely a fan of steinbrenner's win at any price mentality. i wish drayton mclean was just like him.

Well, Caple is writing a book that's a humorous look at the Yankees' foibles with a title I don't remember but is something like George Steinbreener Is A Big Fat Idiot.

So I wouldn't look for any change in his attitude in the near future.

since caple doesn't ruin half my mornings from march to november (and i don't care a lick for the yanks anyway), i'll only comment on shaughnessy.

this guy is the poster child for what is wrong with the sports media in boston (not to say that he doesn't have radio competition). he is self-obsessed, asinine, extreme, juvenile, hateful, uninsightful, and usually inaccurate.

he is so despised by every sox fan i know, that no amount of yankees bashing (which is more of an entertaining pastime here, than a requirement), would make him acceptable. if you want corroboration, see the "fire this clown" tshirts, teddy bears and stickers for sale on line.

further, as much as a lot of sox fans don't like the yankees, it doesn't mean we don't want good quality reporting on them -- know your enemy, and all that.

this is off topic, but speaking of buster olney... his writing is painful to read. most of his sentences don't make sense and contain grade school grammatical errors. his style is awkward and he relies on cliches that don't tend to make sense. anyone else feel this way? i don't understand how he can be a professional sportswriter - if he can, my 12 year old brother can.