Jerry Remy: Overexposed?

(Eds. Note: The first of some occasional thoughts about the Boston Red Sox...because not enough is written about them.)

Is Jerry Remy overexposed?

Shit, I feel guilty even raising the question, but I'm not the first.

Don't get me wrong, Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo are two of the best broadcasters in baseball, maybe top five in sports broadcasting. I gnash my teeth when DirectTV forces me to watch other team's regional broadcasters (like the yo-yo who calls the Orioles games and made fun of Jon Lester's hair line the other night. Are you kidding me?)

In addition to calling a great game, and being responsible for at least 60 percent of what I know about baseball, in their best 'Sox lead 9-3' moments, they recall the spare comedy of Bob & Ray, who long ago filled in during Red Sox rain delays on WHDH Radio. (No, not alive then).

And I do love the goofy schtick...my boyfriend and I still crack up about Judge Judy and Munchkin-gate.

But sheesh, is it really necessary for NESN to run Jerry Remy commercials after every inning of Jerry Remy called game? Is there no other time of the day they could possibly run them?

(Memo from Sovereign Bank ad rep to me: Go fuck yourself.)

Does Jerry Remy really want to squander his 'Remy-equity' on ads for windows? Next thing you know, he's gonna be dancing with a poker chip in a Foxwoods commercial. Think about the wonder of that...

Again, it's admittedly Grinch-y to complain about a guy who got payed peanuts to play ball in a far more demanding era, who's just trying earn extra dough. I'm all for it in principle...maybe just not in degree.



And poor Fred Thompson. The networks are ready to yank The Hunt for Red October, Curly Sue and countless Law & Order re-runs to prevent some kind of bizarre advantage (I'm a fiction bad-ass, vote for me?) But the Rem-dawg's free airtime to promote his bid for Red Sox Nation presidency would make the FCC, frankly, shit a brick. (All credit to Don Orsillo for pointing this out tonight, even in passing.)

So to Jerry I say this: I bought your book. I ate at RemDawgs on Yawkey Way. I have the Don and Jerry Bobble-Desk. (Your bobble-head broke off in the shipping though, and it's kinda freakin' me out).

But this winter, when you are far far away in some exotic locale, reading books and trying to not think about baseball for a moment, think about this: You're a baseball icon and a broadcast gem worth a million bucks...please don't spend it all in one place.



[This message has been brought to you by a Gigantic Lifesize D'Angelo's sub--who's best friend David Ortiz brought baseball magic back to Fenway, all by himself.)

Read on...

Yo Mama

For the better part of a decade I was a very small part of a Very Large Company, which did some things quite well, and also reported the news.

Like many Very Big Companies, it started out by only reporting the news. But after a long time being very good at reporting the news, that stopped being good enough.

When I started out, I was often called 'a rising star.' Except, to be perfectly honest, I never quite shot across the sky in the way my first really wonderful bosses hoped I might.

I'm not so much ready to name names (bit cowardly, I'll say it first), so for now we'll just call the company I worked for 'Yo Mama, Inc'. Could have been The Yo Mama Post Gazette, W-Y-M-E Poughkeepsie, or The Yo Mama Nightly News anchored by--you guessed it--Yo Mama.

In the end, it doesn't matter what the real name was, because it really was just an Inc. And not so long ago, they Inc.-ed me right out.

That sounds bitter; I should clarify.

When I got the news, just before Christmas, the woman who got stuck performing the 'sacking' didn't get past the first sentence (something about 'parting ways') before my mind started to whir.

"This means I get Christmas!"

"I could go home and see my family..."

"Hey wait...I can take Christmas AND New Years!"

I kept a solemn face throughout the brief meeting. After all, I was being canned. And I was in shock the rest of the day: I recall a certain buzzing noise. I fixated on writing a kick-ass 'goodbye note'. I even got a little misty packing my boxes, especially when colleagues appeared in my doorway, a little misty themselves. We all realized that 'It Could Never Happen Here' was officially toast, and soon there would probably be 'More To Come.'

And of course there was.

And Was.

And Was.

In fact, Yo Mama was in some pretty good company.

At the end of my brief meeting during which I was severed from the only news outlet I'd ever worked for, I hugged the person who had just fired me. Because after all, she still had to work there.

And I became a freelance journalist, the only job I've ever that contains the word 'free.'

Free to pay a fortune for health care? Yes.

Free to get taxed twice for the same money? You betcha. (What the hell is a business license tax, anyway?)

But also, free to make choices.

(The choice to totally not work not being one of them.)

Free to say, "Looks like no one's calling to hire me today...let's go see 'Shoot 'em Up' ...



...again.

Free not to care when a sports flak is yelling at you for breaking some beat writer rule you didn't know existed because you'd never covered, say, Arena Football before.

(I haven't actually covered Arena Football, but I'd like to keep covering what I cover!)

Free not to care about the latest Presidential Contender Gaffe, because we haven't even had a damn primary yet.

Free to learn how to think for myself.

And most of all, free to tell really tasteless jokes about Yo Mama.

Read on...

What lies beyond...

What lies beyond objectivity?

According to Merriam-Webster, the #3 definition of objectivity is:

"Expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations."

Objectivity other definitions. A favorite: "Having reality independent of the mind."

Roll that one around in your noodle.

But it's Definition # 3 that has been my North Star for the better part of a decade. As a journalism student, it was drilled into me by every professor. As a wage-earning journalist, it was what I lived in constant fear of not being.

Objectivity was never designed to keep me, or any other journalist, from having an opinion...we just had to keep it to ourselves. But as time wore on, (and I can only speak with authority about a small slice of it) the fear of bias, slant, or bent grew worse; the fear of your personal thoughts accidentally thrust in the public spotlight. Worst of all: your wicked sense of humor, the one that kept you sane, exposed to the humorless for rabid misinterpretation.

For me (the only one I can speak for) it just became easier not to have any opinion at all. News? Take it in, report it, let it go. Get a drink.

Except that as we bustled around gathering our news 'objectivitally', commenting on news while reporting it became OK. Fox News did it on the right, The Daily Show did it real funny-like; Air America did it 'til they ran out of dough. And you certainly don't need me to tell you that whole shows on Nameless Cable News Networks were devoted to opinionated hollering.

Suddenly, a journalist who clung to objectivity was like the fat guy with his clothes on, smiling awkwardly while the other kids swam naked in the pool.

So fuck it. I'm strippin' down.

I'm going to practice having an opinion. I'm no longer a daily deadline journalist, so I'm going to start writing about What I Think. Of course, like a newborn that can't hold it's head up, I'll be starting small.

I like the Boston Red Sox.

There. I said it.

I like sharp writing about the Boston Red Sox.

A blind homeless man shuffling through the subway with a sign around his neck makes me really really sad, but I rarely do anything about it.

That makes me kind of suck.

I'm SO sick of the word 'media.'

I am an over-thinker.

This first entry was a bit of a survey piece, but you gotta start somewhere.

So what lies beyond objectivity?

Time to find out.

Read on...