Peter Abraham-big game hunter

By On April 22, 2012 · 12 Comments · In Media, Musings, The Opposition, Whimsy

Oy vey

As an avid baseball fan who reads everything I can find the time for, on a daily basis you’ll come across things you disagree with, sometimes strongly. That’s all fair game, and I’ve long held that some of us like debating sports as much as we like the games themselves. But every once in a while you comes across something so silly, so mindlessly irrelevant and off base that you just can’t let it pass. An entry in yesterday’s post game coverage on Boston.com was one of those instances.

From Peter Abraham: 

The Red Sox allowed seven runs in the seventh inning and seven more in the eighth inning to blow a 9-1 lead. If ever there was a day to skip “Sweet Caroline,” in favor of some decorum, this was it.

But the song played and on one of the most embarrassing days in franchise history, people sang, “So good! So good!” like they were drunk at a wedding.

It’s only a song and if people want to sing, so be it. But let’s forget about the notion that Fenway Park is a tough place to play and is full of hard-core fans. Because it’s not any more. It’s a place where people gleefully sing a cheesy song after their team blows a nine-run lead.

Nobody is singing when they home team is getting embarrassed at Yankee Stadium or Citizens Bank Park. Bruins fans weren’t singing at the Garden Saturday. Either winning really matters or it doesn’t. If it does, put the silly song on the shelf during games like this.

• The best news? It’s supposed to rain like crazy Sunday. Not even the Red Sox can lose a rainout.

Pete, of course, in a former life built the wildly successful LoHud Yankees blog into what it is today. In my dealings with him I always found him to be helpful, and he would offer lots of off the record insight into what was going on with the team for the asking. One of the good guys. But as a journalist, even one who does editorials (opinion as opposed to hard news) this is just beyond silly. To focus on Sweet Caroline when there is a mountain of real baseball analysis to be done on a team in turmoil with no bullpen is at best a distraction, and at worst an upside down set of priorities. Maybe its just the ramblings of a die hard Sox fan whose team is currently struggling mightily. That’s fine coming from the man on the street, but when it comes from a journalist it leads one to question his ability to be objective. Come on Pete, you’re better than this.

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12 Responses to Peter Abraham-big game hunter

  1. TheOneWhoKnocks says:
    April 22, 2012 at 10:05 am

    He covered the Yankees/yankee stadium and know they sing YMCA when they’re losing right?

    Reply
  2. Marek says:
    April 22, 2012 at 10:50 am

    The Yankee fans were singing “So good, so good” loudly. Not sure about the Red Sox fans.

    Reply
  3. Steve Sciacco says:
    April 22, 2012 at 11:43 am

    ““He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short.”-Franceso Guicciardini

    Then every once in a while, you find someone who manages to do both

    http://www.masslive.com/redsox/index.ssf/2012/04/its_time_for_the_boston_red_so.html#comments

    Reply
  4. roadrider says:
    April 22, 2012 at 12:12 pm

    I was never a fan of Pete Abraham. His A-Rod bashing, steroid hysteria, condemnation of fans who were uncomfortable with the “God Bless America” thing, especially at a time when the Yankees and the NYPD were egregiously violating the civil liberties of fans who merely needed to go to the bathroom during the 7th-inning stretch, all made me think of him as a pretentious dick.

    But the capper for me was the time when I challenged him in a comment as to why, if we wanted to persist bash A-Rod over his steroid use, wasn’t Fred Wilpon fair game for criticism over his involvement with Bernie Madoff. Abraham responded by making excuses for Wilpon, saying that there was no reason for him to ask questions about Madoff as long as he was making money with him, then telling me I didn’t know how a Ponzi scheme worked. Well, that’s about as silly as saying that A-Rod had no reason to question what he was taking as long as he thought it was helping him. And as common sense would have told anyone at the time, and subsequent events have proven, if Wilpon didn’t know Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme it was because he didn’t want to know.

    So I’m glad Abraham has decamped for Boston where I have even more reason to dislike him and enjoy him making a fool of himself with this Sweet Caroline business.

    Reply
    • says:
      April 24, 2012 at 10:47 am

      Agree wholeheartedly. While Abraham was providing a great service — a beat reporter who was blogging continuously throughout the day — sometimes his positions were hypocritical and petty.

      What turned me off on the guy was how quickly he was exposed as a guy that simply plays to his audience. While I understand the need to connect with your readership, there’s a point at which you become ridiculous when you’ve spent four seasons ingratiating yourself to Yanks fans and then spend your first few weeks in Boston hastily undoing any association you had with anything Yankee-related.

      Abraham is, for a lack of a better word, a boob.

      Reply
  5. Michael Eder says:
    April 22, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    I hate that song. Still, pretty amazing the only thing for a reporter covering a 4-10 team to find ailing is the songs they play at Fenway.

    Reply
  6. Beavis says:
    April 22, 2012 at 3:21 pm

    OR,maybe this series has been so analyzed to death he thought he’d throw in a different angle,as reporters tend to do when a subject has been covered from every other angle.

    Reply
  7. Chip Buck says:
    April 22, 2012 at 5:39 pm

    It’s nice to see someone else call Pete one of the good guys. Pete has a bad rap among my fellow Red Sox fans because they misinterpret his sarcasm as trolling or rudeness. Personally, I find it amusing in most cases. He and I have butted heads from time to time, but he’s always been willing to talk through our differences. Furthermore, when most Boston area writers were talking about chicken and beer, he was offering up more rational, plausible reasons for the club’s sudden turn in fortune.

    As such, I find his issue with “Sweet Caroline” to be a bit confusing. This goes back to last September when the Red Sox were in the midst of their collapse. I understand that down times aren’t cause for the celebration that “Sweet Caroline” is supposed to symbolize, but it comes off as nit-picky. At this point, the song is more tradition (albeit a new tradition) than anything else. I hope he drops his stance on the issue. Red Sox fans (and the rivalry in general) need him counteracting the bullshit rather than promoting it.

    Reply
  8. YankeeGrunt says:
    April 22, 2012 at 11:01 pm

    Abraham has long been a giant tool. His blogging was great, even his detractors would give him that, but he has always been a mediocre writer. His anonymous contributions to the comment boxes of his detractors was childish, as were his pigheaded and sometimes legally wrong attempts to ensure that nobody referenced even a sliver of his writing, even with attribution. And his attack on God Bless America came across as a frivolous Lupica-lite attempt to pretend he was something more than an in-house sports blogger. Good riddance.

    Reply
  9. Tony Remonte says:
    May 13, 2012 at 10:09 pm

    You copy and pasted about 1/8 of his postgame story. That renders your point moot. He wrote about the entire game.

    Jackass.

    Reply
  10. Tony Remonte says:
    May 13, 2012 at 10:10 pm

    Here’s the whole thing:

    http://articles.boston.com/2012-04-21/sports/31379607_1_swisher-and-teixeira-daniel-bard-red-sox

    Reply

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