Report: This is Don Orsillo's last season
- Thread starter Corsi
- Start date
No matter what people think of Orsillo, this is just more confirmation that NESN is run by idiots.
I think an underrated area of Orsillo's performance is the way he handles Jerry. Have you ever noticed that when there is a guest in the booth, Jerry basically refuses to speak to him. Jerry seems like a grouchy prick and DO gets the best out of him, IMO.
Merkle's Boner said:
I think interviewing someone and doing baseball color commentary require a somewhat distinct skill set, and Don's probably better at the former than Jerry is, which is why he takes the lead on those things.
Why does one think one needs to be "outraged" or threatening to not watch games to find this decision stupid?
The Red Sox are my favorite baseball team, something that is a big part of my summer, and I will watch and listen to them pretty much no matter who announces the games.
BUT, I really like Orsillo and I would prefer he remain the PxP guy for TV.
It can be that simple.
Booooo, NESN.
The Red Sox are my favorite baseball team, something that is a big part of my summer, and I will watch and listen to them pretty much no matter who announces the games.
BUT, I really like Orsillo and I would prefer he remain the PxP guy for TV.
It can be that simple.
Booooo, NESN.
Chad Finn
5 mins ·
Asked WEEI boss Phil Zachary if Don Orsillo might be on the station's radar. His response:
"We’re taking our time on this. I’m happy for Dave O’Brien and wish him nothing but the best. Meanwhile, we now have an exceptional opportunity to innovate around the heart and soul of our broadcasts, Joe Castiglione. If Don Orsillo wishes to remain in New England, I’d be delighted to speak with him. By all accounts Don’s a gentleman and a polished performer, and it’s quite clear he’s a fan favorite. At the same time, however, we do have some other ideas and want to keep all options open for the next month or two."
5 mins ·
Asked WEEI boss Phil Zachary if Don Orsillo might be on the station's radar. His response:
"We’re taking our time on this. I’m happy for Dave O’Brien and wish him nothing but the best. Meanwhile, we now have an exceptional opportunity to innovate around the heart and soul of our broadcasts, Joe Castiglione. If Don Orsillo wishes to remain in New England, I’d be delighted to speak with him. By all accounts Don’s a gentleman and a polished performer, and it’s quite clear he’s a fan favorite. At the same time, however, we do have some other ideas and want to keep all options open for the next month or two."
Dick Pole Upside said:
I think this is a fair point generally, but I would push back a little bit and say being an announcer for a baseball team is not just any job and owning a baseball team is not just any business. If you're selling wingnuts and the owner of the company says hey, I don't like the cut of your jib, go sell wingnuts somewhere else, whatever. It's not a job with any cultural significance or institutional memory to speak of. (Sorry to any aggrieved wingnut salesmen out there.)
I try not to be sentimental about the business side of sports, but the fact is that owning a stake in a popular, historic, major-market sports franchise is basically a license to print money in no small part because there is a shared history that (virtually always) predates your involvement, and a cultural attachment to the business that enhances people's willingness to pay 10 bucks for a crappy domestic beer at your ballpark.
That doesn't necessarily entitle Orsillo to anything (after all, he's getting paid to be there just like the owners are making money). It's still a gray world with a lot of assholes in it. But it does suggest that there is some dimension to this whole saga beyond the cut and dry basics of a boss doing what he wants with his product.
Those people saying that they won't watch any Red Sox games on NESN next year are either full of crap or a bit mentally unstable. That being said, if the Sox are again a last place team and there aren't young kids I'm interested in seeing play I will be a little less inclined to watch meaningless games. I enjoy the chemistry between Don & Jerry (silliness included) and they are a big reason I've watched otherwise unwatchable (the bobby valentine era) games.
I'm sure it was the Red Sox Brain Trust feeding WEEI, but on the midday show today they said specifically it was 100% about bringing Dave O'Brien aboard and didn't have much to do with DO. They thought O'Brien was a huge talent and wanted him on NESN.
It's sad we won't get anymore WEEI Shaws Promos midgame with Dave O'Brien and Castig.
"Wow, Shaws has celery on sale for $1.99 each this week, Joe" "Dave, that's a great bargain, I love celery and at that price, what a deal!"
"Hey Joe, a six pack of Raisins is now $2.99 at Shaw's!" "I love raisins!"
It's sad we won't get anymore WEEI Shaws Promos midgame with Dave O'Brien and Castig.
"Wow, Shaws has celery on sale for $1.99 each this week, Joe" "Dave, that's a great bargain, I love celery and at that price, what a deal!"
"Hey Joe, a six pack of Raisins is now $2.99 at Shaw's!" "I love raisins!"
NortheasternPJ said:
I don't doubt this for a second. In fact, it's perfectly understandable that they'd want to do that. I like Orsillo, but I have no problem with them wanting to go in this direction.
The problem is with how this has gone down this week. Not just with the leaks and the seemingly rushed announcement of the coming change, but particularly the story that they were discussing pulling Orsillo off the air with six weeks left in the season. If it really isn't about DO at all, and solely about "upgrading" the position next year, why even a thought about bum rushing Orsillo out the door? There's simply no way to put a positive spin on that.
dirtynine said:
Former Pawsox announce Aaron Goldsmith has been in Seattle calling M's games for only 3 years. Having a connection to the org in the past, there might be a match there. (Or he may have become acclimated to baseball weather out here and never plan to live back east again, for all I know. Just spitballing.)
Good article from Chad on this: http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2015/08/27/media/LtL9K60NCSUmdCaSDc4DHI/story.html?event=event25
I'm still pretty bullshit over their treatment of him.
I'm still pretty bullshit over their treatment of him.
WARNING: Impossibly long, overly personal post incoming.
Despite checking SoSH between 2-100 times a day, I lurk. Mainly it's because I had a bad experience in the post-2004 offseason where I asked a main board member to post a interesting factoid I had been told by Somebody Who Knows Somebody, and the Red Sox front office found it and all hell broke loose. Somebody lost their job, and I had to write an apology email to Theo Esptein, which, for a Jewish 18 year old Red Sox devotee in November 2004, was like having to write an apology email to God himself. So I've been content to read. But, I feel like I have to say something about this, and I'm dumping it here where maybe one or three of you will understand.
I am 28 years old. Born 1987. In my family, sports were never popular (bunch of lefty liberal pinko commies), but I somehow found my way to the Red Sox starting in '99. I distinctly remember watching Pedro dominate the '99 all star game-- I believe this is the first baseball game I watched with any interest. That incredible seed grew and grew, and by 2003, my addictive personality took over, and I watched at least 5 innings of 142 regular season games. Yes, in true bubbing-sabermatician-form, I counted. In 2004, right around when Curt Schilling (and then I), discovered SoSH, my stepfather's company got field box season tickets, and since he was the CEO and the company only had about a dozen games they wanted to take clients to, I went to 49 games (playoffs included, plus three in baltimore). Between that and NESN, in 2004, I doubt I missed more than two or three games all year. An expensive hobby to be sure, but, I had some trouble with the wrong kind of kids and the wrong kinds of habits for a teenager, so my folks were happy to foot the bill in exchange to keep me "off the streets", for lack of a better term. Yes, I realize how incredibly lucky I am/was, and I promise I'm building to a point here.
The point is: I have listened to Don Orsillo talk. A lot. I can't find a breakdown of how many games NESN had vs WSBK/WBZ in Don's first NESN season (2001-2004), but, if we (conservatively, I think) assume that he averaged 60 games a year those years, and a 140 once it went to NESN full time, Don has announced (again, conservatively) around 1720 of the last 2430 games for the Red Sox. That's 70% of the regular season games since I started watching with any regularity. Roughly 15,500 innings, or around 240,800 pitches (half of them in ’03-'09 Red Sox/Yankees games), or an estimated 7290 hours (over 300 days), and my life from ages 14-28 (half my life on the planet, 85% of my life as a Sox Fan, and roughly 60% of my cognizant, memory-generating years). That's a lot of all of those. I’d like to think that, of the first 1000 or so games of Don’s career, I, conservatively watched the majority of at least 600 of them. Things have gotten busier since graduating college in 2009, and that plus moving away from New England has drastically reduced the number of games I actually get to watch, especially beginning to end. Such is life.
But, even as my hours with the Sox have diminished, certain aspects of the experience always remain the same; it’s part of the comfortable routine that is baseball. “My” seat in Fenway always feels the same. David Ortiz turning on an inside fastball, is, improbably, comfortably the same in year 13 now. Offseason-mode SoSH convincing me that the team will win 100 games in the upcoming season is as regular as clockwork. Peanuts, beer, the 7th inning stretch, even dumb stuff like Sweet Caroline and The Wave (both of which you bitter old men taught me to hate well before I became a grizzled 17 year old Fenway Regular) remain steady throughout the years.
Another thing that has been steady is my unwavering support and defense of the Sox and their ownership. I’m an optimist, and that, plus the eternal promise of baseball, the incredible success of the Red Sox, and the stats I found here all led me to a point where I reflexively agreed with everything ownership did. I have been a STAUNCH defender of damn near everything the Sox have done. Crawford signing? Way to flex financial muscle and make a superteam! Cespedes for Porcello? Gotta love a 28 year old somewhat-controlled starter with a track record! Sandoval? Makes sense to me; who else was going to play third base? Trading Nomar, trading Manny (to this day, my favorite player of all time,) letting Pedro walk, bringing in David Wells, allowing/pushing Epstein to leave… I even made excuses for the smearing of Francona, which, the farther we get from it, makes ownership look worse and worse. But hey, they brought usA 2 3 Championships. Generations pined for that, and I got it handed to me at 17 from one of the best seats in the house that I didn’t pay for. So I was a pretty big fan of the whole group responsible for that.
Suffice to say that my personal road to fandom bought the Red Sox and their ownership a more or less infinite amount of rope. Forget "in Theo We Trust", in John Henry I trusted, the man who did what that beloved old bigot Yawkey never could. I had a close personal friend decide to stop following the team altogether this offseason, because he believe the Pablo/Hanley signings were all about PR (panda hats, in particular, he thought were a motivating factor...) when the team obviously needed pitching. To him, it was a sign that ownership, championships in their pocket, cared more about profits than W’s. I defended ownership vociferously: how can you say that the most successful ownership in Team History (the only owners with more than 2!) cared about anything OTHER than winning? I drank the kool-aid each and every day; I believe in the numbers, the team seemed to believe in numbers, I (okay, SoSH posters I read and repeated) could always find the statistical argument to back up the team’s moves, and that was always enough. When things went the wrong way, I shrugged my shoulders and largely chalked it up to bad luck.
So it feels odd, after years of being so impossibly on board with everything that Ownership’s done, to think that something as trivial as an announcer change is the one thing that would finally really, really upset me. But that’s what’s happened. It’s very surreal.
Reading this thread, I realize now that this is probably not really as big of a deal as it feels like to me. Teams change announcers all the time, for all number of reasons. I love Don, but certainly he’s not irreplaceable. A lot of you are on your fourth, fifth TV PBP guy alone. I understand that Ned Martin’s departure was equally hurtful/contentious, but never heard about that until this week. It’s the way of the world. So I’m not going to argue that he should have been kept. I wish he had been, but, hey, shit happens I get that.
But here’s the thing: There was no reason to do him dirty. It smacks of obtuse decision making and reveals a surprising, though admittedly not new, cruelty in Henry’s machine.
Don Orsillo has been with the Red Sox longer than any player. If my conservative guess of 1720 games is correct, then only 6 players in Boston history have “appeared” in more games than Orsillo (Yaz, Dewey, Ted, Jim Ed, Doerr, and Papi), and 4 of them have their number retired (and another will soon, and Dewey should as well IMO [shared with Manny]). I have vague memories of Sean McDonough, terrible memories of Joe Buck and other national idiots, and an infinite amount of memories of all kinds with Don. When games were slow, his stupid bits with Jerry were occasionally the highlight of the night (and occasionally the lowlight, but, always in an endearing kind of way, and almost never when the games were good, so who cared?). When Jerry missed huge swathes of time, Don was the steady hand on the tiller. For Nomo, Lowe, Lester, and Buchholz's no-hitters, it’s Don’s half-screamed, scratchy, “excited Don voice” that still punctuates my memories. He was the perfect mix of company man and goofball— playing nice with our favorite players by leaving critiques to others, while staying out of irritating Fan Boy / Hawk Harrelson territory.
The point is this: whatever you may think of him, Don Orsillo has been an inextricable part of Red Sox history for 15 years now— arguably 15 of the most exciting years in the franchise’s storied history. For fans my age or younger, who rarely listen to the radio, Don Orsillo is perhaps the most ubiquitous, familiar, consistent piece of the entire Franchise, and by dropping him so quickly and coldly, they’ve done nothing to soften the blow for the fans, and that’s making it a whole lot harder to comprehend. I have mentally prepared for Ortiz’s eventual retirement— he is old. I knew my hero Epstein would eventually leave for a new challenge. Remy's mortality has been on audial display for a decade now. I knew Manny would be traded, I know Pedro would leave town. I barely batted an eye when Lester left, a guy who I’ve been following closely since he was almost traded for A-Rod. But Don Orsillo was, more than anybody else in the organization, the one I was simply not prepared to lose. I’d considered who Henry and Co might sell the team to, and when, more than I’ve considered who would replace Orsillo someday. As a young man with a good radio voice, I occasionally fantasized about having Don’s job one day… but any time the thought even wandered through my head, I thought “Nah, Don will do this for another 20 years or more!”
I realize that a lot of this is just naiveté. Reading through this thread was a cold bucket of water in that regard: seeing your opinions on Don after ruminating on my own so much in the last 48 hours, made me realize that my age and stage have made unusually fond of the plastic-faced, rosy-cheeked, Los Angeles native. So, okay, I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that it means far less to everyone else than to me. I’m old enough to know that doesn’t make my feelings any less valid (and vice-versa, of course). Just another reminder that life is an endless march towards death; everything ends badly or else it wouldn’t end at all, and all that Jazz. Dave O’Brien (who I like just fine) will come in and, I have no doubt, do a bang-up job. Jerry will adapt because he has (against all odds) become an old pro, and then a few years later he’ll retire and be replace by someone I watched play (Merloni?), and in twenty more years, some other stupid nerdy kid will write an embarrassing amount of words about how much Dave O’Brien meant to him when he leaves. I won’t care so much because to me O’Brien will probably always just be the guy who replace Orsillo. To invoke Vonnegut unnecessarily: So it goes.
But, even as I work through my emotions in 10,000 words (anybody still reading? If you are, prove it by mentioning Cesar Crespo in your reply!), there is one part of the situation that I cannot even begin to explain:
Why did they have to do this in such an ugly, public, clunky, hurtful way? Why did they have to take a guy who loved his job and was (mostly) loved (or at least, tolerated?) by those he preformed for, and basically make him look and feel like a total fucking failure? What possible benefit was there to doing this so cold and so hard? I don’t know when Orsillo knew, but it’s painfully obvious he didn’t know it was being made public. He was tweeting about the cool deck at his hotel room (Yup, that’s the most “Don” sentence I’ve ever typed) just a few hours before we all started to hear!
Forcing somebody to finish out a job they’ve already been fired for is one of the biggest losing bets in any business. But in such a public job, it’s beyond uncomfortable. Poor Don has to go out there and act like everything’s fine (because that’s his regular job) and just chat about baseball like he didn’t just get knifed in the back in public. Particularly painful as most of the chatting about this year’s team will focus on next year.
Somehow, when ownership was cold, or even played dirty, in regards to baseball-related moves, it never bothered me too much. Do what it takes to win, I always thought— it’s a learned trait from years of also being a Patriots fan. But this feels different. This can’t be justified as what’s best for the team. It’s certainly not what’s best for Don. And even if you argue O’Brien is an upgrade and therefore it’s what’s best for the fans, doing it in such an ugly and public way has been nothing but terrible for fans.
The whole thing is weird and mean and petty. It smacks of the worst kind of pointless corporate scapegoating. It makes ownership look stupid across the board— can anybody remember any other simple PBP guy change turning into such a passionately nightmarish PR disaster? Maybe I’m just young, or maybe it’s because we’ve had very little turnover this decade but… I can’t remember a damn one. This is a stupid, childish problem to be having.
It’s the first time since getting hooked by Pedro in ’99 that I have felt ashamed and embarrassed of my team. I cannot even begin to defend this move. It affects how I reflect on the Francona smears, Epstein’s departure, Manny’s departure, and damn near every other relationship this ownership has ended.
It’s one thing to be aspire to a lean, mean, efficient-to-the-point-of-cruelty baseball operation. It makes sense there. But this is simply no way to run an organization, and it makes me feel bad about all the money I’ve given them over the years. God, all they had to do was await and announce it 45 days later; it would have been a simple press release, a single globe article, and maybe a “Thank You, Don” thread, and we’d all move on.
I’m sad, disappointed and confused. My lowest moment as a Red Sox fan since Boone.
Anyway. Thanks for reading. Felt good to get it all out.
Despite checking SoSH between 2-100 times a day, I lurk. Mainly it's because I had a bad experience in the post-2004 offseason where I asked a main board member to post a interesting factoid I had been told by Somebody Who Knows Somebody, and the Red Sox front office found it and all hell broke loose. Somebody lost their job, and I had to write an apology email to Theo Esptein, which, for a Jewish 18 year old Red Sox devotee in November 2004, was like having to write an apology email to God himself. So I've been content to read. But, I feel like I have to say something about this, and I'm dumping it here where maybe one or three of you will understand.
I am 28 years old. Born 1987. In my family, sports were never popular (bunch of lefty liberal pinko commies), but I somehow found my way to the Red Sox starting in '99. I distinctly remember watching Pedro dominate the '99 all star game-- I believe this is the first baseball game I watched with any interest. That incredible seed grew and grew, and by 2003, my addictive personality took over, and I watched at least 5 innings of 142 regular season games. Yes, in true bubbing-sabermatician-form, I counted. In 2004, right around when Curt Schilling (and then I), discovered SoSH, my stepfather's company got field box season tickets, and since he was the CEO and the company only had about a dozen games they wanted to take clients to, I went to 49 games (playoffs included, plus three in baltimore). Between that and NESN, in 2004, I doubt I missed more than two or three games all year. An expensive hobby to be sure, but, I had some trouble with the wrong kind of kids and the wrong kinds of habits for a teenager, so my folks were happy to foot the bill in exchange to keep me "off the streets", for lack of a better term. Yes, I realize how incredibly lucky I am/was, and I promise I'm building to a point here.
The point is: I have listened to Don Orsillo talk. A lot. I can't find a breakdown of how many games NESN had vs WSBK/WBZ in Don's first NESN season (2001-2004), but, if we (conservatively, I think) assume that he averaged 60 games a year those years, and a 140 once it went to NESN full time, Don has announced (again, conservatively) around 1720 of the last 2430 games for the Red Sox. That's 70% of the regular season games since I started watching with any regularity. Roughly 15,500 innings, or around 240,800 pitches (half of them in ’03-'09 Red Sox/Yankees games), or an estimated 7290 hours (over 300 days), and my life from ages 14-28 (half my life on the planet, 85% of my life as a Sox Fan, and roughly 60% of my cognizant, memory-generating years). That's a lot of all of those. I’d like to think that, of the first 1000 or so games of Don’s career, I, conservatively watched the majority of at least 600 of them. Things have gotten busier since graduating college in 2009, and that plus moving away from New England has drastically reduced the number of games I actually get to watch, especially beginning to end. Such is life.
But, even as my hours with the Sox have diminished, certain aspects of the experience always remain the same; it’s part of the comfortable routine that is baseball. “My” seat in Fenway always feels the same. David Ortiz turning on an inside fastball, is, improbably, comfortably the same in year 13 now. Offseason-mode SoSH convincing me that the team will win 100 games in the upcoming season is as regular as clockwork. Peanuts, beer, the 7th inning stretch, even dumb stuff like Sweet Caroline and The Wave (both of which you bitter old men taught me to hate well before I became a grizzled 17 year old Fenway Regular) remain steady throughout the years.
Another thing that has been steady is my unwavering support and defense of the Sox and their ownership. I’m an optimist, and that, plus the eternal promise of baseball, the incredible success of the Red Sox, and the stats I found here all led me to a point where I reflexively agreed with everything ownership did. I have been a STAUNCH defender of damn near everything the Sox have done. Crawford signing? Way to flex financial muscle and make a superteam! Cespedes for Porcello? Gotta love a 28 year old somewhat-controlled starter with a track record! Sandoval? Makes sense to me; who else was going to play third base? Trading Nomar, trading Manny (to this day, my favorite player of all time,) letting Pedro walk, bringing in David Wells, allowing/pushing Epstein to leave… I even made excuses for the smearing of Francona, which, the farther we get from it, makes ownership look worse and worse. But hey, they brought us
Suffice to say that my personal road to fandom bought the Red Sox and their ownership a more or less infinite amount of rope. Forget "in Theo We Trust", in John Henry I trusted, the man who did what that beloved old bigot Yawkey never could. I had a close personal friend decide to stop following the team altogether this offseason, because he believe the Pablo/Hanley signings were all about PR (panda hats, in particular, he thought were a motivating factor...) when the team obviously needed pitching. To him, it was a sign that ownership, championships in their pocket, cared more about profits than W’s. I defended ownership vociferously: how can you say that the most successful ownership in Team History (the only owners with more than 2!) cared about anything OTHER than winning? I drank the kool-aid each and every day; I believe in the numbers, the team seemed to believe in numbers, I (okay, SoSH posters I read and repeated) could always find the statistical argument to back up the team’s moves, and that was always enough. When things went the wrong way, I shrugged my shoulders and largely chalked it up to bad luck.
So it feels odd, after years of being so impossibly on board with everything that Ownership’s done, to think that something as trivial as an announcer change is the one thing that would finally really, really upset me. But that’s what’s happened. It’s very surreal.
Reading this thread, I realize now that this is probably not really as big of a deal as it feels like to me. Teams change announcers all the time, for all number of reasons. I love Don, but certainly he’s not irreplaceable. A lot of you are on your fourth, fifth TV PBP guy alone. I understand that Ned Martin’s departure was equally hurtful/contentious, but never heard about that until this week. It’s the way of the world. So I’m not going to argue that he should have been kept. I wish he had been, but, hey, shit happens I get that.
But here’s the thing: There was no reason to do him dirty. It smacks of obtuse decision making and reveals a surprising, though admittedly not new, cruelty in Henry’s machine.
Don Orsillo has been with the Red Sox longer than any player. If my conservative guess of 1720 games is correct, then only 6 players in Boston history have “appeared” in more games than Orsillo (Yaz, Dewey, Ted, Jim Ed, Doerr, and Papi), and 4 of them have their number retired (and another will soon, and Dewey should as well IMO [shared with Manny]). I have vague memories of Sean McDonough, terrible memories of Joe Buck and other national idiots, and an infinite amount of memories of all kinds with Don. When games were slow, his stupid bits with Jerry were occasionally the highlight of the night (and occasionally the lowlight, but, always in an endearing kind of way, and almost never when the games were good, so who cared?). When Jerry missed huge swathes of time, Don was the steady hand on the tiller. For Nomo, Lowe, Lester, and Buchholz's no-hitters, it’s Don’s half-screamed, scratchy, “excited Don voice” that still punctuates my memories. He was the perfect mix of company man and goofball— playing nice with our favorite players by leaving critiques to others, while staying out of irritating Fan Boy / Hawk Harrelson territory.
The point is this: whatever you may think of him, Don Orsillo has been an inextricable part of Red Sox history for 15 years now— arguably 15 of the most exciting years in the franchise’s storied history. For fans my age or younger, who rarely listen to the radio, Don Orsillo is perhaps the most ubiquitous, familiar, consistent piece of the entire Franchise, and by dropping him so quickly and coldly, they’ve done nothing to soften the blow for the fans, and that’s making it a whole lot harder to comprehend. I have mentally prepared for Ortiz’s eventual retirement— he is old. I knew my hero Epstein would eventually leave for a new challenge. Remy's mortality has been on audial display for a decade now. I knew Manny would be traded, I know Pedro would leave town. I barely batted an eye when Lester left, a guy who I’ve been following closely since he was almost traded for A-Rod. But Don Orsillo was, more than anybody else in the organization, the one I was simply not prepared to lose. I’d considered who Henry and Co might sell the team to, and when, more than I’ve considered who would replace Orsillo someday. As a young man with a good radio voice, I occasionally fantasized about having Don’s job one day… but any time the thought even wandered through my head, I thought “Nah, Don will do this for another 20 years or more!”
I realize that a lot of this is just naiveté. Reading through this thread was a cold bucket of water in that regard: seeing your opinions on Don after ruminating on my own so much in the last 48 hours, made me realize that my age and stage have made unusually fond of the plastic-faced, rosy-cheeked, Los Angeles native. So, okay, I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that it means far less to everyone else than to me. I’m old enough to know that doesn’t make my feelings any less valid (and vice-versa, of course). Just another reminder that life is an endless march towards death; everything ends badly or else it wouldn’t end at all, and all that Jazz. Dave O’Brien (who I like just fine) will come in and, I have no doubt, do a bang-up job. Jerry will adapt because he has (against all odds) become an old pro, and then a few years later he’ll retire and be replace by someone I watched play (Merloni?), and in twenty more years, some other stupid nerdy kid will write an embarrassing amount of words about how much Dave O’Brien meant to him when he leaves. I won’t care so much because to me O’Brien will probably always just be the guy who replace Orsillo. To invoke Vonnegut unnecessarily: So it goes.
But, even as I work through my emotions in 10,000 words (anybody still reading? If you are, prove it by mentioning Cesar Crespo in your reply!), there is one part of the situation that I cannot even begin to explain:
Why did they have to do this in such an ugly, public, clunky, hurtful way? Why did they have to take a guy who loved his job and was (mostly) loved (or at least, tolerated?) by those he preformed for, and basically make him look and feel like a total fucking failure? What possible benefit was there to doing this so cold and so hard? I don’t know when Orsillo knew, but it’s painfully obvious he didn’t know it was being made public. He was tweeting about the cool deck at his hotel room (Yup, that’s the most “Don” sentence I’ve ever typed) just a few hours before we all started to hear!
Forcing somebody to finish out a job they’ve already been fired for is one of the biggest losing bets in any business. But in such a public job, it’s beyond uncomfortable. Poor Don has to go out there and act like everything’s fine (because that’s his regular job) and just chat about baseball like he didn’t just get knifed in the back in public. Particularly painful as most of the chatting about this year’s team will focus on next year.
Somehow, when ownership was cold, or even played dirty, in regards to baseball-related moves, it never bothered me too much. Do what it takes to win, I always thought— it’s a learned trait from years of also being a Patriots fan. But this feels different. This can’t be justified as what’s best for the team. It’s certainly not what’s best for Don. And even if you argue O’Brien is an upgrade and therefore it’s what’s best for the fans, doing it in such an ugly and public way has been nothing but terrible for fans.
The whole thing is weird and mean and petty. It smacks of the worst kind of pointless corporate scapegoating. It makes ownership look stupid across the board— can anybody remember any other simple PBP guy change turning into such a passionately nightmarish PR disaster? Maybe I’m just young, or maybe it’s because we’ve had very little turnover this decade but… I can’t remember a damn one. This is a stupid, childish problem to be having.
It’s the first time since getting hooked by Pedro in ’99 that I have felt ashamed and embarrassed of my team. I cannot even begin to defend this move. It affects how I reflect on the Francona smears, Epstein’s departure, Manny’s departure, and damn near every other relationship this ownership has ended.
It’s one thing to be aspire to a lean, mean, efficient-to-the-point-of-cruelty baseball operation. It makes sense there. But this is simply no way to run an organization, and it makes me feel bad about all the money I’ve given them over the years. God, all they had to do was await and announce it 45 days later; it would have been a simple press release, a single globe article, and maybe a “Thank You, Don” thread, and we’d all move on.
I’m sad, disappointed and confused. My lowest moment as a Red Sox fan since Boone.
Anyway. Thanks for reading. Felt good to get it all out.
To paraphrase Terry Mann from Field of Dreams: "I wish I had your passion, Manuel Aristides... Misdirected though it might be, it is still a passion. I used to feel that way about things, but...." Oh, and Cesar Crespo.
Manuel Aristides said:
Wait, wait, wait... care to elaborate? I was here during that time, but apparently I need my memory jogged. I'd hate to think we missed out on this soul-crushing aspect of the story. Theo's gone now, so no worries.
Good post,Manuel Aristides said:
Sports, what are they good for?
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Agreed with whoever upthread mentioned the effect on 'EEI
As someone who likes both DO and DOB (and Castig and Eck), my biggest worry is the drop off on the radio, where there are fewer substitute "goods" when driving and the quality of the PBP is more apparent with no picture. It'll be sad when Castig leaves.
Hail, Cesar.
Good on you, LT. The romantic fan in me still believes cooler heads will prevail here.
#SaveOrsillo
Good on you, LT. The romantic fan in me still believes cooler heads will prevail here.
#SaveOrsillo
I would love nothing more than to elaborate, it's a pretty great story (especially my end of it), but, after what happened... I'll PM you.The Allented Mr Ripley said:
I'm not sure what this means but I am happy to be almost-in on a joke around here for once.Ale Xander said:
Wow man, that is a tremendous story. Thanks so much for sharing it !Manuel Aristides said:
As far as feeling guilty about Bill, it is sad that he lost his employment, but he was the one who originally leaked the news, wherever that goes after it leaves his lips is also at least somewhat partly on him.
Again, great story. ps Cesar Crespo
HriniakPosterChild said:
And had a basically meteoric rise through broadcasting. He was a Sea Dogs broadcaster (intern?) for a single season and after a few weeks it was obvious he was a talent.
“@leahysean: Tom Werner & @NESN explain why they’re parting with Don Orsillo to @bostonherald’s @BuckinBoston https://t.co/GzqaEt6zLd
More at the link
I'm a big fan, Jose, been reading for years. The CC reference is absolutely your influence coming through.jose melendez said:
Looks like the post got moved or deleted. Probably for the best. I never learn.
Maybe it is a shot – and if so, that's ok. I like Don fine but this has all gotten to be a bit much. After all, was it last season or the season before when we were reading about Don potentially leaving the team? Perhaps it was early as his last contract in 2011. Regardless, Don knows as well as anyone that this is a business – no one is entitled to a position and no job is forever. Further, there's nothing wrong with them informing Don mid season that they're going in a different direction.
Ostensibly the problem is the timing. But even there, reading between the lines with Werner, it sounds to me as if they intended to keep a lid on things publicly until the season was over and that they believe Don or someone close to him leaked it. And as a result, the team's hand was forced, which resulted in the admittedly awkward and rushed announcement.
Not sure why I should be offended by any of that as a fan.
Ostensibly the problem is the timing. But even there, reading between the lines with Werner, it sounds to me as if they intended to keep a lid on things publicly until the season was over and that they believe Don or someone close to him leaked it. And as a result, the team's hand was forced, which resulted in the admittedly awkward and rushed announcement.
Not sure why I should be offended by any of that as a fan.
Manuel Aristides said:
Can we make this guy a member already? He caused a man his livelihood - that deserves something, right? Poor Chris probably lost his wife (and will to live) after the fallout from MA's post.
Oh, and unfortunately P&G isn't porn. It's mostly just a lot of posts by left wingers followed by Marciano talking about his deadlift stats. And ponytails. For some reason there is a lot of talk about men with ponytails.
BannedbyNYYFans.com said:
Seconded, although it looks like I missed out on the really fun posts here (specifically what was leaked back in 2004, and why was it such a big deal?)...
I'm fascinated by this entire drama and response.
I understand that people don't like change and baseball fans specifically don't like change. I understand that Orsillo was the voice of some really good times. I understand some people are upset about how this may or may not have gone down.
But IMO DOB is significantly better and this was a likely outcome the day he signed with EEI. As a fan this changes very little.
DO paid his dues in the minors and got a decade plus of calling Red Sox games. I'm struggling to feel bad for him. People get fired on management's whims everyday. Specifically in TV.
I understand that people don't like change and baseball fans specifically don't like change. I understand that Orsillo was the voice of some really good times. I understand some people are upset about how this may or may not have gone down.
But IMO DOB is significantly better and this was a likely outcome the day he signed with EEI. As a fan this changes very little.
DO paid his dues in the minors and got a decade plus of calling Red Sox games. I'm struggling to feel bad for him. People get fired on management's whims everyday. Specifically in TV.
Question: what would Steve Lyons be doing now if he never dropped his pants in the field?
My money is on selling insurance in Spokane
My money is on selling insurance in Spokane