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CHB

From Wiki Gonzalez

CHB refers to Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe "reporter" (actually, a columnist).

Table of contents

1 Writings 2 Opinions on CHB 3 Nicknames 4 References

Writings

CHB's day job is being a general sports columnist for the Globe. In Boston, this often means discussing the Boston Red Sox, or simply stirring the pot to attract readers, or both.

CHB is best known for writing The Curse of the Bambino in 1990, a light-hearted book which suggested the Red Sox's disastrous sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000 resulted in a curse which would forever prevent the Sox from winning the World Series.

The book apparently aggravated a lot of Sox fans and almost single-handedly created the mainstream media obsession with The Curse, an obsession that dominated East Coast navel-gazing baseball journalism in the early 2000s. It also catapulted CHB into being a nationally known sports personality, as people (and increasingly himself) presented The Curse as fact, with CHB as its "discoverer."

In 2005, Shaughnessy tried to maintain his relevance after 2004's World Series triumph by writing Reversing the Curse, a self-congratulatory overview of the Sox championship season. In the book, a young Theo Epstein is portrayed as a bile-spewing wannabe sportswriter who had read The Curse of the Bambino and ultimately grew up to apply its lessons in making the Sox winners for the first time since 1918.

Opinions on CHB

Among a group of Boston sports fans who derive pleasure from hating the members of their local media, CHB is loathed for his continual characterization of Sox diehards as miserable people who would never be happy if their team won it all, when in fact it's apparent only Shaughnessy himself fits this profile. His profiting off the numerous Sox near-misses by writing The Curse of the Bambino has also rubbed many people the wrong way.

Most whisperings suggest that CHB is hated also by most of the Boston media for the same reasons the fans hate him.

You could fill a phonebook with other reasons to hate CHB:

1. He co-hosts a radio show with the despicable Mike Barnicle.
2. He penned a hatchet job in 2004 when Nomar Garciaparra was traded.
3. He belittles his readers if they disagree and he refuses to consider any advanced baseball statistics.
4. He called Jose Offerman a piece of junk, thus offending pieces of junk across the world.
5. He criticized the David Ortiz acquisition and called him a "sack of you know what."
6. He made a thinly veiled swipe at the Sports Guy (Bill Simmons), which was the result of petty jealousy.
7. He questioned whether Pedro Martinez was actually sick when he missed a start in 2003. Pedro was in the hospital receiving fluids through an IV.
8. While he tends to blast away at players indiscriminately, the only derisive nicknames he's handed out have all gone to players of color.
9. He revealed that Red Sox outfielder Jeff Stone was mildly retarded, a fact that every other journalist in the country had the good taste to keep to himself.
10. Helped run Theo Epstein out of town temporarily in 2005.

One good thing about CHB: He answers emails. He once even gave a Primate his telephone number and told him to call so they could discuss his emailed question.

Nicknames

"CHB" was coined by Sox outfielder Carl Everett. While complaining about reporters who criticized him, he referred to "[Gordon] Edes and his curly-haired boyfriend." This was shortened to CHB by Red Sox diehards at Sons of Sam Horn, and quickly became the popular way to refer to Shaughnessy on the Internet.

Other nicknames for Shaughnessy:

• "Curly-Haired Cursemonger"
• "Shank" or "The Shank-ster" (for backstabbing Glenn Ordway, the host of WEEI's The Big Show, by stating that he refused to go on the show because it was offensive while he was, in fact, positioning himself for a job at a rival station. CHB's refusal to appear was in part responsible for the Globe banning its writers from appearing on WEEI's morning and afternoon drive time shows. The radio station responded by instituting a complete ban on Globe writers.)

References

• Future Sox GM was a student of the game (http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/sox_therapy/discussion/27117/) - Sox Therapy thread on CHB's 2005 book. (March 27, 2005)
• Ironing Out the Dirty Laundry (http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/sox_therapy/discussion/33655/) - Sox Therapy thread of CHB "reporting" on the dirty laundry of the Red Sox front office. (October 30, 2005)
• A critical view of CHB's writing. (http://danshaughnessy.blogspot.com/)

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