Sports writer - Grant writer

Category: Boston sports media (Page 1 of 2)

When Listening To Home Is As Easy As Opening A Browser Tab, Why Is Sports Radio Going National?

A Tune In Radio app screen capture full of post-related goodness.

When Buffalo Bills training camp began in July, Buffalo, NY sports radio station WGR upped their camp coverage. They added the John Murphy Show to their evening lineup, allowing the longtime Buffalo Bills announcer to report in-depth on a Bills team with great expectations.

I listened to the show’s first broadcast on July 26th while on the commute from Boston to Salem, MA from my iPhone via the TuneIn Radio app. I wasn’t alone. When Murphy took his first round of calls around 7:45pm that night, most of his callers weren’t Western New Yorkers, but listeners from North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

When I want to listen to sports radio, I’m no longer turning on a physical radio with knobs and an antenna, but services such as TuneIn. I am no longer limited to the offerings of my geographical area, and I “humble brag” as such all the time on Twitter. When I am able, I listen to WGR, Rochester, NY (my hometown)’s John DiTullio Show on 1280 WHTK, or even radio stations from the Midwest. Even though I have lived here for eight years, I don’t listen to Boston sports radio regularly, because half of my sports interests and allegiances don’t align with the geographic area in which I live.

And, thanks to technology, that is not a problem in 2012.

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What is a problem is something I touched upon in an article I wrote in January for SBNation Boston: large media entities thinking sports radio should go national. The article’s Twitter length synopsis: Smaller regional markets are losing local sports programming in favor of syndicated national programming like Mike and Mike In the Morning and the Jim Rome Show. Continue reading

The Grand Boston Red Sox PA Auditions List

Updated July 6, 2012

On the morning of Wednesday, May 30th, Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino announced on WEEI that the team would hold auditions to replace legendary PA announcer Carl Beane. Beane, who passed away in a single car accident a few weeks ago, had a booming voice with a trademark pronunciation and cadence. His replacement will have a lot to live up to, but many feel ready for the challenge.

I thought it might be helpful to curious types (like myself) to assemble a list of those who are auditioning and on what day. So here is a list I’ll keep updated as much as I can, culled from Twitter and other sources. I’ll be sure to credit where I first heard the news. If you have news to share about auditions, send it to me on Twitter or via email (sportsgirlkatATgmail.com)

May 30 – Brian Maurer, Boston University alum (Source: his former WTBU broadcast partner Prescott Rossi in this Tuesday night Tweet.)

May 31 – Jon Meterparel, currently heard on WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan (Source: Lucchino on WEEI Wednesday morning and the Boston Globe.)

June 7 – Mike Riley, currently on WEEI and WRKO, formerly of the Boston Blazers and too many other New England area teams to count (Source: Riley announced it via Twitter Wednesday morning.)

June 8 – James Demler, Boston Pops and BSO baritone and Boston University College of Fine Arts assistant professor. (Via Pete Abraham’s Twitter account)

June 9 – Tom Grilk, Boston Marathon Executive Director and race PA announcer. (Via Maureen Mullen’s Twitter account)

June 10Kelly Malone, in-game host of the Boston Bruins and voice-over personality. (Via her Twitter account)

June 19– I missed this announcement, and haven’t had time to track it down. Sorry!

June 20– Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe (Via seemingly everyone ever on Twitter.)

June 21– Jim Murray from 98.5 The Sports Hub (Via many of the 98.5 staffers who are on Twitter.)

July 6 – David Wade, anchor at WBZ Channel 4 (Via his Twitter account.)

Accountability and Expectation: Why The Josh Beckett Anger Is Justified

I thought out this blog post while in the shower this morning. So, we’re not even going to pretend that it is well-researched. It’s stream of consciousness. I apologize in advance.

Josh Beckett and Kelly Shoppach

Josh Beckett (image from Over The Monster and Getty Images)

There are Boston Red Sox fans who I follow on Twitter who are upset that the media has pointed out that Josh Beckett went golfing, despite having a muscle issue and missing a scheduled start on the mound. They feel as if the media has ganged up on the pitcher, and he has every right to play golf on an off-day. Beckett himself even defended his actions by saying that he “only gets 18 off-days a year” and that he had every right to use one to hit the links.

Let’s put the supposed media “witch hunt” aside. Let’s look at the actuality of an athlete playing another sport as leisure while in season.

Professional and college athletes are often forbidden from playing any other sport – even one as innocuous as golf – while in season. For example, a very good friend of mine played Division I hockey, but she also loved to ski. But when she was home for the brief time she had for the holidays because she was in-season, she had to watch everyone else in her family ski while she sat there. She couldn’t downhill or cross country ski. She had an understanding with her teammates and her coaching staff that because she was an athlete in season, she couldn’t jeopardize being injured participating in another sport at leisure.

Sometimes this expectation is physically written into a contract with a professional athlete, and sometimes it is just implied. If you make a living from your body being at its peak, you don’t put it at risk of any type of injury.

There is a vast difference in athletic output between golf and skiing, but you still can be injured playing golf (ask my father, who actually broke ribs playing golf a few years back.) While those injuries are usually relatively mild, the risk is still there. And given that baseball is a sport where players often miss starts due to things as minor as ingrown nails and broken toes*, the minor injuries that golf can cause are significant enough to meddle in the everyday life of a baseball player. For a pitcher, the repetitive shoulder isolating actions of golf increase that risk more. If you’re a pitcher with over ten years of major league wear and tear on your arms and shoulders, and you have a sore latissimus muscle (which Beckett has) the motion of hitting a golf club may not be advisable in season. (In layman’s terms, the latissimus muscle is the muscle found from under your armpit around the side of your back. It’s a muscle used in both pitching and swinging a golf club.)

Also, there is that old adage that if you’re not well or performing well enough to do your job, go to school or attend an event, than you shouldn’t be stepping out and doing something enjoyable in its stead. When you were a kid, and you had to stay home from school with either an legitimate illness or a trumped up cold because of an exam you wanted to avoid, your mother wouldn’t just let you go to the mall or playground or what have you later in the day. No, even if you were feeling better, you stayed home. You needed to keep up appearances – or at least my mom wanted us to. Even to this day, if I am stuck home sick, I’m not jumping in The Kat Mobile and putting around. That’s playing hooky. I don’t want to appear to be playing hooky.

If you are being paid handsomely to show commitment to your job, you never want to appear to be playing hooky.

Josh Beckett knew he was not making his next scheduled start. He then decided to go play golf with another pitcher. He’s an adult and is allowed to make his own decisions, but I just don’t know if that was his best one. Is the media out to get Beckett? Frankly, the media is out to get anyone and everyone involved with the Red Sox because no one within the organization is showing accountability. It’s like a consumer report – you pay $50 to attend a game, you spend $140 a month to get a cable package with NESN so you can watch it, but you’re getting nothing but failure from that money. I think it’s fine for the media to ask these questions. The product is faulty, and they are just trying to figure out why.

*And before anyone comments, “Have you ever had one of those injuries? They hurt,” yes, I have had both. And danced on pointe, ran cross-country and did beam with both. I’ll get off my high horse now.

How Blogapalooza Proved That I’m Not An Introvert (And Saved My Writing Career)

To be blunt, I am a straight up coward in big rooms with many people. After I got the confidence burnt out of me in college, I would walk into networking events in my chosen career path of higher education and be at a complete loss for words and a complete loss of desire to try. Everyone knew everyone else, and since I didn’t go to the “right” grad program or wasn’t in a hiring capacity, no one wanted to talk to me. Accordingly, I started avoiding networking events and conferences in my field, and labeled myself an introvert. Continue reading

I Get It. I’m With You. My Favorite Football Team Stinks.

A sarcastically fun facet to being a Buffalo Bills fan living in Massachusetts? Every time the local TV stations have to find B-roll (the video footage that rolls while a reporter speaks over it) of a New England Patriots player, they use footage from a Bills-Patriots game.

Example: this morning, the local news I watch led off their broadcast with a story on Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather facing serious allegations regarding a fight at a party and a possible shooting. They used footage of Meriweather playing the Bills – which, granted was probably some of the only footage of him actually doing his job on defense. But still.

When Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was breaking out spastic moves that show he has no rhythm in South America this week, a station juxtaposed it with him throwing a touchdown…against the Bills. There are a ton of Brady touchdowns out there. He’s sort of the reigning NFL MVP. But no. They had to use the Bills footage.

I get it. The two AFC East foes play each other twice a year. There is a lot of footage to be had, especially footage in the Patriots favor. But come on. It’s becoming like the never-ending joke on Geico commercials, where the caveman is faced with the stereotype that cavemen are idiots at every turn. Bills fans in Boston have to face the idea that their team pales in comparison to the superior Patriots endlessly and at the most unexpected of moments. I wake up this morning not even thinking about football, sit up in my bed, turn on the morning news and…look! The Bills blew that coverage again. The Patriots intercepted the Bills. Ugh. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Really. All I wanted to see was the weather.

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