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Got an email today from someone whose opinion I respect and with whom I go way back in the biz. An excerpt:
Your ideas and quality is really going to attract people to his site. (but) ... LAY OFF THE YANKEES. It's over, we won it last year. Move on. Relax. You are coming across as a typical obsessed Yankees hater from New England. We're on top now, not them. They haven't won a Series since Clinton was in office. Chill. You don't need to bad mouth them in every story.
Fair enough. I will make one point in my defense, though. If you closely read what I've been writing, I haven't been picking on the Yankees so much as attempting to lampoon the national baseball media's unending reverence towards them. The people on the big TV screamfests and a bunch of the game announcers are hanging on to this outdated, knee-jerk notion that it is still 1999 and the Yanks still rule the roost, when anyone with a functioning brain cell or two can see the rose is off the bloom. The worse the Yankees get, the stronger the TV types cling to the idea they're still on top, and it gets sillier with each passing day. Sort of like how sometime in August, we'll start hearing "THIS IS PEYTON MANNING'S YEAR!!!" all over again from the usual suspects.
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I also got an email from Globe sports copy desk legend Marcia Dick, who is always a pleasure to hear from. Marcia, for the past several years, has been one of several people who have worked tirelessly on the annual Robin Romano Memorial Fund golf tourney.
Robin Romano was one fantastic human being. When she broke into the business and worked at the Patriot Ledger, she was one of the first women who ever covered the World Series. Eventually she became assistant sports editor at the Globe.
My personal experience with Robin came when I was a co-op at the Globe in 1997-98. She was always kind and helpful even though I was just a newbie, a trait you can't ascribe to everyone in the sportswriting business. When I graduated college and left for my first job in Tacoma, she gave me a jacket from the 100th Boston Marathon in 1996 as a going-away gift, a nod to the fact I cut my teeth covering high school track and field. It is one of my most treasured possessions.
Robin put up a tremendous battle in a fight with cancer before she passed away on Jan. 3, 2000. The money raised from her fund goes to college scholarships for Massachusetts cancer survivors; the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's emergency fund (which supplies basics like hotel rooms and air conditioners to families who have loved ones in treatment), and Camp Sunshine, a retreat in Casco, Maine, for children who have life-threatening illnesses and their families. If you'd like to make a donation, please send to:
Robin Romano Memorial Fund
c/o Ken Fratus
assistant sports editor
The Boston Globe
P.O. Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819
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