Alex Speier leaving WEEI for The Globe

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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Tomase has been writing in the Boston market for what, 15 years?  Why is an introductory column needed?  Unless he was going to apologize for having spent a career being a jerk, there was no purpose for this column other than trolling.  To say that he doesn't believe in "hot takes," then cite Borges as the writer he most admires, is just amazing.  Fortunately, Tomase has been an easy guy to ignore ever since his Super Bowl report, and I can now resume ignoring him.
 

Corsi

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I grew up on Bob Ryan, who watched games like a fan but wrote about them as a detached observer, a high-wire act that’s way tougher than it sounds.
 
 
Wow, talk about completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the way Bob Ryan went about his business.
 
Ryan touched on the topic of the way he watched and wrote about the teams he covered, namely the Celtics in an interview with Toucher & Rich in early December:
 
T&R: You've talked about being a homer in journalism.  You were someone who wasn't afraid to say you were rooting for the teams that you were covering.
 
Ryan: Right. I rooted for them internally.  It's good business for the team to win.  Why would people not want their home team to win, I've never understood that? 
 
T&R: Ask Dan Shaughnessy.
 
Ryan: I know. We're good friends and no one has my back more in public than Dan Shaughnessy, but we disagree on this and that's fine.  I don't understand why you wouldn't want them to win.  They're happier people, it's a better circumstance, the fans are more receptive.  I don't know.  You root for them internally.  If they don't win, you sit down and write the story.  It's not about objectivity, that's a ridiculous point.  It's about fairness.  It's about intelligence, competence, and fairness, alright?  And back to the thing I said about developing the trust.  If all you do is praise, praise, praise, that kind of gets old and it doesn't mean anything, but if people know you know the difference between not only good and bad, but good and great, your praise means something.  That takes a while to develop, but I like to think I've developed that kind of circumstance covering that team.
 
T&R: It makes sense.  You're with a team at least 82 games a year, you would probably go crazy if you were completely indifferent to what they were doing.
 
Ryan: It's all about temperament.  One of my friends, Alan Richman, covered the 76ers, who were 9-73. I can't imagine covering a team that was 9-73, but he was detached. He wasn't emotional like me.  He thought journalistically it was fantastic.  He didn't mind.  I would have found it very, very difficult, but he didn't seem to mind it at all.
 
 
 

Harry Hooper

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It's about intelligence, competence, and fairness,
 
 
 
Ryan on the mound, Tomase at the plate: Strike One, Strike Two, Strike Three, yer out!
 

twibnotes

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Jul 16, 2005
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Think this is a loss for us fans. 
 
I personally enjoy his podcasts on eei, and I'm not willing to pay to read his stuff in the Globe.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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MarcSullivaFan said:
The guy names Borges as the Boston columnist he admires the most. Jesus Christ.
 
Hey, Tomase wrote that "Pats filmed the SB walkthrough" column that was proven to been 100% filled with lies, so no wonder he admires a convicted plagiarist the most in the industry. "He fucked up bad and got another job, and he showed me the way I could do it too! So I did!"
 

timlinin8th

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Corsi said:
 
Wow, talk about completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting the way Bob Ryan went about his business.
 
Ryan touched on the topic of the way he watched and wrote about the teams he covered, namely the Celtics in an interview with Toucher & Rich in early December:
 
 
That interview is awesome, and shows why Bob Ryan has always been one of the best in the biz... Teams will lose on their own, even the best sports teams lose anywhere from 25-40% of their games... Don't need HOT SPORTS TAKES, just praise the wins and suffer the losses as they come. Anything other than that is phony.

This interview should be required reading for every member of the media as a reminder... Tomase could learn something from someone that the footie pajamas fit way better.
 

Spelunker

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Jul 17, 2005
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The linked cutaway on the peak years of players is the sort of article that I'm still shocked to see in the Globe.

Pleasantly so.
 

mcpickl

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JCizzle said:
Geez, he didn't write an article introducing himself, how are we supposed to know what Alex is all about?
 
Sigh, guess Globe readers who aren't familiar with Alex have to figure out on their own that he's one of the best baseball writers/analysts in the business rather than have him just tell them.
 
Shouldn't take very long for that to happen.
 
Hope he's running the Sunday notes column by Groundhog Day at the latest.
 

Reverend

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mcpickl said:
Hope he's running the Sunday notes column by Groundhog Day at the latest.
It'll be three pages long.
 

joe dokes

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mcpickl said:
Hope he's running the Sunday notes column by Groundhog Day at the latest.
 
That would be fitting, since Nick has written the same column for the past 5-10 years.
 

PedroKsBambino

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First and last Tomase column on WEEI.com I'll ever read.   He cites Borges as an idol (what's the baseball equivalent of aspiring to draft David Terrell or Koren Robinson?), shows that he doesn't undestand Bob Ryan whatsoever, and manages to appear even more pompous and out of touch than when he was at the Herald.
 
I will say this:  he's a better match for the over-the-air product than Speier ever was, and I mean that as a compliment to Speier.
 

E5 Yaz

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There is no Rev said:
It'll be three pages long.
 
It was often said that the Globe only ran a half to a third of what Gammons actually wrote on some weeks
 

mandro ramtinez

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PedroKsBambino said:
First and last Tomase column on WEEI.com I'll ever read.   He cites Borges as an idol (what's the baseball equivalent of aspiring to draft David Terrell or Koren Robinson?), shows that he doesn't undestand Bob Ryan whatsoever, and manages to appear even more pompous and out of touch than when he was at the Herald.
 
I will say this:  he's a better match for the over-the-air product than Speier ever was, and I mean that as a compliment to Speier.
I always felt that Speier was aligning himself with the Castiglione side of WEEI and not the "Big Show" side of the station.  
 

URI

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mandro ramtinez said:
I always felt that Speier was aligning himself with the Castiglione side of WEEI and not the "Big Show" side of the station.
Do you think it was a natural progression, or a conscious choice to not be a professional asshole?
 

tims4wins

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Thanks for the link corsi. Truly interesting to see how a guy can fall off the NFL coaching radar like he has.
 

Nite Vizhun UV

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soxhop411 said:
@BGlobeSports: We’ve launched a baseball newsletter by @alexspeier. Sample: http://t.co/lT7piQXJbu Subscribe: http://t.co/NW7SfojcUh
 
I joined this a couple days ago and I'm glad I did. One of the things I thought I'd miss most from Alex leaving weei.com was the regular baseball notes columns and regular minor league reports, and this newsletter is a combination of both in one column. I can easily see this becoming appointment reading for me.
 
BTW Soxhop, you included a link to the Boston Globe Sports twitter feed in your post above. Not sure if that was deliberate or not, but I deleted that link from the quoted version of your post.
 

dynomite

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Thanks for posting that link, just subscribed.

I will say I was disappointed that Peter Abraham wrote the nasty and overly sarcastic intro to the big Globe 2015 Red Sox Scouting article, but it's good to see Speier getting some leash to produce good content.
 

soxfan121

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Awesome to see SoSH Baseball stuff being re-tweeted by Speier. The best baseball reporter in town showing the way to the best baseball writing in town can only be good for the folks running the site. Congrats!!