This is about Boston sports, so I know the audience will be limited.
Jerry Remy died last Saturday after a long battle with lung cancer. He was the color commentator for the Red Sox since 1988 and, before that, a very good second baseman on the Red Sox teams of the late 1970s and early ’80s (when I began following the club).
I loved him as a player—I, too, was an undersized, left-hand-batting, contact-hitter second baseman, so he was my hero. And as a broadcaster he was terrific: insightful, funny, self-deprecating. He was a lifelong New Englander who played and called for his hometown team, complete with regional accent. I thought he was at his best with Don Orsillo, but somebody at NESN had a bug up his ass about Orsillo and let him go after the 2015 season.
Check out these highlights. First, the “pizza incident”:
Also, the famous “boob grab” in the stands, where Orsillo and Remy were laughing so hysterically they could barely talk for over a minute, until Orsillo chokes out, “This used to be a family show.”
More highlights—if you watch baseball, you know that the games can be long (longer still today), the season is long, and silly stuff comes up:
On a more serious note, here’s a great piece by the legendary Peter Gammons about the “RemDawg.”