Public Enemy No. 1 of Red Sox Nation

With the Red Sox season one game away from it's conclusion, I decided to take a different approach at looking at what has gone wrong for Boston during their ALCS matchup with Tampa Bay and who's to blame.

While others are laying blame on the moves (or lack their of) by Terry Francona, the lack of health on the team, the struggles of Big Papi and Jacoby Ellsbury, or the struggles of the pitching staff, I have come up with another reason why the Sox have struggled.

I blame it all on the Curly-Headed Boyfriend from the Boston Globe, Dan 'Shank' Shaughnessy. I blame everything on Shaughnessy (because he's a hack) so this is nothing new.

After Dice-K's masterpiece in Game 1 (which feels like years ago), Shaughnessy wrote in Saturday's Boston Globe.

"It's only one game. So how come it already feels like the Red Sox are going to the World Series?"

That was the lead of his story, and it only gets better. A couple of paragraphs later, Shaughnessy drops this bit of knowledge on all of us.

"So how come it already feels like the Red Sox are going to the World Series?
It just does. There's a swagger and confidence about this bunch. They do the right thing. They let the other guys make the mistakes."

Anyone feel that way after Games 2-4? Tampa's a very good team. Did anyone else besides 'Shank' feel that the series was over after Game 1? Shank did.

"Somebody's got to stand up to the Red Sox and right now it doesn't feel like the Rays can do it. They had everything going for them last night and they came up short time and again. The Red Sox are 4-1 in this postseason and it feels just the way it felt when they went on unstoppable runs in October of '04 and again last year."

Unstoppable runs of 04 and last year, did Dan forget that in those postseasons, the Red Sox had deficits of 3-0 and 3-1 in the ALCS (to New York and Cleveland)? I'm sure after watching New York beat Boston 19-8 in Game 3 of the ALCS, Boston fans thought that the Red Sox were on an unstoppable run. Shaughnessy's first rule of thumb when writing - Never let the truth get in the way of a good line in a story.

By the way, Shaughnessy ends his column this way, in case you were wondering what the point of his column was.

"It's only one game and already it feels like the Red Sox are going back to the World Series."

We get it, you only mentioned it like five times in the course of the dribble that you tried to pass off as a column. Go back home and write some more about how you turned the fence in your backyard into a replica of the Green Monster.

What a tool.