Back from a blog-free week of rest and relaxation, and now I am ready to go. I must say it has still been an eventful span of days with the Celtics refusing to man up during a road playoff game and the whole Matt Walsh/Bill Belichick/John Tomase saga finally playing out to a conclusion. Hopefully things can start to settle down now, and Tomase can move on and get back to doing his job -- which is all he was trying to do in the first place. More on that later...

Just wanted to drop off a quick email I received from Sox GM Theo Epstein when I asked him to clear up some unconfirmed past reports that Gabe Kapler left the Sox organization and his Greenville managing post on less than ideal terms. Kapler always speaks about his life in terms of "The Journey" and Epstein referenced that in wishing his former reserve outfielder well in his return to a playing career:

"Gabe was a valuable role player for us, but he was also a great teammate and important part of our clubhouse.  He and we thought managing in our system was a great landing spot for him, but it turned out to be just part of the journey.  We will always wish him the best."

Hope that along with Kapler's comments at Fenway on Friday clear things up. Also wanted to give a quick plug to some cross-bloginization, as NECN's outstanding and apparently very peppy Mike Giardi would call it, as the NECN folks were kind enough to feature me in their new Personality Plus segment on the their Boston Score blog last weekend. Any time I can harken back to the time I talked to Pat Murphy about Dustin Pedroia is a good day for me. Also check out the overall blog, as the NECN sports department is obviously stepping up and moving confidently into the Bold New Blog World.





OK...back to Tomase. Did he make a mistake? Absolutely. Does he deserve to lose his job? Without question, he doesn't. I think he learned a major life lesson with this entire episode and he's become a bit of a reminder/cautionary tale to other journalists out there that our first responsibility is to get things right. But in some corners he's been compared to Patricia Smith or Jayson Blair, and that's just plain ridiculous. He didn't make things up and he didn't plagarize...he was led down a path by a source and made an error in judgement and a crucial error in verb choice.

Perhaps he would be best served by a relocation to a different beat, but some of the piling on by members of the local media has been in really poor taste. Those in Glass Houses...as they say.

 

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