I’m on the record as being a Bob Lobel fan, but he’s got me scratching my head with this opener to his OT column today:
Reading unsolicited e-mails from people you don’t know — unless, of course, they are secretly your immediate family — is a practice to try to avoid at all costs. Anyway, this one e-mail was particularly priceless to me. Check it out for yourself and pretend you are receiving it. It arrived after my last literary effort:
“I thought you sucked for every one of those 29 years. Especially the last 10 or 15, when you just mailed it in.”
Violation of personal rule No.1: Never read e-mails. Violation of personal rule No. 2: Never, ever answer e-mails. But, for this precious reader, I am going to violate those rules and probably regret it. Here goes:
What you say is really not true. Not about your assessment of this former TV sportscaster’s job performance. Not at all. And by the way, I do hate that word “former.” For your information, I did not suck for 29 years. Twenty-five or 26, maybe, but I did not suck for the whole body of work. It’s just not true. I also object to being accused of just mailing it in for the past 15 years. I’ll admit to maybe seven or eight, but not the last eight, what with all of the titles that were taking the town by storm.
Suck, yes, but not for the decades of which you accuse me. Mail it in, yes, but not for the amount of time of which you accuse me.
Then he goes on to talk about Red Sox ticket prices, the downtrodden and “eminently beatable Patriots” and baseball free agency.
I guess he’s being sarcastic and attempting humor with the first part, but I guess I don’t get it.
