Friday Four-Pack 5.24.24

Reviewing week one of The Rich Shertenlieb Show. MA avoids sports betting disaster. An odd comment by a Celtics announcer.

Getting old sucks.

First - a note to say thanks for reading The Friday Four-Pack on Memorial Day weekend.

Hopefully, you have Friday off and are reading this from home. Or maybe you open it on your phone Saturday, on a beach somewhere, sipping on a cold drink and firing away winning sports and horse bets. Or maybe from a golf cart between holes.

Either way, enjoy the weekend, and thanks for reading.

But yeah, getting old sucks.

I guess I sort of knew that already, but it’s been amplified for me over the last few weeks.

It started harmlessly enough playing wiffleball, which my boys are now very much into. After years of my own father angrily pointing out how much we were tearing up his backyard with hours of neighborhood wiffleball games, I find myself 30 years later doing the same thing. And the same eye rolls I gave my dad, well, yeah now I’m on the receiving end.

But the ripped-up lawn is not the issue. After a fairly mundane pitching session against Brothers Mutnansky, I could not lift my shoulder to throw the next day. Could not shoot a basketball. Could not go to the gym.

Rest and Advil have aided the recovery but my shoulder is a mess.

Fast forward to Thursday night, the second game of the Kirk Minihane Show’s ‘Team KMS’ adult men’s basketball league season.

Like, I thought I was in okay shape. But there was a moment - and you can see it on the tremendous game footage - when I glanced up at the scoreboard at McDevitt Middle School.

We’re in the first half and I figure based on my fatigue level at that time, we were already six or seven minutes into the game. I’m gassed. I’m gasping for air. Lungs on fire. Eyes watering a little bit. Just empty.

And the scoreboard shows there’s still 17:31 left in the half.

Shit.

I had to sub myself out multiple times. Meanwhile, these 20-somethings are sprinting up and down the court like they’ve been shot up with PEDs.

After the game (a hard-fought loss where the offense was nonexistent in the second half) my only thoughts were about how gassed I was. And how much it bothered me and affected my play. It’s probably naive of me, but as I sat in my car for almost 10 minutes, still trying to catch my breath, that’s all I was thinking about.

I’m washed. I’m washed. I’m washed. And it’s hard to accept.

There is no real point to this. It’s Memorial Day Weekend and I’m feeling old. I wanted to write about it. Maybe you can relate.

But if you’re in your 20s, even your 30s, don’t take it for granted. Please.

Meanwhile, I listened to a new radio show in Boston for way too many hours this week. We almost had a huge miscue in the Massachusetts sports betting landscape. And Sean Grande made a weird comment after Game 1 of Celtics/Pacers.

That’s all on today’s Friday Four-Pack.

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On Week One for The Rich Shertenlieb Show…

“There is one thing - that I have to be honest - did rub me the wrong way…”

These words came late in the 7 AM hour on Monday, May 20, 2024, on Show #1 of The Rich Shertenlieb Show on 100.7 WZLX.

I get it. He’s been off the radio since last November when he walked away from a large salary and big ratings at 98.5 The Sports Hub. There were probably at least a half dozen things that have happened or have been said over these last six months that host Rich Shertenlieb could have felt the urge to respond to next.

Might he choose to comment on how quickly 98.5 The Sports Hub seemingly sided with his former co-host, Fred Toucher, over himself to move forward with that show?

Maybe he’s upset because that same co-host has called him out over and over again, suggesting that Rich tried to get Fred fired. Or that he lied about working so hard he had to sleep in his car, among other shots Fred has taken. Maybe the most inflammatory was the suggestion that Rich put his wife on the phone during a conference call to complain about the hostile work environment Fred had created.

Plenty to choose from, for sure.

No, what rubbed Rich the wrong way was …. having his social media followers taken away from him during his exit from the station.

Rich is so mad that he’s going to donate to charity when he gets those followers back!

It was a bizarre rant (and based on this video was scripted as Rich is reading off notes) in what was otherwise a pretty straightforward week for the new show.

And as someone who listened to close to 12 hours of it, I feel I can say that pretty confidently.

It’s a sports-ish talk show on a music station. That doesn’t play music. But talks a lot about music. You get Michael Hurley on sports flashes three times an hour, renamed ‘front and center.’ And sporty guests, including Levan Reid, Tom Giles and John Karalis.

It was all wildly underwhelming.

I’m not sure what I expected, but a watered-down version of Rich’s old show was not it. And that’s what it feels like a week into the new show.

Assorted notes from a week of listening.

• It is astonishing how much time is spent commenting on the rejoin music. Rich seems very interested in every rejoin. Every. Rejoin. Maybe it stands out more because IDGAF about it. Or his music tastes. But it’s noticeable.

• Same for what should be quick little plugs for the iHeart app, contests, etc. They dronnnnnnnnnnnne on. There is a lot of time spent on show “filler,” almost like Rich is actively avoiding getting back into actual content

• The tech issues, well those happen on any new show. Not going to kill them for that.

• Hurley is a smart, sarcastic writer and at some point, I want to hear that guy more on the show.

• Ted Johnson, twice a week during the football off-season, seems cruel and unusual to the listening audience.

• YOU DON’T HAVE TO TALK ABOUT SPORTS BETTING. The worst segment I heard was Thursday at 9 AM when the crew made their bets for the Celtics/Pacers Game 2. Johnson asked if the “over/under” was 9. The producer gave out a bet he said was conservative but was actually a 16-1 player prop. Bad. They are not the only show that does this - forces sports betting talk because it’s legal and they want to grab some of the marketing budgets of the big sportsbooks. The payoff for the segment is that someone has to do something SUPER DUPER ZANY if they miss bets three weeks in a row.

• I didn’t listen to all 16 hours Monday - Thursday, but I never heard one phone call. I found that sort of odd. Rich was giving out the number.

• Rich was not lying when he told The Boston Globe that as the host, “I’m always going to be scattered.” We can tell.

• Tough break for longtime WZLX listeners who wanted music on their drive to work. They’re not sticking around for sports talk. Not like this.

How about some other opinions?

We’ll start positive. A friend who had been a Toucher and Rich listener texted me out of the blue Wednesday morning.

“Rich on 100.7 in the morning is scratching my itch. It just makes me realize how much I don’t like Toucher.

As of Friday morning, he’s still a fan and “has listened every day.”

A more critical review came Friday morning from someone who formerly worked in Boston radio.

“The benefit of Rich’s horrible program is that he makes all other morning shows in the market sound decent.”

Horrible is a subjective term. But with the amount of time spent talking about rejoin music, the surface-level sports talk, and the reliance on bits/fan sound, it’s probably not a show for me.

Who is a show for? I’m not quite sure. The Toucher and Rich listener who thought Fred was an a-hole? Can you really make a dent in Boston’s morning drive with that as your plan?

I guess we’ll find out.

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On the Celtics 2-0 lead over the Pacers…

For all intents and purposes, this series is over.

This is the 44th time the team has taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven series. The only one they’ve lost was to LeBron back in 2018.

There is no LeBron on this Pacers team.

The Celtics are just better, even without Kristaps Porziņģis. They can survive a brutal first half from Jayson Tatum on Thursday and still cruise to an easy win.

The media knows this thing is over, too: that it was probably never going to be a series. And that leads to wild takes - like Stephen A. Smith being disgusted with their offense in a win.

The dumbest commentary has been on their playoff road and that its ease should somehow take away from their NBA Championship if the Celtics finally break through with this group.

Once you win no one cares about who you beat or didn’t beat along the way. It’s forgotten in months if not weeks. Maybe even days for the fans of that team.

The Timberwolves are probably a better team, but bring me Kyrie and the Mavs in the NBA Finals. There are just a few players in the NBA that can guarantee a raucous TD Garden crowd, and Kyrie is No 1 on that list.

We want Kyrie. Right?

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On a near disaster for Massachusetts sports betting…

This section was originally scheduled to be an update on Tuesday’s Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) roundtable on the limiting of winning players by commercial sportsbooks.

If you want to catch up, we explained the importance of the meeting last week.

The idea of the sportsbooks having to explain their practice of doing this - in a public forum - was pretty exciting.

Except the sportsbooks didn’t show up.

All 10 active sportsbooks in Massachusetts declined the invitation by the MGC, with some of the sportsbooks requesting an executive session to talk about limiting winning players. Those sessions are not public so per MGC policy, it was a non-starter.

Only Bally’s sent along a representative and they’re not even an active sportsbook in Massachusetts right now.

As fellow Substack author Steve Ruddock wrote in his very good sports betting newsletter, Straight to the Point, “…this is either the shrewdest move I’ve ever seen the industry make or its biggest misstep.”

"This was not a good use of our time today," Commissioner Nakisha Skinner said at the end of the meetings, alluding to the sportsbooks not being there to answer any questions.

I mean…they just no-showed. To me, it was a clear sign that as a group, these sportsbooks don’t think the MGC has any power whatsoever. The whole idea of this was to get a sense of how/why sportsbooks limit winning players while continuing to let losing players fire away.

It’s a fair question - and one we didn’t come closer to answering on Tuesday. It’s unclear what the next step will be for the MGC on this issue.

The sports betting market in Massachusetts avoided a major pothole Thursday when lawmakers rejected a monster tax hike on sports betting.

A jump to a 51% tax would have been a disaster for Massachusetts and had a negative impact on Bay State sports bettors.

In NY, where the tax is already 51%, those players see fewer promo offers from the sportsbooks, who point to the tax rate as a reason why.

It would also deter new sportsbooks from entering a Massachusetts market with an already high barrier to entry. Circa, please, come to Massachusetts.

Bullet dodged, for now. No doubt lawmakers will circle back to a tax increase at some point. They always do.

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On your Memorial Day Weekend Mutstack Notes…

• So this is kind of an odd one. In the aftermath of the Celtics win in Game 1 over the Pacers, C’s radio voice Sean Grande made a comment along the lines of “And people wonder why I didn’t take the TV job.”
  
  He said this after exalting the win as one fans would be talking about for years. NBC Sports Boston - the TV home for the team - can’t broadcast playoff games. So by turning down the TV job, Grande gets to call memorable playoff games for the local team on the radio.
  
  That’s great, but two people I talked with in the last few days confirmed that Grande was never offered that job. No, that gig eventually went to Drew Carter, with NBC Sports Boston seemingly passing on Grande. Carter takes over for the retiring Mike Gorman next season.
  
  It was never Grande’s to turn down, according to MutStack.com sources. Have no idea why he said it, but people heard it, thanks in part to his 98.5 The Sports Hub teammate Fred Toucher playing the audio multiple times on Wednesday. Certainly seemed like Toucher wanted to make sure his audience heard it. I think Grande > Carter, but it appears Grande never got an offer to turn down. Awkward.

• An awesome call by Jessica Paquette on the MutStack Podcast - 2024 Preakness Roundtable, giving out Sieze the Grey in the Preakness at 12-1. For a second straight Triple Crown race, my picks were not good. The ride on Bob Baffert’s horse was interesting - I think many of us thought he’d be on the lead. Nope. Wrong. My pick ran a non-threatening third. A losing day for us, but Jess’s win means we all win. Great call. She’ll be back for our Belmont Roundtable in two weeks.

• An awesome read on Warner Bros/TNT botching the NBA rights deal over just $200 million.

• Inside the NBA is terrific, but they’re not going anywhere. Even if TNT loses the NBA rights, they’ll end up on NBC/Comcast. It makes too much sense.

• Top Three Memorial Day Weekend Backyard Games: 1. Wiffleball. 2. CanJam 3. Cornhole.

• If you’re planning on attending The Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga, they have posted the full “Know Before You Go” rules and regulations. There will be no re-entry all weekend once you go in and one chair per person: many different rules than the Summer Saratoga set.

We have indeed said it all.

Enjoy the holiday weekend. Thanks for reading. Don’t get old.

Good weekend.