Welcome back to another episode of Northeast New Next. On today's episode we have Ian Brown, the head sports writer for the Boston Red Sox at NOB.com. We'll discuss his northeastern experience, going digital and journalism, and receiving a gold card from the NOB. Let's get into it.
Okay, cool. It sounds like we're reporting. How are you Ian? Nice to meet you today, and thanks for joining the northeastern next podcast.
Yeah, great to be on with you, Tom. Yeah, so where am I talking to you from today? I met my house at West Rockshade, just getting ready to go to the ballpark in a couple hours to see the Red Sox, the surging Red Hot Red Sox, but yeah, everything just chilling at home right now. Nice.
Yeah, they're kind of on fire right now. It's been a lot on the watch. Yeah, it's been one of the best streaks I've seen them have and the entire time we've been covering the team where they came from earlier in the year. Yeah, I just saw something this morning too where I forgot what it was exactly, but like if you would ask somebody before July 2nd, if this Red Sox team would anywhere touch 500, you'd be a person.
Yeah. Yeah, another 10 over, which is crazy because there were 14 under, you know, five, six weeks ago. No, it's been an amazing thing to watch, especially. I know everybody in Boston is very excited about it.
And, you know, I feel like I can't watch the day of Sports Center without hearing about the Red Sox and just turning it around. But yeah, thank you again for joining me today. I have a few questions about Northeastern and I'm just really excited to talk to you and just hear your stories. So why don't we kick things off with, can you just tell me a little bit about your Northeastern experience?
Well, would you read a Northeastern where you were in any co-ops, you participate in any clubs? Anything you want to talk about? Yeah, it's funny. I grew up in the South Shore in Boston about town called Coasset.
And my mother was actually going to Northeastern Law School when I was growing up. So I was in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. And I remember she was taking summer classes. And maybe when I was in fifth grade, I was probably 10 or 11 years old.
She actually took me to one of her classes with her at one time. And just walking around the campus here, I was 10, 11 years old. I was like, this is really cool. I got a vibe for Northeastern.
That was the kind of environment I wanted to go to college in. I'm like a nice city school growing up in a small beach town in Coasset. I thought it'd be cool to be in the city. So I just felt the cool atmosphere there.
And I knew from my mom in the process of becoming a lawyer, she was going through the Co-op program herself. So I was like, oh, that would be really cool to kind of be able to do a job in your field while you're in school. So that was kind of the start of it for me with Northeastern. And then fast forward, you know, seven, eight years, and it was time to start applying for colleges.
And, you know, I applied to a bunch, but Northeastern was definitely the one that I wanted to go to do. And when they, they accepted me, it was really like an old preener. And that was kind of where I always wanted to go. So I was excited and got to go there for five years.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, no, it's really an amazing school. And like you said, the Co-op is such a huge draw. And it's so unique to Northeastern that I don't know, I always wondered why other schools don't do it because I feel like it's such a, it's just such an amazing thing to have healthy students just really set them up for the future like that.
Yeah, I was always more work driven than class driven. So I think that it was just a great setup for me. And it opened up a lot of doors for me to tell you the truth. My first co-op and my sophomore year, I tried to co-op at the Globe, Boston Globe, and the Sports Department.
And at the time, I was kind of told, you know, not enough experience, not enough clips. Because you know, I was only a sophomore college, so I hadn't really done anything yet. So I went to a place called the Middlesex News, which is now called Metro West Daily. And they're based in Framingham.
So it does like a lot of those kind of Eastern Central Mass sort of towns over there. And so they had an advertisement for Co-op. And I went over there, had an interview, had a tryout. They let me cover a college hockey game.
And it was a Framingham State hockey game. And then the guy came back to me a couple days later, I think, and was like, look, we'd left off of this, but we just got our budget slashed. And, you know, we don't have any money to offer you. So my mom had the great suggestion that, you know, this is your first internship.
Why don't you just tell them that you'll do the internship for nothing? So it was a three month co-op. So that was basically what I told them was, I'll just do this. And it was about a 45 minute drive from where I was living in Co-Hassac, because I'm a non school quarters, you know, I was kind of commuting from home and everything.
So I was actually paying to do this internship. I remember there was gas and there was tolls, but I don't regret it for a second because that was where I got my first clips. And they'd be running into the fire covering a bunch of high school stuff. And I was getting my name on the paper all the time.
And there was some good people there at the Middlesex News who kind of taught me some of the ropes. So I did that for three months. It was awesome. I learned a lot.
And then when I came to interview to apply for my next co-op, which was for the summer co-op in 92, I reapplied to the globe. That time I got the globe job. So I got here. I was 21 years old at the time and maybe even 20 when I first got the job.
I was 20 years old. And here I was in the Boston Globe's worst department with giants and journalism, you know, anyone from Will McDonough, Jack McMillan, to Bob Ryan, to Dan Shaughnessy, Nick Kefardo, just all these great Kevin Paul DuPont, just all these people that I grew up reading. And just to be in the same room with them, even though at the time, my responsibility is going to be mainly collecting high school scores and high school reports and doing things like that. And I started there and I worked alongside a table, they call this Nighthawks, the co-op students, they call this Nighthawks, because we worked Nighthawks, we worked from like 6 to 12 or 6 to 2 or whatever they needed.
And just sitting in that environment with the Globes Copy Desk, I was hearing them talk to the writers on the phone who were on assignment out of Fenway or out of the garden. Just listening to those conversations that I was absorbing through awesome hosts, this is kind of like how the business worked and everything. So it's just really, really beneficial. And I wound up staying there, you know, the entire rest of the time I was at Northeastern.
So I stayed at the globe for three and a half years. And I was even in semesters or quarters, quarters, I got to get back to Northeastern Parlance there. Quarters when I was at school, I was still working part time at the Globe and also making pretty decent money for a kid that age at the time, because they were in a union, like on a union scale of pay. Just the experience I got there, boy, that really set me up for everything that came after that.
And it's just something I'll never forget. It was the time of my life working at the Globe. I met friends there who unbeknownst to me were actually students at Northeastern at the time. So then I got to be friends with them in school and at the Globe.
So that kind of became my college network. That's sort of where I met my people, kind of people who were sports nuts like me. So it was the first time in my life. I really had a network of friends who were like into all the same things I was into and just really obsessed with sports and writing and reporting.
And it was just a we had a great competition just between all the young college kids. We were all trying to outright each other and everything like that and just getting to know Will McDonough and Bob Ryan and Sean and see like they all treated me great. I still work a long time. Sean see a lot to this day.
He's been nothing but great to me since I first met him in 1992. And just the connections you meet there help you get connected in the industry because the journalism industry more than any other. I mean, I think all industries to a degree, it's like kind of who you know the connections you can make the references you can have. So that really, you know, that really set me up for a lot right there.
Yeah, that's really, really cool. I really like that. You're just so integrated with all of those. Like you said, those are big names.
Just being, you know, within arms length or arms within reach of them. I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Very cool. And just it sounds so surreal, but it also is so plausible with what the co-op can do. It's very cool. Yeah.
And it was just like a different time back then. We're sort of in that time before we were transitioning from newspapers to print only to sort of internet. So it's sort of old school and you know guys were getting calls on their manual phones in the office. You know, and sometimes my job would be to pick up Will McDonough's phone and see who's calling for him and take, you know, take messages for him and things like that.
So it was just, you know, it was a great experience and just getting to see those guys in action and how hard they worked. And Don's why I can't forget to mention him. He was a long time sports editor at the Globe and just a great sports editor and who just demanded so much out of his writers, his editors. And that's what made them so good.
That's why the section was so good because of how demanding he was. And he would call me and every now and then and he would say, Hey, you come to the office. Can you come to my office for a minute. So this could be anything from going driving over to Nancy Kerrigan's house at the time that Kerrigan Harding scandal.
Wow. And sticking on her house to see if she ever came out so we could try to interview her to can you go up to the cafeteria and get me a cup of coffee. So it's just like that I never knew where these calls were going to go these meetings in his office were going to go sometimes it'd be like, Oh, you know, the Baltimore Sun is looking for somebody to cover the Washington Capitals tonight at the garden when they're playing the Bruins can you over there. The Palm Beach Post, Alex Rodriguez, by the way, is making his major debut to family tonight at the age of 18 and he's a Miami kids and the Palm Beach Post wants a reporter there and obviously couldn't fly someone up on no notice.
So can you go? Sure, I can go. So I still remember the day July, 1994. That was where I covered my first game in the press box.
I found my power covered a rods major league debut for the Palm Beach Post and the story went on the fold of the Palm Beach Post sports session. So just to kind of break in and, you know, interviewing a rock before his game. It was my first game. So it was kind of like this weird moment where it's like, yeah, I can sort of see the nurses feeling because I'm feeling them too.
That's such a cool story. Wow. That's really cool. But yeah, I can totally understand what you mean by that.
Like you're both feeling those nerves for the same reason, but different reasons at the same time. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah.
That's cool. Yeah. There's a little more pressure on him, but I felt I put pressure on myself. So that wanted to do well.
So, yeah, so I did well enough to make it to the front of the sports page. So, you know, it was like a great day in my life and probably a springboard for what was to come. So, yeah, I was at the globe. I graduated from Northeastern in June of 95.
By the way, we were the last class to graduate at the Old Boston Garden. Oh, cool. So as a big Celtics fan growing up, that's kind of a badge for me. They got to be the last ones to graduate in the old garden.
And then, you know, that at some point, you're looking for a job and I stayed on the globe. That's something nice enough to keep me on. Well, I was looking for jobs all over the country. I sent a must have sent clips to every newspaper in the country, just blind, you know, blind ambition, just trying to get a bite somewhere.
And I did get some bites of some smaller papers, one in West Virginia, the, with the town Morgantown. I got it off. I got interviewed to cover the college basketball team because they were just moving to the big East that year. So that was exciting getting flown in there and everything.
And one of coming down to me and one other guy. The more experience, which in hindsight was probably a good thing. I don't know. More in town West Virginia was really my style of where I wanted to be living.
And then about the turn of the year, 96, my buddy from Northeastern, his name is Adam Reich. We graduated together and were kind of best friends in college and worked together at the globe. He had gotten a job at this website called Sportsline USA, which wound up wound up becoming CBS Sportsline. They were based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
So he called me and he's like, Oh, we're looking for other people you should apply. And honestly, God's truth. I had no idea what the internet was at the time. I didn't know what a website was.
I mean, you got to remember this is January, 1996. I didn't have an email address at the time. We were still on that a text system at the globe where we could send messages to people, but it wasn't like actual email. You have a light looking on your computer on your eight text computer that's a message.
But I didn't know what email was. I didn't know. I thought this thing was like a newsletter or something. So he says, Oh, when you come down here, I'll show you around the site.
And I thought he meant like the actual building. He meant he was going to show me around the website. So this whole thing. Well, it's pretty baffling to me.
And the day I got down there was the day that Don Shula announced he was retiring from the Miami Dolphins. I think. So that was either Shula was retiring or Jimmy Johnson was getting hired one or the other. I'd have to go back and check the dates to remember which I'm a sheriff.
But I just run the newsroom. It was buzzing. And I was like, wow, this is just kind of like a newspaper. It's just a real newsroom.
And it was a consistent of a lot of people who worked at newspapers in their life, including my late boss Mike Khan who had covered the Seattle Seahawks, Sonics for years in the NBA. And Ray Baca guy who had been a columnist at Houston Post and he was the lead columnist and I was just like, this is exciting. So I interviewed with them and they kind of offered me the job pretty quick. But at the same time I was getting offered a job by the Albany Times Union.
So that job, when I was at old school, more newspaper job, they would have entailed covering arena football, covering college sports, covering like the New York Giants used to train out in Albany back then. So I would have entailed that or this other job where I was going to be exposed to pro sports at a very young age. So even though the Albany Times Union, they were offering quite a bit more money because they were like a more stable institution at the time. Something in my gut and just the more people I talked to, my stepfather was involved in computers and he knew about the internet.
So the more people I talked to, they started encouraging me to take the sports line job, even though it's less money. So I tried to shake out a little bit of money out of them, no luck. But I didn't really have that much leverage. I could have just gone to Albany if I wanted to.
But I took the job at Sportsline and that wound up being the best decision of my life. Because when I started there, I was mainly doing a lot of copy editing because we had a lot of columns flowing in from actually newspaper writers who were freelancing for us. They were getting asked for money to freelance for us. So just like a lot of people, even Bob Ryan, a lot of people I grew up reading were sending columns into them.
So I was actually editing their stuff. I was posting stories. I would write it every now and then. I mean, it was kind of like you can write when you would find time to write.
But it was sometimes hard to find the time. But I was covering Florida Panthers games and Miami Heat games and Miami Dolphins games going over to the Marlins. I remember the Orioles Spring Training Complex was like five minutes from my office at Sportsline literally right down the street at Cypress Creek. So on my lunch break, I'm going down to Cal Rickens practicing with the Orioles.
I remember one of my first stories I did was on on Davey Johnson. I got a column about Davey Johnson who was the Orioles manager at the time. And I think I wrote column under Berto Alomar. So it was just, it was great to get this experience.
And then I think it was about, it feels like dog years of the time because we were a startup and we were all working six days a week and 60 hours a week. But I think it was about a year in when my boss Mike said you're just going to be writing. We want you to write full time. So that was when I just kind of, they were flying me different places to cover big games and I remember covering the Stanley Cup finals in 1996 and 97 and I covered my first World Series in Cleveland in 97 and covered in just getting to cover all these things at such a young age.
Just from a national scope. It was really very cool. And then I really wanted to go to Boston because that's where I was from because we my boss Mike decided we would start rather than all of our writers being in Florida, which didn't make a lot of sense because why not spread our wings to different part of the country. So ultimately he decided, I think Boston was on the table briefly, but he decided, you know, he asked me about New York because, you know, such a big sports population so many different teams.
You can really cover a lot of ground. You know, in New York. So in March of 1998, my wife and I, we moved to New York. So I became a one man New York City Bureau Chief for Sportsline covering all New York sports.
I got there just in time for opening day of the 1998 baseball season. So I covered the Mets opening day and then a week later I covered the Yankees opening day. And I was just, there was so much to do. There was, you know, there was two baseball teams.
There was two basketball teams, the Knicks, there was three hockey teams. There was two football teams. Then you had like, you know, St. John's basketball if you wanted to do something.
So the US Open would come in the fall. So there was just so much going on. And just like I always say, like if you like the old saying, if you could make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. It's kind of like covering sports in New York because it's just like so like cutthroat and so many people around, you really have to carve out for space and just doing that for four years.
And you have to do it. I got to do that job for four years. And that was just, you know, that was just an unbelievable opportunity to get to do that. And I was having a blast.
I really was. And then one of the first like internet bubble busts of hers came in April of 2001. So I was driving around with my sister-in-law in the car. It was my wife's 30th birthday.
Remember my sister-in-law was in town to take care of our son who was, he was a year and a half of the time. We had another baby on the way. And she was there to babysit him. So I could take her out to dinner, like take my wife out to dinner for a birthday.
I got a phone call. This was, you know, I had a cell phone at that point finally. And my boss, one of my bosses from Sportsline was on the phone and all of a sudden got in this real corporate voice. Didn't ask me what I was doing.
Just said, you know, we regret to inform you that your position from the company's been eliminated due to budget constraints and all this. So here I was thinking, like I was ready to work for Sportsline like forever. Like I thought this was the greatest thing ever. And then to find out later that 90 people were laid off from Sportsline that day.
I think our entire works staff, including everything, not just reporters and editorial side, but business and marketing. The entire company was 360 people, I think at the time. And 90 of us were slashed in one day. So I was like, wow, this is crazy.
I have a baby on the way. I just, we just bought a bigger apartment with a higher rent. What am I going to do? So lo and behold, two days later, the same guy who called me to tell me that I was being let go, knowing full weight, well, it's never his decision because he thought very highly.
I mean, we had a really good relationship. It came from above him. But he told me he heard of an opening at MLB.com, which was MLB Advanced Media. They were really starting their first season of being kind of an independent website, major league baseball's official website.
So he's like, you're going to get in touch with this guy right away and apply for a job there. They have an opening. So I applied. I don't think I had even hung up the phone before I had called about that and sent him my resume.
And the guy who's running MLB.com at the time, a guy by the name of Din Man. He was the editor and chief. He knew some people that I knew. Like I said, he knew Ray Buck from Sportsline.
He knew a Steve Miller, the guy who the editor called to tell me I was laid off. And there were a couple of people already working in MLB that I crossed paths with who put in a good word for me. And I got that job based in New York. So I was going to be in charge of the NLE.
So I started. So I was out of work from Sportsline April 17th of 2001. I was working for MLB by May 20th of 2001. So I was out of work for a month.
And it turns out I had sevens pay a three month three months of sports line. So for an overlap for like a month for like two months, I was getting paid by Sportsline and MLB. So that worked out nicely. I got a little bit of a raise out of the job for an MLB from when I was working at Sportsline.
And now I was just baseball was my favorite sport. So for the rest of that, one season, my concentration was the end of the lease. I would do a weekly notebook each week kind of gathering information from our other writers in the end of the end of that. And I was at that 01 season.
Din Man, the editor in chief said to me that they were kind of wanting to change directions on how they're covering things. And they wanted to put basically the most visible people, which I guess at the time I was one of the most visible people. They wanted to put them on beats covering teams. Instead of just kind of blanketing the NLE.
So I got to do other stuff too because I did get to cover that the world series that year and some of the all playoff to so I was covering a lot of different things. But then, yeah, so then he said, you know, how would you like to cover like the Yankees or the Mets for us. It was kind of like we already had Yankees and Mets writers. I sort of knew them both.
So I really didn't think much of that. And then, and then he was like, Oh, you're from Boston. He was like, how about, you know, do you think about covering the Red Sox. So I was like, yeah, that's pretty much been like my dream job since I was a kid, you know.
So that was how I became the Red Sox Beat reporter. And then I started at the end of February, 2002, basically went to Springfield, before I moved from New York to Boston. That's how quick the whole thing went down. So I went to Red Sox camp.
Yeah, the team changed ownership the day I got down there. And they fired the general manager, Dan DeQuette, my second day in the job. They fired Joe Carrigan, the manager, like my fourth or fifth day on the side. Just like all kinds of stuff was going on as well.
This is this job is crazy. So all this stuff was happening. This is a no more Garcia Para Pedro Martinez Red Sox. And it was just so that was the start of it.
And then I moved to Boston in April. I moved to West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where I've been ever since. And I just celebrated my 25th year with MLB.com. I got recognized at my park.
They gave me people. When you work for MLB, the company, so this isn't just writers. This is anybody who works for the corporation, Major League Baseball. When you work there for 25 years, you get what's called a gold, a gold pass or a gold card.
So it's entitled to get to any ballpark for the rest of your life. You want to guess best available tickets any regular season game. So that was kind of a cool thing, not that I really need it now because I'm financial that these came to the cover. But I'm going to take one of my kids to a game in New York that the Red Sox aren't playing in.
And so when I got down to the field, my wife and my three kids and my three adult children were in the dugout and I was like, why are my wife and my kids in the dugout? So they and my boss, Allison Footer, was there. They were surprising me with his gold card ceremony. And I knew it was going to happen at some point because it happened to some of our other writers.
But I didn't know exactly when or how it was going to happen. I see John Henry standing down there. I saw Tom Warner. I saw Pedro Martinez, like all taking part in the ceremony and all my friends from the beat.
Other writers covered the red section while standing on the corner on the sidewalk. And I was just like, I was just blown away. So that was a real night. And I was like, wow, 25 years and I'll be.
And it makes you remember like, you know that Northeastern in the globe. That was what all kicks started the whole thing. Right. That was where, you know, like, grandites and fortune along the way, but you have to make your own breaks.
You have to have the talent to go with it too. And the personality to go with it. And that was when it just kind of like a lot of things came flashing back to me when that happened. And I was like, wow, my path.
Starting at Northeastern, leading to the globe, leading to the Internet Web, the boom of the Internet, right when I graduated from college. Because a lot of people worry about working at the Internet in 1996, because like me, they didn't know what it was. So certainly sees a newspaper journalist. They didn't see newspapers kind of going downhill budget wise like they did over the next many years.
So they weren't willing to jump. So I was willing to jump and we take those leaps, you know, really helped me kind of get to where I am today. And you know, 25 years at MLB, five years at sports line, 30 years in the business. It's, you know, it's kind of hard to believe.
It seems like just yesterday I was at chicken lose during my breaks from classes or down at the old Maxwell jumps or our house. And I know none of these bars exist anymore, but these are the places I would hang out with my friends. I know it's all different over there now. But yeah, I brought brings back a lot of nostalgia to a great, just to I could not for anything more from my Northeastern experience.
It was really as I suspected it was like kind of the perfect place for me. Yeah, no, I mean, what you said right there, I think that really just kind of embodies the spirit of Northeastern, where you were talking about that a lot of people didn't make a jump, but you did. And I just kind of feel like that is what Northeastern really encourages their students to do is to just take that risk, you know, to see the innovation on the horizon and be able to just grab it and run with it. And it sounds like you did just that because congratulations on the 25 years and the whole career in general, that's really cool.
That's also really funny that you didn't know like you knew it was coming, but you didn't exactly know when the ceremony was going to happen. And just it was the Yankees were in town too. And it was just like, yeah, it was just like coming. It was a busy day.
It works. I was kind of somebody told me to come downstairs. Like they said, they daked me and told me that Craig Resilai was about to talk to the media. So I took him and his word and I came down and then I saw these people like my family and the dugout of my boss, Alison Best Boss in the world.
And just couldn't believe I saw John Henry and Tom Warner and my good friend Pam Ken, who was in charge of Red Sox Media Relations for many years. She has her own agency business now just to see all these people who were important to my life and important to my development. It was kind of like colliding of all the, you know, convergence of all the important people in your life, your work life and your personal life, kind of just all at once. So yeah, that all hit me and Tom Warner and John Henry and Pedro also really nice things about me during the ceremony and then I had to give a little speech and off the cuff because I didn't prepare anything.
Like I said, I didn't know I had no idea how this whole thing was going to happen. I thought it was going to be like a quick. Somebody was going to come up to me and give it to me and say congratulations. I had no idea.
It was going to be this ceremony took place like right in front of the Red Sox dugout. Like an hour, like an hour before the game. So it was just, it was like my own thing, my own ceremony wasn't like part of the regular pregame ceremonies they have during the game. And it wasn't for the fans because you know, like Gates had just opened so there's some people in but they didn't know what's going on.
But it was just like for me and my family. And yeah, it was a night. I'll never forget that's for sure. Yeah.
And just kind of all of it encapsulating into that gold card. That is one of the, I think that's personally one of the coolest things in sports. Like to me, I had always heard about it, but I always kind of thought it was like an urban legend. I didn't ever look too far into it because it just sounds so surreal to me that there's one card that can get you.
And I always assumed it was kind of like, you know, that annex black card that people have in the world. I should have taken it out for the year. You're not doing the video anyway, but I should have taken you out and shown it to you for the podcast. But no, it's yeah, it's crazy.
And it's just like not only like, you know, two tickets, you and a guest, best available tickets and even has like numbers on there for every game. So if you think it's going to be a game that's going to be like a high volume of tickets sold ahead of time. You can call a couple days ahead of time coming in. You know, you think you could reserve these tickets for them or so.
Yeah, kind of a really cool thing for someone loves baseball. I'm like, because of what I do in my family loves baseball, like my wife loves going to the ballpark my three kids, two sons and a daughter. They're all in their twenties, but they all love going to the ballpark. So, yeah, it's just kind of a great thing to be able to know that I'm going to just be able to have, you know, forever.
That's a fantastic thing is just having your back pocket. Yeah. Yeah. So you said that you had like a flash of memory when you were having the ceremony that was celebrating you and your work.
I was just curious. You have any favorite memories from your time with the Red Sox? Was there any like, I mean, obviously in the last 25 years, there's been countless. Yeah, I mean, with the team that night became my favorite night quickly.
But yeah, no, I mean, it was crazy. Like, I was there, just the ups and downs that I've gotten the cover. I've been, which really stood out to me to be there. 2003 game seven, the Red Sox are five outs away from going to the World Series.
My second year in the beat. And I spent my whole life. I'm growing up as a Red Sox fan and you lose the kind of fan part in you when you cover the team because you have to be objective and no cheering the press box on that. But it was still surreal that 2003 my second year in the beat.
It looked like they were going to the World Series five outs away. Pedro Martinez is pitching and all of a sudden the Yankees come charging back and the famous greaty little manager of the decision not to take Pedro Martinez out of the game, which ownership is still bitter about four World Series later and can't really blame them because all the data suggested the Pedro turned into a pumpkin after 105 pitches in the point of his career. And so I saw one of them I was just like historic collapses in baseball history and this is what it was like being at home in 86 and watching the 1986 World Series slip away when they were one strike away from winning. So now I'm experiencing this as a journalist.
I'm in the clubhouse. My lasting memory is David Ortiz is literally slumped over this big long couch they had in the middle of the clubhouse you're slumped over crying. I mean grown men were crying to make you thought that he was going to lay great to make you like that. He was thought he was going to be remembered as the next Bill Buckner, which was not the case because everyone put this loss on Brady.
So we feel that that's a worry about that but just like the whole magnitude of this thing was big and I was excited because at the before the collapse because I thought I was going to Miami for the World Series the Marlins and already claims their world series spot. And like I said I worked in South Florida for two years that was where I got my start in the business I was like I'm gonna go down to Florida hang on my friends go to the beach during the day cover the World Series at night this is gonna be like the greatest they ever. And the rug got pulled out from under me on that one. And just just the the aftermath of that whole thing was nuts.
And then that it sort of built toward the whole 2004 thing where they went out in the off season and they said first thing they did was they fired Brady little. After 95 one season and becoming five months away from getting to the World Series that right there tells you the magnitude of how pressurized it was to be a Boston Red Sox player at that time. Like they hadn't won since 1918 so this was just this ownership was in it to win it. So going into the 04 off season.
I was outside raking leaves like a couple days before Thanksgiving and you know listening to the radio and all these reports are popping up that you know the stocks are trying to trade for Kurt Schilling. Oh my God. Kurt Schilling at that point was kind of like larger than life because he just helps Lately Yankees at a series that he covered by the way for MLB.com when I was still in the national role the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks and Schilling and Randy Johnson basically slayed the Yankees by themselves so you're like the Red Sox are going to get Schilling like this is this is huge like this is big. And then the Red Sox to a whole new level and then they went out and got the closure they needed and he's folk the winner meetings and then the reports were they were going to trade for a ride and that deal blew up because he was going to take a pick up to come to the Red Sox.
The Red Sox can only make the deal if they could his salary at the time was a historic $252 million contract they know other player and even touch at the time. So they're like if you'll have to do a little re-die wasn't a huge pair of contract if you'll just do this then we'll make the deal. So they had it all lined up and then the players union blocked it and they said no we're not they told me could not accept the deal to him. So I'm going to sit up at precedent for the players so Larry Lequino another late great one kind of went on a spiel about the Yankees and the evil empire and all this stuff.
You know it was ruining baseball to not do a deal like this so then you go from there a month later Aaron Boone the guy hits the home run off way feel he he tears his ACL playing basketball during the off season. So he's no longer a Yankee the Yankees need a third baseman so Brian Cashman. I think I was the ultra Rodriguez was in town the time at the New York Baseball Raiders dinner. He was getting his MVP award that he won for the Rangers.
It was kind of like I feel like the story goes the cashman asked a rod if he would ever consider coming to third moving to third base if he was becoming a Yankee. And of course Derek Jeter was not moving on shortstop that would be like moving something Tom Brady's going to go play like running packer wide receiver you know you just you don't do that so I guess a rod said yes and that put the motions and that put the wheels in motion and was right around Valentine's day the Yankees got a rod. And at that point you felt like the season was kind of sunk you're like wow the Yankees just got a rod on this team that has been to the World Series it was something like five times in the last seven years they've been to the World Series. You know they had won four World Series and it was they won three worlds.
Yeah so they had one three at the time so it was just kind of. You know it was nuts and then you know I remember making calls and Kevin Marlar was just like I got him on the phone he was just kind of like. You know we got we've got a bunch of grinders on this team you know the Yankees better the star players he's like we got the grinders he wasn't worried about it. And that team kind of took their cues from him but he also did something kind of silly earlier in that offseason when.
So when the Red Sox were going to trade for a rod they were trading Manny Ramirez and I think John Lester to the Rangers for a rod. And they had a separate deal where they were trading Nomar Garcia Para to the White Sox for Magli or don't use. And so the deal was you know Kevin Marlar went on sports and he did live in on sports and I was thinking the A-Rod deal is done. And Dan Patrick says you know right now Kevin if you had a choice between you know A-Rod throwing you the ball from shortstop or you want no more Manny still on your team who you're taking.
He goes he goes he goes I'll take A-Rod you know this big smile on the space. Yeah. And then the deal blew off. It just created this enormous tension within the Red Sox clubhouse early in that O4 season because Nomar is a very sensitive guy and rightfully so he had been the face of the franchise and he finds out through back channels so trying to trade him.
But he was not happy with Kevin Marlar so that you know your best your most recognizable player and your and also a Marlar your clubhouse leader the kind of guy kind of sets the tone in your clubhouse. The two of them aren't getting along strangely not Manny and Marlar they got closer than ever so Manny didn't take it personally. And I remember you know the team kind of history of the team they sort of muddled along for a while that O4 season and played 500 baseball for about from a fan of good April I think they were like 14 and 6 and April but then from May 1st through July 31st they were a 500 team and the big reason was defense. Nomar missed the first couple months of the season we came back as defense was hampered by his injury and some people thought lingering attitude from from almost being traded he just wasn't really fitting in with the team anymore.
So they traded Nomar right at the buzzer the trade deadline is seismic trade seismic trade where they traded Nomar and they got they got Orlando Cabrera and Doug McCaewich they got Cabrera from the Exmos the now defunct Montreal Exmos and Doug McCaewich from the twins who were across the hall we were at the Metro Dome at the time. I remember distinctly Doug McCaewich walking over from one locker room to the other while Nomar was being ushered out. And that was this this season just got really weird and the web scene said he had to take his first ever ambient to get the sleep that night because he was like everyone was asking him why he just traded the face of the franchise for a couple 240 years. Because that's he thought he read the culture of the team and he also knew that defense, you know they couldn't win with the way they were playing defense and the next later that day they got Dave Robertson that was a deal that wasn't mentioned at all the time, if we were all consumed with this no more thing but They went on this day became a team about a week after the no March raid where they just loved each other not blaming no mark is that situations on both sides team and player but they just the chemistry on that team Cabrera fit right in Dave Roberts fit right in McCaewich fit right in And then they went on a run 10 that season which is kind of similar the ones that are on here in 2026 they think they won they finished the regular season 40 out of their last 55 games.
And they steam rolled in the playoffs they swept the angels in three games. And then in the LCS to down zero to three though okay this is after losing in game seven year before this was the other finally supposed to beat the Yankees because they had showing they had folk they had this newfound chemistry with Cabrera. And then they had three games to none and the LCS they lose 19 to eight and game three everyone's making their vacation plans and we're talking to Johnny Damon and he's like well I guess we're all going to be you know the carpool line picking up our kids at school Monday we're all going to be home for Halloween. Like Johnny Stank maybe says it won't really happen kind of like when you put your if you pack a raincoat it won't rain but if you don't get a four sort of that sort of thing.
He's not that game for you know Robert steals the base. Bill Miller who never gets the credit he deserves knocks them in with a single or tease like I said just becomes an absolute legend in these playoffs. He walks the Yankees off game for a game five home running game for 12th inning game five 14th inning a single and at the point I'm absolutely exhausted like this is great to be able to cover this but you're these are the times when the games are starting to 830. There was no pitch timer game for was five hours and two minutes game five is five hours and 49 minutes you're just smokes you're getting to sleep like when the sun's coming up and then you're getting up the next day feel like you get hit by a truck and then you're getting on a train back to New York Oh my God.
I'm going back to New York against our laws. You never thought that was going to happen when they were down 3 0 and that kind of the adrenaline kicks in for you when the game. I managed to start a similar to players. The only difference is the players admitted later they were taking shot to Jack Daniels.
They started taking shots at Jack Daniels served by Kevin Marlar starting with game six. They actually game six. So they did it for every game for the rest of the playoffs. They picked like a symbolic toasted Jack Daniel before.
I was I was not thinking shots to Jack Daniel but there was like adrenaline that came over you when you felt the responsibility to really do great work because you were witnessing something historic here. So they had the bloody stock of game six was showing. They had Johnny Damon who had done nothing all series getting a grand slam and a two run home in game seven and it was just like cathartic for all the Red Sox nation. They blew out the Yankees in game seven.
It was like if you kind of just finally the Red Sox finally did what they couldn't do in 19 since 1918 they beat the Yankees in a big game with everything on the line. And that's when I knew I had covered something really historic and that's something that you know I'll never forget that was a great just that whole world series almost let down you knew they were going to win in that Cardinals team people forget they won 103 or 104 games that the Red Sox just rolled over them and the UFC had a meeting before that series with the players and the owners and he said we're going to crush these guys. I've gone through the scouting reports they're pitching. They have all off to be pitching we crushed off to be pitching.
They have no chance. Not only do they have no chance but the same list matters which at the time were Albert Puhls and Larry Walker and all the Scott Roland they had a great lineup. They all just did nothing that all world series it was crazy and the Red Sox swept them and that was kind of like almost went down the world series was beating the Yankees. And that would be 87 years without a championship so they won the world series and that's but by far that's by far the coolest thing I've ever covered.
I think other good things 2013 you know the way they played after the Boston Marathon bombings and showing a lot of character at the old four team showed him the personalities with the playoff beards and all that stuff and that was another great thing and also some really down times like the 2011 collapse. They blew nine game leave in September first game playoff history to have a nine game leave in September not make a playoffs. So just the way that all happened in the final game in the season when Karl Crawford dropped a single line drive in Baltimore and second later Evan Longoria had a walk off a tropical field to put the race in the playoffs. The Red Sox are going home huge fall off and that Terry Franklin is no longer the manager two days later.
The Webster leave the court of the Cubs. So that was another one that you always remember because there's so much involved and yeah I've been lucky. I mean 2018 the best team I've ever covered 108 wins franchise record Alex core brings excitement in his first year as the manager. Yeah I've seen a sort of down period after 2018 when they try to lead into rebuilding and there's a lot of down the air and the mookie trade and.
It's kind of all the way into what you feel like now it's finally a resurgence again and it started in 2025 when they got Derek crochet and they got pregnant. They only had pregnant for a year but they got back into the playoffs. They got a great free game playoffs here against the Yankees who lost some free games. But then this year they said the window of contention is here we really have to push to win now.
But it didn't seem like they got off to such a terrible start there 14 games under 500 on June 24th. We're talking here they've gone on one of the best runs in team history. So now it feels like one of those really exciting periods that I'm covering so I feel like it's been a lot of up and down since I've been covering the team in terms of storylines like great storylines story lines of really sharp collapses or off the field things like the chicken and beer. You know the pictures drinking beer needing fried chicken instead of being in the dugout during the 2011 collapse so always something it's always entertaining.
That's the thing with the red socks. It's just like a runaway train that never really stops and you just never know what's gonna happen a day when you go to the ballpark. So there's really no job I never have. I'd rather have.
So doing this off my 25th season with covering the red socks really very lucky to still be doing this. Yeah, no absolutely. I mean it sounds like it's been an incredible time and you know the stories I thank you for sharing all the stories I thought I'm a Sox fan so I've been really really enjoying hearing like 2004 is really my earliest memory of them period. Yeah, like I didn't know them.
I know I kind of got locked into like all the glory and everything I never really knew them prior to that but still like thank you for sharing all the stories and everything that's been personally it's been a lot of fun here and I know that a lot of people listening are going to really enjoy that too. It's been a ride man. It's been a ride coming stocks. Yeah.
Well thanks so much for joining the podcast today I had an absolute blast chatting with you and yeah hopefully you know they keep doing what they're doing. I hope that everything from the trade deadline worked out. I know that's been a big. Yeah, my house.
You never know how that's gonna work out. You know, I'll trade a lot of prospects but as we see in first time with the red socks these prospects don't always turn out to what you think they're going to. Right. They're taking a chance at the rush from the guy who does a lot of things behind people looking at his batting numbers.
He means a lot more in terms of leadership and how he handles the pitching staff and his catching skills he's kind of like Jason Barrett Tech is probably a player that I would compare him closely to. Oh, that's really cool. Okay. Switch hitter, team leader, maybe not as physically imposing as tech who you just didn't want to mess with.
But you know, Rushman the same kind of mindset. So yeah, it's gonna be an exciting finish to the season. The season seemed like they're going to be sellers. They wound up being buyers.
So it's gonna be a fun these next two months are going to go back to that. It's gonna be very, very fun. This is gonna be a very fun August. Well, thanks again Ian.
This was a blast. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Northeastern Next. Are you or do you know a Northeastern alum with a great story to tell? If so, email us at alumni at northeastern.edu to be featured on a future episode of the pond.
I hope you enjoyed the episode and I'll see you the week after next.