'The Gray Lady Wears Red Sox,' 1/1/06, NY Magazine

Historical reference, from NY Magazine about 3 years ago, 1/1/06): "Has the Times gone Red Sox crazy? Since coverage of the Yankees’ off-season began on October 12, (2005) five days after their archrivals hung up their hats,

• there have been 105 articles mentioning the Sox—two more than the Bombers, and
• 26 more than the Mets, who play in Queens, and not, say, Massachusetts.

The paper’s Boston coverage can be absurd: Witness its infamous October 2003 pro-Sox editorial or the December 1 photo of Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez’s Boston apartment, complete with the $6.9 million asking price.

• What’s going on? Too many Harvard grads on 43rd Street?

Or can the paper be reminding New Yorkers that it owns a minority stake in the Sox?

• Nothing of the sort, insists sports editor Tom Jolly, who says the count is skewed because of the movement of Red Sox free agents and the upheaval in their front office.

• “Anything [the Red Sox] do will be of great interest to Yankee fans.”

Still, a search reveals that no other local paper comes close to this kind of parity."

• (Volume is part of it but actual content, words, phrases, how information is placed within an article, and photographs are even more important in my experience. Baseball is very political now. As came to pass, there was a great deal of favorable coverage in the NY Times of a senator/Red Sox owner's activity on behalf of his law firm and a report costing about $20 million). sm

In an October 8, 2003 editorial, the NY Times stated its hope for the Red Sox beating the Yankees. They didn't mention they were part owners of the Red Sox, but the bigger picture is the cultural aspect of the editorial. It says to local spirit, 'you do not exist' in a cowardly passive aggressive manner. Millions of eyes saw those words and believed them to be true. How dare one have an individual spirit and not be a globalist and tolerant? sm

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