Dan Shaughnessy calls second game ‘must win’ for Red Sox

Dan Shaughnessy is the resident pessimist of the city of Boston. The longtime Boston Globe writer has made a career out of overreacting and annoying Boston Red Sox fans by counting the team out before it’s over. After the Sox lost to the Baltimore Orioles on Opening Day, Shaughnessy was up to his old tricks.

In his Globe column on Tuesday morning, Shaughnessy wrote about how the Red Sox were “lacking championship intangibles” and failed to do all the “small things” that helped them win the World Series last season. He finished up the discussion with this gem:

Those were the things they did not do on Monday. Luckily, the Red Sox do not play in a town that’s likely to overreact to a loss on Opening Day.

Wednesday night, however, just became a Must Win for the Olde Town Team.

There is obviously some sarcasm in there. Boston fans overreact to just about everything, so Shaughnessy was being facetious with his claim that the Red Sox don’t play in a town that will overreact to a loss on Opening Day. We can only hope calling game two of a 162-game season a “must win” was also a sarcastic remark.

Even if it was, the column was written with a “sky is falling” tone. Red Sox fans may overreact, but no one is panicking after the first game of the season. In fact, no one will panic if the Orioles sweep John Farrell’s club. If Shaughnessy’s point was that the fans consider game two a must win, he’s still wrong.

Then again, the only time Shaughnessy expressed optimism for the Red Sox was in 2011, when their season ended in disaster. The team is at it’s best when Shaughnessy is at his worst.

H/T Hardball Talk