[Bostongambler]

RIP Remdog

[BiTeMe UsAdOj]

RIP Remdog

How many years do ya think his psycho son took off his life with all the angst & trauma?

R.I.P., Mr. Remy

[Brock Landers]

Sad to hear, enjoyed his commentary.

How son should have died before him, that piece of shit

[jjgold]

Sad to hear, enjoyed his commentary.

How son should have died before him, that piece of shit

yep

[stevenash]

Loved him.
One of my favorite Sox.

Must read
(cut and pasted from The Athletic since it's a PPV e-publication)

As a kid, Jerry Remy would toss baseballs off the back of his grandfather’s house in Somerset, Mass., pretending it was Fenway Park’s Green Monster. Never mind that the house wasn’t at all green, that it was actually pink, or perhaps, as Remy once put it, “some weird color.” What matters is that his youthful imagination, coupled with sturdy New England roots, provided him a lens through which he could look at the home of his grandfather and see the home of the Red Sox.
Years later, it was God-given talent and lots of hard work and dedication that got Remy to the big leagues, first with the California Angels and then, in 1978, as an All-Star second baseman with the Red Sox. Later still, after a wrecked left knee had ended his playing career way too soon, it was his status as a former member of the Red Sox and his keen understanding of the game that guided him to a new career as a color analyst on Sox telecasts. But it was Remy’s decision to place his New England background on the table, and to do so unapologetically, here it is, take it or leave it, that transformed this feisty little ex-ballplayer from Bristol County into an institution.
Remy, who was 68 when he died Saturday following a long battle with cancer, according to a Red Sox official, did so much more than “talk baseball” during Red Sox telecasts. He talked Boston. He talked New England. He would complain about the weather — during a baseball game! — and get away with it because he was a New Englander talking to New Englanders, and in a manner both raw and honest.
And imagine the many times the suits had to grin and bear it when Remy, a bought-and-paid-for in-game analyst, would matter-of-factly intimate that Sox fans would be more entertained if the players and managers down on the field could maybe speed things up a little.
“The reason he was so successful, and why he resonated with all of us so much, is that he was truly and authentically one of us,” said Tom Caron, the longtime host of Red Sox pre- and postgame shows on NESN. To illustrate his point, Caron shared conversations he’s had over the years with the likes of former Red Sox shortstop Rick Burleson, Remy’s old double-play partner, and with Hall of Fame left fielder Jim Rice, who now works at NESN.
“Rick Burleson once told me he could never have imagined Jerry becoming a Red Sox broadcaster,” said Caron. “And Jim Rice told me the same thing. And that makes perfect sense, because Rick Burleson and Jim Rice aren’t from New England. Anybody on the outside would meet Jerry, especially when he was a young player and was grinding, and they’d hear this accent, and they’d hear this curmudgeon, complaining about traffic and about whatever else he was complaining about at the time.
“But if you were from New England, he was the perfect broadcaster. He’d complain about the same things the viewers would complain about, whether it was a guy not running out a ground ball or a pitcher taking two minutes between pitches.”
It’s important to note that this was but an infinitesimal part of Remy’s on-air persona. And anyway, Remy’s brand of complaining was devoid of yelling, pounding the table or other cheesy attention grabs. He’d just say stuff, and then maybe toss in a little chuckle or a sigh. And when something goofy was going on in the stands, such as that memorable day when a fan tossed a slice of pizza that splatted off the shoulder of another soon-to-be-very-pissed-off fan, Remy had this way of breaking things down with a sort of mock seriousness, as though it were a 6-4-3 double play.
All of this — the candor, the ability to take something silly and turn it into something laugh-out-loud funny — is what set him apart. Yes, he could analyze a real play as well as any ex-ballplayer. Yes, he had a crystal ball stashed somewhere inside his cranium, giving him the power to often tell you what was going to happen before the pitcher had even toed the rubber. And it was clear he still knew his way around the clubhouse, given his casual observations about this or that player.
The passing of Jerry Remy, then, is so much more than a death in the family. It’s the end of an era, a very, very long era, when one considers that as a 14-year-old he rooted his heart out for the 1967 “Impossible Dream” Red Sox, that as a player he was a key member of the powerful but ill-fated 1978 Red Sox, that as a color analyst he covered the 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018 World Series champion Red Sox, and that until illness finally took him away from the booth this past summer he was talking excitedly about the surprise-package 2021 Red Sox.
He played his own role in various stages of Red Sox history. In the ninth inning of Boston’s Oct. 2, 1978, one-game playoff against the Yankees at Fenway Park, the Sox trailing 5-4, it was Remy who lined a single to right field off closer Goose Gossage with a runner on first. But Yankees right fielder Lou Piniella, after seemingly losing the ball in the sun, threw up a glove and stopped the ball from bouncing to the corner, forcing Burleson to stop at second. Two outs later, the Yankees had their victory, sending Sox fans into an offseason of agony

[mcaulay777]

Yes Very Sad.Sox broadcasters were one of my Favs.Im old so i remember when Jerry Remy played for the California Angels before going to the Red Sox.

[Bostongambler]

Always enjoyed him at his craft.

Good read Stevenash

[stevenash]

Good read Stevenash

Here's the rest of it.





Remy always said Carl Yastrzemski was one of his favorite players growing up in Somerset, and what a thrill it was to both play against and with Captain Carl. It was an extra special day for Remy, then, when on Oct. 2, 1983, Yastrzemski’s final game, he contributed three hits.
That’s a lot of Red Sox history right there. That’s a lot of Jerry Remy, too, and Sox fans couldn’t get enough of him. So comfortable did he become behind the mic, and such was the respect NESN viewers had for him, that he was willing to share details about his personal life that would have sent other broadcasters rushing into retirement. He talked on the air about his health issues, because he believed viewers deserved to know why he’d been away from the booth. More importantly, he addressed the wrenching agony that he and his wife Phoebe went through in 2013 when their son Jared pleaded guilty to the murder of Jennifer Martel, the mother of their granddaughter.
In the memoir he authored with the late Nick Cafardo, Remy wrote, “It was and continues to be, by far, the most horrible day of our lives. There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about Jen and what a heinous act was committed by our son. Two families were ruined, and a beautiful woman who was so full of life was gone.”
By acclimation, Red Sox fans welcomed him back to the booth. Jerry and Phoebe remained involved in helping to raise their granddaughter.
“We all know he went through so much,” said Sean McDonough, who shared the Red Sox television booth with Remy for years. “He’s had such a fascinating life, not all of it great, obviously, but I just admire the hell out of him. I really do. And I’m going to miss him.”
To younger Red Sox fans who never saw Remy play, know this: He was a huge talent. He was just a little peanut of a ballplayer, listed as 5-foot-9 and 165 pounds, but possibly not even that. But as a big-league second baseman he was tough and steady around the bag, especially when turning a double play, and he was a .275 lifetime hitter. He hit only seven career home runs, one of which I remember vividly: It was in the third inning of Boston’s 8-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at the old County Stadium, Remy pulling the ball over the right-field fence off a right-hander named Eduardo Rodriguez. It was Aug. 5, 1978, a Saturday afternoon, and I was listening to the game on the radio in a room I was renting on Montgomery Road in Westfield. I had signed on just four days earlier with the Westfield Evening News, my first job in the biz, and this was my first day off. Since my dream was to someday write about baseball for a living, and since this was my first chance to catch a game, albeit on the radio, it became a keepsake memory.
Years later, after I told Remy that story about his home run at County Stadium, he said, “Oh, I remember that one!” That was classic Remy, poking some fun at his modest home run prowess. But he knew, and anyone who ever saw him play knows this as well, that his playing career should have been much longer and more prosperous. But for all practical purposes his playing days ended in 1984. Those mounting injuries to his left knee limited him to just 30 games that season, and he didn’t play at all in ’85. By the time he reported to spring training in 1986 he’d had seven surgeries on his troublesome knee, along with, as he told reporters, taking part in “acupuncture, faith-healing and voodoo.”
Remy was a long shot to make the team, as Marty Barrett was ensconced at second base by then. And anyway, on March 4 he was unable to participate in a workout because of swelling in that damnable left knee. His career over, Remy could have pocketed the $500,000 due to be paid to him for the 1986 season; he took the money, of course, but he also took a job as a part-time coach with Boston’s Double-A New Britain club.
His coaching career ended after one season when he was hired to be an analyst for Red Sox games on NESN, working alongside the legendary Ned Martin, whose calls of the ’67 Impossible Dreamers Remy listened to as a kid growing up in Somerset. It wasn’t a comfortable fit in the early days — I remember Remy as being choppy and not very interesting — but there was an important transformation happening behind the scenes. In the early days of Remy’s broadcasting career the Red Sox had two television crews — Martin and Remy on NESN, and a young Sean McDonough and former Sox catcher Bob Montgomery doing over-the-air games on WSBK-TV. But the crews sometimes traveled together, and during the first few years of this arrangement a friendship formed between Remy and McDonough.
Caron, who has been around long enough to classify as a fine NESN historian, minces no words when he says, “Jerry would be the first to tell you that Sean McDonough was the one who worked to bring out the personality in him. Jerry had been trying to be Johnny Professional Broadcaster, instead of just being himself and letting his natural personality come out.”
Said McDonough, “Jerry was always very generous to give me credit for that, but the personality was there. It was always there.”
Everything changed in 1996 when a plan was hatched to have Remy replace Montgomery, meaning he’d be doing all Red Sox games that weren’t being televised nationally. It also meant he’d be working alongside McDonough on the over-the-air telecasts.
As McDonough tells the story, “We were on the same buses and the same planes, and in the same hotels, and we’d have meals together. And I just remember this guy as being more interesting off the air than he was on the air. And I’d think, it’s too bad more of this doesn’t come out when he’s on TV.”
Remy said no to that, said he’s not a call-attention-to-himself kind of guy, said if he started telling funny stories people would accuse him of trying to take over the telecast.
“I told him, you’d be better off, the broadcast would be better off, the viewers would be better off, if more of the popularity we see off the air comes out on the air,” McDonough recalled. “I knew where Jerry was coming from about not wanting to be the center of attention. It’s a razor-thin line between doing it just right and overdoing it.”
The historical record shows that Remy settled nicely on the winning side of that line. For here was a man who over the years attained the ability to be serious about baseball while also reserving the right to talk about his bromance with the Wally the Green Monster bean bag doll that sat next to him in a miniature Adirondack chair. Was it a little silly sometimes? Sure. But raise your hand if you believe Major League Baseball in the 21st century is sorely in need of more silly.
Such was the endurance of Jerry Remy’s television persona that it worked well with different broadcast partners over the years, from McDonough to Don Orsillo to Dave O’Brien.
“Oh, my God, the stories he could tell,” said O’Brien. “My favorite one, and there were a lot of them, and he told this on the air a couple of times, usually when the Red Sox played the Royals, was about that little run-in he had with Hal McRae.”
As Remy told the story, there had been some bad blood between the Sox and Royals at the time, leading to McRae mouthing the words “I’m coming for you” after reaching first base. Sure enough the next play was a grounder that required Remy to cover second, whereupon he was wiped out by McRae.“Every bone in my body hurt,” Remy said later. The best part of the story is what happened the next year, when, according to Remy, the Red Sox returned to Kansas City and came upon a giant billboard that showed McRae sliding into second and Remy six feet in the air.
“You would think Rem would be embarrassed, and he did wince when he told the story,” O’Brien said. “But I think he loved it. It was who he was. Knock him down, sure. But Jerry Remy gets back up.”
Remy enjoyed sharing stories. A favorite of mine: In his first major-league at-bat, with the Angels on April 7, 1975 — Opening Night — Remy sliced a single to left off right-hander Steve Busby to plate Joe Lahoud with the Halos’ first run of the season. Busby immediately picked Remy off first. After the game, crusty Angels manager Dick Williams, who’d skippered teen-aged Jerry Remy’s beloved ’67 Red Sox to their “Impossible Dream” pennant, congratulated the rookie on his first major-league hit and then told him he’d be on the next bus to Triple-A Salt Lake City if he got picked off base again.
These amusing stories by Remy — often making himself the butt of the joke — helped shape the persona that transformed a reticent sidekick to Ned Martin into a New England icon. And not unlike the late Tommy Heinsohn, the Hall of Fame former Celtic player and coach who had a decades-long run as a television analyst, Remy’s act resonated with younger viewers as much as it did with oldsters. The reason was two-fold: Honesty, coupled with a lack of preachiness. He was never the type to suggest that today’s players lacked talent, or hustle, or grittiness. He was no fan of over-baked home run celebrations other types of on-field celebrations, but he always stopped short of yelling at those players to get off his lawn.
In recent seasons the Red Sox experimented with a three-person booth when they joined Hall of Fame pitcher Dennis Eckersley with Remy and O’Brien. Eck had worked as a substitute during Remy’s various absences due to health issues, but this was different: Eckersley was being asked to work with Remy. Though they had been Red Sox teammates in the old days and were friendly, they had never really been friends.
“He was a hard-nosed dude back then, hard to crack,” said Eckersley. “He was a good teammate when we played for the Red Sox, and he could be very fun-loving. If he knew you. But he was also kind of a private guy. Real serious.”
Mike Narracci, who has directed Red Sox telecasts on NESN since 2001, put it this way: “You couldn’t make Jerry your friend. Jerry had to make you his friend. People would say, how do you get to know Jerry? And I’d say Jerry needs to get to know you and then he’ll decide if you’re in the circle of trust.”
Narracci had a place in that circle of trust, to the degree that in 2017, when Remy was honored at a Fenway Park pregame ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of being hired by NESN, he was invited to join his family on the field.
“I was shocked and honored at the same time,” said Narracci. “Really, really honored.”
Eckersley, initially worried about entering Remy’s turf, was delighted to earn his own place in that circle of trust.
“I didn’t know early on how he was going to react to it,” he said. “I felt like we were tiptoeing around him at the beginning. It was his booth. I was really just playing off him.
“And it ended up being wonderful. Who could have predicted that? It was all going to be a matter of how Jerry was going to react to it, not so much me.”
It was solid gold for NESN. Remy and Eckersley played off each other exceedingly well, comedically as well as analytically, and O’Brien knew when to sit back and let the two old ballplayers do their thing.
“But I’ll always consider Jerry the true voice of the Red Sox,” said O’Brien. “Born in New England. Rooted for the Red Sox. Played for the Red Sox. Coached for the Red Sox. Nobody will ever be able to match that.”
That Remy finally stepped away from the booth this summer had nothing to do with him being behind the times. He simply ran out of time, this after one last cancer diagnosis.
“He knew when he got sick this time that it was bad, that it was worse than before, it was different,” said McDonough. “I told him that my dream is that we would do another game together again. And I’m really sad that we won’t, because it was one of the joys of my life, not just my professional life but the opportunity to show up every night and be a part of something that was really special. Because Jerry was special.”


Remy’s last public appearance came on October 5 when he made a surprise appearance at Fenway Park to throw out the ceremonial first pitch prior to Boston’s 6-2 victory over the Yankees in the wild-card game. His catcher was Dennis Eckersley.
As fans at a packed Fenway park roared their support, Remy was driven in a golf cart from the garage opening in center field. The fans continued to applaud as Remy stepped out of the cart, made the toss, and then received the ball from Eckersley.
“See, Jerry? Everybody loves you,” Eckersley said to Remy. “I love you, everybody loves you.”

[Bostongambler]

Geez Steve, when I get a free 5 hours I’ll read the rest.

[stevenash]

Geez Steve, when I get a free 5 hours I’ll read the rest.

Brevity was never my forte.

[Bostongambler]

No no no I’m not taking my hat off!!! We are at a BASEBALLLLLL game!

[Runeblade]

RIP Jerry Remy. Your commentary will be missed by so many beloved fans.