Get Off My Lawn: Stop Saying We

Please stop saying “WE.” There is nothing that gets my craw more than when fans start talking about their team and they use the word “WE.” I am going to state the obvious here but…YOU are not on the team. Nothing YOU do helps the team win. I don’t care if you think you are a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. I don’t care about you being a card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation, and I hate to break it to you, Bunky, but you are not the 12th man.

The money you pay for your dumb officially-licensed replica puck, overpriced court side seats and watered-down Bud Lights are not but a drop in the ocean to help support your local team. The only thing your hard-earned dollars are buying is knowledge that the 70-year-old owner can buy himself another pair of non-age appropriate Nikes, pay for marriage counseling, and allow themselves to be hoodwinked by a shyster and partake in a Ponzi Scheme.

Nice sneakers Robert Kraft. Did your 27 year old “girlfriend” pick those out for you?

I know that me complaining about this is not exactly a Hot Take. The reason this is on the top of my brain is because last weekend I saw a Twitter exchange that made my head explode. It all started with a benign tweet that Boston Broadcasting Legend John “Dino” Dennis sent when he heard a local NESN (New England Sports Network) reporter use the dreaded “WE” when interviewing Red Sox Owner John Henry after the Red Sox clinched the AL East Division.

Dennis then went back and fourth a bit with a troll until the tone-deaf Red Sox Reporter Gary Striewski stepped in with a vomitous response showing off his 2013 World Series Ring.

I am sure that teams now give out cubic zirconia versions of Championship rings to media types regularly. But it sure seems like Mr. Striewski somehow feels he earned it for being a part of the team’s on field success. Hate to re-iterate the obvious here, but he was not. You could literally glue a marshmallow on a carrot stick and it would have the same effect on the 2013 Red Sox team. Enraged by this, Dennis sent out this (half coherent) tweet.

And Striewki shot back with this.

OK. This made me nuclear. The NESN Red Sox sideline reporter decided to throw a completely meaningless local Emmy in a Boston Broadcasting legend’s face? The Local Emmy he won was for a NESN kiddie show that he hosts with David Ortiz’s son. I don’t even have to look it up, but I am going to assume that John Dennis has a dusty box in his garage full of local Emmy trophies. Dennis was a Boston Sports Anchor when it it was cool and it actually meant something. He knew, and knows better, to never throw around the word “WE”. If he did, Larry Bird and Kevin McHale would have dragged him into a locker room stall and hung him up by his underpants. John Dennis came up in the business in a different and better time.

So where do WE go from here? I fear it’s only going to get worse. Since Al Gore invented the internet, every fan thinks they are experts in drafting, injuries, roster moves and salary cap ramifications. Meanwhile, sideline jockeys get a false sense of importance because they can post a photo of the next Bobble Head and get 2,500 Twitter followers. I beg you, the reader, to stop saying “WE.” And if a media member says it, please make him accountable for his missteps by hate tweeting him into submission.

And one other thing…GET OFF MY LAWN.