04.19.2024

Local biz leader blasts Wu tax plan | Quake could devastate Back Bay | Big power grid buildout eyed for Boston | Sox being readied for the sales block? | NPR chief’s woke tweets inspire satire | Quick hits |

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Bill Simmons is out: Legendary Sox superfan bails on team, accuses owners of prepping for sale

Simmons has been publicly rooting for the Sox since he popped onto the local sports media scene with his “Boston Sports Guy” website a quarter century ago.

After years at ESPN, Simmons went on to launch The Ringer, the sports, pop culture and tech website and podcast network, which has made him a wealthy man.

Yet despite his love of the team, or maybe because of it, Simmons declared on his podcast on Monday that he has watched “zero” innings of the Sox this year as they have stumbled to a 10-10 record.

“I’m actually done this year, I’m out,” said Simmons, author of “Now I Can Die in Peace” on the ultimately successful quest by the Red Sox in 2004 to win the team’s first World Series since 1918.

Bill Simmons: No. 1 Sox fan no more?

And Simmons clearly believes there is a method to the team’s maddening mediocrity, which is saving money and just possibly making the franchise’s bottom line more attractive to buyers.

“I am not wasting any time this year watching the Red Sox,” Simmons said. “They don’t care if the team’s good - they are just positioning it to sell it.”

Simmons also issued a provocative challenge to Sox owners John Henry and West Coast TV mogul Tom Werner. (Henry also owns The Boston Globe and two other sports teams, among other ventures.)

“I will watch them when we have new owners or a team you actually give a (****) about,” Simmons said.

Sound like Simmons isn’t buying Henry’s claims, issued as recently as late February, that he has no plans to sell the Sox.

The emperor has no clothes: Boston’s new climate change chief acknowledges ambitious push to ban fossil fuels in city’s office towers and buildings remains aspirational

Brian Swett, Boston’s first-ever climate chief, won’t be starting his new job until June.

But the principal at global engineering and design firm Arup has already earned an ‘A for bluntness in the wake of a WBUR interview.

What’s clear from the piece, which ran Wednesday evening, is that Swett envisions a long, tough road ahead for phasing out fossil fuels and decarbonizing buildings in Boston.

A veteran of city government as well, Swett was frank in his assessment of the challenges ahead, a quality too often missing in both the media coverage of the issue and the airy pronouncements by our elected leaders about wonderous green new deals.

In fact, a lot more than just a tweak or two will be needed to ensure the city’s power grid can handle buildings large and small switching over from gas and oil to electricity, he noted.

Meet Brian Swett, Boston’s first ever climate chief

The transition will involve building out politically unpopular electric grid infrastructure, not just downtown, but in the city’s neighborhoods as well, Swett said on WBUR’s “All Things Considered.”