By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

Another, in the long line of Shots’ Field Trip re-tellings.

This one was to the the Hingham (Mass.) Public Library on Monday night, Trading Deadline Day, 2006. It was sponsored by Buttonwood Booksand featured “Feeding the Monster” writer, Seth Mnookin.

Red Sox Nation braced for a couple of heatwaves as the Dry Erase calendar went from July to August, and the citizenry’s hottest author continued his own impressive hot streak.

On the night when the Monster of Fenway (Big Papi) sent one to the right of The Monster (the left field wall), the Monster Writer (Seth Mnookin) sold a few more copies of his 434-page tome, “Feeding the Monster” to an entirely Caucasian audience of about 60 – many of whom were past that same number in age and Red Sox seasons of disappointment.

Mnookin is currently “. . .on a grand driving tour of New England (and beyond)” with (among other things) ample supply of his best-selling book, his overstuffed black leather briefcase, white adidas sneakers and, on this night, a blue, retro “Daddy” Penguin golf shirt.

Capitalizing on a never-ceasing appetite for behind-the-scenes information on the Red Sox corporation, Mnookin’s book (which Shots has just begun reading), which carries the subtitle “How Money, Smarts and Nerve Took a Team to the Top,” has been the most-talked about local interest book since Howie Carr’s recent Bulger book.

Friends, (and new Gather gatherers) if you’re generating buzz the way Howie Carr does, you’re probably onto something.

While many of the Mnookin reviews and discussion threads have chosen to focus on the Larry/Theo information as well as “Manny’s Mannyness,” as Mnookin calls it, and, the backroom negotiations that landed the ownership group its “Monster,” it makes more sense for Shots to look at Mnookin’s relationship with the “regular” media he encountered during his year on the “inside.”

It’s no secret that Mnookin’s access and preferential treatment rubbed some of the Sox Beat’s “regulars” the wrong way and a few were a bit leery of Mnookin, if for no other (juvenile) reason than the “book guy” was getting all the “good stuff.” (Sports Beats can be petty places, if you haven’t already figured that out).

One Sox beat person recently confided in Shots that Mnookin had an air about him. “Almost like he owned the place – which, little did I know, he sort of did with key, workspace at Fenway, etc.,” said the prominent scribe.

Mnookin, for his part, said at the Hingham “reading” (where he did no reading whatsoever, just an intro and Q&A), he sensed maybe “two or three reporters, who were not happy with (the access) I was getting.

“I didn’t go in with guns-a-blazing. I was an observer and I tried to always be as respectful as possible of the (beat people).

“Every day (before a home game) Terry (Francona) has a press conference in his office. I would go to all of those, but I didn’t ask a question all year long.”

In the Acknowledgments of the book, Mnookin goes out of his way to thank John Tomase of the North Andover (sic) Eagle-Tribune and during the talk, after a question from MLB.com’s Ian Browne’s mom, Mnookin also suggested he had a good friendship with Browne. So not everyone mistrusted the guy.

The one man Mnookin knows “won’t be inviting (him) to any Shaughnessy family outings” is Globe Columnist (and lightning rod for all things Red Sox) Dan Shaughnessy.

“Apparently Dan called me a ‘coward,’” said Mnookin. “This is going to sound like a back-handed compliment, but Dan is truly a great columnist. People will read the Globe just to get mad at Dan Shaughnessy.”

However, Mnookin, who flatly states a disbelief in the “Curse,” feels Shaughnessy’s involvement with the Theo/Larry episode was beneath even a “great” columnist.

“I’m not in favor of people working out agendas through the media,” Mnookin said on Monday night.

What Mnookin needs to understand (aside from the fact that Shaughnessy is not nearly as “thick-skinned” as Mnookin believes him to be) is that this whole Monster Madness is a continuous series of agenda plays through the media, by ALL parties. Including Mnookin himself.

John Henry (chiefly) gave Mnookin his almost unfettered access because there is a certain ego-stroking that comes with having a hot, young author ( Hard News was critically acclaimed) writing about YOUR franchise.

Mnookin, in turn, now gets the opportunity to media play (and book tour) his agenda (selling books, getting another book deal) throughout Red Sox Nation. “I purposely didn’t want to have ‘Boston” or ‘Red Sox’ in the title, so that other people in other parts of the country could feel like it was accessible,” said Mnookin, who then gloated for a moment, “It seems we were able to trick all these people.”

. . . Mnookin comes off a bit un-polished as a public speaker, but did get more comfortable as his hour-long talk evolved. On the way out, one gentleman in the parking lot said, “I’d love to have a couple of beers with him.”

Mnookin had left the “reading” option to the audience and when questions started flying within moments of the offer, Mnookin turned into a mini-Theo for the most part.

Clearly, after months in the Bunker drinking the Kool Aid found in the Bunker, Mnookin has an affinity for not only Henry, Tom and Larry, but one for young Theo as well. He says the word “Yankees” with the same emotion one now mentions “Hezbollah.” He heard Theo say he wanted to “tamp down expectations” and he believed him. (What Theo is actually doing is tamping down spending.) He appears to have bought into, or at the very least become a proponent of, many of the strategies the Sox embrace. His brief discussion of “40 cents of every dollar earned from baseball-related income going to (other MLB teams)” could have come straight from the lips of Dr. Charles Steinberg.

Mnookin also still exhibits a bit of naiveté when he suggests, as he did Monday, that sports fans don’t want the same type of dirt that magazines like “US” and “People” dish about Hollywood-types.

“We don’t want to know that about our baseball players,” Mnookin said.

Of course, the immediate, following question from an older gentleman was about the off-field exploits of Keith Foulke and Manny Ramirez during last season.

Websites like Deadspin, OnTheDL and BadJocks exists specifically for that reason – and all have various degrees of success with it. Mnookin has to understand this, right? Yet he indicated it wasn’t important.

If Mnookin doesn’t understand that reality after a year behind the Green Monster, it might lead one to start to question some of his other observations.

. . . Gotta give some love to the Hingham Public Library and Buttonwood. To be able to have that “relevant” of an author inside a public building on a glorious summer night was enough to even instill some civic pride in an old bitter guy like Shots. The terrace area with the running water off the library’s second floor might be one of the most idyllic library settings in all of Massachusetts. Not that I would know such a thing, but I can at least speculate.

. . . Questions from the well-heeled, Brian McGrory-hating, Nation-Folk ranged from the wordy (Moustache Guy) to the repetitive (David Pauley Lady) and the question of the night came from the audience member who attempted to discover just what was the “Monster” referring to in the book’s title. Mnookin’s explanation wandered a bit, but Shots can succinctly say what we know the Monster to be: The Cash-Printing Operation that is the Boston Red Sox, circa 2006.

. . . Mnookin developed a special hatred for player agents during his research (which yielded 120-130 hours of tape and piles of notes), but admits he wasn’t able to encompass all that sleazy-ness within the “Monster.”

His obvious mistrust of the agents (or “sleazeball liars,” as Mnookin calls them) would appear to come, at least partially, from his foreign-ness to sports coverage. Not necessarily a knock against Mnookin, but his body of work has been mostly comprised of coverage in other areas of media, pop culture and politics. He even mocked Vanity Fair (where the impetus for the book began as a story) for its decidedly un-sports reputation.

The only real difference between agents and owners is that owners deal in mega-billions and agents deal in mega-millions. Both are pretty damn rich and pretty damn conceited and egotistic by definition. If you were to spend a year inside IMG the way Mnookin did inside of RSN, you would probably wind up developing some appreciation of the work agents do as well.

As a writer who may never do another sports book, Mnookin can afford to burn bridges with Arn Tellem and his ilk – but that doesn’t necessarily mean Tellem is any worse than John Henry when making business decisions and maneuvers.

. . . Shots is trying to contact the Jimmy Fund to see if they’re interested in sponsoring a Shaughnessy-Mnookin Steel Cage match at Lynn’s Fraser Field as a run-up to a future North Shore Spirit game. In Mnookin’s corner would be his manager Mr. Henry (or Mr. Fuji with salt in his right hand) and Danny Boy could go with either Classy Freddy Blassy or Deep Throat, Dr. Chuck Steinberg.

. . . As with any similar book, the Index often provides the most revealing names and statistics. We’ll save our top observations from a page-count perspective for Friday’s regularly-scheduled Shots, but here’s a little taste:

Boston Sports Guy Bill Simmons is mentioned once (page 213)

Shaughnessy is mentioned no fewer than 30 times

Regular Sox writers mentioned include Peter Gammons, Gordon Edes, Chris Snow, Ian Browne, Nick Cafardo, Tony Massarotti and Steve Buckley

Regular Sox writers not mentioned include, Jeff Horrigan, Michael Silverman, Sean McAdam, Bill Ballou and Mike Fine

The Dean of Boston columnists, Bob Ryan, gets just one page mention (47) and one notation mention (233)

Shots, Bruce Allen and Boston Sports Media Watch get shut out entirely.

. . . Mnookin’s site listed the gathering as a 6:30 p.m. start time. It was a 7:00 p.m. (7:09 first pitch) event. The real loser in that was Percy the Dog who was deprived a playdate with Jersey the Neighbor Dog as Shots hustled off to the reading.

Too hot for you anyway, Big Fella.

. . . Yes, Shots ponied up the $27.30 for the book. We’re charging My Buddy Paulie Brookline a dollar rental fee for each day he has the thing, in order to re-coup my losses from what should have been a review copy.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom