The Hook and Lateral

Mr. John Tomase, you should probably pack your bags and get out of Boston. Judging by the 400+ comments (update: now over 800) written regarding your apology to the Patriots and its fans, I’d say your life is probably in danger. I read about 20 pages of the 40+ pages of comments and did not find one positive comment, and I’m sure these comments have been tamed since they’re on a newspaper’s website. All of the physical threats and vulgarity probably didn’t make it through moderation, meaning there could have been anywhere from 400-100,000 comments that weren’t published.

For those of you that don’t know, Tomase is the writer for the Boston Herald that broke the story on February 2, 2008, regarding the Patriots having taken film of the Rams’ walkthrough before Super Bowl XXXVI. Well, after Matt Walsh turned in the tapes and none of them had the aforementioned walkthrough, Tomase had to do some serious insert-foot-into-mouth backtracking and apologizing, and a lot of it.

His apology is very in-depth and walks you through his thought process and “fact”-gathering. Unfortunately, his source turned out to be someone he was having a casual conversation with that said a friend of a friend told him that it was rumored that the Patriots had taped the walkthrough. Ummm….ok. What’s this I keep hearing sportswriters and journalists say regarding sports bloggers? That they have no sources, responsibility, or accountability? Well, you know where I’m going with this. Goodbye, Mr. Tomase. I didn’t even know who you were before February 2, 2008, nor do I care about the Patriots, but as an outside observer, I think it’s time for you to end the relationship with Patriots and its fans. The next article with your name in it in the Boston Herald might very well be your obituary.