Published July 13, 2010

You might think the tiny piping plovers of Plymouth are a big controversy. But you’ve never met the seals of my hometown San Diego.

They may look cute, but it was a hostile takeover. In the 1990s, scores of harbor seals staged an occupation of the “Children’s Pool” in La Jolla Cove. The historic stretch of beach was once a place for schoolchildren on field trips to play with starfish. After the seals took over, kids weren’t allowed in. No humans were.

The ensuing legal saga has lasted almost two decades. Activists have sued to open up the beach for recreation, and friends of the seals have fought to protect their adopted home. Judges have ruled, overruled and ruled again. It’s political suicide to take a stand on the seals. In the meantime, the spot has become a tourist Mecca.

So it’s hard for me, a San Diegan who covered the seal saga, to take Plymouth’s controversy too seriously. After all, in San Diego it’s seals vs. children, two of nature’s cutest things. Here in Massachusetts, it’s plover versus Hummer.

Beachgoers can’t drive SUVs across certain stretches of sand for a few months a year, to protect the defenseless one-ounce birds from being crushed.

“The birdies and their nests have taken over the beach,” said Karen Fantasia, of Plymouth.

Um… These birdies — brown-and-white cotton balls with orange toothpick legs, as David Boeri calls them — are hardly taking over. Try sharing the beach with a belching 200-pound sea mammal.

But some people in Plymouth really see these birds as a threat to their human rights. Rich Whelpley started a Facebook page to “take back the beach.”

“You’ve got to make a decision. We care about the wildlife. We care about the people. Do we care about them equally?” Whelpley said. “Or do we say: People aren’t important, they can do something else, this beach is for the birds?”

No comment, Mr. Whelpley, except that people aren’t endangered.

In San Diego, the humans have a good case. The beach is for the kids. In Plymouth, the beach is for the cars?

The plover protesters need a new angle. A suggestion: Piping plovers are illegal immigrants who have better beach access than the taxpaying residents of Plymouth.

Discuss.

Published July 13, 2010

Oh, mannequin. A woman got busted in the carpool lane for having this guy in the passenger seat:

Observations:

• My colleague Benjamin Swasey asks: “The newsroom wonders why the driver decided she needed to add a vest to the mannequin. The red shirt wasnt life-like enough?”
• I would like to know what that ball cap is. (Should have put a Sox hat on the old man.)
• Nice touch with the crossed legs.
• I had to do some serious color correction on this photo — and still it looks like a police mug shot, which, I guess, it is.

Here’s the e-mail from the Massachusetts State Police press office:

Good afternoon. You’ve all asked for a photo of the mannequin that we caught a woman driving with yesterday in the HOV lane of the Southeast Expressway. Here he is. The driver was cited for improper use of the HOV lane and fined $35. Please note we are not presently doing any sound on this. I will tell you that we do occasionally see people trying to beat the HOV regulations, and that we routinely run details at the entrance to the lanes for just this reason.

What a dummy.

Update: The mannequin is now on Facebook.

Published July 13, 2010

Blog host Andrew Phelps here. Legendary Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is dead, and Boston owns a piece of that story. Intern and sports writer Jeremy Bernfeld looks back.

Say what you want about George Steinbrenner, but the world was more interesting with him in it.

The flamboyant, outspoken, passionate Yankees owner died on Tuesday after being in poor health for years. He was 80.

It is a struggle to describe Steinbrenner.  He built an empire (evil or not) and succeeded in bringing America’s game to a place no one thought possible: the world. An astute businessman, his Yankees grew to be worth more than a billion dollars under his watch while becoming the first baseball team with a stake in its own cable network, one of the largest revenue streams for today’s teams.

And yet Steinbrenner surely will be remembered for perplexing decisions and unbelievable outbursts.  He feuded with managers and players, enforced rigid and sometimes unpopular policies and created a team that some charge with destroying baseball’s competitive balance.

Above all else, he most certainly won.  Since Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973, New York brought home an incredible seven World Series titles.  While the Yankees ascended and the Sox struggled, the New York-Boston rivalry intensified under Steinbrenner’s watch.  He personified the rich, flashy, immoral winner that Red Sox fans hated and became the object of special (in)affection.

[pullquote]Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy.[/pullquote]

Beneath the venom, on sports talk radio, on the T, in the bahs and in the pahks, there was a jealousy.  “Why can’t we get a free-spending, winning-obsessed guy in charge?” we all asked, breathlessly.

To many Sox fans, Steinbrenner was the devil incarnate, but the devil we would have sold our soul to for just one World Series title. Heck, he could have spared one.

Whatever he was, he was famous–presiding over one of the biggest sports franchises in the world’s biggest market will do that.

From the New York Times obituary:

Steinbrenner was the central figure in a syndicate that bought the Yankees from CBS for $10 million. When he arrived in New York on Jan. 3, 1973, he said he would not “be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all.” Having made his money as head of the Cleveland-based American Shipbuilding Company, he declared, “I’ll stick to building ships.”

Steinbrenner certainly did not stick to building ships. Famous for rapidly making changes within his organization, he didn’t stick to much.

He was the man most Bostonians loved to hate, and in that way, he’ll forever stick to Boston.