Nice work … if you can get it

Ask a journalist who has written thousands of sports columns to name the first one that comes to mind, and you expect to hear about a famous person he met, or one particular story that drew some great feedback from readers.

But ask Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy, and he’ll be quick to tell you about the one he wishes he could take back.

‘When [Celtics player] Reggie Lewis died, I was in North Carolina on vacation,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘And I was really angry, ’cause I thought it was so preventable, and I thought everybody hadn’t looked after him as well as they could have. [My column] was fairly critical of the Celtics, and it was on the front page of the paper the next day, and people were just adjusting to the idea that he was dead, which was a shocker. And here you have this column with my picture on it, basically blaming the Celtics. I think that it was just too much, it was on the front page, it was over the top. If I could pull that one back, I would ’cause people didn’t have time to absorb the impact of it.’

Lewis, a 28-year-old Northeastern University graduate nearing the end of his sixth season with the Celtics, collapsed on the court during a first-round playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets in April, 1993. Three months later, Lewis returned to the court after visiting numerous doctors and finding one who decided that the heart problems that had caused the collapse had subsided.

Not long after returning, Lewis collapsed again while shooting baskets at Brandeis University. He died soon after.

‘I equate it to if there’s a fire in a three-decker and two little kids die and the mom, it turns out, was out bowling with her boyfriend,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘The tragedy is the two little kids died, and no one wants to read a column blaming the mom the next day even though it is her fault.’

In an interview last month, Dan Shaughnessy sat at his desk, with a poster of Babe Ruth staring down at him while he ate his lunch. Fellow Globe columnist Bob Ryan could be heard screaming in the background as he was filming that afternoon’s edition of Around the Horn, a sports talk show on ESPN, no more than 20 feet across the floor of the eerily empty Globe newsroom.

There wasn’t much underneath the glaring eyes of the Bambino other than a few photos of the Shaughnessy children and a computer. On the adjacent desk sat a bound archive of the Globe sports pages from this year. Alongside it was a similar book filled with the sports pages of the rival Boston Herald.

Shaughnessy, now in his 14th year writing sports columns for the largest paper in Boston, quietly ate his soup, laughing at the spontaneous screams of his colleague in the background.

‘Coach K is the best coach in the game,’ Ryan yelled, obviously talking about Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. ‘If he could coach at State School U., he’d win every year!’

‘This will be great for your tape,’ Shaughnessy said, motioning toward the tape recorder on the desk. ‘You’ll get to hear him chime in all the time.’

Born and raised in Groton, Mass., Shaughnessy has covered just about everything there is to cover in Boston. Well, maybe not everything. But before becoming a columnist, the curly-haired, mild-mannered writer covered the two things that Beantowners could not live without: the Celtics and the Sox.

After writing for his town paper in high school, Shaughnessy went to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, where he covered freshman football for the school paper not long after arriving on campus.

‘Holy Cross basically recruited you; I got a thing in my mailbox to come out for the school paper,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘When I was a sophomore, four weeks into sophomore year actually, the sports editor’s girlfriend got pregnant or something and he was out of there. I became sports editor really early. And from that point on I really poured into it, and I knew that’s what I wanted, and I spent more time on it than on my studies.’

After serving as the Globe’s Holy Cross athletics correspondent for his final two years in Worcester, Shaughnessy continued to write for the Globe on and off for the two years after graduation, tallying nearly 400 stories.

‘They were all little things neighborhood basketball, high school stuff. But I was shmoozing and meeting people getting out there,’ Shaughnessy said. ‘So I was two years out of college without a real job before I got my first real break to go to the Baltimore Evening Sun to cover the Orioles.’

After four years following the Orioles, Shaughnessy returned home and worked as a feature writer at the Globe for a year before being sent down Causeway Street to cover Larry Bird and the Celtics, including their epic battle with the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1984 NBA finals.

And just when he thought things couldn’t get any better, he was switched to the Red Sox beat just in time for the 1986 World Series and a guy named Bill Buckner.

‘In the course of the job there are a lot of memories,’ said Shaughnessy, who now lives in Newton. ‘I met Bruce Springsteen in a hotel lobby, Richard Nixon, [Muhammad] Ali. Great events like the ’84 finals, Celtics and Lakers. The ’86 World Series. Those games in New York after 9/11, the three games of the World Series, were really amazing. It’s those kind of things that stick with you.’

As one of three regular columnists for the largest paper in the Hub, Shaughnessy’s face, or at least the pencil drawing of it that appears at least three times a week, is one of the most recognizable in the city. And the fans seem to either love him or hate him.

‘The readers are really passionate here and that’s a good thing,’ he said. ‘But sometimes it gets a little too intense, like it’s affecting people’s lives. I don’t really enjoy that. And all the hate and the anger and the shouting, I think talk radio has fostered a climate out there that’s not very healthy. But hey, I contribute my own way, with cynicism and negativity.’

Shaughnessy, who himself is a regular host on a morning sports-talk radio show, says that as long as people are reading his column, he’s happy. He said he hopes they either read it because they love it or because they want to disagree with him.

‘As a columnist, as long as you’re being read, that’s what’s important. What I object to is when they start saying you’re lazy; you’re mailing it in,’ he said. ‘I’ve had too many jobs and I’m too into this to be lazy; I don’t like that. But when people disagree or think your opinions are all wrong, that’s fine.’

Shaughnessy credits a lot of his success with readers in Boston to the fact that he grew up as a Boston sports fan and knows how passionate they can be.

‘It helps a lot to be from around here. I still tease Bob,’ he says, motioning over toward his screaming, gray-haired colleague across the room. ‘He came here in ’67 as a freshman at BC. He’s from Jersey; what can he know? He’s only been here about 35 years, so he’s still a newcomer. So we get to tease those guys … I wouldn’t be as effective in Philly or Chicago or New York. I think growing up here you know how people think, and knowing the history is helpful.’

As he finished his beef and vegetable soup, Shaughnessy weighed the pros and cons of being a columnist as opposed to a beat writer.

‘There are a lot of plusses as a columnist,’ he said. You get to throw your opinion out there obviously. My style is very combative, assertive. And to be around a team all year isn’t good because you really run at each other.

‘It’s good to be able to move in and move out as a columnist. Celtics tonight, Bruins two nights ago, NCAA hockey on Friday. But you obviously know your stuff better on a beat. You know everything about one thing. It’s a ton of work, but that’s how you make your bones here and carve out a name.’

Shaughnessy gathered his things and headed for the door at the end of his day. It was only 1 p.m.

Go on the radio and talk about sports. Go to the office and talk about sports. Go to some games and write about sports three times a week. And get paid for it along the way.

Not a bad way to make a living.