Deadspin

Pardon the Defribillation

My condolences to you and your family,
Mr. Ryan. But please, stay off my tv.

Ugh. Nightmare for Ryan's family.

Pardon the De-Fribble-ation?

Over/Under: 1 more show with J.A. Adande or Dan LeBatard before my ears fall off.

I'M GOIN' UNDAH!

Wow, that sucks. Ryan's kid seemed like a pretty impressive guy.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, what's the difference?

Damn. That's too bad.
Hope Wilbon gets better quick.

PTI Curse? Heart attacks, suicide, Monday Night Football, LeBatard with the top of his shirt unbuttoned.

@Wayfaerer:

What do you MEEEEEEEAN my shirt is too loud? What do you MEEEEEEEEEEEAN?

BAM!!!!

Nice, the first non-Closer, non-Gridskipper post is about death and heart attacks. That rain has Will down in the dumps today.

Buck up, camper!

@Wayfaerer:
...also male patterned baldness.

"Pardon the De-Fribble-ation? "

CLEAR! [whirrrrrrrrrr]

I have to say, Bob Ryan is one of the good guys who has done it for so long but still loves sports. Can't say that about CHB or Lupica.

@Rob Iracane: By all accounts, Wilbon is a Friendly a guy.

@Kid Canada: I think I'm one of the few who enjoy LeBetard.

Has Kornheiser been taken to a secure location?

LeBatard (to Adante): Watch me scare the hell out of Wilbon.

(sneaks up behind him) BAM!

Just a horrible thing to deal with for Ryan. Parent's should never go through the ordeal of losing a child, no matter how old. Ryan is one of my favorites, good guy too.

@Sh!tShow: Yeah, a friend of mine won a round of golf with him at an auction and said he's really nice and funny. Best of luck to him.

And that's terrible news about Ryan's kid. I actually don't mind Ryan and think he's leaps and bounds better than the Mariottis and Paiges of the world.

@LeagueofShadows:
I do enjoy this LeBatard edition of PTI.

Tony, stop doing the Penguin dance ... oh wait, that's a stroke.

@Kid Canada: That's pretty good.

@Rob Iracane: Newport Creamery Afwul Awful > Friendly Fribble

I'm not related to Bob, nor am I the Dave Ryan from ESPN, in case anyone was wondering. But Bob's son was my age. (And we do have tickets in the same section at Fenway.) Very sad.

Bob may not have the most... um... listenable style in the world, but he absolutely knows his shit forwards and backwards (especially hoops), and still really appreciates sports, an appreciation which -- as noted by MH's Hairplugs above -- has been pretty much drilled out of Shaugnessy and his ilk (locally, Borges and Gerry Callahan fall into that category) over the years.

@Rob Iracane: Do not mock the Fribble. Except the nimrods they employ at most Friendly's these days can't make it right. A true Fribble should have the consistency of partially-set mortar, and be made of about 95% ice cream and 5% milk. It is Beyond Milkshake. And yes, I have high blood pressure and cholesterol issues, why do you ask?

Should've been you, Skip Bayless.

Re: Wilbon

I wasn't surprised in the least when I heard the news Tuesday morning that Michael Wilbon had a heart attack. Angry? Yes. Surprised? Not even a little. If it had been Mike Wise, I would have been stunned. But not Michael Wilbon.

Hey, Wilbon, you see how tasteless this is? Maybe you don't do it next time.

Adapted from [www.washingtonpost.com]

I hope Martin Lawrence has a speedy recovery.

Should've been you, Jeremy Schaap.

I'll echo the sentiment of Bob Ryan. I always appreciated his waxing poetic about Tiger Stadium - a city, and a stadium he had no vested emotional interest. Classy guy. It's a shame.

@Nationalcoholic: With all due respect to the guy with the heart attack - that was well played.

Let's just hope Albom doesn't write a book about Ryan's kid.

@cromartie: I always preferred Ryan in written form, when he wasnt trying to outhuff three other dingbats.

Does this mean no more invites to Wilpon's hot tub in the near future?

Good luck and speedy recovery Mike.

Condolences to the Ryan family.

I think chest pains were the one thing that Wilbon hadn't complained about yet on PTI.

@Nationalcoholic:
If you're hoping to read about the on-air exploits of Mike Wilbon, or a retrospective of his time with the Washington Post, it would probably be better if you cast your eyes to a piece elsewhere in this post.

Seriously, you should stop right here.

Because we're going to have a different conversation in this space -- about the senseless nature of the extra value meal that almost took his life, about trying to eat smaller courses when those around you might not embrace such a change, about having hypertension in America, about putting the spork down, if at all possible.

I agree with the above positive viewpoints on Ryan. He does know basketball and baseball (to a lesser extent). And once when he is one of the few guys I have seen on a roundtable sports show who has admitted that he doesn't know much about a certain subject (in this case hockey) and deferred to others.

I also think he could step above being a fan of Boston teams and enjoy a good story or event. Something which is rare for the Boston (or most) sports media.

@PeteJayhawk:

SHOULDA BEEN YOU, STEPHEN A. SMITH!!! EVERYTHING MY LEFT VENTRICLE PUMPS IS IMPORTANT!!!

/posted on my online blog

Re: Bob Ryan's son, the article says that as a kid, he always seemed destined for high pressure jobs. How do you get that from a kid? Did he have a Jack Bauer playset? Did he always look constipated?

@Chad Sexington: Damn. Beat me to it.

I have a deep-seated distrust of, and simmering resentment against, Michael Wilbon. I still have a shred of sympathy for him as a man but I can't help but ask: ain't karma a bitch, Mikey?

@Kid Canada: + 120/80

CIA covert agents are commonly "attached" to the diplomatic service or a relatively innocuous agency as their cover. I certainly do not know whether Mr. Ryan was CIA, but I would not be surprised were I learn that to be the case. My sympathies to his family; they should be proud that their sun put himself in an extremely hazardous part of the world, at civil servant's pay, for his country.

@Nationalcoholic: +1. Just what I was thinking.