When there are complaints that reporters are in bed with their sources, it’s rarely meant literally.
But that’s a delicate situation that the Red Sox, again and again, have found themselves in, as relationships that begin as professional evolve into something more.
It appears as if John Farrell is the newest to join the trend, after a reporter from Comcast SportsNet New England resigned amid rumors that she and the Red Sox manager had gone past mere friendship.
Jessica Moran had worked at the station since 2009 until she abruptly bolted Friday. The Boston Globe reported the network and industry had questions about her relationship with the fourth-year Boston coach.
Farrell, 53, declined comment to reporters about Moran — “My private life is private” — but he did mention that he and his wife are getting a divorce. The couple had been married for 30 years and have three sons, but Farrell said he and Sue Farrell have been separated for about the last two years.
The 2016 Red Sox media guide listed the manager as not married.
The 32-year-old Moran, who covered the team, has not answered the swirling rumors directly.
“I have stepped away from Comcast SportsNet as I thought it was in my best personal and professional interest to do so,” Moran wrote in a text to the Globe. “They have been extremely supportive during my tenure at the network — and with this decision — and I am very appreciative of that.”
It looks like the latest in a strange line of reporter-baseballer couplings that have sprouted in Boston. The most high-profile was Jenny Dell, a former NESN reporter who hit it off in 2014 with Will Middlebrooks, then a third baseman with the club.
She tweeted a New Year’s picture of the two, confirming both that they were together and that she couldn’t be covering the team anymore. She had a reduced role with the network for a few months, then left and landed at CBS — with a ring from Middlebrooks, who bounced from the Red Sox to the Padres and now the Brewers. The couple was married this offseason.
Rewind a few years back and you find the same haze over Jason Varitek and Heidi Watney as hovers above Farrell and Moran.
Watney covered the team for NESN from 2008 to 2011. While the rumors were never confirmed and periodically shot down, the two were linked until the Red Sox catcher retired in 2011. Varitek filed for divorce from his wife of more than 10 years in 2008, and immediately there were whispers about his relationship with the one-time Miss California finalist. Varitek remarried another woman in 2011, so if anything did happen, it was short-lived.
Is there something in the water? Or, er, bubbler?
