Living 2,600 miles away won’t stop this die-hard Red Sox fan
More proof that you can take the sports fan out of Boston, but you can’t take Boston out of the sports fan.
Actor and Weymouth native Nate Corddry, the younger brother of fellow “Daily Show” correspondent Rob Corddry, left Massachusetts for college 20 years ago, later moved to New York City, and now lives in Los Angeles. But he’s still a Red Sox season ticket holder, despite his home address being 2,600 miles from Fenway Park.
(“I was on the waiting list for 10 years,” he explained, “so when they called me last December and said, ‘Hey, your name came up,’ I said, ‘Oh, Lord. I live in — I accept! I’ll take them!”)
in the friendly wager he’s made with actor and Baltimore fan Thomas Sadoski on this Saturday’s Patriots/Ravens game. The loser will donate to the winner’s charity of choice. But it was a delightful surprise for NEADS — a Princeton, Mass., organization that trains service dogs for people with physical disabilities — to learn that it is the nonprofit Corddry is supporting. So if the Patriots are victorious, Sadoski will be giving NEADS a donation.
“When I was thinking what charity to use in this little bet, they were the first one to come to mind,” Corddry said. “The nonprofit world is incredibly competitive, so I’m throwing what little muscle I have behind NEADS because I think what it does is important.”
On the other hand, Corddry joked, “If the birds win, I will happily make a donation — well, maybe not happily — I will frustratingly make a donation to Refugees International,” the charity Sadoski is backing in the bet.
Two other actors are also involved: pro-Patriots Laura Benanti (the nonprofit she’s supporting is Artists Striving to End Poverty) and pro-Ravens Aya Cash (hers is The Hunger Project).
Collectively, the four actors have more than 85,000 Twitter followers, “and we’ve all been tweeting about it, so hopefully what happens is that one, two, three, a hundred people click on the Twitter handles of the nonprofits and make a donation to whichever one is special to them, whether that be a dollar or a hundred dollars,” said Corddry, who tweets from @imnatecorddry. “That’s the reason we’re doing it.” — SACHA PFEIFFER
One Direction for Atlas?
Word has it that some Boston venture capitalists are cozying up with potential partners that would make many a VC’s daughter swoon.
Atlas Venture’s Chris Lynch and Cort Johnson were in New York City on Wednesday to meet with none other than One Direction’s Harry Styles about his interest in potentially investing in some Boston technology startups.
It seems that Styles, who may be looking to follow Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher into the world of early stage innovation investing, contacted Lynch mainly because he was keen on a photo he saw of the Atlas partner (as well as his recent track record of leading multiple companies to successful exits). Styles is a big Ramones fan and thought he and Lynch could be simpatico after seeing the VC’s famous/infamous picture, in which he sports shades and a Ramones T-shirt.
No word on what the outcome of the meeting was, but it seems it was more of a get-to-know-you session than anything else. — DENNIS KEOHANE
Getting revved up in Sonoma
Thousands of Massachusetts biopharma executives will be boarding flights to San Francisco this weekend for the 33d annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the industry’s premier gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, and deal makers eager to talk about gene therapy while sipping pinot noir.
No place outside California is better represented than the life sciences hub of Massachusetts at the Westin St. Francis Hotel powwow and the myriad events that have sprung up nearby, ranging from Biotech Showcase to One Med Forum to dozens of cocktail receptions in hotels, art galleries, and a former Prohibition-era speakeasy.
“It’s the big annual get-together,” said Steve Burrill, chief executive of the San Francisco health care financial firm Burrill & Co., who has been networking in and around the big biotech conference for decades. “It’s meet and greet and hope that some magic comes out of it.”
The private business development meetings that take place around the main conference will plant the seeds for collaborations, licensing deals, and acquisitions. But many industry stalwarts come out early for pre-meeting events, winery tours, or team-building exercises.
Polaris Partners, a Boston venture capital firm that bankrolls biotech startups, will be taking about two dozen partners and portfolio company CEOs to Sonoma Raceway north of San Francisco this weekend to drive high-performance sports cars, including a Formula 1, on a 2.5-mile road course and drag strip.
Founding partner Terry McGuire said his Polaris team has been racing cars before the biotech meetings get underway for the past decade. “It’s a good way to get revved up for the year,” he said. — ROBERT WEISMAN
A last-minute Olympic gripe
Critics of Boston’s Olympic bid complain about the potential waste of taxpayer money and the stresses on local roads and trains. But the US Olympic Committee has a new complaint to weigh as the group meets Thursday to decide which city to advance in the bidding.
The president of the Merit Construction Alliance was incensed last month to learn from the Globe that if the Olympics come to Boston, the infrastructure would be built with union-only labor. It’s unfair, Ron Cogliano says, to exclude the majority of the state’s construction workers, who aren’t unionized.
But the timing turned out to be tough for him to lodge his complaint.
He had trouble over the holiday weeks getting in touch with the right people at the USOC office. Finally, he fired off a letter on Jan. 5 to Larry Probst, chairman of the USOC’s board, airing his concerns. Cogliano realizes that his last-minute lobbying might not persuade many people on the committee. That’s why he’s starting early with reaching out to the International Olympic Committee, in case Boston makes it to the next round.
— JON CHESTO
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