By David Scott
BSMW Columnist

Debateball
If ESPN and the three Major Leagues had produced last night’s debate there would have been:
A debate shot clock sponsor, most likely Cialis or Viagra; Al Jaffe and Woody Paige playing the cranky old men instead of Lehrer; Kerry’s copious notes available on ebay, beginning this morning; Some kind of product placement - Aquafina missed a nice opportunity for sure; psychedelic morphing of CSPAN’s logo into ESPN’s; The Coors Silver Bullet quickfire round;
. . . Attention FCC: Brit Hume just said, on Fox News, “more lectern, less Bush.” That’s gotta be worse than Janet’s Boob. Fine ‘em a cool mill. I dare you. . .Outsourcing is very much an issue with Scott’s Shots these days as well and led to the very scary phone call from a deranged, supposedly dying man. I get into the oddest predicaments you wouldn’t even believe. It ain’t easy being on the side of truth . .”My opponent” really loses its oomph after the 53rd time. . . So, wait, Kerry served in ‘Nam?. . . Oh to be a single, straight male of any merit spinning in the Spin Room last night. The background shots made it look like a Friday night at The Rack. . . Brokaw gets me every time. The anti-Dan Rather, as I like to say. Jennings too, when he’s on. . . There’s no way I have any right to offer more political opining. Much less sports media thoughts.

Between the Lines of Pages
One of the many beauties of this column (aside from making my own hours, deadlines and payment schedules) is the depth and breadth of the readership. The emailers range from college SIDs, students and even major, national columnists. (We thank each and everyone of you and ask only this: Tell two friends.) So it was no surprise to sample last Friday’s responses to my claim that the Green Boxers is dis-servicing readers by not filling key positions. More than a few SS readers reminded me that Messieurs May and Powers filled in admirably for the regular Red Sox writers. In fact, that’s true . . . but it doesn’t make up for shortchanging loyal readers by cutting corners on staff size and resource utilization (hello, Boston.com? Do you care to distinguish yourselves in way other than having the pseudo-muckraking Dirt Dog (oh gosh, there’s ticket scalping at Fenway? There’s price gouging INside.). . .Another emailer (a competitor of the GreenBoxers, in fact) wanted us to recall that Peter May did baseball for UPI with regular Sox coverage and, wrote the Scott’s Shots Friend, “an officer in the Boston Baseball Writers’ Association.”. . .I refuse, by the way, to explain to the young ‘uns what UPI was when it was, what it was. . . A quick Acela jaunt to NYC this week revealed great panic at both of that city’s major Tabs concerning the Yankees’ potential pitching problems. Bunch of worrywarts, eh?. . .In other efforts to sell more papers the NY Post is running a Giants and Jets sticker set insert that urges readers to buy the collector’s edition album to stick them on (with room for all 50!). Clearly the Globe’s stick-pin promotion would be too dangerous for those unstable New Yorkers (redundant). . .

Viewers Dilemma
To borrow from Dickie V. , the biggest “M and Mer” in recent broadcast history was staged last night at 5:30 when ESPN’s “PTI” went up against NESN’s “Boston Globe Sportsplus/minus” show. Proving that quality kills quantity every time, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon put the NESN quartet to shame. Babbling Bob Lobel was at his babbling worst fishing for controversy and Danny Boy and Johnny Be Oh So Bad Valentin wasted air and space. Meanwhile Bob Ryan appeared less-than-thrilled to be sharing set space with DB – especially when DB’s speciality, Sox talk was dominant. The handheld experiment also continues and at times you wish you were riding The Sizzler in Topsfield instead of watching the quick cuts to the branded logos on set. It’s Boston, folks - we like our TV simple and non-jumpy. . . Shira Springer did manage a well-executed interview with fashionista Paul Pierce (bizarrely stationed in Aisle One at Saks). What’s better than hearing the still under-polished Pierce starting an answer with “Shira, Man. . .”?. . . Kornheiser kills me at least thrice an episode. Too bad he didn’t translate to sitcom world – but so few do. Dave Barry barely did and even our guy Spenser couldn’t pull the page to tube switcharoo.

Asking the Slouch
Despite my fear that Norman Chad would figure I was just one of his exes looking for money, I took the liberty of e-mailing the Slouch to get to the bottom of his Globe absence (Lord knows, the sports page doesn’t have the courtesy to inform readers of things such as, when and where regular columns will irregularly appear). Between sips of Rolling Rock and poker commentary, the mutli-talented, underappreciated Chad explained things thusly: “Alas, due to budget and/or space cutbacks, the Globe informed me in August that it had to drop the column. Naturally, it saddens me any time any paper drops the column. The loss of the Globe made me even sadder than usual, because the paper has been so good to me — they carried my NFL picks column for years and then didn’t hesitate to take on my Couch Slouchcolumn — and, obviously, it’s a great place to appear.
Once you get over the shock of me actually doing something resembling reportage, it makes sense to ask just how much does the Globe save by not running the Slouch? I bet it’s nowhere near what it cost to have the No. 8 guy in Athens for three weeks. It can’t be a space thing – we get enough AP fillers and WNBA coverage to suggest there’s room and then some.
It should be noted that we also explained to the Human Hanging Chad that there really is only one Shirley and it’s The Shirl, my all-sports knowing and seeing mom. I also sought reimbursement for The Shirl, who had been ‘paying the man’ throughout Chad’s Globe run and had run up a sizable Slouch slush fund balance. Wise beyond his height, Chad wrote: “Give my regards to your Shirley. (My Shirley often doesn’t speak to me.)” Listen, Norm, if you need a Shirl to talk with, The Shirl would be happy to oblige. What’s one more run-down of the day’s news when you do it 4 times already?. . .I’m half-heartedly starting a fund to Bring Back The Slouch to the Globe. He was the best thing after Basketball Bob the page had going for it and now I can’t even bring him into my private reading room on Monday mornings – I gotta find him on-line. Pay the Man, Shirley. Or Sully. . . Can you imagine the response Scott’s Shots will be getting on the Couch o’ Slouch this weekend. Call my people, Slouch. Maybe we can work on a project together.

Hoops
The Shaq/Kobe feud will be the best thing for the NBA since Latrell Sprewell had his nutty on PJ. The Christmas Day Massacre will be built up to intolerable levels. . . I’m not buying love either, Shaq Daddy. But we all are, when it comes down to it. . . Speaking of which, Scott’s Shots has learned of a potential appearance by some rising-star NBAers on an upcoming episode of Donald Trump’s “Apprentice 2″. . . And you say we don’t break news? We simply choose to use our vast resources to react.

Rawhide
If it’s me, I pitch Schilling all five games. But that’s me, Scott’s Shots Vegas. . .Travel plans place me in Philly for the first week of the MLB Playoffs and thankfully I won’t have to wrestle for bar room TV time with Phillies Phans – they’ve been on the Eagles bandwagon since the NFL Draft. . .If the roster gets cut for the Playoffs at NESN, it’s down to Eck and, well, ah, Eck. And that’s no great line-up either, trust us. Tom Caron will need to step up big – Mr. October-big.

Rants and Raves
My Buddy Paulie Brookline celebrates his 76th plus/minus birthday on this day and we wish him a year’s worth of fantasy football success. We also wish his day of birth would stop coinciding so closely with Scott’s Shots’. No sooner do we get over one Scorpion Bowl hangover and all of the sudden another one ensues. Maybe we could alternate birthday years. . .It’s become a dead heat between Paris Hilton and Britney Spears for pop starlet we’d most like to send to Fallujah. It would be appropriate to blame the Herald, but they’re hardly the lone culprit. . .LIFE magazine was re-born this week in the form of a weekend insert in several major newspapers (including the Herald, despite not being worthy of inclusion in a small Page 3 box listing such luminaries as the Stamford Advocate and the Duluth News Tribune). For a stretch, Scott’s Shots was crammed onto the same floor as the dying LIFE over at the T&L building across from radio City Music Hall. It struck us as sad, that one of America’s most important formative-years glossies was all of the sudden relegated to sharing square footage with punkass SI for Kids. So much of what flies today as “important photography” is simply knocking off the format and philosophy LIFE established long ago. That said, the “new” LIFE is so picture heavy and word light, that we wonder why they would even need word editors at all. . .Now that SI for Kids has been mentioned, it should be noted that the title did a truly wonderful steroids piece, penned by SS fave (and sometime boss), Ellen Cosgrove Labrecque. I’m partial, because I spent time there, but the magazine continues to offer up quality reading and teaching with each month’s edition. Young Percy the Dog can’t even read all that well, and he still loves it. . . If I told you I was testifying before an NCAA Representative at Noon, would you believe me? Stranger things have come to fruition. . .If “Ladder 49″ even approaches the smartness of “Rescue Me,” please let me know. But I still won’t believe it. . . A good friend of Scott’s Shots touched base to let us know she went to high school with the sweety playing Sheila - the one who bonked the crap out of D Leary last week. Another case of: If I’d known then, what I know now, it’d all be different. No, it wouldn’t. She’d have been repulsed by me then AND now.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull and can be reached at david@bostonsportsmedia.com

-30-