By David Scott
Boston Sports Media

• Okay, so maybe The Finals aren’t over. Still doesn’t mean the games have been compelling. Just play a Game Seven on Sunday and call it done. . . BronBron brought nothing to the table with his courtside chat with Stu Hugs and Fist Pumps. . .If it’s so important that Boston Sports Guy needs to keep a diary of what he’d like us to believe is his event, the NBA Finals, can you think of a reason why he wouldn’t be Event Blogging the entire series (a Scott Shots trademark infringment is what it would be if he ever did)? Oh, that’s right, he’s busy trying to get on a regular schedule. If you’re not admitting that the guy has slipped, you’re not living in reality. Plain and simple. . . Oh, and Scoop Jackson is starting to feel the pain of having to contribute regularly to a fluid site. His Billups piece the other day was made more confusing form the get-go when he played pronoun games for two paragraphs or more. It is he that is him, or somesuch. Just tell us who you talkin’ ’bout, Cat, would ya?

• We’re not feeling the Thursday Pink from Tiger. Sunday Red was one thing. This is entirely different. . . NBC’s Dick Enberg In Training (DEIT), Jimmy Roberts did a story on David Oh’s caddy, Willy, for Thursday afternoon’s 3-5 p.m. broadcast and from there on out, it was all-Willy, all the time. Willy got more mentions than Oh, even when Oh was hitting.

• What, exactly, was Michael Holley upset with on Thursday? The fact that Shaughnasty got some racial overtones in or that Shaughnasty is still writing for the broadsheet while Holley attempts to be compelling with Dale on WEEIdiot Radio? Or that Bye, Max got cancelled and ruined his dreams being National. . . Holley, by the way, is shrinking. I saw it with my own two eyes on FSN’s Oversized Chair Show with “Felgie and Dickie” last night. And he’s dipped into “The Partridge Family” wardrobe for some denim duds. Guess radio DOES make people nutty. . Dannny Boy’s biggest mistake, if any, was burying the quote so far down into the story. His whole column could have dissected the lunacy of an aging pseudo-philosopher king like David Halberstam, comparing a sporting event to the civil rights movement. . . And that’s scary true, because The Big No gave a huge rant on the same point in the 2 o’clock hour yesterday. He hates agreeing with Shaughnasty, he said, which reminded me how much I despise agreeing with Ordway.

• Neumie got caught slumming with Lou Tilley on CN8’s “Out of Bounds” Wednesday eve. Not only is Tilley the most awful sports host in our viewing radius, he rarely gets compelling guests or commentary. Neumie is so much better than Loser Lou and to kowtow to that sad act is a step backward, not forward. Stick with the NESN gig for now and choose a more national course. Understood?

• My Buddy Paulie Brookline finally admits that he does a SELECT ALL and SEARCH for “paulie” and if there’s any hits, that becomes the only part of Shots that he reads. This should fix him of that crap. Hater.

• We’re gonna give the much ballyhooed Phoenix re-design some high marks and we like the overall implicit admission that the web is going to be vital for the longtime Alt Weekly’s long-term vitality and viability. Very, very well done. Let’s see if the big boys are paying attention or asleep at the wheel.

• The Silva Disclaima posted at the Dirt Dogs website goes like this: “Boston Dirt Dogs is a fan site produced by Boston.com. The Boston Globe newspaper and its Sports Dept. do not oversee the site and have no role in its production. BDD’s content is solely the responsibility of Boston.com.”

But please allow Shots to translate that for you: “Enough is enough with this guy. Our writers have been distancing themselves from Slippery Silva since Day One. It peaked this spring when he was trying to portray himself as a legit Spring Training observer. As one of our writers said, ‘What is he?’ Ideally, the Globe would stop wasting money on him and use his salary to bring on some talent. But that’s a dot-com issue and the sports department has enough of its own problems. Understand that he’s the dot-com’s problem and any further embarrassment he causes the New York Times Family is entirely Hanafin’s issue. Oh yeah, one more thing, if you’re actually looking for intelligent sports talk with pop culture and humor, you could always check out Scott’s Shots. We hear he’s pretty good.”

(Portions of the preceding were exaggerated to simulate the thoughts of some, but not all, of the Sports guys at the Globe.)

• Which brings us back to the all-timer from Hanafin after My Boss Bruce carved up the Silvanator in March: “Oh, Bruce, please — spare me. It’s a blog, for God’s sake. Lighten up. Given some of the content on your website, you’re hardly in a position to be flinging mud.”

Well, the Web Globies sure are singing a different tune these days, eh? Makes you wonder what else this site has been right about for the past couple of years.

• Shots officially adds these two phrases from the past week’s sporting events, into our robust collection of the Shots SportLexicon:

QUITTING ON THE STOOL – Some people prefer to call this constipation. Mike Tyson, however called it his career. Yeah. Right. He fights again before nephew Jake gets bar mitzvahed in 358 days or my name is Scott’s Shots The Third.

UNDRESSING YOUR PITCHERS – This one makes more sense after seeing the Riptide girls website and some of their league members’ home pages. But when Frank Robinson and Mike Scioscia started talking about disrobing the opponents, it got us scared. On many levels.

• Joe Walsh on Howard Stern was on E! Thursday night - WOW, comes to mind. the guy’s sober and this is how he is? We can’t even imagine Walsh the User. Life’s been good to me so far.

• LA Time wiseacre TJ Simers had an amusing run-in with Robinson earlier this week and decided it would be good fodder for a column. It was, in fact, good fodder, but it goes back to the age-old question of whether any reader will care how a media member is treated during the course of doing his job.

Of course that was only the start of a most revealing week for the crotchety crank in charge in DC (not Dick Cheney). Robinson, who The Baze reminds us “was a hell of a ballplayer,” is turning into one hell of an entertaining skipper. And Simers has had a week of columns from the entire episode.

• How does Fred Lynn slip into Mr. Dooley’s for an afternoon marketing event for a credit card company without Scott’s Shots getting a call from one of the nearby neighbors to come on down for a pint? That’s just plain rude, and you know who I’m talkin’ to, Norwell’s Notable.

• A welcome call from Cousin Dave Tampa this week evolved into a discussion of how surreal the Tampa sporting scene is these days. Between Pinella, a wild, over-stressed owner in Vince Naimoli and the Malcolm Glazer/ManU predicament, the Tampa/St.Pete area may very well be the nation’s most fertile spot for sports fodder at this time and place. And while you’re thinking of it, check out the picture of the Naimoli-Buster t-shirt guy with the team’s official mascot (http://www.oustnaimoli.com/oust/).

• If you ever watched General Hospital circa the Luke and Laura era, you’ll be kind enough to recall the weather machine people (Stavros? And Robert Scorpio and Emma’s Samms) who found a way to put us back in the ice age. Is any of this sounding familiar?

Anyway, that’s what is happening now. Some bastard has a machine and he’s messing with us.

Snow in August is more than just a great book, you Shabbos Goys.

• Right about here, someone needs to tell Butchy Stearns that it’s time to move on. The only thing worse than Butch on Fox is Butch on ‘EEI (followed closely by Butchy Anywhere). “I’m just sayin’” is what passes for this dweeb’s best rebuttal.

• So my all-time favorite Umie, Monster.com founder, Jeff Taylor, is heading off to another venture and I know I’m not the only one who hopes Taylor will do for bloggers what he did for the unemployed: Give us jobs.

Listen, Jeff – can I call you Jeff? We’re practically blood – once a Umie, always a Umie and all that. Let’s work on a project together – you’ll see, it’ll be great.

• You ask: “What happens to old Herald Columnists when they’re put out to pasture?”

We answer: “They go to sportsjournalists.com and post their qualifications for freelance work.”

Here’s what a gentleman claiming to be Michael Gee has to say about himself for a thread that hooks writers up with freelance work:

“Name: Michael Gee, duh
Years in Business: 28
Published in: Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, Village Voice, Boston magazine, Sporting News, Maxbaseball.com, and honest to God, Oui magazine.
Links to Clips: Upon request
Awards: A couple Mass. Press Association awards with Phoenix. Bob Cousy once told me I understood basketball.
Availability: Have laptop, will travel. Anything that works economically for both parties. Anything a day’s drive from Boston for sure.
E-mail: mgeelex@aol.com”

First off, the Cousy line is classic. Again, if this had consistently been the Gee that wrote in the Herald, we probably would have had more pangs to see him go. But honestly, the best stuff we’ve read from the guy was in email form to My Boss Bruce (back in the winter) and this witty job beg. (And “Oui?” Gee, or he, wrote for “Oui”? Is that cool or tragically sad? “See Monsieur Gee In Oui. Oui, Oui?”
Second, we give Gee credit for using the site, which does seem to have a few success stories for stringers nationwide.

Most of all though, we wonder what it says for the Herald that their former No. 1 general columnist (in tenure) can leave the paper and within a month be beggin’ for assignments on a site known more for killin’ writers than for getting them gigs.

That’s something Herald Hank better think long and hard about as he moves forward with the re-shaping of his desk. The pages need “oomph” and “pizzazz” and all that stuff that new media guys are proving they can offer up.

• Shots stumbled upon some innovation from the projo.com site and we’re not sure whether to applaud or boo. The cause of our consternation is “Art’s Audio Notebook” by Sports Editor Art Martone. An audio home companion to the ProJo is probably not high among your needs (and Martone’s voice isn’t exactly ready for radio), but the paper needs to be commended for trying some different approaches on its website. At this point, it’s more important to be pushing the envelope than it is to be producing ESPN-quality programming.

So, we’ll applaud ProJo and Audio Art, and save the boos for the Globe.

• This NESN “Fenway Fan Film Fest” seems to be just begging for a porno submission, doesn’t it? Someone get Jenna Jameson on the horn for me, would ya?

• How psyched was NESN’s Tom Caron to have table talk time with Wayne Gretzky the other night? Tommy Lasorda too. But Robin Ventura was clearly the odd man out, despite Caron’s consistent effort to keep Ventura in the mix.

This was a keeper from Gretzky that got overlooked: “We’re closer now than we’ve been in a long time,” to getting hockey back on the ice, he said. Lasorda also chimed in on a very Sox Topic, saying Jim Rice should be in the Hall and that Lasorda himself had voted for him.

• Of course the sentimental story that pervades at Pinehurst this week over Payne Stewart is both worthwhile and emotional. Still, for Shots there is no mention of Pinehurst where we don’t think of a special man who used to grace the streets of that idyllic golf community: Larry Donald, the former Mr. Basketball of College Basketball (and beyond). If you knew Larry, read Larry or spoke with Larry you were among the lucky. If you didn’t, I’m sad to say, they don’t make ‘em like Lar anymore. It’s part of what’s wrong with America today, in fact.

If I may be so bold, I’d even request that Basketball Bob Ryan, during his stay for Tiger Time, could wander over to the Pine Crest Inn and raise a toast to a Final Four media credential that we’re guessing still hangs behind the bar.
But we’re figuring Basketball Bob has already taken care of that – and maybe even dragged along some of Donald’s other devotees.

• This from Media Life Mag on Thursday: “Former Georgetown men’s basketball head coach Craig Esherick has been named vice president of athletic relations at CSTV Networks, responsible for connecting the network with the college sports community. . .
I could do that job. I know I could.

• My new favorite segment of any local newscast is Jamy Pombo’s “The Click” on ABC5’s 5:30 daily report. The smooth-talking Jersey Girl (and senior web editor) gives great click and shows exactly what a little web utilization can do to spice up a newscast. If she’s not exactly a pioneer in this, she is at least blazing a path. Bravo to Five for their willingness to integrate new media. . . And while we’re over at ‘CVB, best wishes and good luck to prez and GM, Paul LaCamera. And let’s hope he realizes that when “Chronicle” gets either A) completely overhauled or B) completely dumped, that he did the best he could to keep the show going.

• At least one pit reporter for EPSN during the Danica Race last Saturday night was wearing the ESPN race jumpsuit. We equate that to having Stuart Scott and Michelle Tafoya in shorts and tanks with ‘ABC’ across the chest for The Finals. Just goofy car racing stuff that we’ll never appreciate or understand.

• Brian McGrory continued his recent roll with Tuesday’s column on the trouble with slots, particularly the scene at Lincoln Park in Rhode Island. A few months back, Shots and The Baze took a run over to the original Linc for some afternoon dog duty. When the greyhounds are the best looking breathing entities in the place, you know you’re at a hole of a hole. “If there’s a more depressing place in New England, I haven’t seen it,” wrote McGrory. Amen.

• And speaking of The Baze – Happy Dad’s Day – to you and Pittsburgh, always and forever.

• Hey, we’re as sympathetic to the Herald’s plight as anyone, but just what can be gained by putting the mug of Joan Kennedy on the front page for four (or more?) days running? We like it better when we get Bridget or Gidget or some tasty morsel worth dropping 50 cents into the Yellow Box for. Not Joan. Anyone but Joan.

• Here’s what Barry Bonds beat boy, Pedro Gomez of ESPN, told GQ in the June issue of the mag: “I’ve been frozen out by Curt Schilling, Randy Johnson, Tony LaRussa and Rickey Henderson. I think if you’re doing your job right, that’s gonna happen form time to time. So if you’re asking me if I’m a pussy, I don’t think I am.”

If I’m Schill, I’m a bit put off that I would be included in a mix of such self-important prima donnas. Oh, wait – was that the point?

• Long-time Shots’ arch-enemy Keith Olbermann got an hour-long ESPN Radio show given to him this week and we start to wonder if this guy has more lives than Tyson? Maybe he IS Tyson.

• Not for nothing, but it looks to these keen eyes as if the Sports Gal in the current Boston Sports Guytoon, got a boob job. Best episode I can recall, by the way, and it was entirely made by the Sports Gal’s disgust at the Celtics dancing sluts. Of course the timeliness was completely lost with the Celts not having played for a month, but who’s gonna notice, right? Just keep feeding the masses BSG.

• Who else was confused on Tuesday when Sardina was at bat and DiSarcina was on color with Troop, filling in for Stick. It was like a code-name directory for the FBI.

• This ownership group just doesn’t miss a beat and the latest sign of the red Sox commitment to excellence was the World Series trophy replica presented by Mike Dee to Jerry Remy’s closest lil buddy, Wally, the booth monster, on Fisk Pole night. Later, Tom Werner presented the RemDawg’s furry friend a ring as well. Quite a moment for sure. . . The problem with naming the left field pole after Carlton Fisk is that such monuments need to be massaged into the lexicon over time. To foist it upon the fandom and make it “official” de-legitimizes the entire event. . . And now, get this, Wally’s got a stuffed stalker which lays at his feet. How long until the Wally Bodyguard appears? The World of Wally is truly fascinating and we will always do our best to keep you informed on all things Wally.

• The BCS threw out a test balloon this week to see if having the Harris Poll people involved in their squirrelly process would put some faith in the general public’s college football soul. It was a pre-announcement, announcement that the same folks who bring us pop-culture polls will potentially be bringing us a football poll.
For those inquiring minds, here are the latest headlines at the Harris home page:

“Cliff Huxtable from The Cosby Show Tops the List of TV Dads This Father’s Day, According to New Harris Poll”

“National Survey Reveals Gay and Heterosexual Personal Financial Decisions May Differ”

“Harris Interactive and IMAS International Conduct Thirteen-Country Survey in Remembrance of 60th Anniversary of World War II”

“Public Supports Some Curbs on Access to OTC Drugs Used To Produce Methamphetamine”

“Public Support for Stem Cell Research Remains High, but Differences Widen Between Supporters and Detractors”

And coming soon: “Bob Stoops Says His Sooners Support Enforcing Sanctions on Iran if Recruiting Violations Continue”

If you’re looking for a legit name, Harris is certainly one of them. The heart of the whole problem is that all of this is wasted energy, if only they would get their heads out of the sand and do the playoff thing.

• To all the dads out there: Nice work. For the most part. Enjoy the weekend. . .

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