By David Scott
Boston Sports Media

EDGARTOWN, Mass. – At one point, Shots tipped off readers to the notion that whenever there’s a dateline attached to this space, you’re in for a special treat. It’s time to amend that statement: Sometimes datelines will proffer up valuable rantings.

Other times, you get this:

• San Diego native Lya Vallat is a producer for the 1 a.m. SportsCenter and I know this because Thursday night I was caught watching “This Is SportsCenter” in the 11 p.m. hour. It was the visual equivalent of watching widget makers make widgets and yet it still captivated wholly as a true Guilty Sports TV Pleasure (GSTVP). (See also: Cheap Seats; Summer Sanders’ FSN countdown show and The White Shadow.) The now annual ‘production of The Production’ has become much more significant this summer as Stu Scott, Chris Berman, Kenny Mayne, Linda Cohn and even Sal Pal were all working the show of The Show. Again, you can’t overstate how self-serving, self-promoting and self-ingenious these people are. . . And this, in the midst of the mobile marketing machine of “50 in 50, the Network’s attempt to cram created coverage down our throats for a month a half. . . When your own personalities interview your own personalities there is a level of confusion to the average viewer that may be cosmically incalculable. And there’s no way ESPN spokesmoron, The Rick can get it through his head.

• Shots went to Martha’s Vineyard for a-couple-a-few days and by the time we return we’ve got Tedy Bruschi on the sideline and the eternal Red Sox, Kudzu Hyzdu (Ner Hyzdu in Hebrew) back with the squad. This is what happens when you leave The Peninsula (Hull) and go to The Island. It why we’re vowing not leave the greater-Hull area until Columbus Day.

• From afar – and this is from a guy who watched no TV and heard little sports talk at all for the past 72 hours – Chris Collins of NECN flat out swung and missed on the Bruschi story. If all our area’s sports journalists demand credit for breaking news, they also have to take the hits when they fumble. So, if you have a report saying Player A is coming back and the very next day Player A announces the exact opposite, you have made a big error somewhere along the way. It doesn’t mean you should stop trying to break news, it just means you have to have better sources with more reliable info.

• Here’s a link worth checking out, especially the part where two giant Green Boxers, Bob Ryan and alum, Peter Gammons square off. The gentlemen creating the lunacy of the in-depth Media Madness are Mac Thomason and Alex R. (ARod, perhaps?) and you can check it out at: http://www.braves.net/bravesjournal/bristol/

• Shots stumbled across the list of Glenn Ordway’s “comp” for the National Association of Broadcaster’s “Major Market Personality of the Year.” Before we look at it, please know one thing – if a Big O can’t beat a Philly Butterball and a Chicago Sylk spelled with a “Y,” we’re going to be embarrassed. For everyone involved, but for The O most of all. And the nominees are . . . (winners announced in late September at the Marconi awards ceremony): Dunham & Miller, KTCK-AM Dallas, TX; Bill Handel, KFI-AM Los Angeles, CA; Glenn Ordway, WEEI-AM Boston, MA; Sam Sylk, WGCI-FM Chicago, IL; and Joseph “Butterball” Tamburro, WDAS-FM Philadelphia, PA.

• Laura Vecsey will write her final Baltimore Sun column on August 21. Please, control your emotions. We’ll still get George. And Peter, too, if the NBA employs him again next season as studio sourpuss.

• The Globe reported yesterday that “. . . Richard Chacon, the newspaper’s new ombudsman, plans to start an online forum for complaints, concerns, and suggestions, and set up regular meetings for community leaders to share their thoughts with Globe staff members in person.”

If this trickles into the Sports Department, count Shots as one community leader who’d like to know why we’re forced to spend approximately 80 minutes a day searching for the Transaction Box? We’d also like to know the last time Tank McNamara was either relevant, funny or remotely worthy of the prime space it gets on Scoreboard. And lastly, we need to unearth the reason Fluto Shinzawa only gets to cover the black rubber sports: Hockey and NASCAR? . . .We hear Chacon is Norwellian, which gives him a fighting chance if nothing else. What it doesn’t give him, though, is the title of Norwell Notable. That’s reserved for Scott’s Shots original N-N, the grandpa of Allie Dub and the forefather of young, whipper snapper PR flacks everywhere.

• A Modell’s catalog made it to the Seaside Shanty and on the front is Patriot Richard Seymour strutting on fake snow with his pads in his right hand and old school, wooden snowshoes in his left hand. If Big Sey’s gotta go to Mo’s, he most certainly should be required to go to Bill’s as well. As in Belichick.

• The San Francisco 49ers’ made their hire to replace the (too) provocative Kirk Reynolds and he has a New England connection. Aaron Salkin, who was with the Patriots for two seasons (and most recently in Atlanta), was named the Niners PR director on Monday. . . Go ahead, ask me who I got on my NFL Media Relations Director Fantasy Football roster. My Buddy Paulie Brookline and I held our Draft last weekend at the Malta Beach in Hull. . . . MBPB, by the way, has been digesting the jam-packed Fantasy Football Index all vacation long and it does appear the Travis Henry to the Titans move has shaken up his draft board.

We’ll keep you posted, because we know how much fantasy means to you.

• Shots gives big ups to the sports info staff at the University of Memphis for its under-$40,000 DeAngelo Williams for Heisman ad campaign (www.racefortheheisman.com). Jennifer Rodrigues spearheaded the effort, but those of you who ran in UMass circles with Cal’s Pals, will also remember Lamar Chance, now a Memphis Media Man (reunited with Cal for hoops, in fact). The Lamar Tar Heel who discovered the bliss of western Mass., Lucky Chance was a charter new-generation member of the Shots SID Hall of Fame Shots’ way back when he was training Shots to get pub for women’s soccer. If there’s a bigger hearted guy in all of college athletics, you’d have to show me the exact measurements – Chance is simply tremendous.

Anyway, our very own #20 car arrived in the super secret post office parcel box locale and carryin’ that baby out of the Allerton Station extension felt like carrying the Heisman itself. In a brown cardboard box. With a Memphis return address stamp (low on ink).

The die-cast 1:24 scale stock car is good for “ages 3 & up” according to the packaging that also gets the Collegiate Licensing stamp and that of Action Performance Companies, Inc., (NYSE: ATN) the car’s ‘maker.’ For the record: Nephew Jake receives all such chazerai. We’ll let him decide whether or not to take it out of the box. He’s too old to play with it (12) but not old enough to contain his curiosity about moving parts.

• Westfield State College director of athletics Richard Lenfest “last week announced the hiring of three new head coaches: Ray Arra (baseball), Matt Noyes (men’s soccer), and Todd Ditmar (women’s soccer).” Immediately, Shots had to find out if it was the NECN Weather Guru, Matt Noyes, who got the job. We prayed it wasn’t, because Noyes has become as reliable as anyone in the region and good weather folk are so hard to find.

Alas, there are at least two Matt Noyes and the NECN dude ain’t goin’ nowhere. Hear that Dickie?

• Italian transplant, Marvelous Marvin Hagler had an up and down showing with Brian Kenney on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights last week. But Hagler deserves more work – he’s got the potential to be very good with some training.

• Some Vineyard ramblings before we bid you adieu: If there’s a better commercial FM radio station in New England than WMVY, 92.7, you better be damn sure about your candidate. On Wednesday night just before 11 p.m. they hit us with Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” (Red means run son/numbers add up to nothing) and about 20 hours later we got a Grateful Dead vintage play with “Cassidy” (Lost now on the country miles in his Cadillac/I can tell by the way you smile he is rolling back/Come wash the nighttime clean, come grow the scorched ground green). . . Tick season is hitting the island hard – South Beach’s walk ways were littered with the little suckers clinging to tall blades of grass. . . A trip to the New Bedford Ferry took Shots by the shiny and mod Standard Times Building and we wondered if Shots’ favorite Danny Pires was overlooking the gritty city from his penthouse office plotting his next Pats story?. . .Shots and Co. avoided almost every trendy tourist spot with deft skill and spectacular timing. The early morning breakfast at Whosie’s near the Red Baron’s airfield was tremendous and some sneaky food choices at both the Katama General Store and the sandwich place near Karpet Kare on the way to Jim Belushi’s gravesite, were particularly rewarding. . .Peak summer on the Vineyard means two things: scorching sun and tourists who left their brains at home. . .Tuesday, Brian McGrory should have heard the Shots chuckles and chortles coming from the latest offering by the city’s hottest writer in his latest Hingham rant. If McGrory were a baseball player, he’d be batting about .450 for the past two months. . . Percy The Dog made the most of his inaugural trip to MV. He managed to agitate both of Shots’ host’s dogs; he tried to start a scrap with a Golden near the Red Baron’s flying machine and he got flawless canoe service from one side of Great Pond to the other and back. Oh, and he retrieved the newly purchased H2O Dog Toy from various depths about 60 times. . . All that adds up to Percy and his Master retreating to the shores of Nantasket for rest and recuperation from our days rest and relaxation.

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