By David Scott
Boston Sports Media

Please be sure to check out this week’s David Scott’s PodShots for a quick and breezy podcast that looks at: an unforgivable sin performed by the Patriots organization on Tedy Bruschi and why the Globe gave so much space to Mrs. Idiot, MichelleMagnanDamon.

•Thanks to Cousin Bill, Shots has the unique potential of seeing the very first and very last games of this Fenway Red Sox season and ONLY the first and last games of the season. Gotta love symmetry like that.

Logic says that they’re playing two in Fenway this weekend, but if the ole ballyard needs to be locked up for the season after today’s tilt – well, you can count on Shots to bar the door. Check that: Count on us to find the door to a bar. Same thing, right?

• We did due diligence on your behalf to find out a little more about Mike Winn’s departure from The Zone and entrance into The ESPN Realm. Of course, trying to get info from a savvy salesman (ala Winn) is like trying to get the meat bone away from Percy the Dog.

What’s more, Winn proudly professed: “I am pretty conservative (some would say boring) and I am not going to bash anyone here (at 1510) or The Sporting News on my way out.”

Not that Shots was looking for any bashing, mind you. It’s not like we’re the “Track Gals.”

Winn, who is still finishing things up at WWZN 1510 AM, will report directly to ESPN Radio Boston’s General Manager Jessamy Tang , and joins program director Doug Tribou as the Big Three at the fledgling station (located weakly at both 890 AM and 1400 AM).

Winn (who’s also done on-air stints at WWZN) has seen the Boston sports radio landscape from different perches and that is likely a big reason ESPN Radio Boston went and plucked the Belmont-native from his four-year stint at The (Dead) Zone. A good move, to say the least.

A St. Anselm (’89) grad, Winn was an AE (account executive) at WEEI from 1996-2000 and spent a year selling the Patriots for WBCN before starting up with 1510 at their launch in this market. He steadily moved up the skeletal, WWZN business-side ladder and became GM in January 2004, with his most recent promotion getting him the additional title of VP of Sales (June ’05).

With almost 10 years of local selling experience under his belt, this could become an intriguing hire for ERB, when all is said and done. It’s no secret that WWZN is cash poor and virtually resource-less, yet still, Winn (and Eddie Andelman) have been able to keep things afloat for a relatively long time. The entrance of ESPN into the market virtually assured ‘WZN’s demise. Now, with Winn taking his contacts and prior relationships with him, ‘1510’ might not just be the station’s numerical spot on the dial, it may also be how many minutes are left in The Zone’s lifemeter.

“(The biggest lesson I learned at ‘WZN) is that, if done right, a second sports station can succeed in Boston,” said Winn, a father of three (Michael 7, Ryan 6, and Samantha 10 months) who, if you must know, hates dogs.

What that means for the third station in town is left unsaid by Winn, but we think you can follow the thought process if you’ve been playing along at home.

Admittedly, the big decisions going forth are going to come from Tang, but Winn (and others) will have input. “I really have always looked at programming from a sales perspective only,” he said – the salesman, once again, reminding us that he’s a salesman.

. . . As for ‘WZN, there will be a lot of people who try and convince you that the station can still make a go of it. Those people are either lying to save their jobs or completely ignorant. ERB and ‘EEI are going to be the players in this market IF there are actually going to be a plural “players.” The Zone simply can not compete with both in its current structure and the resources are not available to change that structure. I’d welcome anyone to challenge that premise at the contact info below.

• The reorganization and new title allotment appears to be complete at ESPN and, at its barest bones, means that a true, baby blue Tarheel, John Skipper, is the most powerful man in sports content provision for all the land. That is one heck of a title to hold.

It’s worth a look-see at the link to see just who it is that makes up the inner sanctum of the Worldwide Leader. Some fascinating stories in that bunch. . . (And white, mostly male, we might add.) Is that Jesse Jackson we hear storming up Route 84?

• CN8’s Ed Berliner doesn’t want to hear it, but this team (the Sox) is getting a pass this year. And I’m not so sure they don’t deserve it. Do you have any inkling of just how long these past 14 months have been for guys like Schilling, Damon and Millar?. . . Up-ups to our man John Carchedi who battled through some technical glitches and snafus to report splendidly from Chicago on Tuesday night (with Shots in-house to see the production and crack wisely under the Boston Sports Review tag). . . More up-ups (whatever they are) to NECN’s Laura Behnke who managed to make the countdown worth sticking around for on Thursday night. Sadly, Greg Wayland (the local net’s answer to CNN’s Jeanne Moos ) was having an off day with his “It ain’t over till. . .”-flop of a segment. Wayland had been on a roll as of late, but the clunker from Thursday didn’t deserve No. 2 status on Behnke’s board. For our money, Behnke has been the region’s best newcomer to the TV sports scene since Mike Ratte made his way up the Pike from out West, hard by the Mullins Center. . . That whole Sports Late Night countdown thing has been a little weak since inception, but we do like that the NECNers are willing to experiment. Now, if they would just make a local-version of PTI like we asked, and stop being so damn stubborn. Because if they don’t do it, Shots is gonna. And the Wilbon to my Kornheiser will knock your socks off. I’m telling ya. . . use it now or lose it later. (Oh and for those board haters who complain that I job-beg too much in this space: “Knucklehead, it’s my damn blog. What else is my own damn blog good for, if not a bit of self-promotion? Start your own blog to complain about blogger who job-beg. . .Hey, wait. Maybe I’ll do that.”)

• A little bit of follow-up on the news from earlier this week that has Lawrence Eagle Tribune Red Sox guy, John Tomase, heading over to the Herald for purposes of Patriots coverage:

Tomase, 33, is a graduate of Mansfield (Mass.) High School (‘91), who earned a degree in English from Tufts (’95). He began his professional career with the Herald on the high school desk and also held a part-time gig in the fertile newsroom of the MetroWest Daily news (formerly the Middlesex News), where he was hired full-time in 1996. Three years later, he slid over to the EagTrib, getting the Patriots beat at first and then switching to the Sox in the Spring of 2000.

The neat bit of trivia that goes along with that timeline is that Tomase, during his MetroWest days, was sharing page space with both Tom Curran and Mike Reiss. Now, of course, once the Herald gig begins, he will be competing with both those gentleman on the increasingly competitive Pats’ beat.

At the TuftsDaily.com website, Tomase is listed as having had a Daily tenure from 1992-1995. He was a sports editor and described his current duties as covering “the Red Sox as a writer/columnist for the Eagle-Tribune in Lawrence. I also write for Baseball America, Boston Baseball and Diehard magazine.”

Also he said his “fondest Daily Memory was Beating the freaking Observer just once in basketball.” (Inside Tufts joke, we guess.)

That’s about all the web stalking I can do on Tomase. All that’s left is to start watching him work his new beat for the Herald. Good luck, Tom-Tom – we’ll all be watching. And please, be sure to get a Papi Hug from Manny before you leave the Sox clubhouse for the final time. You two seem to have a special bond.

• Best headline of the week had to be ESPN.com’s “Gaffe-anino” from Thursday morning. Woulda been nice to see that one on the back of the local tabloid, don’t you think?

•We won’t say who, but someone just had to get this into our inbox as soon as they saw it.

Listen, Jimmy Kimmel obviously has some appeal. But not to me. And since I’m about a decade out of his intended demo, that’s fine. I’d still rather watch Letterman and fall asleep, than bother switching over to Kimmel and Bits.

• Steamer Bob Stanley popped up on ABC5’s Wednesday night postgame and aside form chewing gum (a TV no-no, Steamer), he gave good info and good bites of sound. With Mike Lynch in ChiTown and Bob Halloran and Ed Harding anchoring in Boston, the postgame was pretty strong. The funniest thing is that Harding probably wasn’t even supposed to do the show, but he’s on so damn much that they rolled him in for the gig. Harding sleeps at the station and we’re guessing he’s not alone. Heather Unruh’s got the noon-midnight-noon shift as well. Crazy hours they keep – and they still look so fresh. I need that vitamin.

Anyway, the ABC5 postgamer was a good bridge to the NESN coverage that had to wait until Bruins commitments were fulfilled by the network on Wednesday evening.

• If, over the past week, Shots hasn’t given you enough Sports Guy for a lifetime, you’re welcome to check out Slate’s Bryan Curtis’s take. . .And, despite my shock at actually feeling this way, Pages 4 and 5 of the “Simmons, uncut” thread at www.sportsjournalists.com, got into some serious and well-argued Simmons debate. We found “Double Down’s” lucid comments to be the perfect example of how constructive, thoughtful, non-spiteful posting can be. It almost gave me hope for the medium – but then I remembered the layers of venom expressed on pages 1-3 of the thread. If only the balance were more evenly distributed, they might be onto something. Haters.

• Hired guns for the “Adam Carolla Project” on TLC were blanketing Gillette on Sunday and handing out mini-DVDs promoting the show that debuted on Tuesday (L’ Shana Tova to those who had other plans on Tuesday evening). With a construction theme, there were hard-hatted and tool-belted co-eds giving out the swag post-game, but mostly fans were frisbeeing the mini discs as an aggression-beater to combat Tomlinson Syndrome.

Carolla goes in the Kimmel category for us, which makes sense, since they were joined at the hip for quite a while.

• A couple of homerun quotes from Sean McDonough came out of the John Craig story that ran in the Sunday Globe’s South section . Craig is listed as a staffer but had no email to contact him at – we wondered if he was an offspring of “SporTView’s” daddy, Jack Craig? Quite a legacy that would be to uphold. Truly.

• Sister Elle will be up in arms when she hears about this one: Rachel Ray, the former cutie from the Food Network, who got whored up for FHM and never looked back, is getting her own talk show. This, in addition to Ray’s own magazine, a library of 10 cookbooks and no fewer than three Foodie shows, means that ArAr has managed to exploit every last ounce of her limited talent into a lucrative career. That kind of crap just stuns me.

Whoa! Rachel Ray bashing in a sports column? Food is sport, pal. Food IS sport.

• Our thanks to vacationing Ted Sarandis who was kind enough to return Shots’ phone call, but politely declined to comment on anything regarding his situation or the break-up at WEEI 850 AM. Ted Nation can rest comfortably knowing that Sarandis is enjoying some R&R while traveling and might have even been humming a Frank Sinatra tune he’s fond of: “The Best is Yet to Come.”. . .Mike Adams had us laughing more than few times driving homeward this week during the dark hours. His rapport with his callers is second to none in the market and every once in a while he just says something so outlandish that you have to chuckle. “Why isn’t he Ned Kennedy?” he asked during a ‘Ned’ diatribe. “What is Ned short for anyway?”

• Some pictures of Chicago bears QB Kyle Orton and a bottle of jack popped up at new friend, www.deadspin.com, this week. What’s even better than the pictures, is the no-excuses-explanation from both head coach Lovie Smith and Orton who said: “I regret the pictures came out. But it was the bye week. I was trying to get away and see friends I hadn’t seen back home. I’m a 22-year-old kid. I was having some fun.”
No harm there and it’s nice to see a pro athlete not kowtow to the holier than thous who try to control public perception.

• The Herald had a curious omission this week in its weekly Player of the Game poll results. Since the feature has begun, the Herald has been including both a chart on the percentage winner AND a Total Vote number. This week, in what we’re assuming was low, voter turnout, they simply did the pie chart with 34.7 percent choosing Tim Dwight. All we’re saying is we’d like consistency – if you give the vote total one week, you need to give it every week. Otherwise we start suspecting the poll’s fixed or finagled. Or worse yet, you only had 12 voters.

• Check back next week sometime (Wednesday most likely) for a special Scott’s Shots Lifestyle Experiment Diary. For one full day – 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. – last month, Shots listened to Boston Sports Talk radio and ONLY Boston Sports Talk Radio for 10 straight hours. The results may not astound you, but they were frightening nonetheless. It’ll be worth the perusal – as much as anything I offer up for free is worth the perusal.

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