By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

You need to get through the Fire Ron Borges stuff at the home office’s homepage and then you can proceed with Shots. Bruce and Byrne have gone all out on this one - it’s revealing, hilarious and, most of all, very Internet friendly. We know you’ll agree. Cast your vote now!

If I wasn’t so adamant in my current ban on “Open Letter Columns” – which I’ve used in the past to varying degrees of success – this space, on this day, would be that very type of offering.

Instead, we’d simply ask that someone of merit at the Herald (who is, at, or above the level of Hank Herald, the fine editor who day-in and day-out does more with less) lend an ear:

“Bring Back Howard!”

Stern? Screw Stern. Get serious, not Sirius. Bring Back Howard Bryant and juice up your back end of the paper the way you have the middle portion (i.e. the Track Gals and the “Inspector Gadgetization” of the Business Section).

Use the sports section to drive the rear wheels – the way the Daily News and the NY Post in New York do it. Be splashy, be shrewd, be aggressive. But Be Bryant.

Boston is ready for some mud slinging – I’m convinced of it from observing the success of WEEIdiot Radio where the afternoon show continues to be THE Least Common Denominator programming choice of the masses.

Bryant left Boston less than two months ago but it’s beginning to feel like two centuries ago. The Herald’s voice – as soft as it may have been – is now completely muted. Tony Mazz showed some nice versatility, but he’s not going to sell papers the way Bryant could if the Herald were to dangle a carrot in his general direction. The pages need a voice - they need some oomph and attitude. Bryant could thrive in that role.

And to be honest, from the tone of Bryant’s emails to Shots, he’d be back faster than a Michael Holley to the Globe.

Let me set the scene a bit: Bryant, whose chops really came through loudest and strongest in his final six months in Boston, leapt at the chance to SHARE the ‘Skins beat for the Post (with Jason LaCanfora). What’s more, he left a columnist gig for a beat; left his roots for Foggy Bottom. It was a tough call at the time and it’s a tough call still. But he left what could be the Titanic for the Love Boat. Here’s an excerpt of what Bryant had to say:

“Things are insane here. . . when things are supposed to be quiet and I was supposed to find a place to live, the Redskins keep winning. So, the insanity continues.

Things are interesting here. This will be a difficult transition, probably harder than either New York or Boston, the former because I was familiar with New York, was covering the same sport just in a different city and because I was not sharing a beat; the latter because I was familiar with Boston, I had come in having written a book about Boston, which made the transition easier, and I think I felt more accomplished on baseball at that stage.

Here, going back to the beat is certainly a step down, both in attitude and stature. For anyone who thinks the writing comes first, it is certainly jarring. Coming here is exactly what I thought it would be: the paper is better, the actual job is worse. That is not to say that I can’t learn anything here, but certainly that the writing opportunity was much richer in Boston.

The Post is a very hierarchal place, and in terms of Boston, I could write whatever I wanted. Here, it’s a beat, and shared one at that, with all of its constraints, and I’m sure, politics (it is Washington, after all). Essentially, coming here was a necessary move that is going to require a major adjustment on my part.

People told me coming in that the fervor for the Redskins is as intense as that for the Red Sox and that’s just not true. The Red Sox are in their own universe. They have it all to themselves.

Shots can’t help but notice the repeated mention of the “shared beat.” Beyond losing columnist freedom, you hardly have beat writer freedom. It’s divided in half and you could get the crappy half (notebook or sidebar filler).

After a Shots follow-up centering on whether the Cartel Callout Man has regrets, Bryant added this:

“I’m not sure it is regret in the traditional sense that I’m having buyer’s remorse or that I wish I were still in Boston. I miss Boston for my family and in that by the end I was finally becoming comfortable with my role at the Herald.

But I don’t miss the cartel, especially the shameless editorial ( Steinbrenner’s Folly) that appeared in the Globe.

I think that it is more a recognition that what I thought was going to be the difficult part of the move _ going back to fourth or fifth on the depth chart in terms of writing freedom from being first (no paper has ever given me the opportunity the Herald did) is going to be VERY difficult.

Once you’ve been a columnist, or worse, written a book where every sentence, comma, phrase and focus of a 150,000-word text belongs completely to you, it is naturally hard to adjust to beat coverage. You see all of these different story ideas, interesting threads, potential columns, etc. . . except that executing those ideas is no longer your job.

The good news is that the Washington Post is everything I had hoped it would be in terms of power and resources, and, most importantly, getting phone calls returned. If you fail here, it is not for lack of resources. You are surrounded by very smart, professional people who are just as ambitious as you - a rich, potentially incendiary mix that can produce hard feelings, seesawing emotions and good work - in an environment that is very competitive. Luckily for me, I didn’t come down here for hugs.

The work is interesting. So far, I have been doing 2,000 word Sunday profiles, which have been rewarding. If you like to write, this is the place to be.

The press box at FedEx Field is the worst, least professional I’ve ever been in, filled with Redskins employees who grunt, clap and cheer during the game, especially against Dallas. It is like covering the game from a luxury suite. All that’s missing is the girl who serves the alcohol and bacon-wrapped scallops.

Mostly, I love that last graf. The legendary bad blood between the ‘Skins honcho Daniel Snyder and the Post is probably the most fractious of any pro team and any major daily. Cousin Davey Palm Harbor was reading about it all last week as the Bucs prepped for Washington and the longer the ‘Skins play, the more attention it’ll get. It has “Outside the Lines” written all over it.

I’m guessing there’s a more than little bit of regret and I’m also guessing he could be lured back. Especially if the Herald were to suddenly stabilize – ala the potential Knight-Ridder takeover by Bain, et al.

Which is why we hoped maybe a Herald Head would take a gander and get in touch with HB – Shots is happy to broker the deal. No fee, no closing costs.

• Tuesday night’s “Outside the Lines” on ESPN looked at the Rice HOF snub and had both Basketball Bob Ryan and Self-Fulfilling Prophet Dan Shaughnasty discussing their views from what appeared to each scribe’s humble abode. In fact, we think we heard sounds of Hingham emanating from the window of Basketball Bob – and it must have been taped at a time when windows could have been open, because the Ryan window appeared to be wide open. . .Just what are sounds of Hingham you ask?

Brian McGrory could tell you: Fine wines being opened and ladies complaining that Lily Pulitzer is out of appropriate pink and green outfits or that Talbots has gone to pot ever since including men’s apparel.

• Someone needs to investigate – we nominate Poynter, Deadspin Will or the ObudsESPN – whether hockey has led the 11 p.m. or 2 a.m. SportsCenter at any point this season and what the stats were for the last hockey season ESPN held NHL rights to?. . . And then they’d need to investigate why the heck I would care about such a thing. . .

• Long ago leftover: Dandy Don Orsillo and NESN Sox producer Emmy Mike Narracci team up for Providence College hoops on Cox Sports Television in Rhody.

• Shots is hereby extending an exclusive offer to Sports Illustrated’s Alex Wolff (who we’re told once read this space and giggled) to serve as the Vermont Frost Heaves official in-their-pocket blogger who will NEVER criticize the ABA expansion experiment in community activism.

We will do this for the tidy sum of one piece of logoed swag per financial quarter, in perpetuity. Meaning, for the cost or two hats and two t-shirts; or one hat, one t-shirt, one bobblehead and one long-sleeved tee; or. . . the Fheaves will receive glowing and frequent mentions in this, the most influential column emanating from Hull, Massachusetts but more specifically from the Shots’ Shanty. And some of the readers actually have real jobs. In the media, even!

• Tough week for Globie, Jackie MacMullan. It was reported in USA Today this week that her book with UConn’s Geno Auriemma , unfortunately titled “Geno: In Search of Perfection,” contained the misspelling of Auriemma’s close friend and Villanova coach, Harry Perretta. The perfectionist’s book spells it P-A-R-R-E-T-T-A – guess the fact checker for Jackie Mack’s tome wasn’t so perfect afterall. The book, we hear, is a must have for the Husky faithful – who, we are convinced, would buy “Natural Husky Nuggets” if proper UConn logo was etched into the feces.

• The possibility exists, if we all play our cards right, that Shots, Pete Meat Sheppard, WEEI’s Julie Kahn and Boston Magazine Publisher “Hully” Dan Scully, could, at any moment be sharing space at any of the fine establishments in our common community of Nantasket Beach.
A recent Page 4 picture in the Hull Times (12/29/05 issue) showed the engaged Kahn, her daughter, Samantha, and Scully canoodling with Red Sox Owner Larry Lucchino and his wife, Stacey, from the soiree where Big O was reportedly leading toasts to the happy couple. File under: Hull – The Media Capital of New England!. . . Tough week for part-time Hullonian, Steve Stirling, the dismissed head coach of the New York Islanders. Our unsolicited advice to the Shots neighbor: Come on down to the beach for a couple of weeks. It’s been a glorious winter down here – never too cold for a walk with Percy the Dog or coffee at Hull’s newest IT place, Toast.

• NBC is getting prime ad space (Top, left) at the ESPN.com site for its Olympic site. Good placement there – don’t fight ESPN’s power; simply use it to your advantage. Good work, NBC Sports.

• Lynn Worthy checked in with Shots a couple of weeks back to introduce himself. “I’m the newest (full-time) addition to the sports staff at The Lowell Sun. I hesitate to say that I’m Rob Bradford’s ‘replacement.’ My primary focus early on will be high schools and UMass Lowell. However, his leaving did pave the way for me to fill a full-time position in sports. . . As of right now I am not taking over the same exact role that Rob played here. Where Rob (now at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune) was a veteran scribe, I’m still the rookie over here.”

Worthy, a Tyngsborough High School graduate (’00) is in the midst of finishing his master’s degree in journalism at Emerson College in Boston. He did undergrad at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine (’04) and has experienced a few different roles for The Sun – from sports stringer, to other GA (general assignment) positions. He also got a few months of weekend work at boston.com.

A member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), Worthy does show some good glimpses of self-deprecation. “Oh, and you’d think Hall of Famer Lynn Swann would have set this straight, but many people assume that the name Lynn is automatically referring to a female. . . not the case here,” he wrote, “I am a guy.”

Let’s be sure to keep an eye on Lowell’s Lynn at the same time we look in on Pennsylvania’s Lynn (Swanny). Good luck to both, but more so Lowell Lynn.

• Is it an awful idea to have your yearly physical on the first Friday the 13th of the year? My bad, if it is.

• We’ve got big plans for a Saturday doubleheader of the early afternoon CAA tilt that has Bruiser Flint’s Drexel Dragons matching up with Jose Juan BeNortheastern over at Matthews; followed by a Pats viewing with my (lone) Godfather, Uncle Stuff, Stevie Sarasota. The former Stevie Medfa has stocked up on Coca Cola Zero, Fresca and lime diet Coke, so we’re gonna be plenty caffeinated come kickoff.

The Bro-in-Lou will undoubtedly have some more Erin Wings by then and we’re betting there’s still some pasta floating around somewhere.

All in all, it should be an enjoyable night of Bronco busting.

Enjoy it and remember, as Uncle Stevie says: “Watch how you go.”

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