By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

• Curt speaks, errr, blogs and we can tell you with virtual certainty that it didn’t appear until the 2 a.m. hour on Friday and that it marks Schilling’s most vitriolic and mean-spirited words for the media since the blog’s inception. And we love every word of it (some 1,539 strong).

Schilling calls out Gary Thorne, John Heyman, Laura (he calls her Karen) Vecsey, Woody Paige, CHB (Dan Shaughnessy), Jay Mariotti and Bill Plaschke by name and nails several aspects of the entire episode of the Bloody Sox Redux.

He also delivers this passage which for all intents and purposes justifies the existence of his and future athlete blogs:

So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I’d hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to ‘defend’ myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here. As I said earlier, believe what you need to, whatever makes you sleep better at night is probably your best bet.

. . . Someone needs to give Schill a bucketful of apostrophes for his next birthday or Christmas.

But no one needs to give him any spunk. He’s got that in spades.

•What if they were to give out excellence in Web awards and neither of the city’s papers were to be found in any of the editorial-based categories?

That’s exactly what has happened as the nominations for the 2007 EPpy Awards, sponsored by Editor & Publisher and MediaWeek magazines, were announced this week. “The 2007 EPpy Awards honor the best Web sites in the media world, including newspapers, TV-Cable, and magazines,” according to the story announcing the nominations at E&P’s website.

Boston’s not alone in being absent from the nominees in any range of categories, but it does strike us as odd that such a supposedly technologically and creatively progressive city such as this one finds itself well behind – web-wise – hotbeds like Lawrence, Kansas and Tampa, Florida.

The best any of our locals did was in the category, “Best Weekly Newspaper-Affiliated Web Site” where wickedlocalplymouth.com got a touch. Oh, and if you want to get technical, Ron Borges got a nod in the “Best Media-Affiliated Sports Blog” as Borges’ “inspiration” Mike Sando had his outstanding (and chart-friendly) Seahawks Insider blog nominated.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post are recognized prominently and, to its credit, the Globe’s classified sites are given nominations.

If only the Globe Editorial side could catch up to the Globe Business side! – and what a sad statement that is in an industry where both sides are treading water.

. . .Also in the mix for an honor in the “Best Media-Affiliated Sports Blog” is a fellow Umie, Peter Abraham who has really taken to the medium for the Journal News and his lohud.com Yankees blog. A native of New Bedford, Abraham graduated UMass (where he was once a Collegian sports editor) in 1986 and served 13 years on the UConn hoops beat at the Norwich Bulletin before landing at the J-N.

He’s got to beat Sando and the front-runner, Richard Justice in Houston, but the fact that Abraham is in the mix tells you all you need to know about the Mike Reiss of the Yankees beat.

. . . Winners of the 12th annual EPpy awards will be announced May 24 at the Interactive Newspaper Conference and Trade Show in Miami. The prestigious awards are now in their 12th year.

. . . It’s bound to happen when job changes occur within market, but the pettiness and lack of respect shown by Rob Bradford’s former employer earlier this week is nothing short of completely insulting to the earnest, hard-working and talented Bradford.

The way we’ve been told the story from an Eagle-Tribune mole is that the removal of Bradford’s final E-T “Bradford on Baseball” post was ordered NOT by sports editor Bill Burt, but instead by the paper’s new head beancounter, Al Getler. Having read (and linked) to that final vaporized post, there was nothing but humility and grace displayed by Bradford – in addition to a link to his new employer – The Boston Herald’s – website. Thanks to a Shots loyalist, the text of that post is included here:

Moving on
This will be my final entry for Bradford on Baseball. That is the bad news, especially since The Eagle-Tribune’s Mike Sperling, Bill Burt, and Karen Andreas did such a great job with the site every step along the way.

The good news is that I will still be blogging. For the time being, starting with Wednesday in Baltimore, my entries can be found at:
http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/bradfordBlog/

I am excited to announce that the Boston Herald will be allowing me to write a very similar blog to what I had been doing. (And yes, the entries suffered lately because of my life’s transition.) The new Web site will be: www.bradfordfiles.com.

That is: www.bradfordfiles.com.

It should be up and running shortly with an ESPN Page 2 kind of vibe. In the meantime please visit both httphttp://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/bradfordBlog/ and the always informative www.eagletribune.com.

Thanks again for everything and hope to see you soon.

posted by Rob Bradford at 7:43 PM

Pretty benign, wouldn’t you agree?

If Getler, or anyone at the E-T, had a problem with that link it should have simply been removed. But the rest of Bradford’s goodbye was perfectly suitable and more than worthwhile.

Apparently though, The Ventriloquist became The Censor on Wednesday, as Getler, who seems to derive pleasure from sticking his hand up dummies’ asses, forced the site’s operators to take down Bradford’s farewell post from the ever-awful E-T website.

Not surprisingly, Getler does not have an active email link at the E-T’s At Your Service web page, or else we would have asked the man who professionally talks out of the side of his mouth, for some clarification on what happened to the Missing Bradford Post.

An email to Burt went unanswered and Bradford had no comment on the matter, preferring to focus on his new job and his new employer and his new blog.

. . .Two quick reminders before we cut this one short (mostly due to the preparation necessary for No. 2 below).

1. The Boston Sports Review show on ESPN Boston 890 AM has another action-packed show in store for Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m. NFL Draft guru John Murphy is scheduled to join us, as is the Boston Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont and we will also be bringing news of. . .

2. . . . The BSR Bar Crawl which will be undertaken by myself and a willing accomplice in an effort to sample as many of Boston’s TRUE sports bars in 12-16 hour period and then chronicle the misadventures, and report our findings, in the pages of the June issue of BSR.

We are still soliciting nominations for “sneaky good sports bar/dive/hole-in-the-wall” in the Boston Proper and we’re also looking for celebrity (or pseudo-celebrity) drop-ins. So if you, or someone you know, wants to be part of the city’s greatest-ever “social experiment” in sports (and yes, this is BOTH social and experimental) contact me or call in to the show on Saturday morning at 866-ESPN-890.

Don’t O.D. on the Draft, people. And stay safe out there. And send bail money care of the Shanty.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. And can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmedDOTcom