Dan Lamothe, who blogs over at Red Sox Monster, almost scored an interview with presidential candidate John McCain. Almost.

So, remember that time when Sen. John McCain’s people said they were interested in having him talk to a sports blogger or two?

What a farce that was.

I say this sadly because after more than 10 weeks, I’m throwing in the towel publicly on attempting to get 15 minutes of the presidential candidate’s time — something I am well aware is no easy task.

Here’s the deal. Back in May, Patrick Hynes, McCain’s point man for the online crowd, told the Washington Times that the campaign was open to having sports bloggers talk to candidate as a way to “humanize John McCain as something other than a carbon-copy politician running for office, delivering talking points.”

It seemed reasonable at time, I thought. After all, Deadspin had already done Q & A sessions with two candidates, even if they were of the lesser variety. McCain talking about Naval Academy boxing (he competed), Curt Schilling (the pitcher backed him publicly) and Steelers football (we’ve all heard the POW camp Steelers story) made sense, right?

As a Washington-area journalist by day and sports blogger by night, I figured there was nothing to lose. Eventually, I reached Hynes with an e-mail three days after the WaTi story ran May 16. His response on May 20:

Dan:

Thanks for contacting us. We’d be thrilled to do something, but exactly what and when is not yet determined. Let’s just keep the dialogue going and we’ll set something up when we see an opportunity.

Why, that sounds… optimistic, right? Surely this dialogue would be helpful thing, and if I could land the interview, I’d be at the converging pinnacle of sports blogger and political wonk nerdom! Yes!

For more than a week, I didn’t hear anything, and on May 29, I followed up with another e-mail “to keep the conversation going” in regard to doing an interview. A few more days went by, but on June 3, I was invited to participate in a conference call with McCain and other bloggers, all of whom appeared to be from organizations like National Journal and TownHall.org — places where one would find nary a reference to Sean Salisbury, Coach Janky Spanky or, say, Jonathan Papelbon talking out of his arm pit.

The teleconference, one of dozens McCain’s staff have no doubt held, went about how you’d probably expect. It started about 20 minutes late and ended about 20 minutes later, after the good senator had taken perhaps six or eight questions. Nothing seemed earth-shattering at the time, although he did touch on a challenge made that day to Sen. Barack Obama to hold a series of town-hall forums leading up the election.

Frustrated, but aware of my place at the back of the line, I appealed to the McCain camp the following day to see if we could flesh out the “something” Hynes had mentioned. For more than a week, I received no response other than various e-mails blasts proposing policy changes, frequently with subject lines expressing things like, “BREAKING: Reporter finally asks Obama a relevant question.”

Finally, on June 11, I responded to one of Hynes’ e-mail blasts thusly:

Patrick,

Just wanted to follow up again. I’ve been receiving your emails in regard to the campaign, but haven’t received any kind of response to my follow-up inquiries about Sen. McCain possibly taking 10 minutes to talk sports for a blog-based interview. Is that still a possibility?

Best,
Dan Lamothe

The response? Butkus. Zippo. Zilch. And so here we stand today, after several more unreturned e-mails and phone calls right up through last week, including several where I made it clear I’d be writing about the subject one way or the other. Also of note: I also was removed from whatever McCain e-mail list I was on, since I haven’t received one since June 11.

Is it possible the McCain camp is still on some level entertaining talking sports to “humanize” McCain? Absolutely, and it’ll probably be a good fun read if they get around to it — the kind that would either make McCain look like Uncle John, future president, or that crazy neighbor guy who tells you to get off his damn lawn, already.

Some McCain supporters might bring up the fact that nobody has made a big deal about Obama not talking sports with a blogger. Considering the number of options presidential candidates have to talk about whatever they please, that doesn’t seem particularly relevant (or sane, for that matter). But it’s also worth noting that Obama’s camp isn’t the one that brought up the idea, either.

Bottom line? Seems to me somebody tried to play we sports blogger-types for patsies, scoring a few cheap brownie points on the Internet by suggesting McCain was reaching out to the people… even sports bloggers!

Here’s hoping the good senator’s people are still interested in earning those points.