Steve Lyons, one of the trio doing the American League Championship Series on FOX TV, was sacked for something he said during Game 3. What did he say? The story I read vaguely said it was something offensive to Hispanics.
Here’s a story that tells the tale.
Okay, so, what did he say about Green in '96?
‘Shawn Green isn’t playing today. I guess he’d rather just sit around worshiping God.’
Not really. I made it up.
I’m curious about that too. I get some hits on Google saying he was suspended for “insensitive remarks” about Green, but none of them say exactly what those remarks were.
His remarks to Piniella were pretty stupid. Was he trying to ge fired?
Steve Lyons on Shawn Green not playing:
“He probably did it more for the heritage and not the religion. He’s not a practicing Jew. He didn’t marry a Jewish girl. And from what I understand, he never had a bar mitzvah, which is unfortunate because he didn’t get the money.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/01/SPG3991UMS1.DTL
Well, it was pretty dumb, but was it dumb enough to fire a guy? He said he wasn’t sure he wanted to sit next to Lou when he was speaking Spanish, and what’s that about a wallet?
To me, that’s a big leap to say that his “missing wallet” was due to Pinella’s Hisapnic heritage, and not a joke that Pinella is a thief, regardless of heritage. Unbelivable that people are that afraid of offending people that he would get fired over something that small. Now if he had “Hispanics are theives and steal wallets” that’s something else.
Implying that Piniella’s Hispanic heritage would make him likely to steal a wallet may or may not be an indication of genuinely racist feelings but it’s definitely stupid and insensitive enough to make a network decide they don’t want him to represent them in a broadcast booth. Don’t forget that baseball has a huge Latino audience these days, largely because of the great number of Hispanic players now playing in MLB. Whatever Lyons might really think, he was jeopardizing Fox’s ratings, and they weren’t going to take any chances.
I actually think Fox should get some kudos for acting so quickly and not waiting around for to let the incident fester in the news. They probably saved themselves a lot of grief.
He pretty much did say that. Otherwise, why would he connect a “missing wallet” to Piniella speaking Spanish? If the joke was not that “Hispanics steal,” then what was the joke?
I thought that was what Lyons was saying. I said “WTF?!” at the time, and I am not surprised that he got canned.
Of course, I think Fox should have canned him long ago for being a crap announcer.
Now if we can just get ESPN to fire Joe Theismann. . .
Well, it could be because Piniella was speaking Spanish and talking about a missing wallet.
I could believe, in theory, that this wasn’t racist, just poorly timed - if not for the “I don’t want to sit too close to him now” part. That does make it sound like a comment about Piniella’s heritage or the wallet stealing. I don’t see anything offensive about the Green comments, although they’re just stupid. Why even speculate about the reasons a Jewish player has chosen not to play on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest Jewish holiday? The thing speaks for itself without analysis. The money thing really isn’t offensive, though - it doesn’t have to be a “Jews are greedy” thing because Jewish kids frequently get plenty of money in bar mitzvah gifts.
- Piniella did not say anything about a missing wallet, he drew an analogy to finding a wallet.
- He made that comment eariler in the broadcast, not when he was speaking Spanish.
Not to get too technical here, but if you find a wallet and it isn’t yours, it’s lost and belongs to somebody else. Maybe Lyons was trying to make it into a joke about Piniella finding his [Lyons’] wallet. Doesn’t matter, as he did end up saying one thing that sounded genuinely offensive.
I’m not sure what you’re saying with point 2. In AndyPolley’s link, it sounds like Piniella says the wallet thing in the second inning, then threw in a little Spanish later in the game. Then Lyons made an ass of himself. I did not mean to say that Piniella said the two things at the same time.
From the irresponsible journalism department… the story linked above says… “He also once pulled down his pants on the field during his playing days.”
Anybody else remember seing that? He had just slid head first and got dirt down his pants. He called time and pulled them down without thinking to get the dirt out. When he realized his pants were down around his knees in front of thousands of people he pulled them up all emabarrased.
Just a good example of how you shouldn’t make judgements based on what somebody writes in the newspaper…especially if there may be an agenda involved.
exaclty…implying he once just for the hell of it pulled down his pants on field, to moon the crowd or something, whoever wrote that article should be fired for purposely adding misleading and incorrect inofrmation in a story, to make the story look better. He may be an ass, but the pants issue was a total brain fart, nothing more.
What’s misleading about it? he did pull his pants down in front of the crowd. What’s the “agenda?”
He doesn’t seem interesting enough to warrant a nickname like “Psycho.”
The pants thing was goofy, but the incident doesn’t seem psycho unless you omit the reason that he pulled his pants down - which, strangely enough, was missing from the article. He was re-tucking his shirt, I think, not pulling a Randy Moss-like stunt.
and of course, Randy Moss didn’t even moon the crowd. He just mimed doing it.