If you didn’t watch game 4 of the Tigers – Athletics series, this probably won’t make much sense. (disclosure: I’ve been a tigers fan since I was 3)
Fox announcer Steve Lyons was fired for racially inappropriate comments.
From the article:
Lyons said that Piniella was “hablaing Espanol” — mispronouncing the phrase which means “to speak.” Lyons also said, “I still can’t find my wallet” and “I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to sit too close to him now” in regards to Piniella.
Now, this sounds pretty bad until you take into account what Piniella said before that. Lou made a bad cliche (as only Lou can) in which he compared the A’s to “finding a wallet on friday, and coming back to try to find one saturday and sunday.” Lou then made an “en fuego” comment.
Taking into account Lou’s previous cliche, one can see that that Steve’s comments weren’t racially inappropriate at all. They were in regards to Lou’s “finding a wallet” story. All he meant to say was that Lou was jumping from topic to topic and using too many cliches.
Now, if Fox would have come out and said “we’re firing Steve Lyons because he sucks” I’d have said “good job” – because frankly, Steve Lyons didn’t offer much of anything to that broadcast team. All that’s besides the point though. Fox was wrong to play the race card here. Perhaps they should pay more attention to their own broadcasts?
In other news, all decisions as to entertainment for the world series will be made by MLB and Fox, with no say what-so-ever from the Tigers. In a way that’s good because nobody wants to see Aretha or the various other Motown acts anymore, but I don’t want to see the inevitable American Idol singers either.