Don’t cry for Psycho, folks. Perhaps he can get a local radio gig somewhere alongside Rick Barry. From the AP :
Fox baseball broadcaster Steve Lyons has been fired for making a racially insensitive comment directed at colleague Lou Piniella’s Hispanic heritage on the air during Game 3 of the American League championship series.
The network confirmed Saturday that Lyons was dismissed after Friday’s comments. He has been replaced for the remainder of the series by Los Angeles Angels announcer Jose Mota.
“Steve Lyons has been relieved of his Fox Sports duties for making comments on air that the company found inappropriate,” network spokesman Dan Bell said.
In the second inning of Friday’s game between Detroit and Oakland, Piniella talked about the success light-hitting A’s infielder Marco Scutaro had in the first round of the playoffs. Piniella said that slugger Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to contribute, comparing Scutaro’s production to finding a “wallet on Friday” and hoping it happened again the next week.
Later, Piniella said the A’s needed Thomas to get “en fuego” — hot in Spanish — because he was currently “frio” — or cold. After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons spoke up.
Lyons said that Piniella was “hablaing Espanol” — butchering the conjugation for the word “to speak” — and added, “I still can’t find my wallet.”
“I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to sit too close to him now,” Lyons continued.
Warning to blind-baiter Thom Brennaman : Fox clearly has a two-strikes, you’re out policy.
I’ll smugly note my earlier prescient remark about Latino player stereotypes, and Tribe Called Quest’s “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” notwithstanding, I’d think even the most liberal-minded people would agree that the cumulative weight of years of “Psycho’s” frat-ish prattlings somewhat outweight his indiscretion here, but hey I’m not complaining. If only Sterling and Waldman would be so careless….
Hard for me to understand how Friday’s comments were an offense worthy of termination but Lyons was promoted after his remarks concerning Shawn Green. But I suspect this had just a little to do with Richard Sandomir’s recent TImes column asking why Lyons was working such a plum gig. Apparently, there is such a thing as being an embarrassment to Fox.