Fox Sports fires baseball analyst for remarks

Quicksilver · #1 10-16-2006, 10:35 AM

Lyons ran afoul of Fox Sports for comments he made during the game after analyst and former manager Lou Piniella said expecting a player to repeat his performance was like "finding a wallet on a Friday night and looking for one on Sunday and Monday, too."

A little while later, Piniella said Oakland A's infielder Marco Scutaro was "en fuego," to which Lyons responded: "Lou's hablaing some espanol there, and I'm still looking for my wallet. I don't understand him, and I don't want to sit close to him now."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061016/en_nm/sports_dc_1

Sponsored Links

Juanted · #2 10-16-2006, 10:39 AM

Lighten up, Fox Sports. It was a joke. A tasteless joke, but a joke nonetheless.

This Political Correctness stuff is getting out of hand.

Juan

Quicksilver · #3 10-16-2006, 10:43 AM

Somehow I missed the infraction so maybe i'm not gettin it. But your correct "This Political Correctness stuff is getting Wayyyyyyy out of hand.

noncom23 · #4 10-16-2006, 10:52 AM

So the crack was at piniella?

BruinMan · #5 10-16-2006, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by noncom23

So the crack was at piniella?

Yes! Piniella is half Mexican. Oh Well, I am sure Steve will find another job.

noncom23 · #6 10-16-2006, 11:01 AM

Isn't that joke among close friends? I mean who cares? I guess Fox does.

Wagner · #7 10-16-2006, 12:35 PM

JV · #8 10-16-2006, 02:11 PM

What the hell? I guess because the guy previously made questionable comments about a blind man and a player they thought this was strike 3?

I don't get the problem with this particular instance, maybe I need to hear it to understand...were they thinking he was insulting the Spanish language or insinuating that hispanics steal wallets,

? Pinella made the "wallet analogy", it's fair game at that point!

Quicksilver · #9 10-16-2006, 02:14 PM

Glad i'm not the only one who couldn't figure it out. Maybe it's the way the article was written that confusing.

motordavid · #10 10-16-2006, 02:24 PM

Here's a version from USAToday, which I happened to skim via
the "in hand" real paper...it's a tad more clear, but still appears
way overblown to me. By the bye, the USAToday site may be
the "busiest"/hard to read on line newspaper site I've seen...
I got a headache just doing the "dig down" to find the same
damn column, online, I had just read in the real paper. I thought
I was having acid flashbacks from the late '60s with all the ads,
crap and jive going on. No wonder your basic kid is close to fookin
illiterate these days.

NEway, the "wallet" much ado, about nothing scenario:

"TV sports analysts needn't worry that using clichés or incorrect grammar or even failing to make sense on-air will automatically cost them their jobs.
Sometimes, announcers have used profanity or appeared intoxicated and kept their jobs.
But Fox's Steve Lyons ran afoul of the most basic job requirement of sportscasting: Avoid comments that can be construed as using ethnic or racial stereotypes — and don't assume that claiming such comments were meant in jest or were just nonsense will be a defense.
Fox fired the baseball analyst Saturday, citing his "inappropriate" on-air comments Friday concerning Hispanics.
But in a phone interview Sunday, Lyons sounded more aggrieved than contrite. Saying he "believes people are taking a lot of liberty with what I said," Lyons said he was making a "joke that had nothing to do with race;" that it's a "real stretch" to find racism in the on-air exchange that cost him his job, "and anybody who knows me knows it was the furthest from anything racist."
As he worked Friday's American League Championship Series Game 3 with Lou Piniella, Lyons made a comment about not being able to find his wallet and not wanting to "sit too close" to Piniella.
The supposed relevance of that, assuming one is intent in finding logic in any of this? Piniella, who has a Hispanic heritage, had earlier compared the good play of a Hispanic player to the good luck of finding a wallet. And thus Lyons, who spoke of "habla-ing Espanol" after Piniella said a few words in Spanish, seemed to be suggesting a convoluted connection between Hispanics and stealing wallets.
Not true, Lyons said: "My joke was about a wallet. It had nothing to do with race. We were all laughing at the time. I'm being painted as a victimizer of Lou. At dinner later (with Fox announcers and production staffers), we all thought it was one of our better exchanges." (Sunday, Fox spokesman Dan Bell declined to respond to any of Lyons' comments.)
Midway through that dinner, Lyons said, he got a call from Fox saying he was off Saturday's ALCS Game 4, for which he was replaced by Los Angeles Angels announcer Jose Mota, who's worked 15-20 regular-season games for Fox.
And Lyons said he "didn't get the chance to explain himself" when he met with Fox Sports head David Hill in Los Angeles on Saturday: "When I landed in L.A., I read reports that I'd been fired. It wasn't like I was going to go in and change his mind."
He's probably right. Lyons had survived making fun last week of a fan shown wearing unusual glasses that, it turned out, the fan was wearing because he is visually impaired. In 2004, Lyons was suspended by Fox for comments about a Jewish player missing a game during Yom Kippur.
Lyons wasn't expected to have a role on Fox's postseason coverage after the ALCS series, which ended with Detroit's victory Saturday. And Lyons' presence on Fox looked like it was going to be reduced anyway. Next season Fox will not carry any first-round playoff games and just one LCS rather than the current two — and Fox's lead team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver presumably will call all that action.
But Lyons, who joined Fox in 1996, said "the inference" he said something racist "is disturbing. It's my career we're talking about. I need to go find myself a job. That statement is going to follow me around. That's unfair."
Is he apologizing? "Absolutely. I'm happy to apologize to anybody who took it that way. But it seems like a real stretch to lose your job over. It's hard to understand."
Not that hard. If you call big-time sports that networks can pay billions to buy, you're going to be accountable for what you say. You need to always speak clearly."

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colum...nd-lyons_x.htm

Sponsored Links