The Ol' Ballfield

FOX Fires Lyons for Racial Remark (or: Y-I-K-E-S, Steve Lyons)

Steve "Psycho" Lyons was fired after Friday's game for making racially insensitive comments about hispanics. According to ESPN.com:

[Lou] Piniella had made an analogy involving the luck of finding a wallet, then briefly used a couple of Spanish phrases during Friday's broadcast.

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.

Now at first I must say I thought this was overreactive on the part of FOX. But the more I look at those comments, the more I realize that they are things that a human with a normal brain-to-mouth filter would never say on the air. This goes way beyond the World Baseball Classic announcers continually referring to the Cuban team as "fiery" and the Japanese team as "calculating". It's one thing (still wrong) to make light of personality traits associated with race; it's a very different thing to make a stolen wallet joke on network television.

And, what a surprise, this is of course not Lyons' first offense. In 2004, after noted jewish ballpayer Shawn Green sat out an important game down the stretch against the Giants, Lyons had this to offer, again on the air:

[Green is] 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.

And of course who could forget the nearly blind fan at Shea Stadium for the NLDS, whose vision-assisting device was mocked on air by Lyons and broadcast partner Thom Brenneman. According to the New York Times:

What was he wearing, they wondered?

“A Psycho-meter,” Brennaman said, to welcome Lyons to town.

“Maybe he’s in virtual reality,” Lyons said. If he is, Lyons explained, “he should stay there.”

And maybe, Lyons suggested, the Dodgers should don the contraptions to better hit Tom Glavine. Lyons then hit on the most logical puerile explanation: “He’s got a digital camera stuck to his face.”

Los Angeles Angels announcer Jose Mota was called upon to replace Lyons for the remainder of the series.

Before signing off, I'd like to offer two more criticisms, this time on how the media presented the Lyons debacle. In the AP article linked above, Lyons' many on-air goofs are punctuated with this final statement before moving on to his playing stats: "He also once pulled his pants down on the field during his playing days." Lyons undid his pants to brush dirt off after a slide. They make it sound like he whipped it out at the stands. He quickly realized where he was and pulled them back up.

Before Lyons' most recent remarks happened, there was a very good article in the Times about (ironically) the lackluster performance of Lyons and Brenneman in the booth. It is soured, however, by this ridiculous last section:

Lyons...has mastered the art of the absolute statement but falters at factual precision. Alex Rodriguez had an “unbelievable” season, he said, but he clearly did not. Derek Jeter had his best year, he said, but his numbers were better in 1999.

As the Yankees succumbed to Detroit’s Jeremy Bonderman on Saturday, Lyons ignored mounting evidence that the Yankees’ potency was more the stuff of fantasy baseball than of postseason reality, to say they comprised “arguably the best offensive lineup that’s ever been produced.”

Alex Rodriguez did not have an "unbelievable" season, but he had a very good one. Whether this or 1999 was Jeter's best year is completely arguable, and I would say that this one trumps it, although I believe I am looking at different numbers than the Times. Anyone who didn't think the Yankees' lineup entering this season was the best in history was fooling themselves. It is complete hindsight editorializing for the Times to call it "more the stuff of fantasy baseball than of postseason reality." I would love to know who would be in Murray Chass' ideal lineup. This season the Yankees outscored everyone in the league by a large, large margin, without the Matsui and Sheffield bats they were to have in the postseason. It would be tough to argue that the Yankees' lineup, one to nine, wasn't the best ever. Perhaps three games of slump are too few to judge nine players' potential performance on.

The point is that these are not comments a broadcaster should be chided for making, when announcers everywhere make stupider statements every day. Has the Times ever seen Baseball Tonight? It's the only sports show on television where the anchor is a lot better at analyzing than the analysts.

Enough ranting. Farewell, Psycho. You won't be missed.

posted by Carnival @ 10/15/2006