You stay classy, Steve Lyons!

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

FOX Fires Baseball Broadcaster Steve Lyons for Racially Insensitive Comment

Saturday , October 14, 2006

DETROIT — 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.

Click here to visit FOXSports.com for complete coverage.

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.

Lyons had been working in the booth for the ALCS alongside Thom Brennaman and Piniella.

A call to Lyons' cell phone was not immediately returned Saturday.

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.

FOX executives told Lyons after the game he had been fired.

Piniella, approached before Saturday's Game 4, declined to comment on the situation except to say: "No, he's not here today."

This was not a first-time offense for Lyons, nicknamed "Psycho" during his nine-year big league career as a utilityman that ended in 1993 with the Boston Red Sox.

Hired when FOX began broadcasting baseball in 1996, Lyons was suspended without pay in late September 2004 after his remarks about Shawn Green of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Green is Jewish and elected not to play one of the two games at San Francisco that took place during the Yom Kippur holiday.

The network apologized for Lyons' remarks at the time.

Lyons, 46, was a career .252 hitter with 19 home runs and 196 RBIs for Boston, the Chicago White Sox, Atlanta and Montreal. He was a first-round draft pick by the Red Sox, 19th overall, in 1981.

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Wow, it doesn't even have the "digital camera" comment about the blind Mets fan.

[resistanze]

Aww beat me by one minue.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

During the incident on Oct. 5 at Shea Stadium, Lyons and Brennaman were not aware that Stephen Teitelbaum, a 64-year-old fan, was wearing a magnifying device over his eyes. Teitelbaum, a longtime Mets season-ticket holder, is blind except for some peripheral vision in his left eye. Lyons and Brennaman mocked the device numerous times, over a 53-second span.

Fox took no action against the announcers.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Fox Fires Lyons Over Ethnic Comments
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
Steve Lyons, the No. 2 Fox Sports baseball analyst, was fired Friday night for offensive comments he made earlier in the day during Game 3 of the American League Championship Series in Detroit.

He was replaced by Jose Mota, a radio analyst for the Los Angeles Angels, who has called some televised games for Fox Sports.

Lyons's remarks Friday came eight days after he cracked jokes about a device that a Mets fan was wearing to aid his poor vision during a division series game between the Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

"Steve Lyons has been relieved of his Fox Sports duties for making comments on the air that the company found inappropriate," Lou D'Ermilio, a company spokesman, said.

The incident Friday afternoon began when Lou Piniella, a guest analyst working with Lyons and Thom Brennaman, noted that the Oakland Athletics could not expect shortstop Marco Scutaro to continue to produce runs as he did when he drove in six during the division series against Minnesota.

Piniella said that expecting similar production would be "like finding a wallet on a Friday night and looking for one on Sunday and Monday, too."

Four minutes later, they had moved to different subjects and Piniella said something in Spanish. "The bilingual Lou Piniella," Brennaman said.

Lyons said: "Lou's habla'ing some Español 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." The three laughed and continued calling the game.

D'Ermilio declined to elaborate on the apparent insensitivity of Lyons's words. He said that Fox executives were unavailable for comment.

Lyons was fired after the game.

Mota was to continue to replace him for the rest of the best-of-seven series, which Detroit led by 3-0 heading into last night's game.

Lyons's contract with Fox was expiring. He also works as a television analyst for the Dodgers. He joined Fox Sports in 1996.

During the incident on Oct. 5 at Shea Stadium, Lyons and Brennaman were not aware that Stephen Teitelbaum, a 64-year-old fan, was wearing a magnifying device over his eyes. Teitelbaum, a longtime Mets season-ticket holder, is blind except for some peripheral vision in his left eye. Lyons and Brennaman mocked the device numerous times, over a 53-second span.

Fox took no action against the announcers.

But the firing is the second action Fox has taken against Lyons for making insensitive ethnic comments. Two years ago, he was suspended without pay for making light of Shawn Green's decision, when he was with the Dodgers, not to play on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

"He's not a practicing Jew," Lyons said. "He didn't marry a Jewish girl." He added, "And from what I understand, he never had a bar mitzvah, which is unfortunate because he didn't get the money."

In a statement, Fox apologized to viewers who had been offended and acknowledged that Lyons had "exercised poor judgment." Lyons never made an on-air apology. At the time, a Dodgers spokesman said that Green had not been offended by Lyons's words.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

"He's not the best color man in the business for nothing, folks."

[jman3000]

i didn't even think they were that bad... wtf?

[jman3000]

it's not like he called him a stupid, leaf blowing, .

[T Park]

Talk about reading wayyy too much into something.

But thats the glorious PC world we live in.

[ShoogarBear]

On the positive side, though, Fox hired him for their news department.

[T Park]

Im sure Senator Byrd wanted him over at CNN, but hes laying low.

[Tek_XX]

On the positive side, though, Fox hired him for their news department.

Fair and balanced as always, he'll be their immigration correspondent.