FOX fires analyst Steve Lyons

[DirtyKash]

I wish they would get rid of Lyons and Piniella. They need Josh Lewin doing play by play too.

http://strike3forums.com/forums/show...920#post233920

can Fox fire Steve Lyons already?

http://strike3forums.com/forums/show...845#post233845



Fox fires Lyons after insensitive comment

By JANIE McCAULEY, AP Sports Writer
October 14, 2006

DETROIT (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.

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.

[Molina00]

Prov and I with some combined psychic energy and Lyons is gone.

[riverdunesrat]

Replaced with Jose Mota who is excellent in the booth. You'll never hear bias or over-exaggerated opinions from Jose. Kudos to FUX for this choice.

[realmofotalk]

Lyons is still currently Charlie Steiner's broadcast partner for Dodger games.

[rockin500]

eh, i think the comment thing is way overblown. should have been fired just for being a crappy announcer. too bad mccarver cant get fired.

[Saber]

Piniella is hispano-latin?

[Kingdom]

He's Canadian-Asian.

[Rufio181]

I thought Pinella was Italian. No joke.

[Lynch]

****ing silly. Fire a guy cuz he sucks (which of course, would leave them with about 3 announcers), but making up shit to fire a guy?

Joe Kapp was one fired for calling one of the Zendahas (sp) kickers a "chili chopper". That makes tons more sense than this.

Lyons said that Piniella was "hablaing Espanol" -- butchering the conjugation for the word "to speak" -- and added, "I still can't find my wallet."

[riverdunesrat]

I thought Pinella was Italian. No joke.

Same here.

[Providence A's]

Prov and I with some combined psychic energy and Lyons is gone.

actually, I emailed Fox and said I would never watch anymore games until they fired him. Seeing as how I'm one of a handful of people that watch their games, they couldn't afford to lose my ratings

[DirtyKash]

****ing silly. Fire a guy cuz he sucks (which of course, would leave them with about 3 announcers), but making up shit to fire a guy?

Joe Kapp was one fired for calling one of the Zendahas (sp) kickers a "chili chopper". That makes tons more sense than this.

Piniella said that expecting similar production from Marco Scutaro in the ALCS that the A's got from Scutaro in the ALDS would be "like finding a wallet on a Friday night and looking for one on Sunday and Monday, too."

So later, the announcers had moved to different subjects and that's when Piniella said something in Spanish, to which Brennaman called him "the bilingual Lou Piniella."

So Lyons says, "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", i.e. Lyons is implying that hispanic people are thieves. This is especially bad considering that it's a baseball broadcast, where a big chunk of the audience is latino. And given Lyons' past, well ... lates. Three strikes, you're out.

[nyjunc]

I thought Pinella was Italian. No joke.

I think his ancestry is from Portugal or Spain.

Obviously this was ridiculous to fire Lyons over this. If you are white you can't say anything that can be perceived as negative about a minority but the other way around you can say whatever you want.

[GiantsFanatic]

Ok guys im kind of confused, I never took spanish, but what the hell did he say? And what did it mean?