October 17, 2006 6:13 AM

Another DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener

FOX fires broadcaster Lyons for racially insensitive remark

DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener #458: Steve Lyons

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 Angels announcer Jose Mota.

I’ve always liked Steve Lyons as a baseball color man. He’s, to say the least, rather uncoventional, but he knows his stuff, and his passion for the game he played professionally is always evident. There’s a reason he’s been known for years as “Psycho”, however, and after 10 years at FOX, it appears his mouth has finally gotten the best of him. (Engage brain prior to putting mouth into gear….)

Given the current PC requirements for any public figure, and especially for one involved in an industry that deals with so many nationalities and cultures, it wasn’t exactly inappropriate for FOX to expect Lyons to know where the boundaries are. Sadly for Lyons, it appears that he just failed to keep in mind that when you crack wise about anything that can even be tangentially interpreted as race-related, it just isn’t funny. And it’s not as if this is Lyons’ first go-round when it comes to racially-insensitive comments.

I’m not certain that the remarks that led to Lyons’ firing rose to the level of a firable offense. Still, the man’s a professional, and he’s been with FOX for 10 years. If he doesn’t understand the rules of the game by now, then there’s certainly nothing to indicate that he ever will.

Did FOX overreact? Perhaps; but if Lyons’ had just kept his thoughts to himself and concentrated on analyzing the game unfolding in front of him, he’d still have a job. I guess part of being a DUMB@$$ is being far too enamored of your own humor and understated brilliance.

Steve Lyons will no doubt be rehabilitated, and he’ll resurface somewhere else. Hopefully, he’ll have learned something from this experience and be suitably chastened. As a DUMB@$$, though, there are no guarantees that he won’t find himself in a similar position a year or two down the road. Stay tuned….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on October 17, 2006 6:13 AM.

The higher your self-made pedestal, the harder your fall was the previous entry in this blog.

The "Cocktober Surprise" claims another innocent victim, #5 is the next entry in this blog.

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