1/4 of the Way There

posted by BH

Steve Lyons was fired by FOX following game 3 of the ALCS.

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.

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 quote went something like: "He probably did it more for the heritage and not the religion. He's 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," which isn't funny. I mean because it's stupid, not because it's insensitive.

Earlier in the playoffs, while working the Mets-Dodgers NLDS, Lyons unwittingly made fun of a nearly blind fan who was wearing special glasses to see the game.

"He's got a digital camera stuck to his face," Lyons said.

Seriously? They couldn't have fired him like five days in to his contract for knowing jack shit about baseball? The guy that always talked about Robb Nen's devastating splitter (even though Nen never threw a splitter)? Every time I heard this douchebag, I was amazed at how little actual baseball knowledge this guy had. The thing is, FOX tried to sell Lyons like he was a funny guy, but he was only funny in the way a 13 year-old would be to his friends. Well...whatever. I can't watch the playoffs because the the jumblefuck that is Brennemanellabuckarver (formerly Brennelyonellabuckcarver) anyway. To hear Brenneman and Lyons tell it during game 1 of the ALCS, the A's were the worst team to ever reach that point in the playoffs. They spent a good deal of time tearing the A's apart for attempting few stolen bases during the regular season, yet chalked up not running against Ivan Rodriguez to respect. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. By the 5th inning, Pinella sounds like he's two Lunesta's and three shots in, but at least he'll be done with this at the end of the year. On the other side, Joe Buck sounds like he's trying to talk with his chin touching his collar-bone, and Tim McCarver treats a postseason baseball game like it's a Mensa for retards word-play fest. Jesus, why isn't FOX interested in producing a baseball game as though baseball fans wanted to watch? We've only got three more to get rid of before true baseball fandom will rule the Earth.