Fox Fires Lyons for Comment

By JANIE McCAULEY, AP Sports Writer

Saturday, October 14, 2006

(10-14) 13:09 PDT 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.

___

AP Baseball Writer Ben Walker contributed to this story.

That's a bit drastic.

haha, I hated that guy's laugh anyway. what a dumbfuck.

Why couldn't it have been McCarver?

Doesn't Fox usually promote these guys?

I don't get it. That's funny, not racially insensitive.

don't get me started on that mo-ron.

Awww, but who else who's never managed a team is going to tell what pitch selection that pitch eight pitches ago should have been?

Ha...I was listening to the game when that happened. Everyone in the booth guffawed and laughed along. And at home, where I was watching the game with my friends, we all were "wait, did that just happen?"

I think it's a bit srastic to fire him...i was watching the game when it happened and it seemed like he was joking about Piniella stealing his wallet because he mentioned finding a wallet and not because of his heritage.

That being said....i like the mota guy in tonights game.

The FOX gaurding the hen house? Could be measured action for political correctness.

The silver lining is his replacement Jose Mota is a really good color guy. He does the Español broadcasts of Angel games. The rare times they throw him in the booth for the entire English broadcasts instead of just pre/post game, it's a real treat since he's so much better than Rex Hudler. I'd love for them to fire Hudler & find a Español replacement for Mota.

Speaking of Fox & thier lack of credibility did anyone see Terry Bradshaw call the Dallas v Houston game "boring" during the Philly v NO halftime? Is the game boring because it was 6-3 or because it was 6-3 & on CBS? I have a feeling a 6-3 game on Fox would not be given that same label.

Really.

I also believe that firing Lyons was way drastic.

i had no idea that pinella was hispanic. i always thought that he was italian, even when he was managing the reds.