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.
AP Baseball Writer Ben Walker contributed to this story.


Josh Milner
joshuamilner@...

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]