The headline reads: "Fox Fires Lyons for Insensitive Comment." The article, however, doesn't give any evidence that broadcaster Steve Lyons made any offensive comment. Perhaps the rest of us are just too "insensitive" for not sensing Lyons's "insensitivity."

Confession: I have always been a fan of Steve Lyons, even when he got caught stealing third with Wade Boggs at the plate to end a Red Sox game in 1986. Lyons brought excitement to a too-often boring game. "Psycho" Steve played with emotion and not rationality. Ocassionally, as in his reckless attempt to steal a base with two outs in the ninth when he was already in scoring position with the game's best hitter at the plate, this led to disastrous results. Always it made things interesting for the fans, such as the time in Detroit when Lyons, then on the White Sox, dropped his pants to shake out the dirt after sliding into first. What was Psycho Steve going to do next? Given a situation, no textbook could provide an answer because Steve Lyons didn't play by the book. He was his own guide and compass. Lyons, one could say, was a premature "idiot"--the nickname for Kevin Millar, Johnny Damon, and other hang-loose players on the Red Sox 2004 championship team. Only Lyons was not an "idiot," but a "psycho."

After Lyons's base-stealing failure resulted in an immediate trade to the White Sox, he returned to the Boston Red Sox for two more stints. As a vendor in the park, I welcomed seeing Lyons in Fenway again. He didn't disappoint. Lyons, in contrast to some other Sox players of the early 1990s, had an approachable nature that fans liked. While awaiting the pre-game start time for selling hot dogs, I once watched Lyons play catch with a fan in the upper-deck above Pesky's Pole. Fans yelled for Lyons to give them a ball, and he responded that he would, only if they gave it back. He threw a gloved fan a perfect strike from forty feet below and 150 feet away. The fan was game. He threw the ball back. They continued to play catch. What other major leaguer does that? It was surreal.

Baseball enshrines its great players in Cooperstown. What of the game's characters? The Billy Martins, Jim Boutons, and Bob Ueckers don't get a Hall of Fame. Maybe they don't need one. Fans will forget Bill Clem and Don Sutton. Who will forget Steve Lyons? Lyons was a mediocre utilityman. But he had an all-star personality. Lyons, unlike Reggie Jackson, Mickey Mantle, and Pete Rose, couldn't combine the colorful personna with on-field greatness. But neither could Robin Yount or Gary Carter combine the two. Being a baseball character and a baseball Hall of Famer are often mutually exclusive. The baseball gods bequeathed the attributes of a cartoon character upon Steve Lyons, rather than the attributes of a Gold Glover or a homerun king.

If Lyons' antics anticipated the happy-go-lucky attitude of the 2004 Red Sox, those antics followed in the long tradition of colorful ball players who plied their trade for the Red Sox: Babe Ruth, Jimmy Piersall, the "Spaceman" Bill Lee, "Oil Can" Boyd. It is the excitement he brought to the field, and perhaps more so the interest he brought to the post-game interview sessions, that would later make Lyons such an attractive choice to provide analysis in the studio and the announcer's booth. But Lyons proved too unpredictable for Fox Sports's executives, just as he proved too unpredictable to Red Sox management. Why couldn't they just trade him to ESPN as the Red Sox traded him to the White Sox? Alas, network executives want their on-air talent just as general managers want their on-field talent: boring and predictable. Steve Lyons is neither, but baseball, unfortunately, is judged as both by a viewing audience that increasingly prefers football, basketball, and as this week's ratings of the coveted 18-34 year-old male demographic show--gasp--cage fighting.

It is an unfortunate irony that in a world that nudges us to tolerate all sorts of intolerable behavior, idiosyncratic individuals such as Steve Lyons find toleration lacking. Boo.

Were there a Hall of Fame for baseball characters, owner Bill Veeck would have to be part of the first class. My father tells a story of Veeck sending a midget out to bat against the Tigers in the 50s. Now that's comedy.

Multiculturalism, like Marxism is based on lies, and so it can only exist by sliencing dissetners, regardless of whether they even realize they are desenting.

I recently read an article that said that we are like Russia under Kruschez, no one really believes the partyline, but they never dare question it in public.

In other news, a 14 year old girl in England was arrested for requesting that she be moved to a group for a science project that spoke English.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23370623-details/Schoolgirl+arrested+for+refusing+to+study+with+non-English+pupils/article.do

Interesting news item Marcus. Is this really the way it should be in a free democratic society? Thought this stuff only was supposed to happen in Marxist Totalitarian states!?

Obviously happening here as well.

Dan, I've searched every news article I can find for evidence of any remark Lyons made deserving of termination, but I'm coming up goose eggs! Should I read anything into the fact that FOX immediately replaced Steve with a broadcaster of Hispanic heritage?

Lyons' comments were so weak as not to be racist, that Fox execs had little basis to justify firing him and typically didn't repeat the comments. He'll get other work, but now his reputation has been impugned and he will forever be prejudiced as making disparaging remarks about Hispanics.

Reason as follows….

The comments came in the second inning when Piniella spoke about A's shortstop Marco Scutaro's success at the plate in the playoffs. Piniella went into an @n@lysis of how Frank Thomas and Eric Chavez needed to be more productive and compared Scutaro's production to finding a ``wallet on Friday" and hoping it would happen again the next week.
Piniella said the A's needed Thomas to get ``en fuego" -- ``hot" in Spanish -- because he was currently ``frio" (``cold"). After Brennaman praised Piniella for being bilingual, Lyons chimed in that Piniella was ``hablaing Espanol" and added, ``I still can't find my wallet."

?????????????????????

I read that article too and could not find one offensive thing in it.

Weird story.

Again, the comment made by Lyons was innocent and weak and certainly didn't justify a canning. If you ask me, the execs at Fox are just stupid and didn't even take the time to understand what Lyons was saying.

In the context of Scutaro's production, I would say that the reference Piniella made was that Scutaro was inconsistent ("finding a wallet on Friday and hoping it would happen again the next week"). Lyons was being self depracating at most and by saying "I still can't find my wallet", it would seem clear that he was saying he (Lyons) was still inconsistent.

Outside of his non-offensive reference to Piniella's bilingualism, what crime was committed?

So sick of people being hyper sensitive and worried about liability or being politically corrct when there is no need to.

The account I first read retold the story in such a way that it was not clear when Piniella had made the wallet comment, that is, the Lyons comment seemed to not come in that immediate context. Then the article quoted his "hablaing espanol" remark and pointed out that Lyons had "butchered" the Spanish by saying "hablaing." Then he said that he didn't want to sit next to Lou anymore (apparently b/c he had been speaking Spanish) and finally that he said he "still couldn't find his wallet" which (as near as I can figure) was supposed to be taken as suggesting that Lou's speaking Spanish frightened him b/c he couldn't find his wallet, the one that Lou referred to as "found" and that Lou had likely stolen his wallet.

The article's telling of the incident was really unclear but that is the best reconstruction I can give of what he "supposedly" did which was offensive. Basically he suggested that someone who speaks Spanish is likely to steal your wallet so he didn't want to be around Lou. Kind of like how Puerto Ricans steal your hub caps.

I have no idea if he actually was saying anything of the sort and even if he was it isn't a big deal, just a lame attempt at humor.

My experience has been that anytime something requires this much @n@lysis and interpretation to make a point, that point will be skewed at best. Meanings can usually be construed any way one would like them to be to serve their purpose. In this case, Fox was just covering their pansy a$$e$ by extracting the worst out of Lyons' comments. This is where the multicultural diversity crowd gets stupid and the powers that be play along in support of political correctness run amok.