ESPN nixes Colin Cowherd’s show after comments about Dominican MLB players
ESPN would rather end its relationship with Colin Cowherd a week early than fight with Major League Baseball, so the network announced Friday afternoon that Cowherd’s show would no longer appear on ESPN Radio.
If you’ve missed the drama the past two days: Cowherd said Thursday on his show that baseball isn’t “too complex,” then cited the abundance of Dominican Republic-born players in MLB as evidence. He essentially said, if a bunch of Dominicans can play, how complex can it be? As you can imagine, insinuating an entire country is dumb, didn’t go over well.
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Jose Bautista, one of baseball’s biggest stars from the Dominican Republic called out Cowherd on Thursday afternoon. Cowherd tried to clarify his comments on Friday’s show, but didn’t actually apologize and instead just attempted a do-over, re-explaining why he was right. A couple hours later, MLB condemned Cowherd and the players’ union sent a tersely-worded statement about Cowherd’s “ignorance.” By the end of the day, ESPN announced:
ESPN decided there was no reason to stand in Cowherd’s corner, since he recently said that he is leaving the network. It hasn’t been formally announced yet, but it’s been widely reported that Cowherd is joining Fox Sports. His last day on the air at ESPN was supposed to be July 31, so really, this amounts to a week’s suspension as opposed to a “firing.”
Cowherd did finally apologize via Twitter after ESPN announced its decision:
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The bigger question now is what Fox does about the baggage it is inheriting with Cowherd. Fox, of course, is the biggest rightsholder in MLB, broadcasting weekly games, as well as the All-Star game and World Series.
While there’s no expectation that Fox was going to stick Cowherd in the broadcast booth alongside Joe Buck this October, it will make for a stickier transition than Fox initially expected, especially considering the disgust with which both MLB and the players’ union have responded.
Here is MLB’s previous statement on the matter.
Major League Baseball condemns the remarks made by Colin Cowherd, which were inappropriate, offensive and completely inconsistent with the values of our game. Mr. Cowherd owes our players of Dominican origin, and Dominican people generally, an apology.
And this is the players’ union statement, from chief Tony Clark:
“As a veteran of fifteen MLB seasons, I can assure you that our sport is infinitely more complex than some in the media would have you believe. To suggest otherwise is ignorant, and to make an ignorant point by denigrating the intelligence of our Dominican members was not “clunky” — it was offensive.
“These recent comments are particularly disappointing when viewed against the backdrop of the important work being done to celebrate and improve the cultural diversity of our game. Baseball’s partners and stakeholders should help such efforts, not undermine them.”
Cowherd obviously has bridges to mend. At least he has a week’s worth of free time to get started on that.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
