June 7, 2017

Remy Issues A Non-Apology Apology For Offensive Comments

UPDATE below.

NESN's Jerry Remy has not done the right thing and acknowledged that his comments last night about foreign-born players needing to "learn baseball language" and not rely on translators were wrong.

(Since no language called "baseball" actually exists, we can presume that Remy meant English.)

Remy issued the standard apology-that's-not-really-an-apology: "I'm sorry if anyone was offended blah blah blah ..."

This is disappointing. I had assumed that there was someone at NESN who would be smart enough to tell Remy how to properly word his apology.

UPDATE: NESN has also issued a statement:
Relative to last night's NESN telecast from New York, NESN does not agree with any such views expressed by Jerry Remy, and we know from talking to Jerry that he regrets making them. The network sincerely apologizes to anyone who was offended by Jerry's comments.
NESN knows that Remy regrets making the comments? Funny, he didn't say he regretted them in his tweeted apology. (I guess that admission was for NESN's ears only.)

4 comments:

mattymatty said...

That is a disappointing not-really-an-apology from Remy. However, when he said, "learn baseball language" I didn't take that as synonym for English but as finding a way to communicate about baseball, like learning specific words, or even players and coaches learning specific words in Japanese (as in the case of Tanaka). Maybe that's too generous but that's what I got out of hearing it live.

FenFan said...

What's worse is that Remy doesn't write his tweets; he has a PR staff that manages his web site who handles it for him. So not only has he still not made a proper apology, his staff has helped prolong this controversy.

mattymatty, I think too that Remy meant to say something else about these prolonged mound visits, but he tripped over his words and it came across wrong. He should at least acknowledge his faux pas.

hrstrat57 said...

baseball should get rid of the mound visit because the 30 s rule will never be enforced

more ridiculous time wasting.....

Anonymous said...

Yes, the real issue is that canned "apologize to those I offended" baloney. The people Remy really needs to address are the one who weren't offended, the people who casually carry around the sort of bigoted, xenophobic worldview that defines English as "baseball language." There's plenty of wasted time in these mound visits, and it's not limited to any single language.

Actually, I would like someone to develop some statistics on ERA and OPS after mound visits.