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It’s surprising to learn that the alleged major league baseball team known as the Oakland Athletics, who are not long for this world and currently have the fewest wins and smallest number of people watching the games of any team, still have broadcasters at all. Does anyone on the Left Coast actually tune in, pop open a Bud Light and watch their games? Someone must, or maybe the A’s keep broadcasters employed for nostalgic reasons, but one of them may be out of a job soon, anyway: longtime A’s announcer Glen Kuiper appeared to utter the racial slur of all racial slurs on the air Friday night, and so he might not be employed long enough to pack up and move to Las Vegas with the team.
Kuiper and his broadcast partner, former A’s pitcher Dallas Braden (who once pitched a perfect game back in the misty past, when the Oakland Athletics actually fielded a major league-caliber baseball team) were in Kansas City for the Athletics’ Friday night game against the Royals. Kuiper happily told the A’s fan who was watching (okay, maybe there was more than one, maybe even as many as five) that he and Braden “had a phenomenal day today: Negro League Museum and Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque.” Except he didn’t quite say “Negro.”
WARNING: Here’s the word (in case you’re reading this article in a public place).
What Kuiper actually said sounded more like that strange word that only rappers and people whom it is supposed to be a terrible slur against can utter without fear of being fired, canceled, denounced, shunned, and even physically menaced. Braden, however, didn’t bat an eye, and neither did Kuiper himself. It’s clear that Kuiper unintentionally slurred the word slightly, and had no intention of going all Lyndon Johnson, or even Snoop Dogg, on us.
Who knows? Maybe Kuiper had a beer or two, albeit likely not a Bud Light, to wash down that Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque and steel himself to announce yet another A’s game, and so his tongue wasn’t quite as nimble as it was in the not-too-distant past when he could look forward to describing the exploits of actual major leaguers, and not just the ones on the opposing team. Whether he did or not, he clearly didn’t mean to utter the Forbidden Word Above All Forbidden Words.
By the sixth inning of the game against the Royals, however, Kuiper had found out about the controversy, and so he said: “A little bit earlier in the show, I said something, didn’t come out quite the way I wanted it to and I just wanted to apologize if it sounded different than I meant it to be said. I just wanted to apologize for that.”
There is more. Read the rest here.