What Did Jerry Remy Mean By His 'Baseball Language' Comments?
BOSTON (CBS) -- NESN Red Sox color analyst Jerry made a comment during Tuesday night's Red Sox broadcast when a translator visited Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka on the mound with pitching coach Larry Rothschild. 98.5 The Sports Hub's Toucher & Rich offered their reactions to the comments on Wednesday morning.
Remy said that translators visiting the mound should be illegal, and presumably that pitchers should "learn baseball language." Many national media outlets and fans on Twitter took issue with the comments, assuming that Remy had a problem with players who don't speak English.
Fred Toucher disagreed, saying that Remy was speaking about mound visits in general and didn't mean anything racist or xenophobic by the remarks. The commentator and former Red Sox infielder has said before that mound visits unnecessarily take up valuable time on broadcasts.
"His feeling is you shouldn't be going out to the mound anyway," said Toucher. "Perhaps his reasoning is - and I'm inferring this - is that you shouldn't be out there anyway and if you're bringing out a translator it just adds to it. ... His belief is, nothing productive comes from mound meetings."
Rich Shertenlieb didn't necessarily disagree with Toucher's opinion, but simply believed that Remy, at best, did a poor job explaining himself in the moment.
"I wouldn't put it past [Remy] that what he really wanted to say was what you were saying," said Shertenlieb. "I think that sometimes ... you don't explain yourself well. All I'm saying is that last night, when he was given a chance to explain it, he did about the worst job possible - if that's what he meant.
"It was just a really odd moment."
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