I missed this yesterday -- which was apparently written before baseball suspended Roger McDowell for two weeks -- but Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle reports on Roger McDowell’s behavior in San Francisco last week from another perspective: that of the fan who didn’t hire Gloria Allred to reenact McDowell’s behavior at a press conference. The upshot: the accusations are corroborated and, in my view, hit a lot harder without the lights and TV cameras of that Allred presser.
Also in my view: McDowell’s biggest transgression, at least as far as baseball is concerned, was not the homophobic language or innuendo for its own sake. Rather, it was the fact that he was hostile to baseball fans. Take away the salacious aspects of what he said and change it all to him merely calling them jerks or something more culturally benign, and we’re still left with a situation in which a uniformed representative of the game is confronting Major League Baseball’s paying customers in a hostile manner. That’s just unacceptable. If I ran the Braves, I would strongly consider firing him for the same reasons that any business owner would fire an employee who engaged in unprompted hostilities with customers.
As it stands, McDowell should consider himself very lucky that he got off with a mere two week suspension.
