Larry Brown Sports

The folks at Baseball Tonight made good use of their time this week and had new employee Terry Francona film an interview with Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia. The best part was Arencibia conducted the interview as if he were ESPN baseball writer Tim Kurkjian. Arencibia got the lingo, pitch, voice, and delivery down perfectly, to the point Francona couldn’t continue because he was laughing so hard. This is easily one of the best impressions we’ve seen and it would probably make Frank Caliendo jealous. Excellent work all around, and it’s nice that Kurkjian was a good sport about it.

video via Buster Olney, also seen at The Daily Rival

Anthony Federico, the former ESPN editor fired for writing an offensive headline about Jeremy Lin and the Knicks, apologized for his headline on Monday, claiming it was an honest mistake. He took matters even further, issuing a heartfelt statement via Twitter Wednesday where he touted his character.

I wrote the headline in reference to the tone of the column and not to Jeremy Lin’s race. It was a lapse in judgment and not a racist pun. It was an awful editorial omission and it cost me my job.

I owe an apology to Jeremy Lin and all people offended. I am truly sorry.

Actions speak louder than words. My words may have hurt people in that moment but my actions have always helped people. If those who vilify me would take a deeper look at my life they would see that I am the exact opposite of how some are portraying me.

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ESPN hasn’t explained why they removed Ron Jaworski from the Monday Night Football booth. The New York Daily News speculated that they may be trying to make room for Peyton Manning, who is rehabbing a neck injury and trying to continue his football career. Jaws thinks ESPN may have just wanted to downsize and he became the odd man out.

“What I’m going to tell you is pure speculation, based on what I’ve heard … from the leaders and captains of industry at ESPN. They just feel that a two-man booth was the way to go. Obviously, I’m the odd man out. I’m the 60-year-old guy and Jon’s the young guy that they believe is the future. I’m not going to argue with that,” Jaws told 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia.

Jaws isn’t saying anything bad about his employer because they’re still giving him plenty of broadcasting opportunities and paying him lots of money. Still, I’m not sure if I buy his reasoning. While it’s true many networks utilize a two-man booth for football games, Monday Night Football has been a three-person booth for a good portion of its history. I don’t think they cut out Jaws to simplify, I think there’s something else coming in the next year or so.

The fired ESPN editor who wrote an offensive headline about Jeremy Lin that appeared on the company’s mobile website late Friday/early Saturday has apologized and claims there was no racial intent.

“This had nothing to do with me being cute or punny,” Anthony Federico told the New York Daily News.

“I’m so sorry that I offended people. I’m so sorry if I offended Jeremy.”

Federico tells the paper he’s used that headline many times before and he didn’t think anything of it.

“My faith is my life,” he said. “I’d love to tell Jeremy what happened and explain that this was an honest mistake.”

It’s nice that Federico apologized and somewhat comforting that he says he made an honest mistake. I wouldn’t expect otherwise; would anyone who hopes to land another job admit to being a racist? Of course not.

I still believe ESPN did the right thing by firing him and don’t feel badly he lost his job. Whether it was an honest mistake or not, you can’t have someone in such an important position acting that carelessly.

H/T Deadspin

ESPN announced Sunday that they fired the employee responsible for the offensive Jeremy Lin headline that appeared on their mobile website after Friday’s game. They also announced that TV anchor Max Bretos was suspended 30 days for using the same phrase during an on-air interview.

ESPN has acted swiftly two days in a row in response to the controversy. They apologized early Saturday morning, hours after the headline appeared on their site. A day later they fired one employee and suspended the other.

The firing was the right way to handle things. At worst, the headline was intentionally racist. At best, the employee had no idea about the word’s offensive meaning. Either way, you can’t have someone who doesn’t know better writing headlines for your company.

In a press release on Wednesday, ESPN announced that Ron Jaworski has signed a five-year extension with the company for a “new, expanded multiplatform NFL analyst role” that will include various appearance on their NFL programs. What it will not include is sitting in the announcers booth during the 2012 season.

As Pro Football Talk pointed out, the folks at ESPN did their best to try to overshadow the fact that Jaws has been removed from the Monday Night Football broadcast. They said Jaworski will have a greater “year-round presence” on ESPN and mentioned that Monday Night Football will feature a “new two-person commentator team” of Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden. In other words, Jaws was given the boot.

As for whether or not last year’s S-bomb had anything to do with the move, I doubt it. From a personal standpoint, this is somewhat disappointing. Of the three that used to call games on Monday Night Football, Jaws is the best at talking football. Gruden obviously knows the game, but how many more “this guys” and “that guys” are we going to hear now that he only has one other person to compete with for air time? This could get painful.

The person claiming to have hacked Dana White’s personal information and the UFC’s website supposedly is a 13-year-old boy from Australia.

Softpedia interviewed the person who goes by the online alias S3erver.exe. The hacker is part of the Anonymous hacking group and says he began hacking when he was 11. He says he is self-taught and that he has learned many tricks by reading information online.

Though it appears as if his actions are nefarious, he sees it another way, saying “I like helping out people who are in trouble.”

He says apart from the hacking, he does pretty typical kid activities like skating, surfing, scooting, and building things. Though he hacks sites now, he is planning to take an ethical hacking class and potentially work as an ethical hacker in the future.

It’s hard to know whether this is the person who hacked the UFC site and Dana White (@JoshtheGod was taking credit for the hacks), but it’s certainly interesting to learn about the people who claim to be responsible for the acts. And if this is true, it’s sad to think that at 13 I was trying to figure out how to use hair gel while this kid was taking down major corporations.

H/T Cage Potato

Tony Grossi used to be the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Browns beat writer. Cleve Scene says Grossi was pulled from the job because of a spiteful tweet directed at team owner Randy Lerner. Here’s what he wrote about Lerner last week:

Some people figure that message was intended to be private but it ended up shared on his Twitter feed. Apparently the paper didn’t like how the tweet showed a negative bias towards the team’s owner and he apparently lost his beat because of it. Grossi did reach out to Lerner to apologize but it looks like it didn’t matter.

Good thing columnists and radio hosts don’t lose their jobs for hatred towards team owners — there wouldn’t be any left.

H/T Sports by Brooks Live, Cleveland Frowns

I’m sure you haven’t thought about Sean Salisbury for years. You probably had no idea what he’s been up to. I’m right there with you. Well you’ll probably be pleased to learn that he’s right back where he was a few years ago: getting fired from a football analyst job.

Salisbury was “relieved from his duties” as an analyst on Lingerie Football League games with three weeks left in the regular season. The reason will come as no shock.

“Our expectations were not met in terms of broadcast protocol and we were not pleased with the overall lack of respect toward our producers, which primarily drove the decision,” league commissioner Mitchell Mortaza said.

Oh Sean, I wouldn’t expect anything less of you. The good news for Sals is that the reason could have been much worse.

Colts owner Jim Irsay fired off a few tweets Sunday to dispute the reporting of ESPN’s Adam Schefter, but Schefter made him look foolish.

Irsay was irked with Schefter’s report that Patriots director of player personnel, Nick Caserio, turned down overtures from the Colts to remain with New England. Irsay fired both Bill and Chris Polian and has a vacancy to fill.

“Adam S, not true about “first candidate we wanted to hire..” There is not any candidate we “wanted to hire” I haven’t interviewed … That’s the way people get false promo about being so coveted just because they don’t interview somewhere;SHELL GAME..leave us out of that BS … Adam, don’t say I wanted to hire someone I never talked to or met..MISLEADING..come on,your better than that..get your head in the game, son!”

Those were three tweets sent by Irsay, edited for clarity. It sounds like he’s making Schefter look bad, until you read Adam’s response.

“Excuse me Jim Irsay,” he wrote, “NFL told me your general counsel Daniel Emerson emailed request for Nick Cesario on Tues before he opted to stay in NE.”

Burned. See, the thing you need to note is that Irsay says he never interviewed or met Caserio. That doesn’t mean he didn’t reach out to Caserio about an interview. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have interest in hiring him. I’ll trust Schefter’s reporting more than Irsay’s angry words. And that’s what this really comes down to. It’s not that what Schefter reports is inaccurate; it’s that people are upset when insiders report information people want to keep private. That’s what’s going on here, in my opinion.

Thanks to Sports by Brooks for the heads up.