Minnesota Twins announcer Dan Gladden is not quite in midseason form just yet.
The Twins played their Spring Training opener against the Boston Red Sox on Saturday at Hammond Complex in Lee County, Fla. Gladden was on the call for the contest … but ended up fighting for his life while attempting to read off the Red Sox lineup before the game.
In particular, Gladden got tripped up by the name of Boston outfielder Wilyer Abreu. He somehow ended up calling him, “Wilyer Wyloo” initially before eventually correcting himself to “Wilyer AY-bre-u” (with the accent on the wrong syllable).
Here is the embarrassing video.
This attempt to pronounce Wilyer Abreu deserves jail time pic.twitter.com/a3ndL8Wl3U
— Isaac (@iTalkStudiosYT) February 21, 2026
Abreu, a three-year MLB veteran as well as a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, seemingly has a pretty straightforward name to pronounce. But apparently Gladden had never encountered it before, which is an oddity considering that multiple former MLB All-Stars such as Bobby Abreu and Jose Abreu also have the same surname.
Gladden, 68, was a two-time World Series champion outfielder for the Twins and has served as a broadcaster for the team for over two-and-a-half decades now. Fortunately for Gladden though, Saturday’s pronunciation debacle was far from the worst thing that has happened to him on the air before.
