With this week’s news that Thom Brennaman has been claimed off the broadcasting waiver wire to call college football games for The CW, my inbox and my eardrums are rattling with questions as to how I feel about that.
Here’s how I feel about that: He never should have been fired in the first place.
We can all agree Brennaman made a thunderously inappropriate comment on the night of Aug. 19, 2020, which was when the then-television voice of the Cincinnati Reds was heard speaking words that included an anti-gay slur. This was followed by a pause, followed by, “Reds (are) live, the pregame show presented by …”
As Brennaman would quickly learn, the Reds were already live. What isn’t known is how that sentence began, or to whom he was speaking. What matters is that his homophobic slur was voiced into a hot mic; before the night was over he was telling viewers he’d be stepping away from the telecast and into an uncertain future. But not before offering an ill-advised and ham-handed apology that, wrapped around his call of a Nick Castellanos home run, has become as infamous as the words that got him into trouble in the first place.
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In this age of social media, lingering texts and the danger of being reduced to a stumblebum by making a salty comment that’s being recorded by the complete stranger who’s standing behind you, we’re all susceptible to speaking into hot mics. This isn’t to excuse, explain or otherwise examine what Brennaman said that night. It was bad all right, real bad, and Brennaman deserved to be condemned by people — whatever their sexual orientation. I happen to be gay, but I cite that here strictly as my own personal station identification, so to speak. Other than that, it doesn’t make much difference.
What’s at issue — or was, back in 2020 — is that Brennaman didn’t allow himself to have a frank and open public discussion about what he said and what he planned to do in terms of making amends. Instead, he attempted to clean things up while calling the game, after which he handed off the remaining innings to booth partner Jim Day and went home.
Brennaman did everything wrong in his apology, beginning with that old standby, “If I have hurt anyone out there …” rather than concede, right off, that he absolutely hurt a lot of people who just wanted to kick back and watch a ballgame. It’s worth noting this happened during MLB’s stitched-together COVID-19 season when the players were performing in front of empty houses. Don’t know about you, but that 2020 season provided a welcome diversion at a time when so much of our everyday lives was placed on hold.
Brennaman then put it out there that he’s “a man of faith,” which, as I wrote in 2020, had nothing to do with what he was trying to make right.
He also said, “I’m not that person.” Well, no, it was Thom Brennaman, television voice of the Cincinnati Reds, who made the insulting remark.
Quality sportscasters are known for their ability to think in the moment as they call the game action, whether it’s a tricky play, a controversial play, a record-breaking play or other events that require an instantly summoned knowledge of such intangibles as a manager’s strategy, the intricacies of the rulebook and a hundred-plus years of baseball history.
I’m unfamiliar with Brennaman’s broadcasting pipes or his talent for delivering a running tapestry of the game, but he’d been doing the Reds since 1989. He did network football. He wouldn’t have lasted that long if he couldn’t deliver the goods. It’s just that it’s different when you’re trying to explain a horrible utterance as your career is hanging by a thread.
So happy to see Thom Brennaman get a 2nd chance at his TV career four years after his really bad mistake.
He listened & learned a lot, and he contributed to the community in quiet yet powerful ways.
Congrats @ThomBrennamanTV and @TheCW. Great to see.https://t.co/Hi6pa6OlJw
— Cyd Zeigler (@CydZeigler) July 21, 2024
Ever seen that iconic 1939 photo of living members of baseball’s Hall of Fame? If there were a photo of the inaugural class of the Bad Apology Hall of Fame, Thom Brennaman would be seated front and center, as Babe Ruth is in the 1939 Cooperstown photo.
This is going to sound terribly pious, but we do an awful lot of yelling these days without doing much in the way of listening. Instead, we metaphorically toss people off bridges and then move on to the next person who said something stupid.
What we needed in 2020 was for Brennaman to wait a day, to collect himself, to talk with people, and then offer something more substantive than garden-variety damage control. And then it would have been incumbent on us, and this is the tricky part, to listen. That all came later, but it was too late.
GO DEEPER
Thom Brennaman returning to broadcasting with The CW
In reading colleague Andrew Marchand’s piece for The Athletic on Brennaman’s revival, what emerges is a soulful, reflective man who in recent years has spent more time with his family … as well as more time talking to people. “What has afforded him the second chance, though, is the work he has done reaching out to the gay community, both in Cincinnati and nationally,” Marchand wrote.
“It was mainly about listening to people,” Brennaman told Marchand.
There it is, right there. The listening.
It’s possible I travel in a forgiving crowd, but in 2020, practically all the people with whom I spoke on this topic, gay and straight, told me A. Brennaman really stepped in it that night, and B. he should have been given some time to save his job.
Now it’s 2024, and Brennaman is finally getting a fresh start with The CW. According to Marchand, his first game is an Aug. 31 Oregon State-Idaho State matchup but most of his workload will be in the ACC.
Let’s watch. Let’s listen to Tom Brennaman. And to each other.
(Photo: Joe Robbins / Getty Images)
