ESPN Has Spoken: Harold Reynolds, Michael Irvin and Just What Constitutes a Firing?

In the strange world of cable TV, sometimes even the most popular personalities just “disappear”. Thus was the case recently when ESPN quietly and unceremoniously fired baseball analyst Harold Reynolds. By all accounts, Reynolds was one of ESPN’s most popular voices on the daily program “Baseball Tonight”. Reynolds had been with the network for over a decade and before that he’d been an all star Major Leaguer for the Seattle Mariners.

So this brings me to my next point, what the hell is wrong with ESPN? I’m not saying that Harold Reynolds didn’t do something that justified his termination, he most certainly might have. But when reached for comment, the ESPN brass could only muster the lackluster “he is no longer with network” response without a shred of reasoning. Not long after, it came out that the cause of Reynolds’ departure happened to be the development, or threat of, a sexual harassment suit, accusations that Reynolds himself has since confirmed. He has been quoted as saying that it has all been “a total misunderstanding” and that “[he] gave a woman a hug and felt like it was misinterpreted.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to prove who’s right or who’s wrong. I have no idea what happened. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Reynolds misinterpreted his hardened penis as an innocent hug. And who’s to say that this anonymous “woman” wasn’t asking for whatever it is she got. As a rule, I find sexual harassment cases hilarious, from the perspective of the perpetrator as well as the victim. I think the phenomena of sexual harassment cases in this country say a great deal about our inability to communicate with one another on a whole, but that right there’s another article.

Basically, my beef with ESPN stems from a scenario involving idiotic loudmouth Michael Irvin and, by comparison, their treatment of Mr. Reynolds. In case you don’t remember, in the middle of the football season last year, a Michael Irvin crack smoking scandal surfaced. I guess it wasn’t really a scandal. Irving was pulled over and the cops found a crack pipe in his center console. ESPN responded by suspending him for one day. They then allowed him to return the following week to explain himself before he settled back into his job like nothing had happened. I could go on and on about the ridiculousness of what transpired here but I’m not going to.

The bottom line is that ESPN allowed a known crack-head to keep his job while firing a perfectly respectable analyst just because he liked to rub up on the bitches. In other words, I have no idea what warrants a firing in the world of on-air sports personalities. Apparently, rock smoking = no big deal, while office romance = grounds for termination. That’s silly, if you ask me.