RIP Brenneman's Career.

[CJD]

This is a pretty accurate summary of my feelings on it:
https://www.redreporter.com/2020/8/20/21377123/thom-brennaman-suspended-reds-baseball-firethombrennaman

Quote:All that’s to say that I feel like I know Thom Brennaman pretty well. I obviously don’t know his heart of hearts, but you can learn quite a lot about somebody’s heart of hearts by watching how they present themselves. And over the years Thom has proven to be generally skeptical of intelligence, suffocatingly pompous, and an insufferable nag. It seems like he believes he has earnestly reflected on himself and his life and has concluded that it is his determination, hard work, and talent that have earned him his many legitimately impressive successes. He believes he is a man in good standing with his community, and he likely sees himself as a leader. He is a man of faith, after all. Those were the words he chose to describe himself in opening his bizarre on-air apology.


This is not a picture of an honest Christian man apologizing for a grievous injury caused, it is of a frightened failson who knows he has disappointed his father beyond redemption by breaking the #1 family rule: never get caught.

Listening to his apology, you can tell his anxiety is genuine. He sure is worried he may never wear the headset again. He apologizes to his bosses, the people who sign his paycheck, and “anyone (he) may have offended.” You know a good way to tell if an apology is genuine or not? On what is the apology focused? Thom’s apology is all about him. How sorry he is, how good of a person he is, how he hopes he has some friends out there who will back him up. And IF anybody out there is offended, well, yeah, he’s sorry to you, too.

He needs you to understand: that is not who he is. It never has been.

Knowing Thom as well as I do, I know that isn’t true.

And knowing genuine people of faith (I can’t claim honestly to be one myself), I know how bitter and cynical it is of him to use it as a shield. Christianity is a faith dedicated to the tenets of peace, kindness, mercy, and care. It is not for you protect yourself from the consequences of your actions.

And listening to the offending comment, you can feel the acidic curl in his lip when he says the word. This is a man well-practiced with the word. You can tell from the ease with which he says it that he has said it numerous times and likely with some regularity. He clearly enjoys saying it. It is, indeed, exactly the kind of man he is.

And so it is likely now that Thom Brennaman has called his last baseball game. And knowing him as I do, I’m filled with the giddy hum of a bright new summer morning. You see, I’ve spent 15 years sharing baseball with this man. His one job, the one job he has ever trained for, the job he was given because it is the job his father had, was to talk to me about Reds baseball. And just my luck there weren’t a whole lot of alternatives for me. He has always been bad at his job and he has never deserved any of the professional blessings he has so abundantly received.

He made one of my favorite things in the world less enjoyable. And in a perfectly just world, THAT is why he should have been dragged out of the booth mid-game a long, long time ago.

But I’m not bitter about that. The poetic justice of Thom Brennaman getting cancelled for dropping a slur on a hot mic is the sweetest of metes.

F*** you, Thom. I hope to neither see you or hear from you again.