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Here’s An Indians Announcer Being Kind Of Racist


Shin-Soo Choo is a very good baseball player for the Cleveland Indians. He is the only active MLB-er that was born in South Korea. Sushi is typically classified as a Japanese food, although a very similar dish (named Gimbap), is a part of Korean culture.

If you are Rick Manning, Indians color commentator for over a decade, you likely know of Choo’s and sushi’s shared Asian origins. Yet for some reason, this combination of factoids in your brain led you to posit that, when a player of Asian descent hits a double instead of a home run, it’s due to the dearth of essential Omega-3 fatty acids residing in his talented body.

Is it racism if it doesn’t even make sense?

What is Rick Manning even trying to say here? As Awful Announcing asks, is sushi some sort of performance-enhancing food? Should I be eating more sushi? Will players start popping up with positive tests and being suspended?

At least if you’re going to make an odd, racist comment, have it make sense. Rick, maybe you wouldn’t have said something so dumb if you had eaten another piece of Canadian Bacon earlier.

I will add, though, that it’s unsurprising that a team with a mascot named Chief Wahoo to be involved in some racism, botched or not.

[Awful Announcing]



  • http://twitter.com/Kates254 Kates254

    As I said on Awful Announcing, it was an interesting range of emotions listening to my commentator yesterday. After going to an Indians game at Yankee Stadium about a month ago and hearing some of the most disturbing racist things against Choo from the Yankee fans around me, my jaw dropped when I heard the sushi line. But as others have pointed out, they did go on to say that the players had all gone out to sushi beforehand, which if true would just make this an unfortunate case of foot-in-mouth disease. If you’re going to report on this and condemn Manning, you should at least play the full sound clip and perhaps even check with a team rep to see whether or not the team did in fact go out to sushi before the game. 

  • Ryan5268

    I don’t think this was intended to be a racist remark, as Rick has been fully supportive of Choo. I totally agree with Kate’s opinion on this.

  • http://www.facebook.com/matt.w.nolan Matt Nolan

    The author of this article is a moron. Overly sensitive moron.

  • Anonymous

    Its only racists when ” funny” comments are directed toward Caucasians and African Americans.

  • Doreen Beisel

    Have to get your pink panties in a knot over something

  • smarthead

    Geez, the Cleveland Indians were named for one of their players out of respect for him being a Native American.

    Me think the original poster is too progressive for his own good– progressive– hate jews, love socialism like the leader of Germany in the 1930′s.

    Progressives are intolerant bigoted racists against whites and shout whenever anyone dares step on any member of their favorite minitory group’s shadow.

    Like Trevon, the gangbanger in Miami with criminal tools in his school locker.  Lets erect a statute of him.  How many 17 year old black kids are missing the title college game by walking around in the dark in the rain?

  • Sakim9

    ignorant wasps- come to asia switch places and see what you think

  • Tetsuya Matsumoto

    Not racist–just culturally unintelligent like most Americans. To be fair, most Asians think Americans are fat slobs who only eat cheeseburgers so this doesn’t bother me as an Asian man.


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