VIDEO: Pirates announcer Greg Brown calls this double play "two more scoops of vanilla"
During tonight's Pirates-Rockies game, Michael Cuddyer of the Rockies grounds into a double play, going from Clint Barmes to Neil Walker to Casey McGehee. After the DP is turned, Pirates announcer Greg Brown shouts "two more scoops of vanilla!" after the play is turned, and then tops it off by praising "the blue collar boys!"
On the surface this call doesn't sound that awful, perhaps just a little strange. But, it is filled with conventional stereotypes that could be easily avoidable in hindsight. What if the DP was turned by a pair of African-American players, and Brown said "two more scoops of chocolate!" The reaction to that would be vitriolic, and this was essentially the same thing... but with white players.
Maybe it seems harmless, and it's likely without malice, but Brown could choose his words a bit more carefully.
[h/t: WHYGAVS, Bucs Dugout]
This is coming from the same guy who has coined such nicknames as Garrett "G.I." Jones, Nate "The Great" McLouth, and proclaimed "BayDay!" every time Jason Bay hit a home run. He makes Chris Berman blush. This is more Brown being terrible as it is politically incorrect.
Pirates fan here, Walker and Barmes refer to themselves as the most vanilla double play combo in baseball. They do not mean it in terms of being white players, but just to both of them being real plain guys. Meaning that they are not flashy, but they get the job done.
Mark
To be fair, he has called the Barmes-Walker DP Combo "The Most Vanilla DP Combo in the League" the entire year. But Brown does get overly excited, and it was a pretty stupid call.
