Steve Lyons, whose 15-year broadcasting career is dotted with numerous insensitive remarks — one of them enough to get him fired — is taking a seat in a more controlled environment: MLB 13 The Show.
As reported by Operation Sports, Lyons said via Twitter at the end of last month that he was recording “lots of VoiceOver work for MLB The Show 2013, and when asked by a follower if he was replacing the third-chair analyst Eric Karros, he replied, “no … [Dave] Campbell.”
Lyons (pictured above at centre) had a run on Fox Sports’ baseball coverage that included disparaging stereotypes about Jews, Italians and Hispanics, and even a comment making fun of a fan who was nearly blind and wearing complex headgear to help him see. His remarks about Hispanics, in the 2006 National League Championship Series, ultimately got him fired. He caught on with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who required that he attend diversity training. Lyons has gone incident-free since.
Not that this poses much of a risk to The Show, whose vocabulary is scripted and editable. In my opinion, Lyons should have replaced Karros, a decent guy who still falls into the trap of trying to impersonate himself, as lesser sports video game commentators do.
Campbell read his lines well. If he was wearing out — and his work was getting repetitive, year over year — it’s on Sony San Diego to provide him with new dialogue, unless he just wanted out of the game, of course. I’ve always thought highly of Matt Vasgersian but he, too, needs a lot of new material in this game. In the end, bringing in Lyons by itself won’t change much in the realm of chemistry unless this team is recording its lines together, like Madden‘s Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, and NBA 2K13‘s outstanding Kevin Harlan, Clark Kellogg and Steve Kerr.
Steve Lyons Replacing Dave Campbell in MLB 13 The Show [Operation Sports]
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