Pirates Announcer Takes A Few Awkward Stumbles To The Dog Whistle

The Pirates played the Braves last night, and in the fourth inning Pittsburgh pitcher Steven Brault hit Braves slugger Ronald Acuña Jr. on the elbow with a fastball. In response to this wholly unremarkable occurrence, Pirates broadcaster Steve Blass started sputtering a bunch of heated nonsense about Acuña.

The entirety of this clip takes us on a very strange journey through the mind of Steve Blass. At first he seems to be convinced that Acuña was hit on purpose because he wears a lot of jewelry. He abandons that line of thinking, however, when his broadcast partner points out that the plunking was almost certainly accidental. Eventually, he circles back around to grumbling about how Acuña shouldn’t be staring at the pitcher, because the whole thing was obviously an accident, and who does this guy think he is?

None of that makes any sense, but such are the dangers of putting an old curmudgeon on TV.