Jack Morris Suspended For Accented Comment About Shohei Ohtani on Live TV

Jack Morris, a Hall of Fame pitcher who's now a TV announcer for the Detroit Tigers, has been indefinitely suspended by Bally Sports Detroit for a comment he made Tuesday night on TV about Los Angeles Angels slugger Shohei Ohtani.

The Tigers and Angels were tied, 2-2, in the top of the sixth with two outs and an Angels runner on second base. Ohtani, a Japanese-born player who leads Major League Baseball in home runs, was coming up to bat when Tigers play-by-play announcer Matt Shepard asked Morris, "Now what do you do with Ohtani?"

Morris, in a shifty accent, said, "Be very, very careful."

The Tigers intentionally walked Ohtani, who leads the majors with 39 home runs this season. Morris, a 2019 Hall of Fame inductee who won 254 career games as a pitcher and was a four-time All-Star with the Tigers, apologized on the air in the ninth when Ohtani came to the plate again.

"It's been brought to my attention, and I sincerely apologize if I offended anybody, especially anybody in the Asian community, for what I said about pitching and being careful to Shohei Ohtani," said Morris, who's now in his second stint as the team's TV color analyst. "I did not intend for any offensive thing and I apologize if I did. I certainly respect and have the utmost respect for this guy."

Bally Sports on Wednesday afternoon issued a statement that said it was "extremely disappointed," and that the comments went against the network's standards.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy for bias or discrimination and deeply apologize for his insensitive remark," Bally stated.

The Tigers organization said it was also disappointed in Morris' comment.

"We fully support Bally Sports Detroit's decision and their on-going commitment to ensure that all personnel are held to the highest standards of personal conduct," the team stated.

This comes a little more than a month when Ohtani was deemed the new "face of baseball," only for that moniker to be blasted by Stephen A. Smith, a co-host of ESPN's First Take.

Smith said the face of baseball should not be a "dude that needs an interpreter."

"I understand that baseball is an international sport itself in terms of participation," Smith said at the time. "But when you talk about an audience, gravitating to the tube, or to the ballpark, I don't think it helps that the number one face, is a dude that needs an interpreter so you can understand what the hell he's saying, in this country!"

Smith later apologized, and he still has his job at ESPN.