New York Sports Announcer Makes Ill-Timed 'Dead Soldier' Comment on Memorial Day

New York Mets color commentator Keith Hernandez on Monday referred to a broken baseball bat as a “dead soldier,” a term commonly used in the game but perhaps not the best one to use on Memorial Day.

“Well, that is a dead solider right there, folks, laying on that infield dirt,” Hernandez said in reference to the New York Mets’ Daniel Murphy’s broken bat. “That’s what we call getting sawed off. Nothing to be ashamed of — it happens.”

Again, the term itself is not uncommon in baseball -- but the fact that he used it on Memorial Day has a few fans upset.

“Ordinarily people wouldn’t think much of someone calling a broken bat a ‘dead soldier,” but the saying sounded especially bad coming on Memorial Day when the country pays tribute to all the real soldiers who died fighting for the country,” the Larry Brown Sports blog notes.

“Not only does Hernandez’s saying trivialize the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, but it also shows an incredible lack of awareness,” it adds.

And sure enough, in the top of the second inning when the Yankees’ Vernon Wells broke his bat, Hernandez made no mention of “dead soldiers.” Maybe someone got a hold of him after his first ill-timed reference.

Here’s the full clip:

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(H/T: Yahoo! Sports).Featured image screen grab