NBC Sports California, television rightsholder for the Oakland A’s, fired long-time broadcaster Glen Kuiper following his use of a racial slur on-air earlier this month.
An NBC Sports California spokesperson emailed the following statement to The Athletic:
“Following an internal review, the decision has been made for NBC Sports California to end its relationship with Glen Kuiper, effective immediately. We thank Glen for his dedication to Bay Area baseball over the years.”
The incident occurred during the pregame portion of the broadcast of the A’s May 5 game against the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. At the time, Kuiper said: “We had a phenomenal day today. (N-word) league museum. And Arthur Bryant’s Barbecue.”
Video of the incident, which contains uncensored use of the offensive language, can be found here.
Later, in the sixth inning, Kuiper issued an on-air apology. Via The Athletic:
“A little bit earlier in the show, I said something, didn’t come out quite the way I wanted it to,” Kuiper said. “I just wanted to apologize if it sounded different than I meant it to be said. I just wanted to apologize for that.”
On May 7, NBC Sports California announced that Kuiper was being suspended and removed from the air while the incident was investigated. Steve Berman of The Athletic also reports that the decision was made to terminate Kuiper in part because of “information uncovered in the internal review.”
Kuiper, 60, had been the A’s primary local-television broadcaster for the past 17 seasons.
