TKNBR owns 1.5 % of the Giants - has management made an investment decision in firing these persons (and also hoping to keep the broadcast rights?) Conflicts of interest corrupt sports reporting also.

When Alvin Dark was fired as manager by the Giants, he blamed his failures on the presence of too many black and latin players - players like Mays, McCovey, Marichal, Hart, Fuentes and Felipe Alou!!! Do yourthink that Alou doesn't remember that comment?

Bob Tufts, ex - Giant, 1981

Alou may be onto something with the Satan stuff. The Giants do have an infernal lineup and a damnable pitching staff.

"Mr. Krueger has a right to express his opinions."

Absolutely.

And the station is under no obligation to provide him a forum for said opinions.

You are focused on the WRONG issue. Racist comments like "...brain-dead Caribbean hitters..." have no place in baseball or our society.

Your comment - "If he leaves off 'Caribbean', it's a pretty accurate statement of how the Giants are playing. I'm surprised Alou was so indignant over the comment." - is outrageous! You should fire yourself and remove your weblog from the net immediately!
You clearly have lost touch with what is acceptable communications in a society that suggests all people are created equally. Why don't you paint your face black and go live in the slums of Harlem or Watts and let's see if you begin to understand Alou's indignation.

And you Jon have clearly forgotton freedom of speech. He is allowed to say what he wants and the station is allowed to let him say it or not. The station decided not to support him. End of story.

Just because you dont like it, does not mean someone cant say it. If you want to spend your life fighting what someone says you can, that is the beauty of freedom of speech, but you cant fight their right to say it. Otherwise we could just say you cant say what you want on this blog or anywhere.

Based on my handling of the pitching staff - 5 relievers combine to give up the losing run in ONE inning (7/26), yo-yoing youngsters in and out of the lineup etc - I think I am definitely now an unspecified mushy cereal.

Look at the old black dude on the front of a Cream of Wheat box.

Now look at Felipe Alou.

Now consider Krueger's comment about Felipe's brains turning to "Cream of Wheat."

See why Felipe's pissed?

the only problem I have with Dave's post, which I feel was spot-on, was the assertion that Alou can't win with talent. He had a loaded team in '94, perhaps the best in baseball, and he was winning. if that season had played out, or if the economics were different, Alou would probably be remembered a little differently. Give the Expos of the 90's the same payroll as the Yankees and we'd be calling Mr. Alou a Hall of Fame manager a la Joe Torre. Does that mean I think Alou is brilliant? No. It just means he is like any other manager. With talent, they win. Without talent, they lose.

Dave! This is SF here, California! To riff on Sandberg's recent comments, the name on the front of the jersey says "Los Gigantes"!!! You missed it, man. Big time. Kreuger was an ass anyway. KNBR did the right thing. Leave the childish comedy to that Worst Damn Sports Show, and do right by the local team, it's players, and common decency.

I'm a little surprised by how much backlash this has caused, and Felipe Alou definately has fanned the flames himself. Has this guy dissed Felipe in the past or something? Or is Felipe really that much of a crotchety old man? Oh, and just let me know if I need to put a disclaimer on that comment so all old people will not get offended.

Look at the fact here, people. Their Carribean players ARE SUCKING. It's not just them, there are plenty of white pitchers who have no place in MLB starting for them, too. But what he said IS true, and that's why I am surprised by the response here. When are we as a society going to get to the point where Chappelle can joke about whites all night long and get paid plenty for it, but some normal talk radio guy can make a similar, much less racist comment about a different race and actually NOT get fired?

I'd disagree with Masked a bit. The best offensive player on the team is Alou. Ellis appears to be hacking at slop, and he's not Carribean as far as I know. That's why Krueger should have left Carribean off the statement. There's lots of diversity among the hackers on the team.

Dave,

This is also SF, CA, and a regular KNBR listener. Unlike Katerba I don't think that "doing right" by the local team when they play lousy is doing anyone a service. It makes for awfully boring radio and calls into question the independence of a station that partially owns the Giants. On the other hand, I think Krueger made a serious mistake by using that one word "Carribean." He should have just stated the players who he had in mind (Feliz and Deivi Cruz, I imagine) and thrown in some other "non-Carribean" players who are less than selective at the plate (Niekro comes to mind). By saying "Carribean" he perpetuated a stereotype which Edgardo Alfonzo and Omar Vizquel among others disprove every day. Krueger richly deserved the reprimand and suspension, but I agree that it makes little sense that he is now fired for the actions of others on a subsequent morning radio show. By the way, I don't know how you define a manager that never wins, but is it my imagination or wasn't Alou manager of the 2003 Giant team that won 100 games and the NL West title? I'm not saying he's brilliant, but you can't say he never won anything.

MM, I stand corrected. I was thinking 2002 was the last time the Giants made the playoffs. My fault for not checking.

No problem, Dave. Actually that 2003 playoff loss to the Marlins brings back a Krueger memory that makes me chuckle and also makes me sad that I won't be able to listen to Krueger anymore on KNBR. During the game summary after JT Snow was easily thrown out at home to win the game, commentators Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper were agreeing that there was no better man on a "contact" play at home than JT Snow. When Krueger came on the call-in show afterwards he quite humorously made fun of his colleagues Kruk and Kuip for their spin on this "contact" play while ignoring the elephant in the room that Sabean and Alou left speedy Eric Young off the roster while going with a needlessly expansive 12 man pitching staff. Now only Ralph Barbieri and Tom Tolbert are the only KNBR hosts left who we can only hope will continue to provide the same type of honesty and courage to dare criticize Giant management.

Leaving aside the important issues of Rastus and Satan, and focusing on what seems interesting to me instead :-)--

Alou made his reputation on being able to keep the Expos in something resembling contention when their best players left each offseason because they couldn't be afforded. His specialty was supervising the force feeding of young players onto the roster while getting enough out of their learning experiences to stay competitive. This is exactly the opposite of what has happened in San Francisco-- here he has been asked to prop up an aging roster with aged free agents...

Seems to me the world might be more sensible if Alou was in Tampa and Pinella in SF...

Dave:

I regularly enjoy your blog but you are way, way off on this. In an earlier post, Jon hits this right on the head. You are dead wrong to just blow off a racist comment, then smear Alou as some overrated manager. The ignorant insensitivity to our collective history of racism just perpetuates it.

I don't know if Krueger's firing was justified or not, I don't think this is on par with many other daily acts of racism, I just think its sad some one of your intellect would brush this off while not-so-subtely bashing Alou for his reaction and his professional history.

Racism of any form needs to be shouted out and stamped out, even if it may have been an "unfortunate" choice of words. If you have ever been the victim of racism, then you will understand what I mean, you will understand why it is such a big deal.

I agree with Bob Tufts that the firing was more a management statement to clear the air, an amputation to stop fanning the flames. Krueger may have been suspended and had nothing to do with the morning show incident but we don't know his relationship with this Tony Rhein, whether it was payback for a friend or not, we are not privy to the internal politics of the situation. My assumption was that KNBR did this to stem the bleeding and make it clear that such tomfoolery would not be tolerated. Firings to sent a message to the troops is a long used management move and some people get to be part of the message, unfortunately.

To concur with David on the Carribean hitters, I found it ironic that three key hitters in the Giants lineup right now are Carribean hitters, Alou, Vizquel, and Feliz. And Alfonzo, while not a key hitter at the moment, had been the past two years, over-paid as he is for what he has produced plus he definitely is not a slop-hitter, he is about as disciplined as they come, with a near 1 ratio of walks to strikeouts.

About Alou's reputation, I went through the same thoughts when he was hired, as I heard the same thoughts about him being unable to win with good players. So I went through the Expos roster each year of his tenure, documenting which players got added and which were gone each year. As the poster above noted, surprise, surprise, once the flow of talent going out exceed that coming in, Alou started losing and the flow got worse as the years went on. The reason he couldn't win with Vlad is because he had to rebuild the team; if you had Bonds and a bunch of prospects in prominent roles, you would probably not win many games either.

Lastly, the Giants needed 12 pitchers, they weren't sure whether Schmidt's arm would hold up or not, and none of the other starting pitchers were sure bets to pitch a complete game, Rueter (who was also coming off an arm injury), Ponson (who could eat innings but sometimes get blown out), and Williams (rookie, most IP in career), so the Giants had to be stocked just in case the bullpen became overused due to starters not going at least 6-7 innings pitched, or worse, if one of the starters when down before the start.

You know what's funny? Everybody involved in this was wrong on this issue. All of 'em.

Do you know what would've prevented it? KNBR knowing where they were (Bay Area), and realizing that there really wasn't any way around it -- Krueger's punishment needed to be severe, even if they didn't agree with it. Krueger should've been suspended a month.

Do I agree with that? No, not really. Krueger's remarks weren't racist, although they could've been part of a little latent bigotry -- but really, Krueger's comment was more stupid than anything. You make enough stupid mistakes on your job, you get fired. You make ONE really stupid mistake on a popular radio station, you get fired.

The stupidity continued with Alou. You don't take one word of one comment from a guy who has never been known for any racial problems and instantly dub him the "messenger of Satan".

In my life, I've lied, cheated a bit, had sex outside of wedlock -- all of which are sins. But am I a "messenger of Satan"? My goodness, I sure hope not. And I doubt seriously that Krueger is.

This incident started out as just a little disappointing, and has turned into something near-tragic because of people taking a single word (and one that means absolutely nothing offensive to 99% of Americans) and running, running, running with it until it was the size of Godzilla.

All because Krueger was stupid for about two seconds. All I can say is, "Wow".

Krueger was certainly not thinking, and at least when you have a rah-rah announcer, they don't just say criticisms off the top of their head (for instance, I'm shocked Ron Santo has never said anything crazy, since he's always living and dying with the moment).
I'm not getting why the Cream of Wheat thing is such a big deal, however. Is its logo that universally known? I mean, I've known what Cream of Wheat was since I was 5, but I had nary a clue as to the cover of the box. There's enough genuine outrage to be had at the Caribbean comment without overanalyzing the way he said that Alou is essentially senile.

I don't think it's a great crime that Krueger isn't working for the Giants anymore. It's the price one pays nowadays. But Alou is no saint here, and there's lots of other crazy racial things being said that get ignored (Harry Belafonte, anyone?).

There are a lot of point being made that are valid, about Alou's managerial history, about the severity and context of Kreuger's firing in particular, but I still think it all sort of falls away when you consider that Alou's career succcess' and failures, the plate discipline of the players on his roster, all are completely and totally irrelevent to the issue of racism. Unrelated on that issue. I agree with the posters AND Kreuger on nearly everything said about performance by the Giants, but it's irrelevent to this story. I said I supported the local team, not excuse their poor play (and management..SABEAN!) but support the players when I feel they've been done wrong. It's an ethics thing, again, completely unrelated to the game on the field, and it's reasonable to feel strongly about both issues. The Giants suck, and Kreuger went to far saying so. And sorry, Chappelle ripping white folks is ok, and will be until they're subjected to the same inhumanity as other american minority are obviously still subjected to. In closing, I didn't gasp in shock, but rather chuckled as Alou's comments were published...he's taking it to KNBR like he would to a blind ump, and I think he's earned that right. Get Behind Me Satan!

First off, Krueger was wrong in saying "brain-dead Caribbean ball-players". From the context, he was definitely talking about Pedro Feliz and Deivi Cruz, especially Cruz who has made swinging at pitches over his head to an artform. On the same show he repeated his complaint that the Giants failed to go after Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Tejada when they were free agents. They're both Dominicans, so his "brain-dead" comment was directed to these guys, not Caribbean players generally.

The "Cream of Wheat" comment was totally out of context. I've had two different posts on this (and another tomorrow) on my blog:

http://southofheaven.typepad.com/

Just scroll down through the last few days.

My adult life has been devoted to social justice. I was what they used to call a "race relations instructor" in the army back during the Vietnam era, when open blacks, whites and Hispanics were fighting each other on the bases. I've been a union rep of one kind or another for the last 20 years. Racism is bad, and when someone says something, you have to call him on it.

The problem here was that Alou never got took the time to learn the context of what Krueger was saying. It would have deflated his rage. The other problem is Alou is a devout Christian of the fire-and-brimstone variety, and he saw all of this as the battle of good versus evil, with God on his side (or maybe God on his inside).

For more on why Krueger got fired and why Alou will be fired eventually, please go to my blog.

well.....um.......um.......well.....OHHHH BABA CUNDA!

KOBA!

And you wonder why Barry Bonds hates the media??
At 52,I remember Alvin Dark's racist comments about
African-American and Hispanic players,as does Felipe
Alou,who played for Dark's Giants in '64.Alou proba-
bly sees Larry Krueger's bigoted remarks in the con-
text of the xenophobia which has swept some sec-
tions of America since Sept,11,2001.