Mike Schmidt and Larry Brown should be friends. They could get together in the late afternoons (for the early-bird specials) and discuss how things used to be, 70s fuck parties, and kids these days. Because just a day after Brown called the Sixers morons for their decision to play their freak-ish superstar at point guard, Schmidt opined on Odubel Herrera.

At first, when I heard Schmidt made headlines, I just figured that he had a crotchety take on Odubel’s antics, which would’ve been fair game. BUT NOPE. Hispanic descent.

Here’s Schmidt on WIP today when he asked if you could build a team around a player like Odubel:

“My honest answer to that would be no because of a couple of things,.” Schmidt said. “First of all, it’s a language barrier. Because of that, I think he can’t be a guy that would sort of sit in a circle with four, five American players and talk about the game. Or try and learn about the game or discuss the inner workings of the game. Or come over to a guy and say, ‘Man, you gotta run that ball out.’ Just can’t be — because of the language barrier — that kind of a player.”

OK, first of all: DAS RACIST. Second, it’s worth pointing out that 27% of Major League players are Latino. When Schmidt played, the number was less than half of that.

This isn’t a particularly good look for anyone, let alone a guy who’s a team broadcaster. And you know you DONE NOT GOOD when the bow tie man himself, little baby Kenny Rosenthal, chimes in:


It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, the Phillies do about Schmidt, the club’s racist uncle who always has something to say.

Side note: I wish he had said this in the presence of T-Mac, just to see his reaction as he tried to squirm out of that and implore Schmidt to modify his statement with a qualifier only for Schmidt to say something completely off the wall like, “Do they even let Hispanics vote, Tom?”

UPDATE: Schmidt issued a statement, seemingly directly to CSN, the network for which he broadcasts: