SNY/MLB
On Sunday, Chicago Cubs rookie third baseman Matt Shaw was allowed to skip the team’s game against the Cincinnati Reds to attend the memorial rally held for podcaster Charlie Kirk. The Cubs, still fighting for home field advantage in the Wild Card round of the NL playoffs, lost the game 1-0.
While the Cubs were playing the New York Mets on Tuesday night, Mets announcer Gary Cohen weighed in on the situation. Cohen, 67 years old, has been a professional sportscaster since the early 1980s and has been the Mets lead announcer on SNY since 2005.
According to Cohen — who noted that he wanted to avoid the political aspect — it was “weird” that Shaw left his team for a reason other than a family emergency. Shaw traveled to Arizona to attend the memorial rally held in Charlie Kirk’s name at the StateFarm Stadium in Glendale.
Former MLB pro Todd Zeile, calling the game alongside Cohen, agreed, saying that he’d never seen anything like it before.
Mets announcers Gary Cohen, Todd Zeile call Matt Shaw being allowed to leave team for Charlie Kirk’s memorial “weird, unprecedented”
“Shaw had Cubs World in a tizzy this weekend when he was not here for the Cubs game with the Reds. Game they lost 1-0, and in which his lack of presence was felt,” said Cohen during Shaw’s 4th-inning at-bat.
“It was later revealed that he had been given permission to attend Charlie Kirk’s funeral. And I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird,” he continued.
“But I thought it was telling that the reason that they didn’t tell anybody and that they had to play a man short was that the situation did not qualify for baseball’s bereavement list. I think that in and of itself gives you a clue as to how it was received by a lot of people.”
Zeile — a former infielder who spent 15 years in the MLB with the Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies, Orioles, Dodgers, Marlins, Rangers, Rockies, Yankees, and Montreal Expos — concurred with Cohen’s assessment, calling the situation “unusual” and “unprecedented.”
“It’s unusual. I think it’s unprecedented, at least from my experience as a player. And I think it made it a little bit more unusual that it was not revealed until after it came to issue because he was thought to be in the dugout and maybe available, and then was not. And that’s how it was revealed. So it became maybe more of a story than it could have been had it been addressed from the beginning,” Zeile added.
“I think that’s something that… would certainly be unusual during my era. But then again, there was no paternity leave. There was no bereavement leave. When I played at all, you showed up and just found a way to get through work. But that has changed. That has changed,” he continued.
The Mets wound up beating the Cubs on Tuesday night by a score of 9-7 to regain a 1-game lead for the final spot in the NL Wild Card race over the Cincinnati Reds.