After Stephen A. Smith took shots at Mike Trout for his recent injury, Boston Red Sox legend Jonathan Papelbon fired back at the popular ESPN analyst, calling him a “racist.”
The Los Angeles Angels were hit with heartbreaking but very familiar news last week when it was revealed that team great Mike Trout would be out indefinitely with a torn meniscus in his left knee. It was killer news that sent the Angels on a path to missing the playoffs again in 2024.
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However, instead of taking the high road during a recent edition of “First Take,” ESPN talking head Stephen A. Smith decided to kick the 11-time All-Star while he was down and made some harsh comments about the future Hall-of-Famers injury history and baseball players in general.
“How the hell is he always hurt?,” Smith said last week “I don’t understand this. It drives me nuts when I see baseball players get hurt. What is it that you’re doing with yourself physically that you can’t stay healthy playing baseball? Now, you get hit by a pitch or something, that’s different, I get all of that. With these oblique injuries, you’re running around bases, catching one, then you’re running out for a fly ball, and all of a sudden, something gets tweaked.”
MLB fans around the country blasted the ESPN analyst afterward, but Boston Red Sox great Johnathan Papelbon took the backlash further by trashing Smith and bringing up a little-known story from his time with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Boston Red Sox greats says Stephen A. Smith was caught snooping around Philadelphia Phillies clubhouse
“I look at him [as] three things,” Papelbon began by saying on the “Foul Territory” podcast. “I look at him as a racist, I look at him as xenophobic, I look at him as a fake … That’s not what the game needs. Everybody wants to tune into the media, I get it. But at the end of the day, you have to be responsible for the s*** that you say. And unless ESPN holds him accountable for the stupid s*** that he says, guess what? He’s going to keep doing it.”
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“I challenge ESPN to either fire him or cut his pay or do something about it because honestly, nobody wants to listen to his s***. Because everybody knows that it’s just for likes, it’s just for followers, he really doesn’t actually know what he’s saying.”
During the conversation, Papelbon also revealed that while playing for the Philadelphia Phillies, he was told by a member of the team’s staff that Smith — while working for the Philadelphia Inquirer — was banned from the clubhouse after he was found to be snooping around the manager’s office and training room.
It certainly paints a different picture about the ESPN star’s rise to fame.
