It’s been quite an eventful season in the broadcasting booth at Camden Yards. Just about ten days after Gary Thorne claimed that Curt Schilling’s blood sock was a hoax, the team’s usual pre-game and post-game host, Rick Dempsey, made a crack about domestic violence. It came when Jay Gibbons’ wife came into the booth to promote a charity. Dempsey was calling his first game of the season and clearly, was a bit rattled by it all.

“Laura, will this kind of help Jay in the domestic violence area? If he doesn’t start getting a few more hits, you might grab him around the neck and rough him up a little bit,” Dempsey said, according to The Baltimore Sun. “[Is] this money going to go to help him a little bit with maybe some of the hospital bills or something like that?”

If Chuck Finley, Julio Lugo, or David Justice were in the booth, this remark might make perfect sense. After all, they’re notorious for kicking their wife’s ass. In the case of Finley, he actually got his ass kicked. But Gibbons is’t a notorious wife-beater so this is a bit confusing. When Gibbons’ wife said she wasn’t going to go there, that was a message to Dempsey that he should be the one one to do it. “All right, I’ll domestically violate him if he doesn’t start getting some more hits,” Dempsey said.

It’s true that Gibbons needs the threat of an ass-kicking to start hitting, considering he’s batting .213. But it’s probably not a good idea to say it on the air. I think this will be his first and last game of the season. He’s already issued an apology. The Orioles might be 15-18 and well on their way to another losing season. But there’s no doubt that Orioles games are worth watching simply for the dumbasses they hire to call games.