UPDATE: It’s Braves’ pitching coach Roger McDowell. Details here.
8:25 AM: Gloria Allred is someone with whom you’re familiar even if you don’t know it. She’s the extremely high-profile (mostly) civil rights lawyer who will, almost always, land some client or another in connection with whatever massive tabloidy and/or entertainment story is dominating the media at any given time. Whether it’s O.J., Princess Diana, Scott Peterson, Borat our countless other arglebargles or fooforaws, you can bet your bippy Allred is involved somehow, usually with a peripheral character, but not always.
My favorite Allred moment was actually a fictitious one. In a “South Park” episode she represented Big Gay Al when he sued the Boy Scouts for discriminating against homosexuals. Then, when Al tries to drop the lawsuit, she accuses Al himself of being a homophobe. An over-the-top portrayal? Just barely, God love her.
In any event, baseball is going to get all they want of Ms. Allred today, as TMZ is reporting that she’s going to hold a press conference this afternoon in which she’ll accuse a major league coach -- identity unknown at the moment -- of making anti-gay slurs at a male fan and then, when the man complained about such language being used in front of his nine-year-old daughter, allegedly said “kids don’t f***ing belong at the baseball park.” There were allegedly threats made after that, but I’m sure Allred will explain it in more vivid detail than I could ever hope to.
If true, this could be the most explosive verbal assault from a baseball coach since that reporter asked Tommy Lasorda what he thought of Dave Kingman’s performance.
