Yankees kick Keith Olbermann to the curb on Old-Timers’ Day

Or as he put it himself, Keith Olbermann is a former old-timer.

For 11 years, Olbermann was the in-stadium color commentator for the Yankees’ Old-Timers’ Day festivities, sitting alongside Bob Wolff. However, the Yankees opted to relieve him of his duties in advance of Sunday’s event, replacing him with Suzyn Waldman.

Olbermann was informed of the switch a week ago from someone outside of the organization, and he blogged about being disappointed no one from the team told him about the switch. The New York Post speculated that the Yankees made the switch because of the controversy caused by Olbermann on Opening Day, when he tweeted pictures of a Yankee employee sitting behind home plate relaying signals while wearing a headset.

Olbermann wasn’t certain whether that had anything to do with it:

I can’t vouch for the legitimacy of the motive described in The Post because this is the first time I’m hearing about it. But on a macro level, that does worry me in terms of the suppression of information. I might have been sitting in the stands when I tweeted the photos in question, but I saw nothing that any eagle-eyed guy in the press box couldn’t have seen (and trust me, they started looking).

There was little fallout from the Opening Day incident at the time, and GM Brian Cashman himself assured Olbermann that there was no problem with what he did. However, it looks like Olbermann might have lost what was probably a pretty fun gig because of it.