FanHouse GaryThorne

Maybe the Orioles should consider broadcasting their games on television sans the broadcast booth because it seems that all their current broadcasters do is cause trouble.

First there was the incident in which play-by-play man Gary Thorne said that Doug Mirabelli told him Curt Schilling's bloody sock was just red paint--and it's not like Curt Schilling would ever say anything untrue--and now Rick Dempsey is in trouble for cracking wise about domestic violence during the Orioles loss to the Indians on Tuesday.

Dempsey isn't normally in the booth, but I guess Jim Palmer had a couple of underwear ads to shoot so he filled in on Tuesday. In the third inning, Thorne and Dempsey were joined by Jay Gibbon's wife Laura Giuliani.

Laura was in the booth to promote some charity work she's doing to help fight domestic violence. Well, with Gibbons struggling through a season long slump, Dempsey thought he'd come up with a good way to get him out of it.

His wife should choke him.

"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?"

To that, Giuliani replied, "I don't know, Rick. I don't think I'm encouraging that. I'm definitely not ..."

"Not going there?" Dempsey interjected.

"Not going there," Giuliani replied.

"All right, I'll domestically violate him if he doesn't start getting some more hits," Dempsey said, according to The Sun.

Video of the exchange can be seen at Can't Stop The Bleeding.

You've read about it all day, but there it is: Gary Thorne's confident revelation that Curt Schilling used paint on his sock. (Big ups to A Red Sox Fan in Pinstripes Territory for the video.)

We've already heard from several member of the Red Sox on the matter -- including Doug Mirabelli, Curt Schilling, Terry Francona, Larry Lucchino, Theo Epstein and Dr. Bill Morgan -- and I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before Thorne eventually faces the music and explains himself. You see, as BostonSportsMedia.com shows us, he already had one chance today but apparently chickened out: his scheduled chat today on USATODAY.com was canceled.

While the debate surrounding this issue will rightly center around Thorne's comments, I think it's also worthwhile to take a moment to point out how his comments snowballed into a national story. Yes, there were probably hundreds of thousands of viewers who heard him, but it was the astute ears of a blogger over at The Joy of Sox who transcribed the comments and brought them to the attention of several reporters:

At 8:56 pm, just after the end of the fifth inning, when the comments were made, I typed up a close approximation of what Thorne said with the request: "Please ask Schilling and/or Mirabelli about this tonight." I sent it to a handful of Boston sportswriters.

[Gordon] Edes responded 19 minutes later -- and he was the only writer to get back to me. We ended up exchanging several emails and speaking by phone a couple of times over the next three hours. Just before midnight, I send Edes an exact transcription of Thorne's and Palmer's on-air comments, which I got as soon as the game was archived at MLB.com (fortunately, it was the Orioles' feed and not NESN).

Gorden Edes, if you don't recall, took the story and ran with it, writing the definitive introduction to the controversy that the rest of the mainstream media has built on. But realize, it was a blogger who broke this.

The season isn't even a month old and bloggers have been responsible for raising the question of what's on Francisco Rodriguez's cap, alerting us to an arcane rule prohibiting Torii Hunter's gift of Dom Perignon to the Royals and now making Thorne public enemy No. 1 in the city of Boston. The old guard best tread lightly, because the bloggers are watching.

Previously on FanHouse:
Curt Schilling's Surgeon Refutes Allegations of Paint
Gary Thorne Claims Schilling's 'Bloody Sock' Was a Hoax

Orioles broadcaster Gary Thorne claims Doug Mirabelli told him Curt Schilling had paint on his sock during the 2004 World Series, not blood. Mirabelli responded by calling Gary Thorne a big fat lying lier, saying he doesn't even know the guy, let alone confided in him. Schilling was saddened by the accusation, Terry Francona was incensed and GM Theo Epstein was surprised.

But what about the actual surgeon who put the sutures into Schilling's ankle? Extra Bases, the Boston Globe's Red Sox blog, talked to Dr. Bill Morgan about the controversy this morning:

"C'mon," Morgan said today from the Fallon Clinic in Worcester, "we all know what the reality is. I don't know where that comes from.

"I drilled a whole bunch of holes in the guy's ankle when we put the sutures in, we put a dressing on them, and the blood soaked through the dressing. The sock is like a sponge. It doesn't take a whole lot of blood, but there's like a capillary effect.'' ...

"Anyone who's ever had stitches knows there's going to be oozing from the wound. I put a bunch of stitches in the guy, and then he had to go out there and pitch at a professional level. The sutures were tugging at the skin, it opened up a little bit. The thing expanded right before our eyes.''

Did how much did it tug open? At the risk of losing your lunch, see for yourself.

Personally, I can't see why anyone associated with the Red Sox would have stooped so low as to try fooling an entire nation with a dab of red paint. This was Game 6 of the ALCS, a do or die situation with the entire season on the brink. There was no shortage of drama attached to this game, and reaching for manufactured theatrics would have been a distraction as much as anything else. Unless more people corroborate the accusation, I'm not buying it.

Previously on FanHouse:
Gary Thorne Claims Schilling's 'Bloody Sock' Was a Hoax