The other day, Boomer Esisason — co-host of the Boomer & Carton show on WFAN — took on the subject of Daniel Murphy taking paternity leave. His opinion: in Esiason’s words, Murphy should “get his ass back to work.” Boomer also said that Murphy’s wife should’ve had a C-section before the season started so Murphy didn’t miss any time.
This was insane, of course, and in the past 48 hours Esiason either reacquainted himself with sanity or had his wife smack him over the head, because today he apologized. And it was a very good, and heartfelt apology:
“I just want to say again on this radio show that in no way, shape or form was I advocating anything for anybody to do. I was not telling women what to do with their bodies. I would never do that. That’s their decision, that’s their life and they know their bodies better than I do. And the other thing, too, that I really felt bad about is that Daniel Murphy and Tori Murphy were dragged into a conversation, and their whole life was exposed. And it shouldn’t have been.
“And that is my fault. That is my fault for uttering the word ‘C-section’ on this radio station. And it all of a sudden put their lives under a spotlight, and for that I truly apologize. I tried to reach out to Daniel yesterday through intermediaries over there at the New York Mets, and to his credit, he answered all of his questions yesterday. I’m sorry that he had to go through that. No man should have to go through that. And certainly Daniel Murphy, who we both admire much as a baseball player as anybody else — and all I can say is that I truly, truly, feel terrible about what I put them through. So for that I certainly apologize.”
Esiason, from what can be told from his public record, is a dedicated father and husband who has gone above and beyond the call of duty both in taking care of his own son (who has special needs) and doing charitable work for others. So when I heard this the other day I was rather surprised. My guess: this is one of those situations where the talk radio medium took over the thinking parts of his brain. The lingua franca of that world is calling out athletes for being soft and playing up to the dude-bro listenership who like to hear that stuff, and it’s easy to auto-pilot in that mode if you let yourself.
Good for him for coming to his senses on this.
