Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price issued a statement via the team's Twitter account Tuesday apologizing for his language in a pre-game rant Monday directed at reporters covering the team, the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reports.
Price’s 5 1/2-minute tirade was laced with profanity.
“In my pre-game conversation with reporters yesterday, I used wholly inappropriate language to describe the media coverage of our team,” the statement said. “While I stand by the content of my message, I am sorry for the choice of words.”
Prior to ending a four-game losing streak against Milwaukee on Monday night, Price was asked by Reds beat reporters why All-Star catcher Devin Mesoraco wasn't available to pinch-hit throughout the series. This sent Price into the tirade that involved the F-word 77 times.
The Reds manager's rant was supposedly targeted at longtime Cincinnati Enquirer reporter C. Trent Rosecrans over a report about minor league catcher Tucker Barnhart getting called up.
This Cincinnati Enquirer story originally went up saying audio of the dressing-down would be posted at a later time. It wasn't. A transcript of it is all that appears.
However, sister newspaper the The Courier-Journal in Louisville did post the audio — briefly.
As Deadspin writes, after The Courier-Journal posted the audio on its site and promoted it via Twitter, the audio was yanked and tweets from the newspaper were deleted.
This left a lot of people wondering why one outlet never posted it and another removed it after just a few minutes.
Still, this is the Internet, and nothing goes away forever. Deadspin, USA Today and other outlets have posted the audio on their sites.
Now, managers, players and reporters generally play nice with one another most of the time. But this is actually the second time Enquirer reporter Rosecrans has been the subject of an obscenity-laced rant in the past few years.
In 2013, Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips went off on the reporter as then-manager Dusty Baker stood by.
"I'm tired of you talking that negative [expletive] about the team, dog," Phillips said.
Going into Monday's game, the Reds had lost seven of their last eight games. That stretch also included Price's first game ejection this season as Reds manager April 19, so it's easy to see why Price might have been on edge.
– The Dayton Daily News contributed to this report.
This video includes images from Getty Images and music from Bensound / CC BY ND 3.0.
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