mike-shannon-cardinals

Longtime St. Louis Cardinals radio commentator Mike Shannon is known for his colorful quotes. This is the guy who once said, “It’s Mother’s Day today, so to all the mothers out there, ‘Happy Birthday.'” Who once said, “It’s raining so hard that I thought it was going to stop.” Who once said, “This big standing-room-only crowd is settling into their seats.”

But in more than four-and-a-half decades on the radio, Shannon may have never delivered a line as ridiculous as the one he tried during the Cardinals’ game against the Diamondbacks on Saturday. Tasked with reading an ad for the Third Degree Glass Factory in St. Louis, Shannon said the following:

“Yes sir, if you go to ExploreStLouis.com, they’re going to tell you about a blow job. That’s right, [inaudible] will appreciate the local hand-made works of art at the Third Degree Glass Factory. Glass-blowing demonstrated, or create shop and entertain in their unique event space.”

It’s hard to really imagine what Shannon was thinking there beyond, “Hey, glass blowing reminds me of another type of blowing. I’ll say that.” Maybe he just wanted to see what he could get away with? Test his job security? Win a bet?

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cardinals senior vice president of sales and marketing Dan Farrell attempted to pass off the comment as a “misunderstanding,” but we’re not quite buying that.

“Our announcers read anywhere from 15-20 pieces of promotional copy on any given broadcast, and there are times when they may ad-lib to a certain extent” to make the commercials more conversational, Farrell said.

“We apologize for any misunderstanding. It’s unfortunate if anyone was offended. It does not (represent) the values of the franchise. Explore St. Louis is an important partner of ours and the Third Degree Glass Factory is a great St. Louis attraction.”

In the end, it’s not like Shannon’s PG13 ad-lib hurt anyone. After all, 95 percent of people listening already know what the term he used means, and the other five percent got to learn something new Saturday. And besides, the Third Degree Glass Factory definitely got some publicity, which was the whole point to begin with.

About Alex Putterman

Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.