Michael Kay couldn’t sleep after his faux pas during a recent New York Yankees broadcast. No, not because he called out a bat boy for having long hair. The sleepless night was caused by a botched home run call.
Saturday afternoon, Giancarlo Stanton hit a moonshot during the seventh-inning of the Yankees 6-1 win over the Minnesota Twins. And as the ball screamed off Stanton’s bat, Kay went into his renowned home run call on YES Network.
That’s just G 💪 pic.twitter.com/O40Vug5C7F
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) April 15, 2023
“Drilled deep to left field, there it goooooes, SEE YA!” Kay exclaimed. “A long home run!” But it wasn’t a long home run, it was a double off the wall. And Kay quickly corrected himself after watching Stanton stop at second base.
Monday afternoon, the blunder was broached on ESPN New York’s The Michael Kay Show, with the radio host and Yankees TV voice acknowledging he was bothered by the error.
Michael Kay took last weekend’s botched home run call pretty hard pic.twitter.com/6uXfQovPwM
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 18, 2023
“It was a total screw-up on my part,” Kay said, admitting he doesn’t want to make any excuses. But since his co-hosts Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg asked, the play-by-play voice explained why he went into his home run call.
“You try to take it all in when you’re doing the call. You see the guy at home plate who’s in a home run pose, tossed away the bat as if it was long gone, the parabola of the ball looked like it was gonna end up in the left field bleachers.”
“I should’ve waited until the umpire signaled,” Kay added. “I literally lost sleep all weekend. Who wants to make a mistake like that? It’s brutal!”
Respect to Kay for taking pride in his craft, but it happens. Just ask beloved Yankees’ radio voice John Sterling.
And to Kay’s credit, he doesn’t botch many calls. Kay, like probably every single person watching, thought Stanton hit a home run. The ball was crushed off the bat, it just didn’t make it over the fence. No one wants Kay to now pause before every home run call to make sure it wasn’t blocked by the wall after one mistake.
Kay, who recently went on a tirade claiming everyone “sucks” while blasting Awful Announcing as “clowns” and expressing a feeling of guilt for bringing children into a world that “sucks” over criticism of his bat boy hair discussion, credited social media for largely being supportive after his home run gaffe. Maybe everyone doesn’t suck.
“I should’ve had it rubbed in my face,” Kay said. “It was embarrassing, it was terrible. I hated that it happened.”
Kay has been his own harshest critic, with the internet noting the mistake, but mostly bypassing the opportunity to rub his face in the botched home run call, because it really wasn’t that embarrassing of an error.
