Michael Kay found himself trending Thursday morning after attempting to prove he’s no Yankee fanboy by feuding with a random guy on Twitter.
During Wednesday night’s broadcast on Amazon Prime, Kay and analyst Paul O’Neill spoke to field reporter Jack Curry who was in attendance for Brian Cashman’s press conference earlier in the day. One fan felt Kay was defending Cashman too much during the conversation with Curry and he reached out on Twitter to say as much.
“You watch every game, right? Explain to me how you could possibly defend Cashman,” the tweet to Kay read.
Following the Yankees game against the Cleveland Guardians, Kay was scrolling through Twitter and stumbled on the accusation from @PlayoffBader, prompting him to respond with a detailed direct message.
“Okay, let’s do this,” Kay wrote back. “You give me a quote, or a sentence where I defended Cashman on the air tonight, any proof you can come up with, and I will make a sizable donation to your favorite charity. Again, any instance of me defending the Yankee GM during tonight’s broadcast, and I will gladly make the donation. And if you can’t come up with proof, and you will not be able to because it doesn’t exist, I want nothing back from you, other than you gaining the knowledge that what you and others hear is that when someone isn’t bashing Cashman who think they’re defending him. I will patiently await the proof. Thank you for watching the game on Prime.”
And still no answer. That’s all you have. I never DM anyone anything I wouldn’t make public so this is fine but the fact I gave you the consideration of DMing you a response and you made it public tells me all I need to know about you and your opinion. LOL. https://t.co/7qpHIK1Huv
— Michael Kay (@RealMichaelKay) May 4, 2023
The fan took a screenshot of the DM and shared it on Twitter, along with his surprise that Kay would actually take the time to direct message him back. @PlayoffBader has since deleted the tweet and failed to respond to Kay with proof that he defended Cashman. So instead of donating to the charity of @PlayoffBader’s choice, Kay said he donated to his favorite foundation, The Alzheimer’s Association.
I certainly don’t want to have charity suffer so I am going to donate to my favorite charity, The Alzheimer’s Association, instead. This way, everyone wins and we can put this to bed. Anyone else who wants to donate I assure you it’s a worthy cause.
— Michael Kay (@RealMichaelKay) May 4, 2023
It was kind of lame of the fan to expose the private message, but to Kay’s credit, he had no issue with @PlayoffBader sending it to the masses. During Kay’s Thursday afternoon radio show, the Yankees play-by-play voice admitted he wouldn’t DM anything that he wasn’t comfortable being publicly tweeted out.
Sliding into the DMs of a fan might even seem beneath the play-by-play voice of the prestigious New York Yankees, but Kay goes back and forth with raucous people and fans every day on his radio show, doing the same thing on Twitter isn’t much different. In recent months, Kay has feuded with an ESPN New York producer and called attention to the long hair of a Yankees bat boy, so it probably shouldn’t be too surprising to see the self-admitted thin-skinned play-by-play announcer respond to a random person on Twitter.
I did not watch Wednesday night’s broadcast to know if Kay went overboard defending Cashman, obviously he remains steadfast that he did no such thing. But fans probably should just get used to the fact that play-by-play announcers are not going to call for people to be fired from the team that pays their salary. And in Kay’s defense, he has called out the Yankees before, going on an epic tirade last year after learning of the team’s “tone deaf” motivational tactics in the playoffs.
