Last month, San Francisco-area radio host Larry Krueger was fired after Giants manager Felipe Alou reacted angrily to Krueger's decrying the team's "brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly" (SF Chronicle). Krueger certainly gained nothing by referencing the hitters' place of origin, and there are plenty of non-Caribbean free-swingers on the Giants who egregiously fail to get on base. (Moises Alou, Felipe's son and of Dominican origin, leads the team's regulars in on-base percentage; Caucasians Lance Niekro and Mike Matheny can't buy a walk.) But Krueger was merely inartfully recycling and specifying an old yarn about Caribbean hitters that has been repeated in the past couple of months as such august publications as Sports Illustrated and the New York Times Magazine.

SI's Michael Farber wrote last week, "An old saw suggests that many Caribbean players became free swingers because walks wouldn't get them off the island." And in the NYT Magazine in July, Jonathan Mahler wrote, "That Dominican prospects aren't usually known for their plate discipline makes sense. There is an expression in the Dominican Republic that goes something like this: 'You can't walk your way off the island.' " As the San Francisco Chronicle's Betting Fool columnist wrote during KruegerGate, "The PC police have never attacked this saying because it's mostly true."

So blame Krueger for a boneheaded choice of words, but not for originating the notion that Caribbean baseball players lack plate discipline. (Incidentally, Gelf remains unconvinced that this is true.) We won't be holding our breath waiting for Mr. Manager to start picketing the offices of the New York Times & Sports Illustrated.