I thought Gammons was still in good form in 2000 but that is really bad, as best I can tell 'racist' has been attached to Mussina at least obliquely since that piece in 2000. I see that Will Leitch here calls it "an infamous (and instantly discredited) accusation from Peter Gammons that he was a racist" although he doesn't give specifics (maybe hard to).
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2008/10/leitch_mike_mussina_a_stand-up.html
I have always liked Gammons although he should have stopped a while back (and I guess mostly did) but this is pretty terrible. I feel like Gammons maybe misunderstood something someone told him and then went with what he thought was clever insider code no one could decipher when in fact it was pretty obvious. But then since he hadn't said it was Mussina straight out, Gammons couldn't really publicly apologize, I guess. Yikes, I didn't remember much about this from the time but I don't see any other hint of anyone first-hand calling Mussina a racist ever on the web, yet I feel like I heard that so much I kind of assumed it was true (and maybe it is).
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2008/10/leitch_mike_mussina_a_stand-up.html
I have always liked Gammons although he should have stopped a while back (and I guess mostly did) but this is pretty terrible. I feel like Gammons maybe misunderstood something someone told him and then went with what he thought was clever insider code no one could decipher when in fact it was pretty obvious. But then since he hadn't said it was Mussina straight out, Gammons couldn't really publicly apologize, I guess. Yikes, I didn't remember much about this from the time but I don't see any other hint of anyone first-hand calling Mussina a racist ever on the web, yet I feel like I heard that so much I kind of assumed it was true (and maybe it is).