Yankees Drop Singer Over Jewish Slur

Ronan Tynan is the guy who sings “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch at Yankee Stadium—and a Paralympic gold-medalist, a former member of the Irish Tenors, and a devout enough Catholic to have performed at the installation of New York’s new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, earlier this year. (He also sang Ave Maria at Ronald Reagan’s funeral.) But according to NBC New York, Ronan Tynan may also be a little bit of a casual anti-Semite. According to the station, a real estate agent who was showing an apartment in Tynan’s building on Thursday reassured the singer that his potential new neighbors weren’t Red Sox fans, prompting Tynan to respond, “I don’t care about that, as long as they’re not Jewish.” Well, the apartment-hunter, Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, wasn’t amused, and, apparently, neither was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, because the team abruptly canceled Tynan’s scheduled performance during tonight’s American League championship opener against the Anaheim Angels in the Bronx. Tynan says he was just making a stupid, callous joke, but, hey, as mlb.com’s own blogger Josh Alper points out, given how many people like to diss Tynan’s overwrought stylings (and how cold it’s supposed to be in the stands later), it might have been just the excuse the team was looking for to drop him.

Yanks Bench Tenor After Jewish ‘Joke’ [NBC New York]