On Monday evening, Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price went on a profanity tour de force. In his daily pre-game briefing with reporters, Price uttered 91 obscenities while fuming over the Cincinnati Enquirer’s accurate report that All-Star catcher Devin Mesoraco was not with the team for Sunday’s game.
His tirade lasted 5 minutes 34 seconds, and according to the Enquirer, which posted a transcript of the exchange on its website, it included “77 uses of the ‘F’ word or a variant and 11 uses of a vulgar term for feces (two bovine, one equine).” He later apologized for using “wholly inappropriate language,” though adding that “I stand by the content of my message.”
Price, whose team had lost seven of its previous eight before beating the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday, joined a number of managers/coaches whose meltdowns in front of the media went viral. But was Price’s outburst the most profane among those caught on tape?
In terms of the sheer total, it may have been. A quick search of notable coach/manager tirades in front of the media failed to turn up an expletive tally anywhere close to 91. But baseball is a game of rate statistics—batting average, earned-run average and so on. And in that regard, Price didn’t quite make history.
Price averaged one profanity every 3.7 seconds—impressive, no doubt, but not as prolific as Hal McRae. In 1993, while managing the Kansas City Royals, McRae responded to a question about strategy by unleashing 32 expletives in 85 seconds, or one every 2.7 seconds. He also threw several objects off his desk and concluded by saying, “Put that in your f— pipe and smoke it.”
Notably, Price did manage to curse at a higher clip than former Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia. In his infamous 1983 rant against Cubs fans, Elia uttered 48 profanities in 3:07, averaging one every 3.9 seconds. Like the Reds, the 1983 Cubs were off to a slow start when Elia unloaded on fans for booing Cubs players. At a time when all Cubs home games were played during the day, Elia told fans to find jobs instead. “Eighty-five percent of the f— world is working,” he fumed. “The other 15 come out here.”
