Cubs News: Someone needs to remind Mark Grace that it’s 2020

Chicago Cubs legend Mark Grace made a big mistake while on the air during Saturday’s game

It is 2020, right? Well, you may not have known it if you watched Saturday’s Marquee Sports Network broadcast of the game between the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers.

Mark Grace, who is one of the greatest first basemen in history and still beloved by many fans, has been on the air during the middle innings of many Cubs TV broadcasts this season. His work has received mixed reviews, but he really put his foot in his mouth on Saturday when he referred to his ex-wife as “dingbat” — several times.

For context, Grace was telling a story about how his ex-wife parked in former Commissioner Bud Selig’s parking spot one day while Grace was playing for the Cubs in Milwaukee against the Brewers at old County Stadium. Channeling Archie Bunker from All in the Family, Grace said that he used to call her “dingbat” and proceeded to call her that repeatedly throughout the telling of his story.

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Now, I’m a huge Mark Grace fan, as many Cubs fans are; I own about 1,000 of his baseball cards. And though he’s far from being the smoothest commentator in the business, I have found his addition to the broadcasts, for the most part, to be interesting. It has been great to see him back as part of the organization.

Still, in the era that we’re living in, it’s hard to believe that he would portray his ex-wife in that manner. And I’ll admit, it was a little difficult to listen to. Grace did later apologize for his comments.

I’m not going to go as far as to say that Grace should be kicked off future broadcasts for this; I believe that he wasn’t trying to be a jerk about it and was just trying to add some humor to the broadcast.

However, this is sure to add more volume to the calls to remove Grace from Marquee Sports Network and just let Len Kasper and Jim Deshaies handle the call by themselves. I do hope Grace realizes that he needs to be more careful in the future and that they can, at least, figure out a way to keep him on broadcasts in the future. Still, we’ll see if anything more comes of this.