Since Colin Cowherd is leaving ESPN anyway, the network decided to give him the boot early after his controversial comments on baseball and Dominican players.

The controversy began on Thursday when Cowherd tried to explain why he thinks baseball is not as complex a sport as many believe it to be. “I’ve never bought into that, ‘Baseball’s just too complex.’ Really? A third of the sport is from the Dominican Republic,” he said on his radio show.

During Friday’s broadcast, he tried to clarify his comments, but stopped short of apologizing.

“I could've made the point without using one country, and there's all sorts of smart people from the Dominican Republic,” Cowherd said, reports ESPN. “I could've said a third of baseball's talent is being furnished from countries with economic hardships, therefore educational hurdles. For the record, I used the Dominican Republic because they've furnished baseball with so many great players.”

The Herd host insisted that he had statistics to back up his statements that education in the Dominican Republic had “major deficiencies."

“I think when you host a radio show, just like Jon Stewart hosts a show, I think sometimes I bring up stuff ... that makes people cringe,” Cowherd said. “I'm not saying there's not intelligent, educated people from the Dominican Republic. I cringe at the data, too.”

Cowherd later issued another apology on Twitter:



The comments got the MLB, the MLB Players Association and many Dominican players angry. An MLBPA spokesman told USA Today that they were annoyed that ESPN didn’t act immediately.

Former Angels star Vladimir Guerrero tweeted at Cowherd, “You must to respect our Dominican born player and our country.” Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays was one of the first players to go after Cowherd.



“Major League Baseball condemns the remarks made by Colin Cowherd, which were inappropriate, offensive and completely inconsistent with the values of our game,” the league said in its statement to USA Today. “Mr. Cowherd owes our players of Dominican origin, and Dominican people generally, an apology.”

Cowherd has been with ESPN since 2003, but ESPN said just last week that it would not be renewing his contract. The network has been cutting ties with its major personalities, including Bill Simmons and Keith Olbermann.

Although Cowherd said that a third of the MLB is made up of Dominican players, there were 83 Dominican players on Opening Day rosters, making up just 10 percent of players.

screenshot from Keith Olbermann YouTube video