Brandon Tierney, who thought he was the star of “Tiki & Tierney” when he was teamed on the radio with all-time UVA Football great Tiki Barber, is going full-out truther on Juan Soto, who Tierney thinks is fudging his age.
“Does he look 26? Does he? I shouldn’t even start this. This is gonna get me in trouble. But does he look 26? When you’re 26, you still have a youthful glow. Does he look 26?”
This was Tierney, a White guy who played baseball at Marist in the mid-1990s, blowing the racist dog-whistle at Soto, a Dominican in his eighth big-league season at the age of 26, who is MLB’s second-highest paid player, after signing a 15-year, $765 million free-agent deal with the New York Mets.
Admitting “I can’t prove it,” in a discussion with his post-Tiki co-host, Sal Licata, on their Friday show on WFAN, Tierney doubled down.
“I think there’s a good chance he’s not 26, I’ll say it,” Tierney said.
This is pulling a Donald Trump saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya moment.
Soto, slashing an underwhelming .252/.384/.499, albeit with 30 homers and an .883 OPS, in his first season with the reeling Mets, who have gone 19-34 since finishing off a three-game sweep of the Washington Nationals on June 12, has been the poster boy of what is shaping up as another failed season in Queens.
His batting average is 29 points below his career average, his OPS is down 62 points, but the OPS and homer rate still have him among the best in the game, if not the best of all-time, as has been the case to this point in his career.
Thing with Soto is, his aloofness can come across as not taking things seriously.
This makes him easy fodder for racist blowhard failed pay-to-play baseball players like Brandon Tierney, who seems to think that four years playing bad college baseball qualifies him to make medical judgments.
“I don’t even want to give you a number, because it’s just giving it more and more credence,” Tierney said. “By the way, I don’t think he’s in his 30s, I’m not saying that. Maybe, uh, close.”