Baseball's Bigmouth.

Should Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker be fired for his bigoted remarks?

YES

John Rocker is a muscle-twitching, wide-eyed specimen who happens to fling a baseball at high speed. He prattled to a Sports Illustrated reporter recently that he hates a good deal of the populace of New York, particularly anybody not exactly like him--people with purple hair, gays, unwed mothers, whatever. Most of all, he hates foreigners, his definition most obviously including African-Americans.

His parents and neighbors and officials from his private, religion-based high school in Macon, Georgia, are saying they are saddened and shocked at his words. They say this is not the John Rocker they know, but it stands to reason that Rocker did not just pick up his bile from one ugly segment on talk radio. His prejudice comes from deep in the heart of a national schism, people who think the borders should have been closed the day after their own ancestors arrived.

Rocker has since issued an apology whose coherence and maturity make it impossible to have been written by him. The ghostwritten mea culpa will not work. He said it; now he has to live with it.

Ted Turner has built his CNN empire on a quirky message of universal brotherhood. More than any other owner in sports, Turner has the moxie to just fire this rube. Turner should do it today, as a gesture to peace on earth.

--GEORGE VECSEY Times sports columnist

NO

Braves ace closer John Rocker needs a lesson in holding his tongue.

His hyperventilating critics, however, need a lesson in what the First Amendment is all about. Surely, if free speech means anything, it's the right of a person to say things that other people disapprove of.

Nobody, including this newspaper, could possibly approve of the tasteless, mean-spirited jibes Rocker made to Sports Illustrated about foreigners, single mothers, AIDS patients, and others.

But isn't the social censure that's rained down (deservedly) on the hard-throwing Macon southpaw, including from his teammates, enough? Apparently not.

Even though Rocker has apologized, some are pushing for Braves management to fire him; others are urging Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to ban him from the game.

If actions speak louder than words, then those who would deprive Rocker of his livelihood are far more "extreme" than anything he said. Rocker is just 25 years old, with only a high school education.

Unlike some of his more mature peers, he doesn't have the best of judgment. But again, if actions speak louder than words, then isn't it significant that his teammates, including Hispanics, say they have never detected racist conduct in him?

Ironically, Rocket's boss, Braves owner Ted Turner, is no stranger to making hateful remarks himself, for which he later had to apologize. Turner was forgiven when the public turned the other cheek. Turner should now turn the other cheek for Rocker. Don't fire him. Counsel him.

--Editorial, Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle