Yankees voice Michael Kay calls out Phil Mushnick for embarrassing NSFW 'whiff'

When Yankees announcer Michael Kay exploded at New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick this weekend, he got only one thing wrong. He called Mushnick "too fine a reporter" to make an embarrassing blunder. Was that a four-word typo?

Mushnick's history of incendiary behavior and holier-than-thou-and-also-everyone-else-on-earth attitude leaves him very little leeway in the court of public opinion. Predictably, the shots he levied at Kay this week did not land well, leaving the ESPN radio host and voice of the Yankees no choice but to step out of his comfort zone and respond.

The NY Post columnist accused Kay of floating an NSFW hypothetical involving Craig Carton and Halle Berry. According to Kay, that "desperately infantile" moment never came out of his mouth.

Yankees announcer Michael Kay shocked by Phil Mushnick's inappropriate accusations

In actuality, the tape shows Kay made a far tamer reference, and cohost Peter Rosenberg eventually spun the hypothetical into the dirty specifics referenced above.

Kay should probably consider himself lucky that Mushnick only leapt to a bizarre sexual conclusion and not some sort of racially insensitive accusation, territory the veteran scribe has been known to trip into from time to time.

Bottom line? When New York's established media figures bicker, no one wins, and the party making the accusation should definitely have all their facts straight before reaching a conclusion. Kay does bear a modicum of responsibility if you hated the supposed segment; after all, it's his show and he kicked the conversation off. But Mushnick went a step too far by putting words in his mouth and pretending the escalation didn't come from a secondary source.

This isn't the spice most Yankees fans were hoping for this weekend (Wandy Peralta? Blake Snell?), but it's the spice they're going to have to accept. Things won't get heavier until whenever Marcus Stroman makes his New York sports radio debut as a member of the Yankees.