The Real Reasons ESPN Put Keith Law on Twitter Suspension

By now, ESPN’s ludicrous “Twitter suspension” of baseball writer Keith Law has wrapped up, leaving numerous unanswered questions in its wake. Questions such as “Why the hell did they suspend Keith Law?” and, well, that’s about it, though the popular wisdom is that it’s because Law brought the heavy lumber when walking gamedev nightmare Curt Schilling started spouting off on Twitter about how evolution isn’t real neener neener neener. 

ESPN, for its part, claims that the Twitter exchange had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the suspension and now they’re sticking their fingers in their ears so they can’t hear you LA LA LA LA LA LA WE’RE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS. 


 f you take ESPN’s response at face value, then there has to be some other explanation, right? It can’t possibly be that A)they’re lying B)they’re protecting blowhard Schilling because he’s an ex-jock who’s beloved by every Red Sox fan outside of the Rhode Island tax base or C)ESPN is much more comfortable with reporters saying outrageous, stupid bullcrap about domestic violence, racism, and homophobia than they are with logical, well-reasoned debate about a scientific subject. 

 So with that in mind, we’ve uncovered eleven other possibilities, ranked in order of probability: 

 (Full disclosure: I have met Keith, I like Keith, I occasionally have lunch with Keith when he comes to town for work, and he said nice things about my novel. That being said, I would regard this suspension as bullcrap regardless of whether I'd ever met the guy.) 

 1. Refused to give up his reserved parking space at ESPN’s Bristol HQ so Tim Tebow could park his dinosaur closer to the main building. 
2. Cited Skip Bayless as an example of a “transitional fossil” between a T-Rex and a llama. 
3. Won’t stop giving Colin Cowherd crap over his long-ago claim that Mark Sanchez would be a Hall-of-Fame caliber QB. 
4. Once got together with Brian Kenny and the other stat nerds to give John Kruk a swirlie while chanting the formula for WAR. 
5. Logged on to WoW after Warlords of Draenor came out and totally ninjaed Schilling’s Tauren shaman alt character. 
6. Did not obey official ESPN policy to publicly hate all baseball teams that are not the Red Sox or Yankees. 
7. Conducted on-air interview with Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. that consisted of just pointing and laughing hysterically for five minutes. 
8. Management keeps getting him confused with Bill Simmons 
9. Once failed to perform properly the ninety-nine ritual obeisances that one must perform when walking past Derek Jeter in the hall. 
10. Was caught actually mentioning hockey on air. 
11. Discovered the truth about the Bloody Sock and must therefore be silenced.