Boston Radio: Tom Brady Hopes WEEI Doesn't Fire Reimer

Tom Brady & daughter

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady told reporters at Super Bowl Opening Night that he doesn’t want the radio host who criticized his daughter fired, reports USAToday.

Earlier Monday, Brady went on Boston’s WEEI 93.7 FM to call out host Alex Reimer for calling his daughter an "annoying little piss-ant" and said he would “evaluate” whether he would come on the station again. The brief appearance on Kirk & Callahan --- which has Brady and Patriots head coach Bill Belichick on each week under a multiyear agreement --- resulted in widespread criticism of WEEI and Reimer, who was suspended for the comments Friday.

“I certainly hope the guy isn’t fired,” Brady said from the podium during the Patriots’ availability. “I would hate for that to happen.”

About the same time Brady took to the podium at the Xcel Engery Center on Monday, WEEI’s parent company, Entercom, issued an apology to Brady for Reimer’s “utterly indefensible and mean‐spirited commentary directed” at Brady’s 5-year-old daughter. Reimer would remain suspended indefinitely, according to the statement.

Reimer was discussing the documentary series “Tom vs. Time.” The child is heard off-camera in one clip. That was apparently too much for Reimer, according to The Boston Herald.

What was once an offhand remark on a night-time sports radio talk show became an international news story yesterday as Brady reacted to Reimer disparaging his daughter live on ’EEI’s “Kirk and Callahan.”

“I’ve always tried to come on and do a good job for you guys, so it’s very disappointing when you hear that, certainly. But my daughter or any child, they certainly don’t deserve that,” Brady said.

It was a side of Brady we’ve rarely heard. He was defending his young daughter against an inexcusable cheap shot. Still, the lack of yelling, profanity and bombast is a tribute to Brady’s ability to compartmentalize his emotions.

Alex Reimer

Asked whether the remark had hurt him, Brady said: "Look, I think we all go through our life and sometimes we say things we shouldn't say or make mistakes, and that happens. I can express it and you move on." He added that while criticism is part of sports, he doesn't think that "my children or anybody else's children deserve to be in that."

USAToday notes in too many markets across the country, sports talk radio has been a safe space for (mostly white) men to engage in the kind of crude misogyny, sophomoric homophobia, veiled racism and downright cruelty that is no longer acceptable in any other setting. But Boston has been more notorious than most for radio hosts who pull one outrageous stunt after another with little consequence to their careers.

When you have hosts who mock the death of Roy Halladay, turn a gorilla escaping a zoo into racist jokes, casually muse about hiring somebody to murder NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, call Erin Andrews a “gutless bitch,” call Al Horford soft for missing a game due to his wife giving birth, make fun of Jeff Green’s heart surgery and suggest a Red Sox sideline reporter was sleeping with a player, why would anyone who works in that marketplace think there are limits to what you can say and who you can go after?

It should surprise no one that such an incubator of bombast eventually produced someone like 25-year-old Alex Reimer, who went where nobody in the sports talk business should go: to the children.