On Tuesday afternoon, former MLB star pitcher Roy Halladay died in an airplane crash that devastated many people in the sports world. Halladay crashed into the Gulf of Mexico roughly 10 miles off the coast of Florida. He was 40 and is survived by a wife and two children.
It doesn’t seem like Halladay’s death would be fodder for a sports talk radio show, but on Wednesday, that’s exactly what it became when Boston radio host Michael Felger of Felger & Massarotti went on the air and mocked Halladay for making the decision to fly in the first place. It sounds like Felger saw the video that TMZ Sports posted on Wednesday, which showed Halladay pulling off some seemingly dangerous maneuvers in his plane just minutes prior to his death, and he responded by ripping him for it.
"Weeee!" Feller said. "Yeah, man, look at the G-force on this! I’m Maverick [from Top Gun]. Yeah, man, look at this, it’s so cool. And you die. Splat. It’s over. So you’re that guy? You have to do that? Weeee! Oh, look, I just landed on the water, everybody. I’m gonna tweet it. Splat. You’re dead. Two kids. Moron."
Felger also went on to say that the video made him angry, and he added that he hopes people mock him the same way he mocked Halladay if he ever dies taking part in a dangerous activity.
"It just sort of angers me. You care that little about your life? Or the life of your family? Your little joyride is that important to you?" Felger said. "I’m sorry, dude, you’re on your own. I’ve got no sympathy for you. If I die helicopter skiing, you have the right to do the same exact thing I’m doing to Roy Halladay. He got what he deserved."
Listen, we know sports talk radio shows have segments to fill every day, and we know it isn’t always easy to fill them. We also know it can be difficult to get at certain topics, like the death of a prominent athlete, on a show that is supposed to be filled with opinions.
But if this was the only segment this radio show could come up with to talk about the Halladay story, maybe just, I don’t know, don’t talk about it? There are a million and one other things going on in Boston at the moment that they could have touched on instead of this. It would have been the decent thing to do, and it would have saved them from the backlash they are dealing with at the moment as a result of Felger’s ridiculously insensitive comments.
You can listen to his comments in the clip above.
