A's Kuiper Suspended Indefinitely Despite Call For Forgiveness From Negro Leagues Museum President

The Oakland A's and NBC Sports California appear to be in damage control mode, even when they probably don't need to be. It all centers on A's announcer Glen Kuiper. The veteran announcer has reportedly been suspended after he inadvertently used a racial slur during a recent broadcast while talking about a visit to the Negro League's Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

The incident occurred during Friday night's broadcast of the A's-Royals game. Kuiper was talking about the museum after visiting it during the A's trip to Kansas City.

However, he seemed to stumble over his words and accidentally said something that sounded conspicuously like the N-word.

Kuiper issued an apology immediately after returning from a commercial break after his slip-up.

“I said something that didn’t come out quite the way I wanted it to. I just wanted to apologize if it sounded different than I meant it to be said, I just want to apologize for that,” he said.

This was an unfortunate incident. No doubt about it. However, it should've ended with the statement from Kendrick.

Now, there are reports that he will be suspended indefinitely.

The President Of The Museum Released A Statement

Interestingly, reports of Kuiper's indefinite suspension came across just under an hour after Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, released a statement on the matter.

One in which he encouraged forgiveness.

"I'm aware of the unfortunate slur made by Glen Kuiper. I welcomed Glen to the NLBM yesterday and know he was genuinely excited to be here," Kendrick said on Twitter.

"The word is painful and has no place in our society. And while I don't pretend to know Glen's heart I do know that my heart is one of forgiveness. I hope all of you will find it in yourselves to do the same!"

When a guy makes an obvious, unintentional mistake — with no ill intent whatsoever (in fact, he was drawing attention to the museum and its fundraising efforts) — why not forgive him?

Kuiper Made An Obvious Accidental Mistake, So Why Drag It Out?

It never makes any sense to me why teams and companies draw these issues out the way they do, especially when they're clearly accidents. Terrible accidents; but accidents nonetheless.

We just saw it with Barstool Sports. One of their personalities, Ben Mintz, was let go after accidentally saying the N-word while reading rap lyrics. He was sent packing, and founder Dave Portnoy claimed that Barstool's parent company, Penn Entertainment was convinced it could cost them gambling licenses.

It would take a complete psycho to purposely use the N-word on camera, especially these days. So then what kind of "investigation" are the folks at NBC Sports California looking to do? Does Dallas Braden have to provide a statement while they break down the footage of the incident like the Zapruder film to see if Kuiper truly stumbled over his words enough to satisfy the team that he didn't intend to say one of the vilest words in the English language during a television broadcast?

That's a ridiculous waste of time.

It was clearly an accident. There's no argument to the contrary. Kuiper said he was sorry, the A's, for some reason, felt compelled to say they do not "condone that kind of language" — as if anyone thought they did — and then the museum's president asked people to forgive Kuiper.

So... he's suspended why?

It's time to move on, it's unfortunate, but it's high time people stop dragging out incidents that were nothing more than unfortunate slip-ups.

Follow on Twitter: @Matt_Reigle