Charlie Kirk’s former chief of staff, Mikey McCoy, has ripped into the New York Mets announcer for criticizing a Chicago Cubs star for attending Kirk’s memorial.
Cubs rookie Matt Shaw said he had the support of team veterans and coaches when he skipped Sunday’s 1-0 loss in Cincinnati to attend the memorial service.
However, Mets announcers Gary Cohen and Todd Zeile took issue with Shaw’s decision, which they saw as highly unusual and potentially problematic for a playoff-bound team like the Cubs.
‘Shaw had Cubs world in a tizzy this weekend when he was not here for the Cubs game with the Reds – a game they lost and in which his lack of presence was felt,’ Cohen said on SNY during the Mets’ 9-7 win over the Cubs on Tuesday night.
Cohen would go on to call his absence from the game ‘weird’, which lead to plenty of backlash from fans on social media in the days that followed.
Now, Kirk’s former chief of staff McCoy has taken aim at the Mets announcer.
Charlie Kirk’s former chief of staff, Mikey McCoy, has ripped into the New York Mets announcer for criticizing a Chicago Cubs star for attending Kirk’s memorial
Conservative activist Kirk was shot during a rally in Utah earlier this month
Cohen (pictured) stressed he wasn’t addressing Kirk’s politics by discussing Shaw’s move
Taking to X on Thursday, he wrote: ‘A little over a month ago Charlie’s dream came true… he got the opportunity to walk on Wrigley Field and after – see his friend Matt Shaw hit a home run.
“A month later, Charlie is gone and Matt Shaw is receiving backlash for attending his friend’s memorial. Shame on Gary Cohen…”
McCoy also shared a video of Kirk at Wrigley Field on the day, where he stopped and took time to speak with fans and take pictures.
In Cohen’s rant about Shaw, he also said: ‘I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird.
Zeile replied: ‘I think it’s unprecedented, at least from my experience as a player. And I think it made it a little bit more unusual that it was not revealed until after it came to issue, because he was thought to be in the dugout and maybe available and then was not.
‘That’s how it was revealed,’ Zeile added. ‘So it became maybe more of a story than it could have been had it been addressed from the beginning.’
It was later revealed that he had been given permission to attend Kirk’s funeral.
However, McCoy also noted that Shaw wasn’t granted bereavement, meaning the Cubs couldn’t replace him on the active roster for Sunday’s loss.
McCoy took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to make the public attack on Cohen
McCoy shared a video of Kirk interacting with fans during a visit to Wrigley Field this year
Shaw missed Sunday’s loss in Cincinnati to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial in Arizona
‘I thought it was telling that the reason they didn’t tell anybody and that they had to play a man short was that the situation did not qualify for baseball’s bereavement list,’ Cohen said. ‘[I] think that in and of itself gives you a clue as to how it was received by a lot of people.’
However, a number of fans were quick to hit back at Cohen over his controversial stance on the matter.
One user commented on X: ‘Missing a day of work to attend a friend’s memorial, who happened to be murdered in front of the entire world, and worship is not weird. Gary Cohen is weird.’
‘Oh so the death of a friend is less important than sport ball and Gary Cohen thinks THAT is weird? F***ing hell,’ said another.
