Dempsey doesn't know funny

This week, Rick Dempsey apologized for attempting to crack a joke about domestic violence on the air during a telecast of a Baltimore Orioles game on Saturday. During the third inning, Dempsey and play-by-play man Gary Thorne were joined in the booth by Laura Giuliani, the wife of Orioles left fielder Jay Gibbons. Giuliani was promoting a fundraiser the next day intended to help fight domestic violence. Gibbons is hitting .213 as of Wednesday, and Dempsey tried to put Gibbons' slump at the plate together with his wife's charity.

Dempsey - "Laura, will this kind of help Jay in the domestic violence area? If he doesn't start getting a few more hits, you might grab him around the neck and rough him up a little bit. [Is] this money going to go to help him a little bit with maybe some of the hospital bills or something like that?"

Giuliani - "I don't know, Rick. I don't think I'm encouraging that. I'm definitely not ..."

Dempsey - "Not going there?"

Giuliani - "Not going there."

Dempsey - "All right, I'll domestically violate him if he doesn't start getting some more hits,"

You can bet that this will be the last time Rick Dempsey does shots of JD along side DH Kevin Millar before a telecast. With the bad publicity he received, it's a good thing Dempsey called off the second half of his joke; where Scott Erickson would throw Giuliani into the elevator out of Camden Yards.