Via Billy Hallowell of The Blaze, we saw a recent Deadspin blog, “ESPN’s Dave Pasch Outs Self As Creationist After Receiving Darwin Book.” The sports blog of the sleazy liberal Gawker Media Group seemed to take issue with the fact that ESPN sportscaster Dave Pasch dismissed Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of Species, given to him by fellow ESPN broadcaster Bill Walton. From Timothy Burke at Deadspin:
We've noted previously that college basketball games called by Dave Pasch and Bill Walton on ESPN can get especially weird, but we never imagined that it would be Pasch who would lead viewers to ask themselves, "Did he really just say that?"
Walton, apparently already familiar with Pasch's creationist beliefs, gifted a copy of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species to the ESPN play-by-play man in honor of Pasch winning an "Arizona Sportscaster of the Year" award. Walton then stated, "I want to make sure you believe in evolution."
"I don't," replied Pasch, who stated that he had a book for Walton that refuted evolution. Later, Pasch made a comment alluding to the concept of irreducible complexity, a concept long-debunked by science. Thankfully, a tie-dyed Jay Bilas was around to remind the audience that Cake is a great band.”
After setting the book aside, Pasch told Walton "By the way, Bill, I’ve got a book that counters The Origin of Species, if you’d like me to bring that to you next game.” After a few seconds of silence, he said “Crickets?”
Walton responded, "I believe in science and evolution…I’ve been to the Grand Canyon." Wow, that’s deep.
Fortunately, as the basketball action kicked back in, Pasch prevented the situation from escalating any further and changed the subject. "Alright," he said, "let's move on here."
Walton has been known to provide a few awkward moments when broadcasting college basketball games. Two years ago, Burke at Deadspin scratched his head in print:
Bill Walton's on-air behavior has been consistently weird this college basketball season, and that didn't change tonight as broadcasting's biggest Grateful Dead fan launched into numerous questionable tangents during ESPNU's Pac-12 tournament coverage of Washington-Oregon from Las Vegas.
Making first a reference to Ray Lewis's murder and obstruction of justice charges and then ESPN's Twitter suspension of Bill Simmons, Walton repeatedly created awkward situations for fellow announcer Dave Pasch, who struggled to escape and "get back to game action."
As if things weren't bad enough for Pasch, Walton later alleged that Pasch's "wife has been calling me." We're at the point where we have to seriously question if Walton is working under the influence of something more than his own eccentricity.”
