ESPN has suspended Peter Pascarelli's podcasts perhaps permanently, after he took a couple of subtle and fairly harmless shots at the Commissioner of Baseball.

As an apparent aside, Pascarelli dared to make light of  the new statue of Bud being constructed in Milwaukee and said something about pigeons finding it and conducting their business upon it..  Last year, Scott Van Pelt took aim at Bud on ESPN radio and was benched.

I don't know what's going through the minds of the people running the network, but I have a sneaking suspicion. 

ESPN is fighting the MLB network for the hearts and minds of baseball fans.  They've already lost two key pieces of their coverage, one through his actions (Steve Phillips) and the other through a better deal with MLB (Peter Gammons.)  In order for ESPN to remain competitive, they pretty much have to service Bud at every opportunity.  Making fun of Bud just makes MLB mad and they have the leverage with their own network to make ESPN miserable.  So, the network actually becomes a pawn in the effort to keep Bud in a positive light.

ESPN has been very arbitrary in some of these suspensions, some don't make sense and in many cases a simple "I'm sorry, I went a bit over the top" would have sufficed. 

Just the buzz of an apology is enough to get you some pub.  Benching star players makes your team weaker not stronger. ESPN should run a disclaimer that says "The opinions of ESPN hosts are the opinion of ESPN because if it's not, you can count on them getting their asses suspended."