Tenor Adopted, Disowned by Yankees Leaves Town

Ronan Tynan moving to Boston after Jewish "joke" flap

For almost a decade at Yankees games, Irish tenor Ronan Tynan belted out "God Bless America.''
       
But he's been gone from the Bronx ballpark since October after a woman accused him of making an anti-Semitic remark.
       
And now, Tynan is moving to Boston.
       
The 49-year-old singer says other work has also dried up for him, and he's gotten angry e-mails and death threats.
       
He says his reference to "two Jewish ladies'' looking for an apartment in his building was mistaken for a slur.

At the time, the real estate agent showing the apartment reportedly said to Tynan of the prospective customers, "They are not Red Sox fans.'' He responded: "As long as they're not Jewish.''

Tynan profusely apologized the day after he made the comment, and did so personally to the woman hurt by his remark as well as in a later meeting with the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism. 

"I understand totally the insensitivity of my remarks," Tynan said after his meeting with the ADL. "I do understand from my own life how hurtful and wrong prejudice is.”

Tynan was born with a lower leg deficiency and has had both of his legs amputated below the knee. In addition to his prior gig with the Yankees,
Tynan has sung at 9/11 memorials, for U.S. troops in Iraq and lately for the ADL.
       
He says he will still rent an apartment in New York.
       
A Yankees spokeswoman says the team wishes him well.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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