Last night, Manhattan’s David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center hosted the annual ESPY Awards, honoring the top athletes, teams, and sports performances of the year.
As a first-time host, Marcello Hernández kicked off the ceremony with a comedy monologue that mixed sports with jokes about immigrants, American culture, and race.
‘Sports without immigrants is just cornhole.’
Saturday Night Live cast member Hernández, who is of Dominican and Cuban descent, began by shouting out last year’s host, Shane Gillis, joking that Gillis was watching from home “like a true American — on his couch, drinking a beer, while a Hispanic guy does his job.”
He then praised immigrant athletes, declaring, “Immigrant athletes are what make sports great because at the end of the day, sports without immigrants is just cornhole.”
Joking about America’s habit of calling its sports champions “world champions,” Hernández said the FIFA World Cup is “the time when American sports fans remember what the word ‘world’ means,” adding that they typically think it just means “the U.S. and one team from Toronto.”
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He also took aim at the “white sport” of hockey, saying, “You know how I know hockey is a white sport? No matter what you do, the worst thing that happens is, ‘Go to time-out for two minutes.’”
“Latino people watch hockey, and when they see them put those guys in the box for two minutes, the Latino people are like, ‘He gonna do it again. He didn’t learn anything from that.’”
Congratulating WNBA players on their new collective bargaining agreement, Hernández poked fun at the league’s lesbian athletes.
“There’s a lot of new money in the WNBA, man, opening up the door to a new reality show: ‘Basketball Husbands … and Wives.’” He added after a pause, “But mostly wives.”
Not even Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson was safe from the butt of a joke.
Referring to Brunson winning an NBA championship with his father, Rick Brunson, as an assistant coach, Hernández said it proved “that nepotism, like most things, is way cooler when a black guy does it.”
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Mike Coppola/Getty Images
While Hernández’s remarks provided the evening’s opening entertainment, the show ultimately returned to celebrating the athletes and teams who defined the past year.
Among the night’s biggest winners were the New York Knicks, who took home Best Team; Shohei Ohtani, who won Best Single-Game Performance; and Jalen Brunson, who earned Best Athlete — Men’s Sports.
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