While most of the drama surrounding NESN’s Boston Red Sox broadcast team has involved David Price’s feud with analyst Dennis Eckersley over his critical remarks, another concern has been the absence of studio analyst Steve Lyons in recent weeks.

According to the Boston Globe‘s Nick Cafardo, Lyons, 57, has been off the air because of a domestic battery charge connected to an incident at his home in Hermosa Beach, California. The incident in question took place in January.

From Cafardo’s report:

“Lyons was arrested and charged with domestic battery assault and would likely go to trial in September if attempts to have the charges dismissed are not successful. “A redacted police report provided by the Hermosa Beach police does not include the name of Lyons’s girlfriend or the particulars of the assault. The arresting officer wrote in the report that the girlfriend suffered injuries to her face.”

Lyons’s attorney, Richard A. Hutton, told Cafardo that he expects his client “to be completely 100 percent vindicated” of the domestic battery charges. According to Hutton, Lyons’s girlfriend “told authorities within 36 hours of the incident that he had never struck her or touched her in an offensive way.”

The attorney reiterated that he expects Lyons to be vindicated before trial or during a jury trial, if the case goes that far. In the meantime, Hutton is filing pretrial motions to have the case dismissed.

According to Hutton, the police report was based on accounts from a friend of Lyons’s girlfriend who was on hand during the Jan. 14 incident. The report states that some “verbal sparring” took place, which progressed into something physical. But Hutton says the friend never actually witnessed any instance of physical violence. Lyons, according to Hutton, “never laid a hand on her” and he and his girlfriend have remained together since the incident.

Lyons has worked as a pre- and post-game studio analyst, occasionally filling in for game broadcasts, on NESN’s Red Sox telecasts since 2014. If the charges against him are not dismissed, Lyons’s attorney said a trial would take place in September.

[Boston Globe]