It sounds like Mr. DiMauro has a legitimate speech impediment, but saying he shouldn't be on TV is a little much. Bill Walton had a terrible stutter as a younger man, and he did the NBA on NBC for years. You don't think it frustrates a stutterer when they are in the midst of it? Believe me it probably does more than you listening.
It also sounds like Mr. DiMauro has visited a speech therapist a time or two. Those breaks in speech where it seems like he wants to say something but nothing comes out, is actually a learned technique to prevent the Billy-Madison-style stammering. Equally as frustrating for a stutterer is when you want to say something but know it's a sound you'll have trouble with. You can actually feel it. At that point, it's just as important to get any sound out in order to begin the flow of words. Many times a verbal pause (ahh, uhh, umm,) helps, but sometimes you need to pick another word merely for the sound. Starting around 13:15 is a perfect example. He has a number of verbal pauses and then says. "I lost all my c...my credibility around two thousand-fff...five." To me (at least), Mr. DiMauro knew he was going to have a problem with sound. For the C sound he interject a different word (my) when he got there so the C sound could roll off easier. He then stopped on sound in 2005. Another learned technique is to concentrate about what you want to say before say it. Not necessarily the meaning of a word, but the actual sound of the letters. For some though, thinking only makes it worse and adds to the anxiety. Many stutterers (like myself) can sing without a stutter, I'm not exactly sure why, but I think it's because we don't have to think about the words we're about to say. Other times I think its because our singing voice is not our normal talking voice in which we normally stutter.
As a kid, if you want to test his/her fight or flight mechanism, make fun of their stuttering. Even today, something as seemingly innocuous as someone finishing my sentence (even if they are my best friend or they are correct in predicting my thought) makes me want to punch them in the orbital bone.
Bo Jackson was one of my heros growing up and not only for his athletic ability. I saw a documentary where he said when someone poked fun of his stutter as a kid, he would beat the crap out of the offender. No one made fun of him after that. The thing is, if you cry or run away, you're a baby. If you try to comeback over the top verbally, you end up getting so anxious that you stutter more. It's a no win situation unless you eat your Wheaties and spinach, and stop the taunting before it starts. On the bright side for a stuttering baseball player, I was great at infield chatter
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