October 3, 2023 • 42 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 47: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: Yeah, I get it: I want my MTV (Motion To Vacate). Gaetz is running for governor. It’s a STUNT. It doesn’t matter WHICH Russian Republican runs their spitshow. What MATTERS is: Jack Smith is goddamned serious about the Gag Order. And new polling shows that the NATION is serious about disqualifying Trump under the 14th Amendment: 51 percent in favor, only 34 percent opposed.
Judge Chutkan will convene a hearing on October 16 – two weeks from yesterday – on the Jack Smith gag order request and Smith is even more damned serious about it than I dreamed. HIS late night answer to TRUMP’S late night answer pointed out that the newest threats he made – the post about the death penalty for treason for what Trump considered treason – weren’t directed at Milley but directed at OTHER potential witnesses who might want to avoid those kinds of THREATS let aloner anything else. More over, the Special Counsel’s office noted that it doesn’t REALLY matter whether Trump did or DIDN’T buy a Lugar at a white supremacist gun shop in South Carolina. A purchase would obviously be a violation of his bail and there’d be no way for Chutkan not to revoke it and not to put him behind bars until the trial starts. But the OTHER option was ALSO an abuse of the terms under which Chutkan did not end Trump’s freedom in the first place.“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so.” Even LYING about buying a gun is a way in which Trump has exploited the absence of a gag order to remind his cult – AND WITNESSES – that he is a man dedicated to violence and the fomenting OF violence.
Also Trump inadvertently CONFESSED to January 6th, and at his fraud trial he reminded us that his only genuine emotions are about money, and losing it makes him angry and stupid. So anybody debating him needs to make him ANGRY ABOUT MONEY. Also Trump said he’d rather be electrocuted than eaten by sharks and to that I say: you’ve got a deal!
B-Block (18:40) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Did you know Governor Sarah Huckabee of Arkansas is being buried by a scandal over a $19,000 Podium? George Santos has a Constitutional argument against the new California senator. Unfortunately it appears he made it up. And speaking of making it up, Fox's Rachel Compost-Doofy is shocked Gov. Newsom didn't appoint the woman SHE KNEW would be the next Senator (22:03) IN SPORTS: The passing of Tim Wakefield and the guilt of Curt Schilling. Baseball managers Buck Showalter and Phil Nevin were fired even if the teams won't say so. The baseball playoffs have next to no meaning for me, maybe because 45 years ago yesterday I attended - a reported - the greatest playoff game imaginable. K.O. reports from the Bucky F'ing Dent Game.
C-Block (32:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: One of the managers offed as the baseball season ended was Buck Showalter, who 30 years ago provided one of my favorite sports anecdotes and later made fun of himself for it.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah yeah,
I get it. I want my MTV motion to vacate.
(00:30):
That is, Gates is fundraising, Gates is running for governor Florida.
It doesn't matter if McCarthy says bringing on and Gates
says I just did, or the other way round hours
before he filed the motion last night to aust McCarthy,
Gates's father came out of retirement so he can run
for the Florida Send it again. It's a stunt. It
(00:50):
doesn't matter which Russian Republican runs their spit show. The
point is Jack Smith is goddamn serious about the gag order.
The country is goddamn serious about disqualifying Trump under the
fourteenth Amendment, and it's polling surprisingly well. And Trump inadvertently confessed,
and Trump said he'd rather be electrocuted than eaten by sharks.
(01:13):
So I have one simple request, and that is to
have sharks with freaking laser beams attached to their heads.
Throw me a bone here. I will go through all that,
especially the inadvertent confession, which is mind boggling presently, but
newest story first, and our strongest defense against Trump and four.
(01:34):
Democracy remains not our own efforts to preserve it, but
the stupidity of those who would destroy it, specifically the
stupidity of Donald freaking laser beams Trump but.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Not entitled to a jury, which is pretty unusual in
the United States. As America's hope, we think it's very
unfair that I don't.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Have a jury. Trump didn't get a jury at his
New York fraud trial because his lawyers didn't ask for
a jury. At his New York fraud trial, Alina Haba,
the Trump I'm not a lawyer, but I play one
on TV spokesmodel who sat next to him at the
defense table and looked like she had never seen a
table before, let alone the inside of a courtroom. Last night,
(02:17):
she repeatedly denied that she and Trump's other call one
eight hundred and five million injury attorneys screwed it up,
and obviously she would do that, and the crowd she
was talking to is not likely to ever hear that.
The source for the Trump forgot to ask for a
jury story was Judge Arthur Engern, who said that in
(02:39):
court that nobody asked for a jury. Trump was smart
enough also to make another threat this time on tape,
this time with the authenticity of his blind, moronic rage
against the Attorney general and the judge, the judge who's
judging the case by himself.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Now I have to go before a rouge and judge
as a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, as a continuation
of the greatest witch.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Hunt of all time.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And I don't think the people of this country are
going to stand for it. This is a disgrace, and
you're going to go after this Attorney General.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Trump is an idiot when there is rage involved, the
rage element, and Trump actually only has something akin to
human emotion when it comes to money, his money. This
should be a reminder to anybody debating him, or preparing
somebody else to debate him, or interviewing him to get
him angry, because then when he's angry, he says not
(03:41):
just stupid things, but stupid self incriminating things.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's a scam.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
It's a sham.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's a scam. It's a sham. It's a scam. It's
a sham. Scam. Sham reminds me of something, Hi, it's
Vince with sham.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
You'll be saying wow every time you use this towel,
because you know, I can't do this all day. What's
the value of the New York trial. Oh, it's simple.
This genuinely enrages him. The money genuinely enrages him. And
everything that breaks him financially breaks him psychologically. As much
(04:22):
damage as possible, as many blows to the head, the body,
wherever as possible. Keep hitting him the Muhammad Aldi theory,
keep hitting him. Apropos of the financial stuff. The new
Michael Lewis book on Sam Bankman Freed says the cryptocon
(04:42):
man claims he approached Trump's camp with an offer of
cash if Trump would agree not to run in twenty
twenty four. Five billion dollars makes me hate Sam Bankman
Freed a little less and at the same time a
little more. It also would have encouraged Trump to do
this again in twenty twenty eight for another five billion,
(05:03):
and it would have opened up a new market. Hell
five billion. I won't run for president for five hundred dollars.
A late story of no doubt of CNN. All the
anonymous stories attributed to General John Kelly, one of Trump's
chiefs of staff, They're not anonymous anymore. He confirmed them
on the record five years too late, but he confirmed them,
(05:26):
insulting McCain, calling American War dead at Bellowwood suckers, telling
Millie to keep the wounded veterans away from him. Kelly concludes,
there's nothing more than can be said. God help us
unquote yeah, God help you, Pal. You could have said
something in real time to help stop this. Now to
(05:50):
the issues of import its earlier, Judge Chuckkin will convene
hearing on October sixteenth, two weeks from yesterday, on the
Jack Smith gag order request, and Smith is even more
damned serious about it than I had dreamed. His late
night answer to Trump's late night answer pointed out that
the newest threats Trump made the post about the death
penalty for what Trump considered treason, were not directed at
(06:14):
General Millye. They were directed at other potential witnesses who
might want to avoid those kinds of threats, let alone
anything more serious. Moreover, the Special Counsel's Office noted it
does not really matter whether Trump did or did not
buy a luger at a white supremacist gun shop in
South Carolina. A purchase would obviously be a violation of
(06:37):
his bail, and there would be no way for the
judge not to revoke the bail and not to put
them behind bars until the trial starts. But the other
option was also an abuse of the terms under which
Chutkin did not end Trump's freedom in the first place.
Quoting the Smith retort, the defendant either purchased a gun
in violation of the law and his conditions, or seeks
(07:01):
to benefit from his supporter's mistaken belief that he did so.
Even lying about Trump buying a gun is a way
in which Trump has exploited the absence of a gag
order and allowed himself to remind his cult and potential
witnesses that he is a man dedicated to personal violence
(07:22):
and the fomenting of civil violence. Quote. No other criminal
defendant would have been permitted to issue public statements insinuating
that a known witness in his case should be executed.
This defendant should not be either as a side note
to that they are thus confirming Mark Milly is at
least on the witness list. Special Counsel also went out
(07:46):
of its way to go after one of Trump's subtler
but more consistent tricks, repeatedly recasting the charges in his
own favor or flat out lying about what the charges
are and what they mean. Quote. The indictment does, in fact,
clearly link the defendant and his actions to the events
of January sixth. In short, the indictmental ledges that the
defendant's actions, including his campaign of knowingly false claims of
(08:09):
election fraud, led to the events of January sixth. Unquote,
Jack Smith wants Chutkin to not just speed up the
trial start as punishment for all this. He wants her
to circumscribe Trump's ability to write or say whatever he
wants just because he's running for office. He wants a
(08:35):
gag order of some width and breadth. And if she
imposes it on Trump, you know, you know, Trump will
violate it. He has to anything less than violating it,
anything that says he is giving in to the judge.
(08:55):
And he breaks the spell over the victims in his
world record length shell game. And I'll ask this again,
and I'll keep asking it. What happens when he breaks it?
When he breaks the gag order for the fourth time
(09:16):
or the fifth time, or the forty fifth time, and
Chuckkin finally says enough and revokes his bail, whether that's
next month or next year, what happens, then we reenact
the gunfight at the OK Corral on another front in
the war against Trump and four democracy. Politico polled on
(09:38):
the fourteenth Amendment, and I hope every news editor in
this country read the story and we can stop the
political media industrial complex conventional wisdom that continues to insist
that disqualifying Trump under the insurrection clause is a non starter,
A fringe theory, as I've heard it repeatedly described the
Beltway reporters consider it that because they consider everything they
(10:00):
have not actually seen happen before, everything they cannot shove
into one of the twelve or thirteen cubby holes story
templates that they can process and understand, they consider it
the rest of the universe. Fringe theory. Politico asks, specifically,
based on how he behaved after the twenty twenty election,
(10:21):
does the fourteenth Amendment prohibit Trump from ever again running
for office? And fifty one percent said yes, thirty four
percent said no, fifteen percent undecided. The undecided they're not
all breaking for no. The fourteenth Amendment is a factor
(10:42):
in the twenty twenty four campaign, and the media and
the state's secretaries of state, damn well better start treating
it that way. Oh, and generically the fourteenth Amendment is
doing even better. Before introducing Trump's name into the equation,
the Politico pollsters asked if the respondents quote support or
oppose the disqualification clause in the fourteenth Amendment, and they
(11:05):
read it to them, and sixty three percent said they
strongly or somewhat support it, and only sixteen percent said
they did not, Meaning there is twelve percent of that
undecided fifteen percent from the Trump question who agree that
the fourteenth Amendment applies is Legit is not just about
(11:26):
the Civil War but matters today. Twelve percent of the
undecided fifteen percent agree with it. In theory, they just
have to be convinced Trump is guilty of the violations.
Its cites that twelve percent is nearly halfway towards supporting
disqualifying Trump under the fourteenth Amendment. We cannot push that
(11:50):
pedal to hard. Of course, he may beat everybody to
disqualifying himself. As I said, Trump has inadvertently confessed quote,
will Congressman Jamal Bowman be prosecuted and imprisoned? He posted
about the door alarm skirmish in order to stop a
congressional vote that was going on in DC. His egregious
(12:12):
act is covered on tape. A horrible display of nerve
and criminality. It was a very dangerous obstruction of an
official proceeding. When will his trial begin? This, of course,
is as close as Trump can actually get to trolling,
and he's not human enough to realize that a key
object in trolling is not to confess to the crimes
(12:33):
you are accusing the others of in order to stop
a congressional vote. Well, yes, Trump did that. Act is
covered on tape. Well yeah, there's tape a Trump doing that.
Nerve and criminality, well yes, Trump did both of those things.
Obstruction of an official proceeding. That was very dangerous. This
(12:53):
is Trump acknowledging that the charges against him are legit
as surely as those poll respondents are acknowledging that the
fourteenth Amendment applies. And then, lastly, the latest sign that
Trump's cheese whiz is sliding off his ritz cracker. This
(13:15):
is about, believe it or not, alternative fuel vehicles, in
this case boats, or at least it's started there. Come
on over for Trump explaining how he would prefer to
die and then stay for the little Freudian slip.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
If I'm sitting down and that boat's going down and
I'm on top of a battery on the water starts
floating in how I'm getting concerned. But then I look
ten yards to my left hand. There's a shark over there.
So I have a choice of electrocution or shark. You
know what, I'm going to take electrocution. I will take
electrocution every single time. Do we agree, Yeah, I will
(13:56):
take electrocution.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He will take electrocution, Actually, he said, and it's been
dismissed as slurred speech, and it really isn't that is it?
He said, elects rocution. Doctor Freud elects rocution. Still on
the premise of it, no sharks, He'd rather die by electrocution,
(14:21):
to which I say, you have a deal. Also of
interest here, Fox News is crushed by the new senator
designate from California because they had their money on. Now.
You will not believe who they thought, Kavin Newsome was
(14:43):
going to a point to replace the late Diane Feinstein.
But I am betting that you will guess which. Congressman
announced that the appointment is unconstitutional by citing an article
in the Constitution that does not exist, which Congressman would
(15:07):
quote a fictitious article. That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Still ahead on Countdown Sports and the death of Tim
Wakefield and the firing of Buck Showalter and Phil Nevin,
and the forty fifth anniversary of Bucky Effing Dent, including
my report from the game. This just in first time
for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons, and Dunn Kruger,
Effets specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world Lebrons.
(15:55):
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, It's impossible to believe
that you could get yourself caught in a scandal by
spending nineteen thousand dollars of taxpayer money on a podium
and then not just take the humiliation and the laughter
and move on. Trump's former liar in chief keeps making
(16:16):
it worse somehow. First it turned out she bought it
from a company that was not based in Arkansas. Now,
the investigative reporter who broke the story says Huckebye ordered
a state department to not comply with his Freedom of
Information Act request and had somebody alter the request. Doctor
the guy's Foia form. This was a nineteen thousand dollars
(16:36):
podium scandal. Now it is a nineteen thousand dollars podium
scandal that could cost Governor Lady huck her governorship. Attude
the runner up. You may have heard that Governor Newsom
of California has appointed the activist Lafonza Butler to succeed
the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. Congressman George Santos of New York,
the human lie factory, still supported by every Republican, is
(17:00):
not happy that the new senator had been working in Maryland,
so he tweeted his gotcha quote. There is this annoying
thing DEM's hate called the Constitution. Article five, Section three
stated every member of the Senate shall be, at the
time of his election, a resident of the state from
which he shall be chosen. Cool, George, There is no
(17:25):
section three of Article five of the Constitution. George made
that up. But our winner Fox Ninny Rachel campost Duffy
talk about making stuff up. She co hosts the Kids
Table at Fox and Friends, the weekend edition. She got
her start on MTV's Real World Stupid City. Arizona Senator
(17:50):
designate Butler means that Ms Campos Is Duffy's reporting on
the appointment was incorrect. Saturday and Sunday, she went on
Fox and announced that sources had told her that the
new senator from California, since Newsom had said it would
be a black woman, was going to be, was likely
to be You ready, Meghan Markle? No, I'm not kidding,
(18:13):
she claimed. Meghan Markle had campaigned for the post, had
called Jill Biden to arrange it, and Miss Campos Duffy
did a victory lap when the ever reliable Daily Mail
of London reported a rumor about it. Fox is Rachel
Campos Duffy. I may be mispronouncing that it may be
Rachel Campos Doofy, Today's worst parson in no world.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
This is sports Senate. Wait, not anymore, this is Countdown
with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
In Sports. You will recall that Kurt Shilling, scumbag ex
picture of the Boston Red Sox, made the Worst Person's
List last Friday. He broke a confidence and revealed that
his former teammate Tim Wakefield and his wife were battling cancer.
He even acknowledged that he did not know whether the
Wakefields wanted that fact known, he put it on his
podcast Anyway. Sunday, Tim Wakefield died brain cancer. The baseball
(19:38):
world is stricken and in mourning. Anybody else who did
what Shilling did would retire from all public life and
maybe change his name and try to repent. Not Shilling,
because he barely qualifies as a human being. I hope
his maker can forgive him. The rest of us never
ever will. The day after the New York Mets fired
(19:58):
manager Buck Showalter, the Los Angeles Angels fired manager Phil Nevin.
I know it doesn't say that in the news media.
It says one of them parted ways and the other
one didn't have option renewed. But when the general manager
of the Mets tells you you have your choice of
resigning or being fired, you've been fired. Or when the
general manager of the angel says they're not picking up
your option, you've been fired. The option thing. I've been there.
(20:22):
As to the Mets, this better be a precursor to
letting show Hey Otani pick his own manager as part
of the Mets offer to him, or owner Steve Cohen
has made a huge mistake. Can O'tani's translator managed anybody know?
The premise is the team's new head of baseball operations,
David Stearns, gets to choose his own baseball people. Now,
(20:44):
if I'm general manager Billy Eppler, who told Showalter he
was out, I'm thinking, Wait, I'm in baseball and I'm
a people. Am I going to get fired too? Wait?
What's that odd look on Billy's face? Thank you, Nazi
(21:08):
Faust my favorite Buck show Alter memory coming up in
Things I promised not to tell. I'd love to give
you a full baseball playoff preview, but frankly, I don't care.
The baseball postseason used to be the matchup between the
champions of the American and National Leagues in the World Series.
The regular seasons had determined the top two teams with
rare exceptions, and then they fought for the championship. That
(21:30):
was the point of the season. An increase in teams
necessarily meant an increase in playoff teams. I happily embraced
that division winners. This is a joke. The wildcard teams
in the National League are all terribly flawed pretenders, and
one of them could, like last year, get hot for
a couple of weeks and get into the World Series,
(21:51):
not being one of the best teams in baseball and
then get humiliated as the Philadelphia Phillies did. I've expounded
on this before. There are many reasons the TV audience
for each World Series game dropped from forty three a
night in nineteen eighty to fifteen million a night last year.
But one of the reasons is this, we cannot have
(22:12):
any confidence that those will be the two best teams
in the game. It's just a tournament now, like basketball.
If it's not your team involved, why would you watch
at the risk of being one of those Hey, you kids,
get off my et cetera guys. Forty five years ago,
the two best teams in the American leagues spent one
(22:34):
hundred and sixty two games beating each other's brains in
and tied over one hundred and sixty two games, then
had to meet in a one game playoff. The winner
went on to the American League Championship Series. The loser
went home. It was the Bucky Dent Game Red Sox Yankees,
October two, nineteen seventy eight, and before the anniversary slips
(22:55):
back further into obscurity, I was there and on the
air from there.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Again with surprise out of the boom to everybody here
in a three run home run over the westfield wall
at Fenway Park, and see the Green Monsters plays no favorites,
as they say, And the Yankees have just added a
fourth run on a base at my Thurman Munson that
scored Mickey Rivers from second. He had gotten there on
a walk and a stolen base the second of the game.
(23:24):
I have to tell you something about Den's home run.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
I saw it, Keith do no, don't you didn't hear this?
Speaker 4 (23:29):
You know. I'm sitting here with Jim Berger, who is
a member of our staff. The Red Sox just got
the Yankees out of the five ball left. Jim Berger
is a member of our staff, and a Red Sox
fan turns to me with gent up and chillman on
and says, well, at least he's not a home run stretch.
I thank you for saying that, and promple he hit
(23:49):
the home run over the west field wall.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, well just made it over. We saw the replay
on television and the ball was going down and almost
hit the top of the wall, just missed the top
of the wall, made it into the what is that.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
That's known as the Perny Carbo special if.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I remember it, well, Bernie Carbo, Well, it isn't on
the Yankees or the Red Sox now, so.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Well leave came out of here.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
That was years to hit. Okay, well, Key, if your
Yankees are up four to.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Two, it will were d bottom of the seventh and I.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Have to say something else.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Looking at the respective earned RUD averages of the pitchers
who were starting this game. Before the game started, Jim Berger,
our ace Red Sox fan on the sports staff said
this figures to be a four to two game. So
so far he is one hundred percent correct and wishes
he words Okay, I'll talk to you a little later, okay,
can Wright when the game's over?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Bye?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Some notes and yes the host there was a Red
Sox fan too. Bucky Dent rightly notes that if the
Yankees had not fired Billy Martin as their manager three
months before that game, he would not have even come
to the plate then, let alone hit that game leading
home run that eventually put the Yankees over the Red
Sox into the playoffs. Martin had pinch hit for Bucky
(24:53):
Dent five times in seven games at Fenway Park, Boston
in nineteen seventy seven alone. He had pinch hit for
him eight times overall in Dent's first sixty three games
in nineteen seven. Then he got fired. His successor, Bob Lemon,
did not pinch it for Bucky Dent, and back then,
Eastern Airlines flying out of LaGuardia Airport in New York,
(25:15):
guaranteed you a seat on its hourly shuttle flight to
Boston if you got to the gate on time. It's
about one hundred and twenty people maybe per plane. For
the nine AM to Boston on October second, nineteen seventy eight,
they were about one hundred and twenty eight people at
the gate, so sure enough they rolled out a second
plane for the remaining eight of us, among them Dick Shapp,
(25:38):
the sportscaster, his nine year old son Jeremy now an
ESPN sportscaster, American League President Lee McPhail, and me, nineteen
year old Yankee fan, meeting up with my two friends,
the Red Sox fans, who had gone to Boston that
weekend and had bought all of his tickets to that
playoff game. The Yankees would win fifty two of their
last seventy three games that season, while the Red Sox
(26:00):
were just one game over five hundred in their final
seventy three in Fenway in September, where the Yankees had
lost thirteen of their sixteen previous games, New York had
swept four from Boston by a combined score of forty
two to nine and four and a half decades later,
members of the seventy eight Yankees will still insist that
(26:22):
August ninth was as important as any other day of
that year. Pre Internet, pre ESPN, pre talk radio, the
New York newspapers were the dominant media, and the ones
then made the ones today look like a stack of
Valentine's Day cards. On August ninth, nineteen seventy eight, all
(26:42):
of the New York newspapers were shut down by a
strike that lasted until November, and the Yankee players basically
didn't have to answer a question snide, tough, or otherwise
again until spring training. I was told back then that
several of the players proposed making a donation to the
(27:04):
newspaper strike fund as part of their winnings from winning
the World Series out of pure gratitude. Finally, to our
(27:24):
number one story on the content and my favorite topic,
me and Things, I promised not to tell. The New
York Yankees were in their first Pennant race in five years.
They had reeled off eight wins in ten games to
reach a first place tie with the defending world champion
Toronto Blue Jays. It was Sunday, August twenty second, nineteen
ninety three, and I was at Yankee Stadium just cuz
(27:48):
we were about to start a month of intensive preparations
for the launch of the ill fated ESPN. Two. Good evening,
and welcome to the end of our careers that one.
And this was probably going to be my last chance
to go to the city, visit my folks, see a ballgame,
whatever till further notice. And here was my childhood team,
the Yankees, with a lineup that now included friends of
(28:09):
mine like Danny Tartable and Mike Diego and Don Mattingly
against the Royals, for whom my friends while he Joiner
and David Cohne played, and a seat awaiting me in
the press box on a beautiful late summer Sunday afternoon
with just the earliest hint to fall in the air
and Bobby Darren singing on the PA system, and the
(28:30):
Yankees got crushed Kansas City started a pitcher named Chris Haney,
who was much less successful than his mediocre five point
four to seven Era implied he would somehow last for
eleven seasons and become statistically one of the worst pitchers
of a generation. And that day, the Yankees got at
(28:51):
least one base runner on in eight of the nine
innings against Chris Haney, and he still shut them out
seven to nothing. And you could sense right then that
whatever it was that a team needed to have to
hold its own down the stretch, the nineteen ninety three
New York Yankees did not have it. Still, it was
(29:13):
fun to visit with reporter friends, some of whom I'd
known since i'd broken in fourteen years earlier, and some
I hadn't seen since then. The only oddity was that
at some point during the game, one of the kids
from the Yankees media relations department came over and asked
me for my ID, and when I showed him my ID,
he asked me if I was planning to go into
(29:33):
the Yankee clubhouse afterwards. I said, funny, you should to
ask that I am headed downtown for dinner. But I
missed my friend Danny Chartable before the game for some reason,
and I just want to pop in and say hello,
and the kids said thanks, sorry to trouble you, and
he left, and the radio reporter I was sitting next
to Don Gould, said that that was one of the
(29:53):
strangest things he had seen in that press box. And
he added, and nowadays all you see up here is
strange things. As the Yankees went out limply in the ninth,
leaving Bernie Williams stranded on first, naturally, I waited until
all the reporters with real deadlines had taken the first
couple of elevator trips down to the Yankee Clubhouse in
the basement, and then I leisurely made my way downstairs. I
(30:17):
navigated the catacombs of the stadium basement as I had
since it had opened in nineteen seventy six, and felt
warm and nostalgic and at peace. I showed my pass
to the guard at the clubhouse door and walked into
the clubhouse to find the Yankee Clubhouse lacking the one
thing it had literally always featured in each of the
(30:37):
dozens and dozens of times i'd previously entered it since
I was seventeen years old. Players There were no Yankee
players in the Yankee Clubhouse. No Yankees, no Yankees still
in uniform, no Yankees half dressed, no Yankees not dressed,
(30:58):
No sounds of other Yankees in the showers off to
the left. Nothing. Well, that wasn't quite right. I realized
something after about a minute of walking slowly from locker
to locker, thinking, isn't this where they used to be?
Maybe Maddingly is crouching out of sight over here, and
(31:20):
maybe Tartarbule is hiding behind his suit. After that, zero
for three, I realized that while there were no Yankees
in the Yankee Clubhouse, there were reporters in the Yankee Clubhouse,
and they were all staring at me, and angrily staring
at me. I said to them, might have been my
friend from upstairs, Don Gould, what the hell's going on?
(31:41):
And he said testily, I don't know. Why don't you
tell us? The reporters around him, who had never taken
their eyes off me, now murmured quietly, but with a
subtext of threat and menace and vengeance in their indistinct gurgling.
Just at this point, Arthur Richmond, who had been the
(32:04):
men It's public relations man forever and was now a
Yankees vice president of something for some reason, and more importantly,
was the surviving brother of the great baseball reporter Milt Richmond,
who had so helped me at the start of my
career at UPI. Arthur tapped me on the shoulder and said, U,
Keith Aberman, right, And I said, yes, we've met before.
(32:24):
I used to work with your brother. And he did
not look happily at me. And I asked him if
he wanted to see my pass or my ID or
my identifying birthmarks. Arthur did not smile. The manager would
like to see you in his office. I still didn't
have the faintest idea what was going on? Have I
been sent down to the miners, Arthur, I asked jauntily. Yes,
(32:48):
yes you have, Richmond answered with utter seriousness. Arthur Richmond
escorted me to the little room on the home plate
side of the clubhouse, in which I had once seen
the late Billy Martin shout at a coach, two pitchers,
three writers, and a clubhouse attendant who had been with
the team since nineteen twenty seven. The current occupant of
that tiny office, the manager rose from his desk, Keith
(33:09):
hi Buck Showalter. I'm the manager here. I reminded him
that we had done a lengthy interview for ESPN Radio
the year before. That's right, I'd forgotten. I apologize. Listen.
I wanted to tell you. I think you brought something
refreshing and fun to Sports Center. I watch you all
the time, especially when we're on the road. You know
the game too, That's important. But I have to tell
you my players have a problem with what you do.
(33:33):
I wasn't that surprise. Players were like that In nineteen
ninety three. Very few sportscasters said anything negative about players.
They certainly did not make jokes or puns about them.
I saw you on the field before the game. I
heard some of our guys, Showalter continued, like Paul O'Neil
and Wade Bogs and Joe Girardi. They were talking about
(33:53):
how they were thinking about going out there on the
field and punching you in the head. I flashed back
suddenly to nineteen eighty nine when Bogs went on Heraldo
Rivera's show and announced he was a sex addict, and
how after checking with a few of his Red Sox
teammates whom I knew from the year I worked in Boston,
who said that was nonsense. I went on the air
(34:14):
on my sportscast in the local station in LA, having
intercut Boggs's weepy comments to Heraldo with the music video
from Robert Palmers Addicted to Love. I have to say
it was pretty funny and also might have been the
meanest thing I ever did on TV. Boggs wanted to
(34:35):
punch me in the head on the field at Yankee Stadium.
That checked out? Go on, I said to Buck Showalter.
In fact, the players are all staying in the training
room in the back until they've been assured you've left
the clubhouse and you won't be returning. They voted unanimously.
I thought about this, When did they vote unanimously while
(34:57):
they were getting shut out by the worst picture of
a generation that did not check out? Now, Like I said, person,
I like what you do, but I think you may
want to consider the implications of what not having any
access to players ever again we'll have on your career,
especially on such a high profile program as Sports Center.
I thought about it briefly, and I smiled at Buck Showalter.
None whatsoever. Actually, I'm a studio guy. I never have
(35:18):
to go to games and more to the point I've
just left Sports Center for this new ESPN two network
because my boss has said it's basically going to be
a network that's designed around my sense of humor. Buck
Showalter was thirty seven years old then, and at the
end of his second year as a major league manager,
his team, having just achieved a tie for first place,
(35:39):
had just gotten the air let out of its balloon
by an epically bad pitcher on a not so good team.
Plus they were due on a flight for Chicago, and
the bus was supposed to leave in an hour, but
Paul O'Neill, Wade Bogs, and Joe Girardi were worried about
some dumb sportscaster making jokes. I knew they were doomed.
(36:03):
And if manager Buck Showalter actually let Paul O'Neill, Wade Bogs,
and Joe Girardi worried about some dumb sportscaster and his jokes,
Buck showalter io was doomed. And sure enough they would
lose twenty of their last thirty seven games after that
day and not make the playoffs for two years, and
not actually get anywhere in the playoffs until after Showalter
was fired and replaced by my friend Joe Tory. Right
(36:26):
around then after the firing, I was part of the
annual ESPN Awards show The Spies. It was the post
SPI's party, and I went to get a drink and
turned a corner and they're coming toward me were Paul O'Neill,
Wade Bogs, and Joe Girardi. I was just about to
gulp when O'Neill shouted, there, he is our favorite ESPN guy.
(36:48):
Handshakes all of them. Girardi said he was amazed every
time I ripped a player, he said it was somebody.
He also didn't like. How did I know? Bog said,
somebody told me that you put my Heraldo appearance into
that Robert Palmer song. If you got a tape of that,
I'd like to say see it. I told them the
Buck Showalter story immediately. Ah, God, I remember that, said O'Neil.
(37:11):
He was pissed you were in the ballpark and we
got shut out, and he made us stay in the
trainer's room and not come out till after you left.
And god, it was terrible. The smile vanished from Joe
Girardi's face. Buck did stuff like that all the time.
We should all have a drink and talk about it.
We all had a drink and we talked about it.
Years later, I was telling my late friend Pedro Gomez
(37:34):
of ESPN the story, and he said, Showalter used to
do this to him when Showalter was managing the Arizona
Diamondbacks and Pedro was a beat reporter for a newspaper
in Phoenix. You know, Colbran wants to beat you up,
but I stopped him. He quoted Showalter as saying Greg
Colbran was a six foot one hundred and ninety pound
weightlifter from California's Inland Empire who seemed to play baseball
(37:59):
in his spare time. So Pedro said, I confronted him
one day and he said, dude, what are you talk about.
You know, Buck just makes this crap up. The Yankees
fired Buck Showalter in nineteen ninety five, as I mentioned,
and won the World Series in nineteen ninety six. The
Diamondbacks fired him in two thousand and won the World
Series in two thousand and one. Then he went to
(38:20):
work in of all places, the studio at ESPN for
two years. Then he got another managing job in Texas,
got fired from there, went back to ESPN. For three
more years and then became the manager at Baltimore in
twenty ten. I was at the Baltimore spring training camp
one day that March and I see walking toward me
(38:41):
from the other side of the field, trying to capture
my attention. Buck Showalter. I am now fifty one years old.
He is now fifty three years old. It is nearly
seventeen years since the day he locked his entire team
in the trainer's room in the middle of a Pennant
race in a complicated ritual that would have been too labyrinthine,
a plot for Tom Clancy just to express some cheesy
(39:03):
grudge against the way I did sports guests, Hey, Joe
Walter said when he finally reached me, when I pulled
that stunt on you at Yankee Stadium, was that ninety
three or ninety four? We shook hands as I laughed,
and I told him it was August of nineteen ninety three.
I can get you the exact date if you needed.
I'm sorry. I had not been in television yet. I
(39:24):
didn't get any of it. I just thought you guys
came in and shouted your heads off and then went home.
I didn't get it. Obviously. Why didn't you tell me
off or something? He asked. I shrugged. I said, well,
there was you. There were six coaches, twenty five players
there versus me, plus all the reporters who were angry
(39:44):
at me, who were on deadline. What if you were
telling the truth now? Buck laughed and apologized again. We
have been professional friends ever since. Whenever I have seen him,
we compare the cruelties of aging and talk about politics
and television. I saw him two Saturdays ago, after four
more years in TV, when it looked like his managing
(40:05):
career might be over. He is back running the New
York Mets at the age of sixty six and doing
a damn fine job of it. And every once in
a while I bring up the trainer's room full of Yankees,
and he flinches and says, you know, there's one last
thing about it that now I cannot possibly understand that
trainer's room that was really tiny. How did the players
(40:29):
all fit in there? I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown has come
to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the Older
Woman Broadcasting Empire in New York. The music you've heard
(40:53):
was for the most part, arrange produced and performed by
Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel. Brian
Ray handled the guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shanelle
did the orchestration and keyboards that was produced by t Brothers.
Other music, including other Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis.
(41:15):
We call it the Old Woman theme from ESPN two.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the one thousandth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(41:35):
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can, all right, it's at one thousand and
first day if you count today. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletons is the news warrant till then. I'm
Keith Olderman, Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good Luck.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Electrocution's a scam as a chef hi, It's fenced with sham.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Wow Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeart
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Yeah yeah,
I get it. I want my MTV motion to vacate.
(00:30):
That is, Gates is fundraising, Gates is running for governor Florida.
It doesn't matter if McCarthy says bringing on and Gates
says I just did, or the other way round hours
before he filed the motion last night to aust McCarthy,
Gates's father came out of retirement so he can run
for the Florida Send it again. It's a stunt. It
(00:50):
doesn't matter which Russian Republican runs their spit show. The
point is Jack Smith is goddamn serious about the gag order.
The country is goddamn serious about disqualifying Trump under the
fourteenth Amendment, and it's polling surprisingly well. And Trump inadvertently confessed,
and Trump said he'd rather be electrocuted than eaten by sharks.
(01:13):
So I have one simple request, and that is to
have sharks with freaking laser beams attached to their heads.
Throw me a bone here. I will go through all that,
especially the inadvertent confession, which is mind boggling presently, but
newest story first, and our strongest defense against Trump and four.
(01:34):
Democracy remains not our own efforts to preserve it, but
the stupidity of those who would destroy it, specifically the
stupidity of Donald freaking laser beams Trump but.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Not entitled to a jury, which is pretty unusual in
the United States. As America's hope, we think it's very
unfair that I don't.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Have a jury. Trump didn't get a jury at his
New York fraud trial because his lawyers didn't ask for
a jury. At his New York fraud trial, Alina Haba,
the Trump I'm not a lawyer, but I play one
on TV spokesmodel who sat next to him at the
defense table and looked like she had never seen a
table before, let alone the inside of a courtroom. Last night,
(02:17):
she repeatedly denied that she and Trump's other call one
eight hundred and five million injury attorneys screwed it up,
and obviously she would do that, and the crowd she
was talking to is not likely to ever hear that.
The source for the Trump forgot to ask for a
jury story was Judge Arthur Engern, who said that in
(02:39):
court that nobody asked for a jury. Trump was smart
enough also to make another threat this time on tape,
this time with the authenticity of his blind, moronic rage
against the Attorney general and the judge, the judge who's
judging the case by himself.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Now I have to go before a rouge and judge
as a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, as a continuation
of the greatest witch.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Hunt of all time.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
And I don't think the people of this country are
going to stand for it. This is a disgrace, and
you're going to go after this Attorney General.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Trump is an idiot when there is rage involved, the
rage element, and Trump actually only has something akin to
human emotion when it comes to money, his money. This
should be a reminder to anybody debating him, or preparing
somebody else to debate him, or interviewing him to get
him angry, because then when he's angry, he says not
(03:41):
just stupid things, but stupid self incriminating things.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
It's a scam.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
It's a sham.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It's a scam. It's a sham. It's a scam. It's
a sham. Scam. Sham reminds me of something, Hi, it's
Vince with sham.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
You'll be saying wow every time you use this towel,
because you know, I can't do this all day. What's
the value of the New York trial. Oh, it's simple.
This genuinely enrages him. The money genuinely enrages him. And
everything that breaks him financially breaks him psychologically. As much
(04:22):
damage as possible, as many blows to the head, the body,
wherever as possible. Keep hitting him the Muhammad Aldi theory,
keep hitting him. Apropos of the financial stuff. The new
Michael Lewis book on Sam Bankman Freed says the cryptocon
(04:42):
man claims he approached Trump's camp with an offer of
cash if Trump would agree not to run in twenty
twenty four. Five billion dollars makes me hate Sam Bankman
Freed a little less and at the same time a
little more. It also would have encouraged Trump to do
this again in twenty twenty eight for another five billion,
(05:03):
and it would have opened up a new market. Hell
five billion. I won't run for president for five hundred dollars.
A late story of no doubt of CNN. All the
anonymous stories attributed to General John Kelly, one of Trump's
chiefs of staff, They're not anonymous anymore. He confirmed them
on the record five years too late, but he confirmed them,
(05:26):
insulting McCain, calling American War dead at Bellowwood suckers, telling
Millie to keep the wounded veterans away from him. Kelly concludes,
there's nothing more than can be said. God help us
unquote yeah, God help you, Pal. You could have said
something in real time to help stop this. Now to
(05:50):
the issues of import its earlier, Judge Chuckkin will convene
hearing on October sixteenth, two weeks from yesterday, on the
Jack Smith gag order request, and Smith is even more
damned serious about it than I had dreamed. His late
night answer to Trump's late night answer pointed out that
the newest threats Trump made the post about the death
penalty for what Trump considered treason, were not directed at
(06:14):
General Millye. They were directed at other potential witnesses who
might want to avoid those kinds of threats, let alone
anything more serious. Moreover, the Special Counsel's Office noted it
does not really matter whether Trump did or did not
buy a luger at a white supremacist gun shop in
South Carolina. A purchase would obviously be a violation of
(06:37):
his bail, and there would be no way for the
judge not to revoke the bail and not to put
them behind bars until the trial starts. But the other
option was also an abuse of the terms under which
Chutkin did not end Trump's freedom in the first place.
Quoting the Smith retort, the defendant either purchased a gun
in violation of the law and his conditions, or seeks
(07:01):
to benefit from his supporter's mistaken belief that he did so.
Even lying about Trump buying a gun is a way
in which Trump has exploited the absence of a gag
order and allowed himself to remind his cult and potential
witnesses that he is a man dedicated to personal violence
(07:22):
and the fomenting of civil violence. Quote. No other criminal
defendant would have been permitted to issue public statements insinuating
that a known witness in his case should be executed.
This defendant should not be either as a side note
to that they are thus confirming Mark Milly is at
least on the witness list. Special Counsel also went out
(07:46):
of its way to go after one of Trump's subtler
but more consistent tricks, repeatedly recasting the charges in his
own favor or flat out lying about what the charges
are and what they mean. Quote. The indictment does, in fact,
clearly link the defendant and his actions to the events
of January sixth. In short, the indictmental ledges that the
defendant's actions, including his campaign of knowingly false claims of
(08:09):
election fraud, led to the events of January sixth. Unquote,
Jack Smith wants Chutkin to not just speed up the
trial start as punishment for all this. He wants her
to circumscribe Trump's ability to write or say whatever he
wants just because he's running for office. He wants a
(08:35):
gag order of some width and breadth. And if she
imposes it on Trump, you know, you know, Trump will
violate it. He has to anything less than violating it,
anything that says he is giving in to the judge.
(08:55):
And he breaks the spell over the victims in his
world record length shell game. And I'll ask this again,
and I'll keep asking it. What happens when he breaks it?
When he breaks the gag order for the fourth time
(09:16):
or the fifth time, or the forty fifth time, and
Chuckkin finally says enough and revokes his bail, whether that's
next month or next year, what happens, then we reenact
the gunfight at the OK Corral on another front in
the war against Trump and four democracy. Politico polled on
(09:38):
the fourteenth Amendment, and I hope every news editor in
this country read the story and we can stop the
political media industrial complex conventional wisdom that continues to insist
that disqualifying Trump under the insurrection clause is a non starter,
A fringe theory, as I've heard it repeatedly described the
Beltway reporters consider it that because they consider everything they
(10:00):
have not actually seen happen before, everything they cannot shove
into one of the twelve or thirteen cubby holes story
templates that they can process and understand, they consider it
the rest of the universe. Fringe theory. Politico asks, specifically,
based on how he behaved after the twenty twenty election,
(10:21):
does the fourteenth Amendment prohibit Trump from ever again running
for office? And fifty one percent said yes, thirty four
percent said no, fifteen percent undecided. The undecided they're not
all breaking for no. The fourteenth Amendment is a factor
(10:42):
in the twenty twenty four campaign, and the media and
the state's secretaries of state, damn well better start treating
it that way. Oh, and generically the fourteenth Amendment is
doing even better. Before introducing Trump's name into the equation,
the Politico pollsters asked if the respondents quote support or
oppose the disqualification clause in the fourteenth Amendment, and they
(11:05):
read it to them, and sixty three percent said they
strongly or somewhat support it, and only sixteen percent said
they did not, Meaning there is twelve percent of that
undecided fifteen percent from the Trump question who agree that
the fourteenth Amendment applies is Legit is not just about
(11:26):
the Civil War but matters today. Twelve percent of the
undecided fifteen percent agree with it. In theory, they just
have to be convinced Trump is guilty of the violations.
Its cites that twelve percent is nearly halfway towards supporting
disqualifying Trump under the fourteenth Amendment. We cannot push that
(11:50):
pedal to hard. Of course, he may beat everybody to
disqualifying himself. As I said, Trump has inadvertently confessed quote,
will Congressman Jamal Bowman be prosecuted and imprisoned? He posted
about the door alarm skirmish in order to stop a
congressional vote that was going on in DC. His egregious
(12:12):
act is covered on tape. A horrible display of nerve
and criminality. It was a very dangerous obstruction of an
official proceeding. When will his trial begin? This, of course,
is as close as Trump can actually get to trolling,
and he's not human enough to realize that a key
object in trolling is not to confess to the crimes
(12:33):
you are accusing the others of in order to stop
a congressional vote. Well, yes, Trump did that. Act is
covered on tape. Well yeah, there's tape a Trump doing that.
Nerve and criminality, well yes, Trump did both of those things.
Obstruction of an official proceeding. That was very dangerous. This
(12:53):
is Trump acknowledging that the charges against him are legit
as surely as those poll respondents are acknowledging that the
fourteenth Amendment applies. And then, lastly, the latest sign that
Trump's cheese whiz is sliding off his ritz cracker. This
(13:15):
is about, believe it or not, alternative fuel vehicles, in
this case boats, or at least it's started there. Come
on over for Trump explaining how he would prefer to
die and then stay for the little Freudian slip.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
If I'm sitting down and that boat's going down and
I'm on top of a battery on the water starts
floating in how I'm getting concerned. But then I look
ten yards to my left hand. There's a shark over there.
So I have a choice of electrocution or shark. You
know what, I'm going to take electrocution. I will take
electrocution every single time. Do we agree, Yeah, I will
(13:56):
take electrocution.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He will take electrocution, Actually, he said, and it's been
dismissed as slurred speech, and it really isn't that is it?
He said, elects rocution. Doctor Freud elects rocution. Still on
the premise of it, no sharks, He'd rather die by electrocution,
(14:21):
to which I say, you have a deal. Also of
interest here, Fox News is crushed by the new senator
designate from California because they had their money on. Now.
You will not believe who they thought, Kavin Newsome was
(14:43):
going to a point to replace the late Diane Feinstein.
But I am betting that you will guess which. Congressman
announced that the appointment is unconstitutional by citing an article
in the Constitution that does not exist, which Congressman would
(15:07):
quote a fictitious article. That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Still ahead on Countdown Sports and the death of Tim
Wakefield and the firing of Buck Showalter and Phil Nevin,
and the forty fifth anniversary of Bucky Effing Dent, including
my report from the game. This just in first time
for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons, and Dunn Kruger,
Effets specimens who constitute today's worst persons in the world Lebrons.
(15:55):
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, It's impossible to believe
that you could get yourself caught in a scandal by
spending nineteen thousand dollars of taxpayer money on a podium
and then not just take the humiliation and the laughter
and move on. Trump's former liar in chief keeps making
(16:16):
it worse somehow. First it turned out she bought it
from a company that was not based in Arkansas. Now,
the investigative reporter who broke the story says Huckebye ordered
a state department to not comply with his Freedom of
Information Act request and had somebody alter the request. Doctor
the guy's Foia form. This was a nineteen thousand dollars
(16:36):
podium scandal. Now it is a nineteen thousand dollars podium
scandal that could cost Governor Lady huck her governorship. Attude
the runner up. You may have heard that Governor Newsom
of California has appointed the activist Lafonza Butler to succeed
the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. Congressman George Santos of New York,
the human lie factory, still supported by every Republican, is
(17:00):
not happy that the new senator had been working in Maryland,
so he tweeted his gotcha quote. There is this annoying
thing DEM's hate called the Constitution. Article five, Section three
stated every member of the Senate shall be, at the
time of his election, a resident of the state from
which he shall be chosen. Cool, George, There is no
(17:25):
section three of Article five of the Constitution. George made
that up. But our winner Fox Ninny Rachel campost Duffy
talk about making stuff up. She co hosts the Kids
Table at Fox and Friends, the weekend edition. She got
her start on MTV's Real World Stupid City. Arizona Senator
(17:50):
designate Butler means that Ms Campos Is Duffy's reporting on
the appointment was incorrect. Saturday and Sunday, she went on
Fox and announced that sources had told her that the
new senator from California, since Newsom had said it would
be a black woman, was going to be, was likely
to be You ready, Meghan Markle? No, I'm not kidding,
(18:13):
she claimed. Meghan Markle had campaigned for the post, had
called Jill Biden to arrange it, and Miss Campos Duffy
did a victory lap when the ever reliable Daily Mail
of London reported a rumor about it. Fox is Rachel
Campos Duffy. I may be mispronouncing that it may be
Rachel Campos Doofy, Today's worst parson in no world.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
This is sports Senate. Wait, not anymore, this is Countdown
with Keith Alberman.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
In Sports. You will recall that Kurt Shilling, scumbag ex
picture of the Boston Red Sox, made the Worst Person's
List last Friday. He broke a confidence and revealed that
his former teammate Tim Wakefield and his wife were battling cancer.
He even acknowledged that he did not know whether the
Wakefields wanted that fact known, he put it on his
podcast Anyway. Sunday, Tim Wakefield died brain cancer. The baseball
(19:38):
world is stricken and in mourning. Anybody else who did
what Shilling did would retire from all public life and
maybe change his name and try to repent. Not Shilling,
because he barely qualifies as a human being. I hope
his maker can forgive him. The rest of us never
ever will. The day after the New York Mets fired
(19:58):
manager Buck Showalter, the Los Angeles Angels fired manager Phil Nevin.
I know it doesn't say that in the news media.
It says one of them parted ways and the other
one didn't have option renewed. But when the general manager
of the Mets tells you you have your choice of
resigning or being fired, you've been fired. Or when the
general manager of the angel says they're not picking up
your option, you've been fired. The option thing. I've been there.
(20:22):
As to the Mets, this better be a precursor to
letting show Hey Otani pick his own manager as part
of the Mets offer to him, or owner Steve Cohen
has made a huge mistake. Can O'tani's translator managed anybody know?
The premise is the team's new head of baseball operations,
David Stearns, gets to choose his own baseball people. Now,
(20:44):
if I'm general manager Billy Eppler, who told Showalter he
was out, I'm thinking, Wait, I'm in baseball and I'm
a people. Am I going to get fired too? Wait?
What's that odd look on Billy's face? Thank you, Nazi
(21:08):
Faust my favorite Buck show Alter memory coming up in
Things I promised not to tell. I'd love to give
you a full baseball playoff preview, but frankly, I don't care.
The baseball postseason used to be the matchup between the
champions of the American and National Leagues in the World Series.
The regular seasons had determined the top two teams with
rare exceptions, and then they fought for the championship. That
(21:30):
was the point of the season. An increase in teams
necessarily meant an increase in playoff teams. I happily embraced
that division winners. This is a joke. The wildcard teams
in the National League are all terribly flawed pretenders, and
one of them could, like last year, get hot for
a couple of weeks and get into the World Series,
(21:51):
not being one of the best teams in baseball and
then get humiliated as the Philadelphia Phillies did. I've expounded
on this before. There are many reasons the TV audience
for each World Series game dropped from forty three a
night in nineteen eighty to fifteen million a night last year.
But one of the reasons is this, we cannot have
(22:12):
any confidence that those will be the two best teams
in the game. It's just a tournament now, like basketball.
If it's not your team involved, why would you watch
at the risk of being one of those Hey, you kids,
get off my et cetera guys. Forty five years ago,
the two best teams in the American leagues spent one
(22:34):
hundred and sixty two games beating each other's brains in
and tied over one hundred and sixty two games, then
had to meet in a one game playoff. The winner
went on to the American League Championship Series. The loser
went home. It was the Bucky Dent Game Red Sox Yankees,
October two, nineteen seventy eight, and before the anniversary slips
(22:55):
back further into obscurity, I was there and on the
air from there.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Again with surprise out of the boom to everybody here
in a three run home run over the westfield wall
at Fenway Park, and see the Green Monsters plays no favorites,
as they say, And the Yankees have just added a
fourth run on a base at my Thurman Munson that
scored Mickey Rivers from second. He had gotten there on
a walk and a stolen base the second of the game.
(23:24):
I have to tell you something about Den's home run.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
I saw it, Keith do no, don't you didn't hear this?
Speaker 4 (23:29):
You know. I'm sitting here with Jim Berger, who is
a member of our staff. The Red Sox just got
the Yankees out of the five ball left. Jim Berger
is a member of our staff, and a Red Sox
fan turns to me with gent up and chillman on
and says, well, at least he's not a home run stretch.
I thank you for saying that, and promple he hit
(23:49):
the home run over the west field wall.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yeah, well just made it over. We saw the replay
on television and the ball was going down and almost
hit the top of the wall, just missed the top
of the wall, made it into the what is that.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
That's known as the Perny Carbo special if.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I remember it, well, Bernie Carbo, Well, it isn't on
the Yankees or the Red Sox now, so.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Well leave came out of here.
Speaker 4 (24:07):
That was years to hit. Okay, well, Key, if your
Yankees are up four to.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Two, it will were d bottom of the seventh and I.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Have to say something else.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
Looking at the respective earned RUD averages of the pitchers
who were starting this game. Before the game started, Jim Berger,
our ace Red Sox fan on the sports staff said
this figures to be a four to two game. So
so far he is one hundred percent correct and wishes
he words Okay, I'll talk to you a little later, okay,
can Wright when the game's over?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Correct?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Bye?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Some notes and yes the host there was a Red
Sox fan too. Bucky Dent rightly notes that if the
Yankees had not fired Billy Martin as their manager three
months before that game, he would not have even come
to the plate then, let alone hit that game leading
home run that eventually put the Yankees over the Red
Sox into the playoffs. Martin had pinch hit for Bucky
(24:53):
Dent five times in seven games at Fenway Park, Boston
in nineteen seventy seven alone. He had pinch hit for
him eight times overall in Dent's first sixty three games
in nineteen seven. Then he got fired. His successor, Bob Lemon,
did not pinch it for Bucky Dent, and back then,
Eastern Airlines flying out of LaGuardia Airport in New York,
(25:15):
guaranteed you a seat on its hourly shuttle flight to
Boston if you got to the gate on time. It's
about one hundred and twenty people maybe per plane. For
the nine AM to Boston on October second, nineteen seventy eight,
they were about one hundred and twenty eight people at
the gate, so sure enough they rolled out a second
plane for the remaining eight of us, among them Dick Shapp,
(25:38):
the sportscaster, his nine year old son Jeremy now an
ESPN sportscaster, American League President Lee McPhail, and me, nineteen
year old Yankee fan, meeting up with my two friends,
the Red Sox fans, who had gone to Boston that
weekend and had bought all of his tickets to that
playoff game. The Yankees would win fifty two of their
last seventy three games that season, while the Red Sox
(26:00):
were just one game over five hundred in their final
seventy three in Fenway in September, where the Yankees had
lost thirteen of their sixteen previous games, New York had
swept four from Boston by a combined score of forty
two to nine and four and a half decades later,
members of the seventy eight Yankees will still insist that
(26:22):
August ninth was as important as any other day of
that year. Pre Internet, pre ESPN, pre talk radio, the
New York newspapers were the dominant media, and the ones
then made the ones today look like a stack of
Valentine's Day cards. On August ninth, nineteen seventy eight, all
(26:42):
of the New York newspapers were shut down by a
strike that lasted until November, and the Yankee players basically
didn't have to answer a question snide, tough, or otherwise
again until spring training. I was told back then that
several of the players proposed making a donation to the
(27:04):
newspaper strike fund as part of their winnings from winning
the World Series out of pure gratitude. Finally, to our
(27:24):
number one story on the content and my favorite topic,
me and Things, I promised not to tell. The New
York Yankees were in their first Pennant race in five years.
They had reeled off eight wins in ten games to
reach a first place tie with the defending world champion
Toronto Blue Jays. It was Sunday, August twenty second, nineteen
ninety three, and I was at Yankee Stadium just cuz
(27:48):
we were about to start a month of intensive preparations
for the launch of the ill fated ESPN. Two. Good evening,
and welcome to the end of our careers that one.
And this was probably going to be my last chance
to go to the city, visit my folks, see a ballgame,
whatever till further notice. And here was my childhood team,
the Yankees, with a lineup that now included friends of
(28:09):
mine like Danny Tartable and Mike Diego and Don Mattingly
against the Royals, for whom my friends while he Joiner
and David Cohne played, and a seat awaiting me in
the press box on a beautiful late summer Sunday afternoon
with just the earliest hint to fall in the air
and Bobby Darren singing on the PA system, and the
(28:30):
Yankees got crushed Kansas City started a pitcher named Chris Haney,
who was much less successful than his mediocre five point
four to seven Era implied he would somehow last for
eleven seasons and become statistically one of the worst pitchers
of a generation. And that day, the Yankees got at
(28:51):
least one base runner on in eight of the nine
innings against Chris Haney, and he still shut them out
seven to nothing. And you could sense right then that
whatever it was that a team needed to have to
hold its own down the stretch, the nineteen ninety three
New York Yankees did not have it. Still, it was
(29:13):
fun to visit with reporter friends, some of whom I'd
known since i'd broken in fourteen years earlier, and some
I hadn't seen since then. The only oddity was that
at some point during the game, one of the kids
from the Yankees media relations department came over and asked
me for my ID, and when I showed him my ID,
he asked me if I was planning to go into
(29:33):
the Yankee clubhouse afterwards. I said, funny, you should to
ask that I am headed downtown for dinner. But I
missed my friend Danny Chartable before the game for some reason,
and I just want to pop in and say hello,
and the kids said thanks, sorry to trouble you, and
he left, and the radio reporter I was sitting next
to Don Gould, said that that was one of the
(29:53):
strangest things he had seen in that press box. And
he added, and nowadays all you see up here is
strange things. As the Yankees went out limply in the ninth,
leaving Bernie Williams stranded on first, naturally, I waited until
all the reporters with real deadlines had taken the first
couple of elevator trips down to the Yankee Clubhouse in
the basement, and then I leisurely made my way downstairs. I
(30:17):
navigated the catacombs of the stadium basement as I had
since it had opened in nineteen seventy six, and felt
warm and nostalgic and at peace. I showed my pass
to the guard at the clubhouse door and walked into
the clubhouse to find the Yankee Clubhouse lacking the one
thing it had literally always featured in each of the
(30:37):
dozens and dozens of times i'd previously entered it since
I was seventeen years old. Players There were no Yankee
players in the Yankee Clubhouse. No Yankees, no Yankees still
in uniform, no Yankees half dressed, no Yankees not dressed,
(30:58):
No sounds of other Yankees in the showers off to
the left. Nothing. Well, that wasn't quite right. I realized
something after about a minute of walking slowly from locker
to locker, thinking, isn't this where they used to be?
Maybe Maddingly is crouching out of sight over here, and
(31:20):
maybe Tartarbule is hiding behind his suit. After that, zero
for three, I realized that while there were no Yankees
in the Yankee Clubhouse, there were reporters in the Yankee Clubhouse,
and they were all staring at me, and angrily staring
at me. I said to them, might have been my
friend from upstairs, Don Gould, what the hell's going on?
(31:41):
And he said testily, I don't know. Why don't you
tell us? The reporters around him, who had never taken
their eyes off me, now murmured quietly, but with a
subtext of threat and menace and vengeance in their indistinct gurgling.
Just at this point, Arthur Richmond, who had been the
(32:04):
men It's public relations man forever and was now a
Yankees vice president of something for some reason, and more importantly,
was the surviving brother of the great baseball reporter Milt Richmond,
who had so helped me at the start of my
career at UPI. Arthur tapped me on the shoulder and said, U,
Keith Aberman, right, And I said, yes, we've met before.
(32:24):
I used to work with your brother. And he did
not look happily at me. And I asked him if
he wanted to see my pass or my ID or
my identifying birthmarks. Arthur did not smile. The manager would
like to see you in his office. I still didn't
have the faintest idea what was going on? Have I
been sent down to the miners, Arthur, I asked jauntily. Yes,
(32:48):
yes you have, Richmond answered with utter seriousness. Arthur Richmond
escorted me to the little room on the home plate
side of the clubhouse, in which I had once seen
the late Billy Martin shout at a coach, two pitchers,
three writers, and a clubhouse attendant who had been with
the team since nineteen twenty seven. The current occupant of
that tiny office, the manager rose from his desk, Keith
(33:09):
hi Buck Showalter. I'm the manager here. I reminded him
that we had done a lengthy interview for ESPN Radio
the year before. That's right, I'd forgotten. I apologize. Listen.
I wanted to tell you. I think you brought something
refreshing and fun to Sports Center. I watch you all
the time, especially when we're on the road. You know
the game too, That's important. But I have to tell
you my players have a problem with what you do.
(33:33):
I wasn't that surprise. Players were like that In nineteen
ninety three. Very few sportscasters said anything negative about players.
They certainly did not make jokes or puns about them.
I saw you on the field before the game. I
heard some of our guys, Showalter continued, like Paul O'Neil
and Wade Bogs and Joe Girardi. They were talking about
(33:53):
how they were thinking about going out there on the
field and punching you in the head. I flashed back
suddenly to nineteen eighty nine when Bogs went on Heraldo
Rivera's show and announced he was a sex addict, and
how after checking with a few of his Red Sox
teammates whom I knew from the year I worked in Boston,
who said that was nonsense. I went on the air
(34:14):
on my sportscast in the local station in LA, having
intercut Boggs's weepy comments to Heraldo with the music video
from Robert Palmers Addicted to Love. I have to say
it was pretty funny and also might have been the
meanest thing I ever did on TV. Boggs wanted to
(34:35):
punch me in the head on the field at Yankee Stadium.
That checked out? Go on, I said to Buck Showalter.
In fact, the players are all staying in the training
room in the back until they've been assured you've left
the clubhouse and you won't be returning. They voted unanimously.
I thought about this, When did they vote unanimously while
(34:57):
they were getting shut out by the worst picture of
a generation that did not check out? Now, Like I said, person,
I like what you do, but I think you may
want to consider the implications of what not having any
access to players ever again we'll have on your career,
especially on such a high profile program as Sports Center.
I thought about it briefly, and I smiled at Buck Showalter.
None whatsoever. Actually, I'm a studio guy. I never have
(35:18):
to go to games and more to the point I've
just left Sports Center for this new ESPN two network
because my boss has said it's basically going to be
a network that's designed around my sense of humor. Buck
Showalter was thirty seven years old then, and at the
end of his second year as a major league manager,
his team, having just achieved a tie for first place,
(35:39):
had just gotten the air let out of its balloon
by an epically bad pitcher on a not so good team.
Plus they were due on a flight for Chicago, and
the bus was supposed to leave in an hour, but
Paul O'Neill, Wade Bogs, and Joe Girardi were worried about
some dumb sportscaster making jokes. I knew they were doomed.
(36:03):
And if manager Buck Showalter actually let Paul O'Neill, Wade Bogs,
and Joe Girardi worried about some dumb sportscaster and his jokes,
Buck showalter io was doomed. And sure enough they would
lose twenty of their last thirty seven games after that
day and not make the playoffs for two years, and
not actually get anywhere in the playoffs until after Showalter
was fired and replaced by my friend Joe Tory. Right
(36:26):
around then after the firing, I was part of the
annual ESPN Awards show The Spies. It was the post
SPI's party, and I went to get a drink and
turned a corner and they're coming toward me were Paul O'Neill,
Wade Bogs, and Joe Girardi. I was just about to
gulp when O'Neill shouted, there, he is our favorite ESPN guy.
(36:48):
Handshakes all of them. Girardi said he was amazed every
time I ripped a player, he said it was somebody.
He also didn't like. How did I know? Bog said,
somebody told me that you put my Heraldo appearance into
that Robert Palmer song. If you got a tape of that,
I'd like to say see it. I told them the
Buck Showalter story immediately. Ah, God, I remember that, said O'Neil.
(37:11):
He was pissed you were in the ballpark and we
got shut out, and he made us stay in the
trainer's room and not come out till after you left.
And god, it was terrible. The smile vanished from Joe
Girardi's face. Buck did stuff like that all the time.
We should all have a drink and talk about it.
We all had a drink and we talked about it.
Years later, I was telling my late friend Pedro Gomez
(37:34):
of ESPN the story, and he said, Showalter used to
do this to him when Showalter was managing the Arizona
Diamondbacks and Pedro was a beat reporter for a newspaper
in Phoenix. You know, Colbran wants to beat you up,
but I stopped him. He quoted Showalter as saying Greg
Colbran was a six foot one hundred and ninety pound
weightlifter from California's Inland Empire who seemed to play baseball
(37:59):
in his spare time. So Pedro said, I confronted him
one day and he said, dude, what are you talk about.
You know, Buck just makes this crap up. The Yankees
fired Buck Showalter in nineteen ninety five, as I mentioned,
and won the World Series in nineteen ninety six. The
Diamondbacks fired him in two thousand and won the World
Series in two thousand and one. Then he went to
(38:20):
work in of all places, the studio at ESPN for
two years. Then he got another managing job in Texas,
got fired from there, went back to ESPN. For three
more years and then became the manager at Baltimore in
twenty ten. I was at the Baltimore spring training camp
one day that March and I see walking toward me
(38:41):
from the other side of the field, trying to capture
my attention. Buck Showalter. I am now fifty one years old.
He is now fifty three years old. It is nearly
seventeen years since the day he locked his entire team
in the trainer's room in the middle of a Pennant
race in a complicated ritual that would have been too labyrinthine,
a plot for Tom Clancy just to express some cheesy
(39:03):
grudge against the way I did sports guests, Hey, Joe
Walter said when he finally reached me, when I pulled
that stunt on you at Yankee Stadium, was that ninety
three or ninety four? We shook hands as I laughed,
and I told him it was August of nineteen ninety three.
I can get you the exact date if you needed.
I'm sorry. I had not been in television yet. I
(39:24):
didn't get any of it. I just thought you guys
came in and shouted your heads off and then went home.
I didn't get it. Obviously. Why didn't you tell me
off or something? He asked. I shrugged. I said, well,
there was you. There were six coaches, twenty five players
there versus me, plus all the reporters who were angry
(39:44):
at me, who were on deadline. What if you were
telling the truth now? Buck laughed and apologized again. We
have been professional friends ever since. Whenever I have seen him,
we compare the cruelties of aging and talk about politics
and television. I saw him two Saturdays ago, after four
more years in TV, when it looked like his managing
(40:05):
career might be over. He is back running the New
York Mets at the age of sixty six and doing
a damn fine job of it. And every once in
a while I bring up the trainer's room full of Yankees,
and he flinches and says, you know, there's one last
thing about it that now I cannot possibly understand that
trainer's room that was really tiny. How did the players
(40:29):
all fit in there? I've done all the damage I
can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown has come
to you from the Vin Scully Studios at the Older
Woman Broadcasting Empire in New York. The music you've heard
(40:53):
was for the most part, arrange produced and performed by
Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanel. Brian
Ray handled the guitars, bass and drums. John Phillip Shanelle
did the orchestration and keyboards that was produced by t Brothers.
Other music, including other Beethoven tunes, were arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. Sports music is courtesy
of ESPN, Inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis.
(41:15):
We call it the Old Woman theme from ESPN two.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are from Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is
my friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this the one thousandth
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
(41:35):
elected government of the United States. Convict him now while
we still can, all right, it's at one thousand and
first day if you count today. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow. Bulletons is the news warrant till then. I'm
Keith Olderman, Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good Luck.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
Electrocution's a scam as a chef hi, It's fenced with sham.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Wow Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeart
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