April 16, 2024 • 60 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 158: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Seriously?
Donald Trump fell asleep at his trial yesterday. First trial. First day. First session. Fell asleep. Upright. At the trial that could end with him going to prison. During the trial. But it’s Biden with the stamina problem. Biden, who’s too old. Trump fell asleep. At the defense table. But we should be worried about Biden. Trump fell asleep during discussion of his own tweets, his own threats, his own lawyers’ insistence that this is the greatest witchhunt and Abraham Lincoln got off easily compared to this and whatever else they said. “His mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest,” she added later in the paper.
If this had happened to Biden – if this had happened to Biden at wherever HE might be that could be, what, one one-thousandth as serious as Trump’s trial involving PRISON TIME – if this had happened to Biden it would be the only thing on the news, the only thing on television, the only thing on the internet, the only thing in all forms of extra-sensory communication.
Don't worry the media will go back to telling voters that what they should be worried about is how sleepy President Biden is. And don't worry, Don Snore-leone wasn’t sleeping for HIMSELF – he was sleeping for the sake of the January 6th hostages.
The other true headline from the trial is that this is NOT a trial about Trump paying off a porn star to keep their sex secret from his wife or even from the public. This is a trial about Trump interfering with the 2016 election by illegally suppressing facts that the voters should’ve KNOWN and JUDGED for themselves. Voters in the General Election. Voters in the primary. Trump is NOT on trial for Hush Money. Trump is NOT on trial for banging a porn star. Trump is on trial for his favorite crime, the one he never stops talking about. TRUMP… IS ON TRIAL… FOR ELECTION INTERFERENCE.
This happened as Biden's poll streak (ahead in Politico, cuts Trump's NY Times lead from 5 to 1) is so dominant now even some reporters have noticed. I mean Jonathan Martin wrote:
"I’ll say it: there’s an elite tendency to assign Trump a better chance to win than he merits, to show THIS TIME you’re not out of touch."
Of course he didn't mean reporters. He meant foreign diplomats. Because you've seen them on TV: America's political reporters clearly don't own MIRRORS!
B-Block (25:49) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Five of them! Elon Musk continues to be Russia's streetwalker (and Marjorie Bitter Greene helps). CNN cancels its top news show (Charles Barkley and Gayle King). Another RFK Jr staffer beclowns him (and turns out to have been pardoned by Trump and seems to still be working for him). Comedian Rob Schneider was so beyond-the-pale that even Republican Senate staffers walked out of his set. And 48 hours later, Governor Sununu of New Hampshire continues to prove he is our Franz Von Papen, the cynical German politician who brokered the deal to launch the 3rd Reich because it was ONLY politics.
C-Block (36:37) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The passing of Fritz Peterson is marked by many as the end to an extraordinary sports story of half a century ago where New York Yankees teammates "traded lives" (and, incidentally, wines). By others it's the loss of the statistically-best pitcher ever to call original Yankee Stadium home. To me, he was the man from whom I took away his bid for a no-hitter. Seriously.
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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. Donald
Trump fell asleep at his trial yesterday, first trial, first day,
(00:27):
first session. Fell asleep sitting upright at the trial. That
could end with him going to prison during the trial
day one in the morning. But it's Biden with the
stamina problem. It's Biden who's too old. Trump fell asleep
at the defense table. But we should be worried about Biden.
(00:50):
Trump fell asleep during discussion of his own tweets, his
own threats, his own lawyer's insistence that this is the
greatest witch hunting forever, and Abraham Lincoln got off easily
compared to this, and whatever else they said. In his
own defense, he fell asleep. Don't sleep on Donald Trump.
(01:12):
He'll do it for you. To quote The New York
Times at twelve ten pm EDT. Trump appears to be sleeping,
his head keeps drooping down and his mouth goes slack. Well,
who in the hell can blame him? God knows. That's
been my reaction to his bullshit for nine years. The
(01:33):
reporter who posted that, Maggie Haberman, shortly thereafter went on
CNN and said that at one point one of his
lawyers tried to hand him a note, and he was
so asleep he didn't know what was happening, his mouth
going slack and his head drooping onto his chest. She
added later in the paper, I'm just guessing here, maybe
(01:55):
Trump needs some adderall or something. If this had happened
to Biden, if this had happened to Biden at wherever
he might possibly be, that could be what one one
thousandth as serious as Trump's trial involving foreign stars and
payoffs and election interference and prison time. If this had
(02:18):
happened to Biden, it would be the only thing on
the news, the only thing on television, the only thing
on the internet, the only thing in all forms of
extrasensory communications. Instead, from the pool reporter at three forty
four pm, after the jurors leave the courtroom, Trump stares
(02:41):
at da Alvin Bragg. Then Trump turns his eyes to
the press pool. As he exits. He glares at New
York Times reporter Maggie Haberman for several seconds as he
walks out. Don't worry, Maggie. He'll probably decide he just
(03:01):
dreamt it all, and the media will go back to
telling voters that they should be worried about how with
it Joe Biden is Joe Biden and not, as he
was dubbed yesterday, Don's snore leone, who, by the way,
was not sleeping for himself. He was sleeping for the
(03:26):
sake of the January sixth hostages America. Who The ultimate
day one headline is Trump went to his first trial
yesterday and fell asleep and then unfortunately awoke, and then
they let him go home. Unfortunately, be dazzled by the
(03:48):
historic first an ex president on trial like that's top
one hundred among the norms Trump has urinated on in
the last decade. Be dazzled by that the media missed
the surprising, almost shocking, real headline. This trial will not
just be about Trump paying Stormy Daniels to keep her
(04:11):
quiet and thus interfering with the election. And this will
not just be about Trump's comically perfectly named pal, David Pecker,
playing catch and kill with every story that might hurt
defendant Jay Trump and thus interfering with the election. This,
the prosecution says, and the judge has confirmed he will permit,
will be about the entirety of the arrangement between Trump
(04:35):
and his Pecker to interfere with the election, including not
just true stuff that Trump got Pecker to keep out
of the public's flow of information, but also the fake
stuff that Trump got Pecker to put into that flow
of information, fake stuff that Trump got to read in
advance and to prove. To quote prosecutor Joshua Steinlass, here
(04:59):
is a list of National Inquirer headlines timed perfectly to
assist candidate Trump. They attacked Ben Carson. There will be
evidence that the defendant said he was particularly pleased with
this article. There will be the evidence of the stories
about Ted Cruz, including an alleged role of his family
in the assassination of jfk and against Marco Rubio. The
(05:23):
judge will also let Karen McDougall testify about her affair
with Trump and how Trump buried coverage of that. From
the moment the prosecution started talking, they were hammering home
the essence here. This is not a trial about Trump
paying off a porn star to keep their sex secret
(05:43):
from his wife or even from the public. This is
a trial about Trump interfering with the twenty sixteen election
outcome by illegally suppressing facts that the voters should have
known and evaluated for themselves, voters in the general election
and voters in the primary. Trump is not on trial
(06:07):
for hush money. Trump is not on trial for banging
a porn star. Stop putting that in your headlines. Trump
is on trial for his favorite crime, the one he
never stops talking about. Trump is on trial for election interference.
Every time this case is reduced to hush money or
(06:27):
hush money that was then illegally disguised as tax deductible
business expenses, and I've been guilty of reducing it myself,
it reduces its seriousness. It becomes yes, we deducted the
porn star under rule three point twenty one hyphen seven
parentheses a dash two three two eight six four two
(06:49):
banging porn stars. No, this allegation is as serious as
any evidence that Trump conspired with Russia or took Russian help,
or conspired with WikiLeaks or with Fox or with any
other media outlet to deliberately spread falsehoods or concealed truths
to deceive the electorate in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty,
(07:13):
or after the election in twenty twenty. Trump is on
trial for organized, systemic, illegal, and coordinated election interference. Call
it that the hush money is only part of the picture.
The attempt to deduct it all from his taxes is
only another part. To have his porn star cake and
(07:37):
eat it too. Apt, as the imagery might be. Amid
the Trump grandstanding and the procedurals that Shakespeare summed up
as the laws delay, they seated exactly zero jurors yesterday
out of the first one hundred or so. There was
a subheadline and two other laugh lines besides him falling
(07:59):
asleep while you know, sitting upright at a trial that
could end with him going to jail. The prosecution noted
even before jury selection began, or attempted jury selection began,
that Trump has already repeatedly violated the gag order just
expanded by State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marshaan hell he
(08:19):
violated apparently while in the car on the way to
the courthouse at one hundred Center Street yesterday morning, with
more slanders and muddled threats against Michael Cohen. They want
Trump held in contempt of court, which would not result
in him having bail revoked and going to prison. The
first punishment would be a fine of three thousand dollars
(08:46):
three thousand dollars. Oh no, that'll keep Trump awake at
night or in the courtroom. Three thousand dollars is like
charging you or me a penny. It's ludicrous. Send him
to Rikers. Mershawn will conduct a hearing about this week
from today, underscoring that we are looking at may before
(09:08):
there is any testimony in this case. Now the other
laugh lines. At least two Trump whorees raced to his
defense by demanding something be done at the trial that
their side condemned while recounting another famous trial last week.
Not that moral consistency nor personal consistency means anything to
(09:30):
Congressman Byron Donald's or thug Fox News commentators Jesse Waters
or Clay Travis. Clay Travis, who has drifted over from
idiotic sports commentary to idiotic political commentary like a drunk
driving an eighteen wheel tractor trailer. Donald's first, he tried
to get prospective jurors to lie under oath to the
(09:50):
court about not having prejudged the case. I mean, what
a great idea this is if you want to go
to jail.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
My plea is to the people of Manhattan that may
sit on his trial, please do the right thing for
this country. Everybody's allowed to have their political viewpoints, but
the law is supposed to be blind and no respect
of persons. This is a trash case. There is no
crime here, and if there is any potential for a verdict,
(10:19):
they should vote not guilty.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
I'm in Manhattan, I could run right over Byron. Byron
Donald's is not a lawyer. Hell, he's only technically a congressman.
But that same idea poison the jury pool by lying
to the judge that you have not prejudged the case.
That was demanded by the fascist commentator Clay Travis, quoting him.
(10:41):
If you're a Trump supporter in New York City who
is a part of the jury pool, do everything you
can to get seated on the jury and then refuse
to convict as a matter of principle, dooming the case
by a hung jury. It's the most patriotic thing you
could possibly do. Travis apparently has not been able to
get a client in nearly twenty years, but he is
(11:03):
a lawyer, graduate from law school at Vanderbilt. He's a lawyer.
After encouraging prospective jurors to lie, he was a lawyer. Moreover,
on Travis's side of the political spectrum. Just last week,
In fact, just yesterday after OJ Simpson's death, they were
insisting Jesse Waters said this yesterday afternoon on Fox. They
(11:25):
were insisting that OJ Simpson was found not guilty because
a juror lied about not prejudging that case. Now they
want the same alleged illegality to be used to save Trump.
Nice job Byron Donald's nice job Jesse Waters, in particular,
a forging a comparison between Trump and OJ Simpson. Thank
(11:49):
you kids, last laugh? Was I the only one who
heard it? Trump's pre trial whining to the media when
he got drowned out by a dog barking. Doesn't anybody
notice this? Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm
taking crazy pills. This is nothing like this is nonsense
(12:13):
that you've never been royal. It doesn't serve anything like this.
There is no outgrads, and this case was brought. This
is political persecution. This is a persecution. I mean the
second and third times there sounded a little different from
the first, and it was more like a police radio
maybe echoing in a hallway, or a human barking like
(12:37):
a dog. But we are picking knits at this point,
Trump makes his big pre trial martyrdom statement, his weakly
norma Desmond moment, Watch me nail myself to the cross,
the thing he does just before falling asleep in the courtroom.
He does this again, and he gets drowned out by
a dog barking or something sounding like a dog barking.
(13:01):
This was a big day for American justice. They were
drowned out by a dog, or by not a dog,
but an incredible simulation. And then crazy old man falls asleep,
sitting upright. Only in America, Trump falling asleep in court
(13:36):
takes on almost allegorical proportions given what is now unmistakable
in this campaign. The poles have turned, and with them
the vibes. The media rats are not yet racing back
onto what turns out to be a not sinking Joe bidenship.
The front runners have yet to do a one point eighty.
The wind is blowing their own crap back into their faces,
(13:58):
the faces of the reportorial purveyors of the conventional wisdom.
And no, they won't admit it, but I think I
think it's coming. Jonathan Martin of Politico got so close.
Over the weekend, he wrote a column headlined Trump the
front runner. Not so fast as foreign leaders trek to
marri Lago to restore their ties to the once and
(14:21):
future president, they might be surprised to learn that the
election isn't as sealed as they seem to think, as
condescending and as self inflating and as egotistical as that
is who said the election was sealed. Mister Martin, do
(14:41):
you own a mirror? Do any of you own mirrors?
Martin almost made up for that by as remarkable a
near confession as I have seen from a Beltway insider
since I went into the news in nineteen freaking ninety seven.
Promoting his column on the Internet, declaring that, after all,
(15:05):
maybe they were all wrong to ignore reality. Jonathan Martin wrote, quote,
I'll say it, there's an elite tendency to assign Trump
a better chance to win than he merits to show
this time you're not out of touch unquote you think.
(15:30):
Notice Martin never specifies that the elite he's referring to
includes the American news media, which it does. His piece
was clearly inspired by British Foreign Minister David Cameron's visit
to see Trumpet. By the way, David Cameron, the man
who enabled the Brexit vote. Just because the four prime
(15:51):
ministers who followed him have been worse than him does
not make him a good choice to represent the UK
on the world stage. UK anyway, back to Jonathan Martin,
this is, after all, the same man who wrote last
November he's titled how Biden can Still Turn It Around?
Twelve paragraphs in, Martin noted, as if it were the
answer to a trivia question that Trump, quote, is an
(16:14):
exiled strong man who's taken over a traditional political party
and is attempting to reclaim office, to consolidate power and
punish his enemies with little regard for the constitution. Just
ask him. And then finally Martin got around to if
Biden thinks the country is on the line, he should
act like it and literally just that one sentence when
you think, oh, here comes this stuff about how Biden
(16:37):
and the Jonathan Martins of this world and all of
the media should be calling Trump out day after day,
hour after hour in ever more dire and knife edged
words like fascist and Nazi and would be hitler, we
find out what political cost Jonathan Martin thought Biden had
to change to save representative government in this country. He
(17:00):
had to, according to mister Martin last November quote, stop
calling David Axelrod apace Rick calling David Axelrod of prick
as a person who has heard Biden use the word,
says he does in private. It's not a strategy to
win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. Well, now you
know why I never got elected president. Then Martin complained
(17:23):
that Rob Emmanuel and Jennifer O'Malley, Dylon and Ron Klain
should be running Biden's campaign, that that was the key
issue here. That would be the Ron Klain who just
last week f bombed the Biden campaign in a speech
in publican did it on tape because he said a
genius he doesn't know enough to not pee inside the tent.
(17:45):
By the way that Martin complained about the elites, that
almost almost almost got to reality. It got thirty four retweets,
and and same weekend, Martin's employers at Politico were good
enough to bury their own poll showing that den now
leads Trump nationally by two Apparently they did this because
(18:09):
the poll was supposed to be about the election and
the Middle East, and the horse race number was just incidental,
and they didn't publish anything that didn't touch on the
Middle East, like ooh uh, who's ahead in the presidential polling?
After weeks and months and years of emphasizing that Trump
was ahead, who's ahead now? That doesn't matter in the
Middle East at all? The way, The New York Times
(18:31):
did the same thing when its poll in late February
had Trump up by five and its new pole Saturday
had Biden trailing Trump by only one, and it actually
published this subheadline, the president's popularity has ticked up slightly,
even though the simple reality of you know math is
that Biden, in going from five points down to four
(18:53):
points down, erased eighty percent of Trump's margin in six weeks.
The red Field and Wilton poll is out. It has
it tied at forty one. As they note their first
poll where Trump was not ahead since last July. I
would feel better if they weren't British pollsters, but they
did ask Americans, they assure us. Also, they find Biden's
(19:18):
approval number is now only six points underwater. The Associated
Press and Nork NRC did some deep diving based on
how frequently supporters have actually voted. You voted in the
twenty eighteen midterms. The twenty twenty presidential election. The twenty
twenty two midterms. Biden is ahead in your group fifty
(19:40):
to thirty nine. You voted in only one of those.
Trump is ahead forty five thirty three. You haven't voted
at all in any of them. It's Trump forty four
to twenty six. In other words, Trump's support largely depends
on him getting votes from non voters or rare voters.
Wagering on the election has swung wildly. It was all
Trump at the Polymarket betting site. Particularly now, at the
(20:03):
Polymarket bet it's Biden favored sixty two to twenty six.
Their official forecast is tied forty five forty five. That's
only for gambling purposes. But with all that as the backdrop,
the polls continue to break either showing Biden ahead where
he was behind, or just barely behind where he was
(20:24):
lots behind. With that as the backdrop, I will say
to Jonathan Martin and all the other cognocente who did
not do what I did, who did not leave the
media oligarchy and go out on their own and tried
thinking for themselves, for say a stretch of six and
a half minutes, I will say to them, just to
borrow a phrase I heard recently. Have you noticed, I'll
(20:46):
say it, there's an elite tendency to assign Trump a
better chance to win than he merits, to show this
time you're not out of touch, or to update it
just slightly in the wake of yesterday's in court developments,
to show this time you're not a sleep he fell
(21:12):
asleep at the defense table. If Biden did that, a
new network would be opened up today called the Biden
fell of Sleep Network. Also of interest here, the fallout
continues from as cynical a confession from an American politician
(21:33):
since Trump's fifth Avenue shooting boast, Governor Sanunu, I'm not
sure he's a human being. And speaking of that, the
right wing comedian who was too gross even for Senate
Republicans and their staffers. His set was supposed to go
thirty minutes. It only went ten minutes before they threw
(21:54):
him out. When you hear who it was, you will
be shocked it even went ten minutes. That's next. This
is Countdown, ladies and germs. This is countdown, with Keith
Olberman still ahead of us on this all new edition
(22:31):
of Countdown. Statistically, he may have been the greatest pitcher
to ever call the original Yankee Stadium home. But fifty
years later, he's still known first for swapping wives and
swapping lives with a teammate. But I will always remember
the late Fritz Peterson because when I was a kid,
(22:51):
I cost him a no hit game. I really did
next in things I promised not to tell first. Still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger fect specimens as usual.
Well at the start of the week, way too many
for just three trophies. Five five who constitute two days
(23:15):
Wor's persons in the world, crowd together so we can
get you all in the same picture. We start with
the Zinc Trophy fifth place, Elon Musk and Marjorie bitter Green.
A lot of people suck up to Musque online, But
according to the independent journalist Preston Stewart, a recent post
on Telegram reads, and it's translated from the Russian thanks
(23:37):
to Elon Musk for helping his Russian counterpart. It's on
the account of the Rusich Group, an arm of Putin's
army that is looked on with disgust by the Wagner Group.
The head of this outfit is a self avowed Nazi. Meanwhile,
Marjorie Green says, quote it's anti Semitic to make Israeli
(23:57):
aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis unquote March March March.
The Nazis in Ukraine are Russis, sent there by your
boy Putin and helped to get there by your boy
Sleepy Trump, Dozing Jay Trump, your views of religion March
better be one hundred percent wrong, or you're going to
(24:18):
spend a long time in hell. Moving to Copper and
CNN and how dare the Network of Record cancel their
best news show, King Charles, The Gail King Charles Barkley
Weekly Show. It's going to save CNN? Don't you know
(24:39):
that the end has come for this last and most
bizarre of the memorials to the William Henry Harrison of
CNN presidents Chris Lick. King Charles was canceled after last
Wednesday's edition. Per The New York Post, it drew really
sad audiences of four hundred and twelve thousand total viewers
and eighty nine thousand in the coveted twenty five to
(25:01):
fifty four age demo, CNN will out. Let's replace it
by extending the Abby Phillip News Hour to five nights
a week from its current schedule of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday
and Friday. At ten last Tuesday, Miss Phillips newscast drew
four hundred and fifty two thousand viewers, an eighty eight
thousand in the coveted twenty five to fifty four age devo.
That's right. The new show ratings are one thousand people
(25:26):
worse than the old show ratings. This is CNN, the
brons worse. Robert F. Kennedy Junior. If you're beginning like
me to get the sense that his campaign is there
to soak up all the people Trump thinks are too
crazy to work for him, yeah, you may be right.
Angelas Stanton King is the black voter engagement director for
(25:49):
the Kennedy campaign, and she has posted and then deleted
a homophobic attack against the founder of a black pro
Trump conservative group. His name is Deontay Johnson, and Angela
Stanton King called Johnson quote in this deleted tweet, an
open flaming feminine closet gay. How is he gonna lead
heterosexual black men to the Republican Party unquote. Now you
(26:12):
may notice the homophobia and the virulence. You may notice
that I noticed that she attacked this man because she
wondered how he could build support not for her candidate,
who is Kennedy, but instead how he could build support
for her, not her candidate Trump, Trump, who she supported
(26:35):
in twenty twenty who when she went to the White
House in February, she celebrated Black History Month with him
and who. Then a year later, Angela Stanton King, who'd
spent two years in prison after being convicted as part
of a car theft ring, she was pardoned by Trump.
This was just before she went on the Doctor Phil
Show to attack transgendered people like her own child, and
(26:58):
then unleashed an obscenity riddled video on social media attacking
her own child and Doctor Phil and the doctors. And
now she's working for Kennedy, then going full homophobe on
behalf of Trump. Hmmm, it's almost as if she's living
her real life as a closeted Trump supporter. Don't tell
(27:20):
anybody the runner up worser funny man Rob Schneider Politico
reporting that last holiday season, the Senate Working Group's annual
gala was headed by the former Saturday Night Live cast
member Rob Schneider, former as in thirty years ago, literally
left the show. In nineteen ninety four, one hundred and
(27:41):
fifty Republican Senate staffers, including forty chiefs of staff. Some
senators recoiled, according to Politico, as Schneider, who had promised
to keep it clean, made racially offensive and gross jokes,
many aimed at Asian people, including one about quote Korean whorehouses.
At ten minutes in, Senator Cindy Hyde Smith walked out,
(28:02):
and the executive director of the group stoped Schneider and
escorted him off stage. Do you realize how racially offensive
something has to be to get Republicans to walk out
of a free dinner? But the winner the worst, Governor
Chris Sanunu of New Hampshire. I suppose nothing should surprise
(28:25):
me anymore, But even nearly forty eight hours after the fact,
I have still never seen anything as brazenly cynical and
Unamerican as what this asshole did on ABC Sunday Morning
with George Stephanopolos. I mean, this was a loud, seemingly
principled Nicki Haley supporter, Remember Nicki Haley, and Sonu is
(28:46):
now not just backing Trump, but he's making no effort
to even rationalize backing Trump. Sonun who said, the criminal cases,
the prosecution quote has been going on for more than
a year, and his poll numbers never go down. George
Stephanoppolis countered, but you're going to politics. I'm asking about
right and wrong. Answered, this is about politics. If you
(29:07):
missed it, it gets worse. Please explain. Stephanopolos asked, given
the fact you believe Trump contributed to an insurrection, how
can you say we should have him back in the
oval office. Sanunu's answer, for me, it's not about him
as much as it is having a GOP administration. Stephanopolos
was dumbfounded. But he will be the president. That doesn't
make any sense to me. You believe that a president
(29:28):
who contributed to an insurrection should be president again? And
then the kill shot from this worm Sanunu, as does
fifty one percent of America. George, forget the math for
a second. Trump has never come close to having fifty
one percent of support in America. It was forty six
in twenty sixteen, it was forty seven in twenty twenty
(29:49):
what Snunu is saying here is he and other Republicans
who know Trump is amoral, anti democracy, a thug, a criminal,
a madman. They will not let that stop them from
supporting him because they have all joined a What are
you gonna do about it, you lousy moral losers. What
(30:09):
are you gonna do about their mob? I don't give
a damn what happens to the Snuu news The father
was H. W. Bush's chief of staff said a hell
with a lot of them. But the more I listened
to this interview, the more I kept hoping, maybe Governor
Sinunu is drunk, maybe he's having some sort of brain episode,
because that would be a better explanation either one of
(30:30):
them than this explanation that Chris Sinunu is our Franz
von Poppen. You know, Franz von Poppen is we have
a bunch of them. Actually, now, he was the Conservative
Chancellor of Germany and it was he who made the
deal after Hitler lost the nineteen thirty two German presidential
election to appoint him Chancellor Hitler so that the weakened
(30:54):
winner of the presidential election would get the political and
parliamentary support of the Nazis in the Reichstag, and Hitler
would have to fall in line with a non Nazi
gut Men von Poppin. Had it all arranged, President Hindenberg's
eleven man cabinet would consist of Hitler and two other
Nazis and eight non Nazis. Within two months, Popin told
(31:18):
a colleague, We'll have Hitler in a corner so tight
that he will squeak. In point of fact, Within two months,
Hitler managed to suspend habeas corpus, suspend freedom of the press,
suspend public assembly, suspend freedom of speech, and he opened Dachau.
A year later, he put Poppin under house arrest, and
a decade later Franz von Poppen was one of the
(31:41):
defendants at Nuremberg. Governor Chris, what are you gonna do?
He's popular. Either we keep him or we keep democracy.
So I guess we keep him. Von Sanunu two days
worst person and the world squeak knew the number one
(32:12):
story on the countdown and things I promised not to tell.
And last Thursday fred Ingalls Peterson died. You probably do
not know that name. You probably do not know the name.
He was better known by Fritz Peterson. He was a
pitcher for the New York Yankees from nineteen sixty six
until he was traded to the Cleveland Indians in nineteen
seventy four. He later also pitched for the Texas Rangers.
(32:36):
He was also a hockey announcer in New York. In
his pitching days with the Yankees, he worked with John Sterling,
who to this day does Yankee games. John Sterling and
Fritz Peterson were the broadcasters for the New York Raiders
of the World Hockey Association in nineteen seventy two seventy three.
But Fritz Peterson, when he is remembered at all, is
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remembered for one of the most spectacular off the field
incidents in the history of baseball, when in his eighth
year with the New York Yankees in spring training of
nineteen seventy three, he and his teammate Mike Kekech announced
they had swapped lives. That was their clean spin on
what had happened that they had been in the terminology
(33:20):
of the day wife swappers. Fritz Peterson had fallen in
love with his fellow Yankee pitcher, Mike Kekech's wife and
Mike Kekch had fallen in love with his fellow Yankee pitcher,
Fritz Peterson's wife, so the two men simply moved out
of their homes and into each other's the Peterson Kekech marriage,
(33:42):
which happened shortly thereafter after. Obviously the divorces. The Fritz
Peterson marriage to the former Suzanne Kekech lasted until the
day Fritz Peterson died last week, not so much for
Mike Kekech. Mike Kekech and the ex Missus Peterson broke up, thus,
of course, leaving to the impossibly bad taste joke that
(34:05):
Mike Kekech was left waiting for the wife to be
named later in the trade. I regret to tell you
that that was my joke. Fritz Peterson, though, was so
much more than that event. He was a great Yankee pitcher,
and in fact such a great Yankee pitcher that when
(34:26):
the old Yankee Stadium, which ran from nineteen twenty three
to two thousand and eight, when it closed, ESPN did
the calculations, and of all the pitchers who threw more
than nine hundred and fifty nearly one thousand innings inside
Yankee Stadium, all the Hall of famers who pitched for
the Yankees in all of that span of eighty six seasons,
the number one earned run average. The pitcher who gave
(34:49):
up the fewest earned runs per appearance in Yankee Stadium
was Fritz Peterson. He was a great pitcher. Just before
the Yankees traded him in nineteen seventy four, he injured
his arm. We did not know that at the time.
When the Yankees traded Fritz Peterson in nineteen seventy four,
a couple of friends of mine and I put together
(35:09):
a huge banner to hang at the ballpark, protesting the trade.
Fritz Peterson and a couple of other popular Yankee pitchers
to the Cleveland Indians for a first basement, like you
couldn't get a first basement anywhere. Well, Fritz Peterson's career
was eventually over, but the first baseman was named Chris Chambliss,
and he hit a home run that won the American
(35:31):
League Pennant for the Yankees in nineteen seventy six and
was the stalwart of their infield for seven seasons. In
any event, none of those none of those stories, none
of those bad jokes, none of those wife swapping tales,
is my Fritz Peterson's story. It is the story that
(35:51):
will always be remembered as long as I remember anything
about baseball, largely because my hand still hurts. Cast your
mind back to a time when things like this actually happened.
In nineteen seventy three, my dad was in the second
season of being a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium.
(36:14):
The cost for this, for four tickets to each Yankee
game was one thousand dollars, plus parking, which I think
was another fifty dollars. In any event, they didn't play
eighty one separate games. They played a lot of double headers,
so technically these were four tickets to about I don't know,
seventy days' worth of baseball. But there were four tickets
(36:37):
to every game of the season. It cost one thousand dollars.
By the time the new Yankee Stadium opened in two
thousand and nine, there were individual tickets that cost one
thousand dollars and more than that. But in those old
days we few season ticket holders. Seeing those last dreadful
Yankee teams before the renaissance under George Steinbrenner, we knew
each other, and so as a very long Fourth of
(37:01):
July weekend approached, in the year nineteen seventy three, the
folks who sat in the front row of the row
we sat in. We sat in the fourth box from
the field. This was just behind first base, just to
the far end, the outfield end of the Yankee dugout
the folks in the front row, who we'd come to
know because they went to a lot of games, as
(37:21):
did my father and my mother and my sister and I.
They said, as they were leaving during I think the
Sunday game before the fourth of July, which was a
Wednesday that week, so we're talking Sunday July first, they said, listen,
we're going to the Hamptons for the weekend. Would you
like to sit in our box? To me, knowing I
(37:42):
was a huge fan, and I said, of course, they said, okay,
let's fix that with the usher. There was an usher.
There were ushers at ballparks who showed you to your
seats and cleaned them off for you, and you were
supposed to tip them, and we did, and we knew
them all by name. There was Irving, who is a
great friend to my young sister. There was mister McCarthy,
who was in charge of the entire areas worth of ushers.
(38:05):
There was Frenchy. There was a whole bunch of them
who used to By the way, there were so many
empty seats at Yankee Stadium in those days that when
their days were done, they would come over and sit
down along with all the groundskeepers near our seats behind
first base because there was plenty of good seats available
for the ushers and the groundskeepers and everybody else who
worked at Yankee Stadium. I knew some of those people
(38:27):
literally until I was in my fifties, some of them
still working in some of them just friends. In any event,
So the folks from the front row, whose name has
been lost to time, they walked me over to where
mister McCarthy, the chief of ushers for I guess the
box seats on the first base side of Yankee Stadium
where he was. And they said, listen, mister McCarthy, we're
(38:50):
going to be away next week for the Red Sox
series on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday were going to
be out in the Hamptons. Would you let this young
man sit in our seats. Make sure he's okay down there.
This is the way this worked. They didn't think about
selling the ta's because after all, a season ticket was
one thousand dollars. Each ticket cost four dollars, so the
(39:12):
front row seats at Yankee Stadium for a Yankee Red
Sox series would have been sixteen dollars for a game.
Maybe if there were a pennant race involving the Yankees
and the Red Sox, you might be able to get
a little bit more for them, but there were all
sorts of rules against selling tickets for more than face value.
Maybe they could have gotten their money back. And if
they were going to the Hamptons for the week in
nineteen seventy three, they didn't need the sixteen dollars or
(39:34):
the thirty two dollars for two games, or the forty
eight dollars for three games. So I had one of
the great experiences of my life spread out in front
of me. Not only could I go and sit in
the front row by myself, without my parents, without my sister,
and concentrate on the game and see the game without
anybody in front of me, and everybody was always standing up,
no ushers, no fans, nothing but me and Yankee Stadium.
(39:58):
To concentrate on my future career as a sportscaster and
enjoy the Yankees, who I dearly, dearly loved then but
noe longer. Not only that, but it was the Yankees
and the Red Sox. Fourth of July, fourteen years old.
Pretty much ideal and pretty much the last idealized moment
in between being a kid, being a boy, and becoming
(40:22):
a young man. I'd be going to college in two years.
This was like it, that transitional moment, and I'd get
to sit in the front row and watch my Yankees,
and yet also in the back of my mind, think
about what it would be like to be announcing that
game without any of the distractions of the people walking
in front of you, or your sister needing to go
to the restroom, or anything else happening back in those
(40:44):
seats way in the back, four boxes from the front row.
So now the big day comes. The weather is lovely.
It's Fourth of July weekend, except Fourth of July weekend
runs from Monday through Friday, because the fourth of July
is on a Wednesday. So this is Monday, July second,
nineteen seventy three, and Fritz Peterson is going to pitch
for the Yankees again. It's the Red Sox, and Fritz
(41:05):
Peterson was I won't claim he was my favorite player,
but he certainly was top five. He was always reliable,
always pitched well at Yankee Stadium, as those later statistics proved,
And he was an affable guy. And he played a
bunch of pranks. And I understood what it meant for
him to have changed wives and traded wives with one
(41:25):
of his teammates, who, by the way, Mike Kekich. The
Yankees got rid of him almost immediately. They traded him
to Cleveland in nineteen seventy three. I think he was
gone by the time of this series. So Fritz Peterson's
kids went with the Kekitches to I don't remember it.
In any event, Kekitch's gone, Fritz Peterson has gone, and
I am in the front row, in the box by myself.
(41:48):
It's important to remember. I am in the front row,
I think for the first time, after seven seasons as
a fan in which I never sat in the front row,
close to it, but never in the front row, never
bordering on the field of play, never literally inches from
the warning track. That was the field, that magical line
(42:09):
defined by Burt Lancaster in the movie Field of Dreams.
You step over into it, and you are part of
the game. You step off of it and you are gone. Well,
I'm right on the line and I'm only fourteen, and
I think this is the big time. Yankees in the
Red Sox scoreless in the first inning. Top of the
second inning, Orlando Sepaida is the designated hitter. This is
(42:33):
the first year of the designated hitter in the American League.
Who knew what a bad idea it would be? He
strikes out. Fritz Peterson has retired the first four men
he's faced for the Red Sox, and then it happens.
Rico Petrocelli a New York born Boston Red Sox whose
(42:53):
brother was a policeman who often worked at Yankee Stadium
during Red Sox Yankees games and look just like Rico Petrocelli.
Rico petris the third basement of the Red Sox, a
member of their great nineteen sixty seven team who then
stayed with them through the nineteen seventy six season and
(43:14):
was on the nineteen seventy five American League championship team too.
Rico Petrocelli pops a ball up behind first base where
I'm sitting, and I don't mean near where I'm sitting,
the ball is hit to where I am sitting. In
those days, pop ups seemed to go far higher into
the sky than they do nowadays. At least that's the
(43:35):
way it looked. Maybe it was the steepness of Yankee Stadium.
Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting there
under these circumstances gifted the front row seat at Yankee
Stadium something I could never buy or achieve in any
other way. I don't know, but it seemed like the
ball was in the air for upwards of half an hour,
and you have to now see it the way I
(43:57):
saw it. I stood up. I knew the ball was
near me in a way that had never been near
me before. There had been foul that had come a
few inches away. One of those friends from Yankee Stadium
I mentioned the vendor, Al Marcus, caught a ball maybe
ten feet from me once during a Milwaukee Brewers New
York Yankee game in nineteen seventy, flipped it to me.
(44:18):
All that was captured on television. Apparently that was my
TV debut. He'd made a great catch and flipped it
to me. That was the closest a foul ball had
ever come to me. But this one, I knew was
going to be far closer than that. In fact, it
was coming right to my box. It was coming right
to my seat. And as I looked up and I
could see the steepness of Yankee Stadium, then fifty years
(44:39):
old and about to be closed for renovations, I could
see it still in the air, a little white dot
high up above the top of the lights, these built
in lights that were added to the stadium in nineteen
forty six, and thus they rose another story or two
on top of this gigantic, majestic Yankee Stadium. I can
(45:00):
see the ball getting larger and larger as it came
down towards me, and I know that I'm going to
adjust to try to use the railing behind me as
support as I reach up to catch the ball. And
again I'm now turning. I'm now turning with my back
not towards the stands, but my back is now going
(45:22):
to be towards the field because I'm reaching with my
arms in the air and I'm reaching with my butt
against this railing to try to get a good stance
to catch this ball bare handed. Now, common sense from
that point on in my life would have told me
to run to the nearest exit under any circumstances, get
(45:42):
under the overhang of the upper deck. To not try
to catch a ball that has been hit more than
twenty seven stories into the air. All you can do
is break your hand or your head. This may be
the last moment of your life. Fourteen year old Keith,
get the hell out of there. But this is not
even the most important part of this. Somewhere in the
(46:03):
process in which I turned my back to the field,
I forgot completely that I had been gifted these tickets
for the front row to me in that moment in
which my concentration was on making this catch, and I
was not a good baseball player. That's why I became
an announcer. The concentration to make this catch erased everything
(46:24):
else from my mind, including where I was. To my mind,
I defaulted back to my seats, and to some a measure,
my dad was not with us that night, just my
sister and my mother. I was trying to protect my
mother and my sister from this flying object. Plus I
wanted to catch it. I wanted my own foul ball
from a Red Sox Yankee game pitched by Fritz Peterson,
(46:47):
hit by Rico Petrocelli. I'm going to catch that ball,
and I am in my box and I am protecting
my sister and my mother. But I'm not in my box.
I'm in the front row with my back to the field.
I have no idea what's happening around me. I don't
realize that there's anybody there. I don't realize that they're
any fan. It's just me and this baseball. And I
(47:07):
reach up and I do not lean back. I do
not lean forward, I do not lean sideways. My arms
are above my head, and the ball hits my hand
and it feels like I have had a spike driven
through my palm, into my arm, through my arm, into
my torso, and down to my feet. It hurts a
(47:29):
lot immediately, but that really doesn't register for a few seconds,
because what I hear behind me is a grunted good
dummit like that, kind of like the words goddamn it,
but said with a Spanish accent. That's when I suddenly
realize I'm in the front row with my back to
(47:50):
the field. Therefore, the ball might have been catchable by
the Yankee first basement. And I turn around and there
is the Yankee first baseman Felipe Alou. Felipe Alou, the
future manager of the Montreal Exposed and San Francisco Giants
in what was the last season of his major league career.
(48:10):
Felipe Alou standing there, hands on hips, looking like he
could kill me, because whereas it's my ball, the ball
was in the stands. I did not interfere with him.
If I had gotten out of the way, he could
have leaned in and made the catch. My immediate thought,
which was not to apologize, but was to say what
(48:32):
I said, why didn't you say something? The ball bounces
off my hand. I realized now that my hand is
now six or eight times its normal size already. Felipe
Alou just looks at me like he could spit and
kill me with his spit and walks back towards the
playing field, and the ball bounces back into the stands
(48:54):
and somebody else gets it. Because the ball was hit
so hard and so high that when it hit my hands,
it bounded back at least twenty rows. So now my
hand hurts. I have interfered, not with a baseball still
in play, but almost I have cost the Yankees and out,
and on the next pitch, Fritz Peterson throws. Rico Petrocelli
(49:15):
swings and singles to left field, the first hit of
the ball game. Petrocelli would be retired a moment later
on a double playball to win the second inning. In
the third inning, the Red Sox went down to Fritz
Peterson one, two three. In the fourth inning, Appotio Fisk,
(49:41):
somebody else all outs. As the fifth inning began and
Orlando Cepeda came up again, it became clear to me
I had cost Fritz Peterson a no hitter because I
did not get out of the way of Felipe Alou,
because I did not remember where I was on the
field relative to the field anyway, because I forgot because
(50:04):
I turned my back. I had cost Fritz Peterson a
no hitter against the Red Sox, or at least the
chance of a no hitter. And now we were in
the fifth inning and there had not been another hit.
I was responsible for that, not a no hitter. Supina
(50:25):
grounded out, and up comes Rico Petrocelli, who has the
only Boston hit so far courtesy of me. He flies out,
and now there's two out in the fifth inning, and
the only hit is the one Petrocelli nominally got He
will get credit for it in the Baseball Encyclopedia, but
it's mine. Fritz Peterson lost a no hitter when an
(50:47):
idiot fourteen year old fan did not get out of
the way of Yankee first baseman Felipe Alou pursuing a
foul pop up, which he must have just given up
on because he saw this gigantic fourteen year old kid
in his way. Dwight Evans came up. I believe he
was still a rookie with the Red Sox that year.
He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He
(51:08):
is not. He had the best throwing arm I elvers
saw on any outfielder, and he played for the Red Sox.
I think until like last week, to some degree, I
was actually relieved when what happened next happened next. Dwight
Evans hit a home run. Dwight Evans hit a home run.
Of course, he shouldn't have been batting, I guess, or
(51:31):
maybe Fritz Peterson would have been pitching him differently if
he'd been carrying the no hitter he should have had
into the fifth inning in that other timeline. Who knows
what would have happened, but in any event Evans homeward.
I was not the cause of that directly, only indirectly,
and Fritz Peterson pitched the entire game, having give it
(51:52):
up only those two hits. The home run that beat
him one to nothing. Dwight Evans home run turned out
to be the only run scored in the game, one nothing,
and of course the Rico Petrocelli single that I caused.
I cannot tell you how badly I felt. It is
(52:13):
literally true that no matter what happened to my hand,
and it did not break, but it was swollen. For
let's see, that's July second, nineteen seventy three. I want
to say it was still swollen into the late eighties.
It hurt, but by no means did I feel that
pain compared to the pain of costing Fritz Peterson a
no hitter. My goodness, I never felt more guilt in
(52:36):
my life about anything before or since. And I wrote
Fritz Peterson a letter. I said, if you'd like to
come out and punch me before one of the games,
I'll be here. You can find me any day behind
the dugout. Just let me know when I'm sorry. It's
my fault. Years later, there was a play called the
(53:03):
Bartman ball play in a Chicago Cubs playoff game when
they were on the verge of going to the World Series.
This was when their nearly century old streak of never
having won the World Series since nineteen oh eight was
still in full flower. And they were playing the Florida Marlins,
and a fly ball was hit down the left field line,
and it was the legal play for the fans. It
(53:26):
was in the stands, and it was not interference, as
mine had not been interferenced. But this poor man, Steve Bartman,
reacted the way I did to my foul pop up
with Rico Petrocelli on July second, nineteen seventy three. And
he was in the front row down the left field
line at Wrigley Field, and I was in the front
row down the first base line at Yankee Stadium. And
we were joined through the decades by what happened next
(53:49):
to each of us. Bartman reached up for the ball.
It bounced off his hands, and he turned around to
see the Cubs left fielder looking at him, hands on hips,
as if, why didn't you get out of the way.
I could have caught that ball, And of course, the
Cubs lead in the game then collapsed utterly. They gave
(54:11):
the opportunity back to the Marlins, and the Cubs did
not go to the World Series that year, and would
not go to the World Series and would not win
the World Series for another what thirteen years, twenty sixteen,
and Steve Bartman to this day has to hide himself
so that people don't know it's him, because that left
fielder made a big deal about the play he did
(54:31):
not make. He kind of gave up on the ball too,
just as that Yankee first baseman did. And here's the
punchline to it, if you don't know it already. The
left fielder in the Cubs play in two thousand and
three with Steve Bartman was named Moys says Elu. He
was the son of Felipe Alu, my first baseman, who didn't,
as I suggested to him many years later in recounting
(54:53):
this story, he did not shove me out of the way.
Number one, he would have spared me the pain in
my hand, and more importantly, he would have spared me
the guilt. I don't think his son had that opportunity
to shove the guy who was in the stands, and
much higher up from the field than Moys's Alou was
(55:15):
the way the stands were configured at Wrigley Field. He
was maybe fifteen feet above the playing field, rather than
where I was level with Felipe Alu, where he could
have easily knocked me down and I would have gone,
nice catch, Felipe. In any event, I never heard back
from Fritz Peterson. But years after that, and in fact,
years after the Bartman play, sure enough, what happens. But
(55:38):
I am doing the Old Timers Day public address announcing
with my friend, the late Hall of Famer Bob Wolf
and Fritz Peterson comes back for Yankees Old Timer's Day
and I'm standing there before the game, and he introduced
himself and I said, we've kind of met before. I said,
do you remember a game in nineteen seventy three that
you lost to the Red Sox. He went, Dwight Evans Homer,
(56:00):
the one nothing game. I went yes, And I said,
do you remember the Rico Petrocelli hit earlier in the game. Yeah,
it was a base hit. I said, no, the foul
ball before it that Felipe Elu did not catch because
some kid did not get out of the way. He went, yeah, kinda,
I said, I was the kid, no kidding, And I said,
no kidding, I wrote you a letter offering you to
(56:22):
the opportunity to come punch me in the nose. Ha
ha ha, he laughed like anything. I said, you remember that,
he goes, No, I'd love to tell you it was otherwise.
I'd love to tell you that he'd harbor to grudge
all that year. I'd love to tell you that he
punched me in the nose on Old Timer's Day. He
did not. He did not. So there are many memories
(56:43):
of fred Ingeles Fritz Peterson, and most of the recollections
of him will always center around the Mike kekech exchange
and the wife to be named later and all the
rest or perhaps in another timeline, in another world of sports,
we remember the fact that his earned run average was
the lowest among all the pictures who ever pitched at
(57:05):
Yankee Stadium for a full time basis about a thousand
innings or so or more better than Whitey Ford and
Lefty Gomez and Red Roughing and all the other Yankee
Hall of famers. People will remember Fritz Peterson for a
variety of reasons, maybe even as the announcer, the color
announcer for the World Hockey Association team in New York.
(57:26):
And I will remember him because I cost him a
no hitter. Fritz Peterson was eighty two years old, and yes,
(57:52):
I assumed. I assumed he'd held a grudge all those years.
I really did hesitate to address him, but he introduced himself,
did not punch me as felife alou did not push
me out of the way. I wish he had. I've
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
(58:14):
for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Ray on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music,
including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
(58:37):
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else,
including costing Fritz Peederson, his not editor, was pretty much
my fault. I mean I was looking for the umpire
(58:57):
to call fan interference on me. I may have even
said that, what about fed interference? Come on, let me
out of this. That's countdown for this the two hundred
and fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election.
In the one one hundred and ninety seventh day since dementia,
Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
(59:19):
of the United States, Use the fourteenth Amendment and the
not regularly given elector objection option, Use the Insurrection Act,
use the justice system, use the mental health system, use
fan interference to stop him from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins.
(59:41):
As the news warrants, Fritz, I'll always be sorry til
next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the
(01:00:05):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Donald
Trump fell asleep at his trial yesterday, first trial, first day,
(00:27):
first session. Fell asleep sitting upright at the trial. That
could end with him going to prison during the trial
day one in the morning. But it's Biden with the
stamina problem. It's Biden who's too old. Trump fell asleep
at the defense table. But we should be worried about Biden.
(00:50):
Trump fell asleep during discussion of his own tweets, his
own threats, his own lawyer's insistence that this is the
greatest witch hunting forever, and Abraham Lincoln got off easily
compared to this, and whatever else they said. In his
own defense, he fell asleep. Don't sleep on Donald Trump.
(01:12):
He'll do it for you. To quote The New York
Times at twelve ten pm EDT. Trump appears to be sleeping,
his head keeps drooping down and his mouth goes slack. Well,
who in the hell can blame him? God knows. That's
been my reaction to his bullshit for nine years. The
(01:33):
reporter who posted that, Maggie Haberman, shortly thereafter went on
CNN and said that at one point one of his
lawyers tried to hand him a note, and he was
so asleep he didn't know what was happening, his mouth
going slack and his head drooping onto his chest. She
added later in the paper, I'm just guessing here, maybe
(01:55):
Trump needs some adderall or something. If this had happened
to Biden, if this had happened to Biden at wherever
he might possibly be, that could be what one one
thousandth as serious as Trump's trial involving foreign stars and
payoffs and election interference and prison time. If this had
(02:18):
happened to Biden, it would be the only thing on
the news, the only thing on television, the only thing
on the internet, the only thing in all forms of
extrasensory communications. Instead, from the pool reporter at three forty
four pm, after the jurors leave the courtroom, Trump stares
(02:41):
at da Alvin Bragg. Then Trump turns his eyes to
the press pool. As he exits. He glares at New
York Times reporter Maggie Haberman for several seconds as he
walks out. Don't worry, Maggie. He'll probably decide he just
(03:01):
dreamt it all, and the media will go back to
telling voters that they should be worried about how with
it Joe Biden is Joe Biden and not, as he
was dubbed yesterday, Don's snore leone, who, by the way,
was not sleeping for himself. He was sleeping for the
(03:26):
sake of the January sixth hostages America. Who The ultimate
day one headline is Trump went to his first trial
yesterday and fell asleep and then unfortunately awoke, and then
they let him go home. Unfortunately, be dazzled by the
(03:48):
historic first an ex president on trial like that's top
one hundred among the norms Trump has urinated on in
the last decade. Be dazzled by that the media missed
the surprising, almost shocking, real headline. This trial will not
just be about Trump paying Stormy Daniels to keep her
(04:11):
quiet and thus interfering with the election. And this will
not just be about Trump's comically perfectly named pal, David Pecker,
playing catch and kill with every story that might hurt
defendant Jay Trump and thus interfering with the election. This,
the prosecution says, and the judge has confirmed he will permit,
will be about the entirety of the arrangement between Trump
(04:35):
and his Pecker to interfere with the election, including not
just true stuff that Trump got Pecker to keep out
of the public's flow of information, but also the fake
stuff that Trump got Pecker to put into that flow
of information, fake stuff that Trump got to read in
advance and to prove. To quote prosecutor Joshua Steinlass, here
(04:59):
is a list of National Inquirer headlines timed perfectly to
assist candidate Trump. They attacked Ben Carson. There will be
evidence that the defendant said he was particularly pleased with
this article. There will be the evidence of the stories
about Ted Cruz, including an alleged role of his family
in the assassination of jfk and against Marco Rubio. The
(05:23):
judge will also let Karen McDougall testify about her affair
with Trump and how Trump buried coverage of that. From
the moment the prosecution started talking, they were hammering home
the essence here. This is not a trial about Trump
paying off a porn star to keep their sex secret
(05:43):
from his wife or even from the public. This is
a trial about Trump interfering with the twenty sixteen election
outcome by illegally suppressing facts that the voters should have
known and evaluated for themselves, voters in the general election
and voters in the primary. Trump is not on trial
(06:07):
for hush money. Trump is not on trial for banging
a porn star. Stop putting that in your headlines. Trump
is on trial for his favorite crime, the one he
never stops talking about. Trump is on trial for election interference.
Every time this case is reduced to hush money or
(06:27):
hush money that was then illegally disguised as tax deductible
business expenses, and I've been guilty of reducing it myself,
it reduces its seriousness. It becomes yes, we deducted the
porn star under rule three point twenty one hyphen seven
parentheses a dash two three two eight six four two
(06:49):
banging porn stars. No, this allegation is as serious as
any evidence that Trump conspired with Russia or took Russian help,
or conspired with WikiLeaks or with Fox or with any
other media outlet to deliberately spread falsehoods or concealed truths
to deceive the electorate in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty,
(07:13):
or after the election in twenty twenty. Trump is on
trial for organized, systemic, illegal, and coordinated election interference. Call
it that the hush money is only part of the picture.
The attempt to deduct it all from his taxes is
only another part. To have his porn star cake and
(07:37):
eat it too. Apt, as the imagery might be. Amid
the Trump grandstanding and the procedurals that Shakespeare summed up
as the laws delay, they seated exactly zero jurors yesterday
out of the first one hundred or so. There was
a subheadline and two other laugh lines besides him falling
(07:59):
asleep while you know, sitting upright at a trial that
could end with him going to jail. The prosecution noted
even before jury selection began, or attempted jury selection began,
that Trump has already repeatedly violated the gag order just
expanded by State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marshaan hell he
(08:19):
violated apparently while in the car on the way to
the courthouse at one hundred Center Street yesterday morning, with
more slanders and muddled threats against Michael Cohen. They want
Trump held in contempt of court, which would not result
in him having bail revoked and going to prison. The
first punishment would be a fine of three thousand dollars
(08:46):
three thousand dollars. Oh no, that'll keep Trump awake at
night or in the courtroom. Three thousand dollars is like
charging you or me a penny. It's ludicrous. Send him
to Rikers. Mershawn will conduct a hearing about this week
from today, underscoring that we are looking at may before
(09:08):
there is any testimony in this case. Now the other
laugh lines. At least two Trump whorees raced to his
defense by demanding something be done at the trial that
their side condemned while recounting another famous trial last week.
Not that moral consistency nor personal consistency means anything to
(09:30):
Congressman Byron Donald's or thug Fox News commentators Jesse Waters
or Clay Travis. Clay Travis, who has drifted over from
idiotic sports commentary to idiotic political commentary like a drunk
driving an eighteen wheel tractor trailer. Donald's first, he tried
to get prospective jurors to lie under oath to the
(09:50):
court about not having prejudged the case. I mean, what
a great idea this is if you want to go
to jail.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
My plea is to the people of Manhattan that may
sit on his trial, please do the right thing for
this country. Everybody's allowed to have their political viewpoints, but
the law is supposed to be blind and no respect
of persons. This is a trash case. There is no
crime here, and if there is any potential for a verdict,
(10:19):
they should vote not guilty.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
I'm in Manhattan, I could run right over Byron. Byron
Donald's is not a lawyer. Hell, he's only technically a congressman.
But that same idea poison the jury pool by lying
to the judge that you have not prejudged the case.
That was demanded by the fascist commentator Clay Travis, quoting him.
(10:41):
If you're a Trump supporter in New York City who
is a part of the jury pool, do everything you
can to get seated on the jury and then refuse
to convict as a matter of principle, dooming the case
by a hung jury. It's the most patriotic thing you
could possibly do. Travis apparently has not been able to
get a client in nearly twenty years, but he is
(11:03):
a lawyer, graduate from law school at Vanderbilt. He's a lawyer.
After encouraging prospective jurors to lie, he was a lawyer. Moreover,
on Travis's side of the political spectrum. Just last week,
In fact, just yesterday after OJ Simpson's death, they were
insisting Jesse Waters said this yesterday afternoon on Fox. They
(11:25):
were insisting that OJ Simpson was found not guilty because
a juror lied about not prejudging that case. Now they
want the same alleged illegality to be used to save Trump.
Nice job Byron Donald's nice job Jesse Waters, in particular,
a forging a comparison between Trump and OJ Simpson. Thank
(11:49):
you kids, last laugh? Was I the only one who
heard it? Trump's pre trial whining to the media when
he got drowned out by a dog barking. Doesn't anybody
notice this? Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm
taking crazy pills. This is nothing like this is nonsense
(12:13):
that you've never been royal. It doesn't serve anything like this.
There is no outgrads, and this case was brought. This
is political persecution. This is a persecution. I mean the
second and third times there sounded a little different from
the first, and it was more like a police radio
maybe echoing in a hallway, or a human barking like
(12:37):
a dog. But we are picking knits at this point,
Trump makes his big pre trial martyrdom statement, his weakly
norma Desmond moment, Watch me nail myself to the cross,
the thing he does just before falling asleep in the courtroom.
He does this again, and he gets drowned out by
a dog barking or something sounding like a dog barking.
(13:01):
This was a big day for American justice. They were
drowned out by a dog, or by not a dog,
but an incredible simulation. And then crazy old man falls asleep,
sitting upright. Only in America, Trump falling asleep in court
(13:36):
takes on almost allegorical proportions given what is now unmistakable
in this campaign. The poles have turned, and with them
the vibes. The media rats are not yet racing back
onto what turns out to be a not sinking Joe bidenship.
The front runners have yet to do a one point eighty.
The wind is blowing their own crap back into their faces,
(13:58):
the faces of the reportorial purveyors of the conventional wisdom.
And no, they won't admit it, but I think I
think it's coming. Jonathan Martin of Politico got so close.
Over the weekend, he wrote a column headlined Trump the
front runner. Not so fast as foreign leaders trek to
marri Lago to restore their ties to the once and
(14:21):
future president, they might be surprised to learn that the
election isn't as sealed as they seem to think, as
condescending and as self inflating and as egotistical as that
is who said the election was sealed. Mister Martin, do
(14:41):
you own a mirror? Do any of you own mirrors?
Martin almost made up for that by as remarkable a
near confession as I have seen from a Beltway insider
since I went into the news in nineteen freaking ninety seven.
Promoting his column on the Internet, declaring that, after all,
(15:05):
maybe they were all wrong to ignore reality. Jonathan Martin wrote, quote,
I'll say it, there's an elite tendency to assign Trump
a better chance to win than he merits to show
this time you're not out of touch unquote you think.
(15:30):
Notice Martin never specifies that the elite he's referring to
includes the American news media, which it does. His piece
was clearly inspired by British Foreign Minister David Cameron's visit
to see Trumpet. By the way, David Cameron, the man
who enabled the Brexit vote. Just because the four prime
(15:51):
ministers who followed him have been worse than him does
not make him a good choice to represent the UK
on the world stage. UK anyway, back to Jonathan Martin,
this is, after all, the same man who wrote last
November he's titled how Biden can Still Turn It Around?
Twelve paragraphs in, Martin noted, as if it were the
answer to a trivia question that Trump, quote, is an
(16:14):
exiled strong man who's taken over a traditional political party
and is attempting to reclaim office, to consolidate power and
punish his enemies with little regard for the constitution. Just
ask him. And then finally Martin got around to if
Biden thinks the country is on the line, he should
act like it and literally just that one sentence when
you think, oh, here comes this stuff about how Biden
(16:37):
and the Jonathan Martins of this world and all of
the media should be calling Trump out day after day,
hour after hour in ever more dire and knife edged
words like fascist and Nazi and would be hitler, we
find out what political cost Jonathan Martin thought Biden had
to change to save representative government in this country. He
(17:00):
had to, according to mister Martin last November quote, stop
calling David Axelrod apace Rick calling David Axelrod of prick
as a person who has heard Biden use the word,
says he does in private. It's not a strategy to
win two hundred and seventy electoral votes. Well, now you
know why I never got elected president. Then Martin complained
(17:23):
that Rob Emmanuel and Jennifer O'Malley, Dylon and Ron Klain
should be running Biden's campaign, that that was the key
issue here. That would be the Ron Klain who just
last week f bombed the Biden campaign in a speech
in publican did it on tape because he said a
genius he doesn't know enough to not pee inside the tent.
(17:45):
By the way that Martin complained about the elites, that
almost almost almost got to reality. It got thirty four retweets,
and and same weekend, Martin's employers at Politico were good
enough to bury their own poll showing that den now
leads Trump nationally by two Apparently they did this because
(18:09):
the poll was supposed to be about the election and
the Middle East, and the horse race number was just incidental,
and they didn't publish anything that didn't touch on the
Middle East, like ooh uh, who's ahead in the presidential polling?
After weeks and months and years of emphasizing that Trump
was ahead, who's ahead now? That doesn't matter in the
Middle East at all? The way, The New York Times
(18:31):
did the same thing when its poll in late February
had Trump up by five and its new pole Saturday
had Biden trailing Trump by only one, and it actually
published this subheadline, the president's popularity has ticked up slightly,
even though the simple reality of you know math is
that Biden, in going from five points down to four
(18:53):
points down, erased eighty percent of Trump's margin in six weeks.
The red Field and Wilton poll is out. It has
it tied at forty one. As they note their first
poll where Trump was not ahead since last July. I
would feel better if they weren't British pollsters, but they
did ask Americans, they assure us. Also, they find Biden's
(19:18):
approval number is now only six points underwater. The Associated
Press and Nork NRC did some deep diving based on
how frequently supporters have actually voted. You voted in the
twenty eighteen midterms. The twenty twenty presidential election. The twenty
twenty two midterms. Biden is ahead in your group fifty
(19:40):
to thirty nine. You voted in only one of those.
Trump is ahead forty five thirty three. You haven't voted
at all in any of them. It's Trump forty four
to twenty six. In other words, Trump's support largely depends
on him getting votes from non voters or rare voters.
Wagering on the election has swung wildly. It was all
Trump at the Polymarket betting site. Particularly now, at the
(20:03):
Polymarket bet it's Biden favored sixty two to twenty six.
Their official forecast is tied forty five forty five. That's
only for gambling purposes. But with all that as the backdrop,
the polls continue to break either showing Biden ahead where
he was behind, or just barely behind where he was
(20:24):
lots behind. With that as the backdrop, I will say
to Jonathan Martin and all the other cognocente who did
not do what I did, who did not leave the
media oligarchy and go out on their own and tried
thinking for themselves, for say a stretch of six and
a half minutes, I will say to them, just to
borrow a phrase I heard recently. Have you noticed, I'll
(20:46):
say it, there's an elite tendency to assign Trump a
better chance to win than he merits, to show this
time you're not out of touch, or to update it
just slightly in the wake of yesterday's in court developments,
to show this time you're not a sleep he fell
(21:12):
asleep at the defense table. If Biden did that, a
new network would be opened up today called the Biden
fell of Sleep Network. Also of interest here, the fallout
continues from as cynical a confession from an American politician
(21:33):
since Trump's fifth Avenue shooting boast, Governor Sanunu, I'm not
sure he's a human being. And speaking of that, the
right wing comedian who was too gross even for Senate
Republicans and their staffers. His set was supposed to go
thirty minutes. It only went ten minutes before they threw
(21:54):
him out. When you hear who it was, you will
be shocked it even went ten minutes. That's next. This
is Countdown, ladies and germs. This is countdown, with Keith
Olberman still ahead of us on this all new edition
(22:31):
of Countdown. Statistically, he may have been the greatest pitcher
to ever call the original Yankee Stadium home. But fifty
years later, he's still known first for swapping wives and
swapping lives with a teammate. But I will always remember
the late Fritz Peterson because when I was a kid,
(22:51):
I cost him a no hit game. I really did
next in things I promised not to tell first. Still
more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of
the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger fect specimens as usual.
Well at the start of the week, way too many
for just three trophies. Five five who constitute two days
(23:15):
Wor's persons in the world, crowd together so we can
get you all in the same picture. We start with
the Zinc Trophy fifth place, Elon Musk and Marjorie bitter Green.
A lot of people suck up to Musque online, But
according to the independent journalist Preston Stewart, a recent post
on Telegram reads, and it's translated from the Russian thanks
(23:37):
to Elon Musk for helping his Russian counterpart. It's on
the account of the Rusich Group, an arm of Putin's
army that is looked on with disgust by the Wagner Group.
The head of this outfit is a self avowed Nazi. Meanwhile,
Marjorie Green says, quote it's anti Semitic to make Israeli
(23:57):
aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis unquote March March March.
The Nazis in Ukraine are Russis, sent there by your
boy Putin and helped to get there by your boy
Sleepy Trump, Dozing Jay Trump, your views of religion March
better be one hundred percent wrong, or you're going to
(24:18):
spend a long time in hell. Moving to Copper and
CNN and how dare the Network of Record cancel their
best news show, King Charles, The Gail King Charles Barkley
Weekly Show. It's going to save CNN? Don't you know
(24:39):
that the end has come for this last and most
bizarre of the memorials to the William Henry Harrison of
CNN presidents Chris Lick. King Charles was canceled after last
Wednesday's edition. Per The New York Post, it drew really
sad audiences of four hundred and twelve thousand total viewers
and eighty nine thousand in the coveted twenty five to
(25:01):
fifty four age demo, CNN will out. Let's replace it
by extending the Abby Phillip News Hour to five nights
a week from its current schedule of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday
and Friday. At ten last Tuesday, Miss Phillips newscast drew
four hundred and fifty two thousand viewers, an eighty eight
thousand in the coveted twenty five to fifty four age devo.
That's right. The new show ratings are one thousand people
(25:26):
worse than the old show ratings. This is CNN, the
brons worse. Robert F. Kennedy Junior. If you're beginning like
me to get the sense that his campaign is there
to soak up all the people Trump thinks are too
crazy to work for him, yeah, you may be right.
Angelas Stanton King is the black voter engagement director for
(25:49):
the Kennedy campaign, and she has posted and then deleted
a homophobic attack against the founder of a black pro
Trump conservative group. His name is Deontay Johnson, and Angela
Stanton King called Johnson quote in this deleted tweet, an
open flaming feminine closet gay. How is he gonna lead
heterosexual black men to the Republican Party unquote. Now you
(26:12):
may notice the homophobia and the virulence. You may notice
that I noticed that she attacked this man because she
wondered how he could build support not for her candidate,
who is Kennedy, but instead how he could build support
for her, not her candidate Trump, Trump, who she supported
(26:35):
in twenty twenty who when she went to the White
House in February, she celebrated Black History Month with him
and who. Then a year later, Angela Stanton King, who'd
spent two years in prison after being convicted as part
of a car theft ring, she was pardoned by Trump.
This was just before she went on the Doctor Phil
Show to attack transgendered people like her own child, and
(26:58):
then unleashed an obscenity riddled video on social media attacking
her own child and Doctor Phil and the doctors. And
now she's working for Kennedy, then going full homophobe on
behalf of Trump. Hmmm, it's almost as if she's living
her real life as a closeted Trump supporter. Don't tell
(27:20):
anybody the runner up worser funny man Rob Schneider Politico
reporting that last holiday season, the Senate Working Group's annual
gala was headed by the former Saturday Night Live cast
member Rob Schneider, former as in thirty years ago, literally
left the show. In nineteen ninety four, one hundred and
(27:41):
fifty Republican Senate staffers, including forty chiefs of staff. Some
senators recoiled, according to Politico, as Schneider, who had promised
to keep it clean, made racially offensive and gross jokes,
many aimed at Asian people, including one about quote Korean whorehouses.
At ten minutes in, Senator Cindy Hyde Smith walked out,
(28:02):
and the executive director of the group stoped Schneider and
escorted him off stage. Do you realize how racially offensive
something has to be to get Republicans to walk out
of a free dinner? But the winner the worst, Governor
Chris Sanunu of New Hampshire. I suppose nothing should surprise
(28:25):
me anymore, But even nearly forty eight hours after the fact,
I have still never seen anything as brazenly cynical and
Unamerican as what this asshole did on ABC Sunday Morning
with George Stephanopolos. I mean, this was a loud, seemingly
principled Nicki Haley supporter, Remember Nicki Haley, and Sonu is
(28:46):
now not just backing Trump, but he's making no effort
to even rationalize backing Trump. Sonun who said, the criminal cases,
the prosecution quote has been going on for more than
a year, and his poll numbers never go down. George
Stephanoppolis countered, but you're going to politics. I'm asking about
right and wrong. Answered, this is about politics. If you
(29:07):
missed it, it gets worse. Please explain. Stephanopolos asked, given
the fact you believe Trump contributed to an insurrection, how
can you say we should have him back in the
oval office. Sanunu's answer, for me, it's not about him
as much as it is having a GOP administration. Stephanopolos
was dumbfounded. But he will be the president. That doesn't
make any sense to me. You believe that a president
(29:28):
who contributed to an insurrection should be president again? And
then the kill shot from this worm Sanunu, as does
fifty one percent of America. George, forget the math for
a second. Trump has never come close to having fifty
one percent of support in America. It was forty six
in twenty sixteen, it was forty seven in twenty twenty
(29:49):
what Snunu is saying here is he and other Republicans
who know Trump is amoral, anti democracy, a thug, a criminal,
a madman. They will not let that stop them from
supporting him because they have all joined a What are
you gonna do about it, you lousy moral losers. What
(30:09):
are you gonna do about their mob? I don't give
a damn what happens to the Snuu news The father
was H. W. Bush's chief of staff said a hell
with a lot of them. But the more I listened
to this interview, the more I kept hoping, maybe Governor
Sinunu is drunk, maybe he's having some sort of brain episode,
because that would be a better explanation either one of
(30:30):
them than this explanation that Chris Sinunu is our Franz
von Poppen. You know, Franz von Poppen is we have
a bunch of them. Actually, now, he was the Conservative
Chancellor of Germany and it was he who made the
deal after Hitler lost the nineteen thirty two German presidential
election to appoint him Chancellor Hitler so that the weakened
(30:54):
winner of the presidential election would get the political and
parliamentary support of the Nazis in the Reichstag, and Hitler
would have to fall in line with a non Nazi
gut Men von Poppin. Had it all arranged, President Hindenberg's
eleven man cabinet would consist of Hitler and two other
Nazis and eight non Nazis. Within two months, Popin told
(31:18):
a colleague, We'll have Hitler in a corner so tight
that he will squeak. In point of fact, Within two months,
Hitler managed to suspend habeas corpus, suspend freedom of the press,
suspend public assembly, suspend freedom of speech, and he opened Dachau.
A year later, he put Poppin under house arrest, and
a decade later Franz von Poppen was one of the
(31:41):
defendants at Nuremberg. Governor Chris, what are you gonna do?
He's popular. Either we keep him or we keep democracy.
So I guess we keep him. Von Sanunu two days
worst person and the world squeak knew the number one
(32:12):
story on the countdown and things I promised not to tell.
And last Thursday fred Ingalls Peterson died. You probably do
not know that name. You probably do not know the name.
He was better known by Fritz Peterson. He was a
pitcher for the New York Yankees from nineteen sixty six
until he was traded to the Cleveland Indians in nineteen
seventy four. He later also pitched for the Texas Rangers.
(32:36):
He was also a hockey announcer in New York. In
his pitching days with the Yankees, he worked with John Sterling,
who to this day does Yankee games. John Sterling and
Fritz Peterson were the broadcasters for the New York Raiders
of the World Hockey Association in nineteen seventy two seventy three.
But Fritz Peterson, when he is remembered at all, is
(32:58):
remembered for one of the most spectacular off the field
incidents in the history of baseball, when in his eighth
year with the New York Yankees in spring training of
nineteen seventy three, he and his teammate Mike Kekech announced
they had swapped lives. That was their clean spin on
what had happened that they had been in the terminology
(33:20):
of the day wife swappers. Fritz Peterson had fallen in
love with his fellow Yankee pitcher, Mike Kekech's wife and
Mike Kekch had fallen in love with his fellow Yankee pitcher,
Fritz Peterson's wife, so the two men simply moved out
of their homes and into each other's the Peterson Kekech marriage,
(33:42):
which happened shortly thereafter after. Obviously the divorces. The Fritz
Peterson marriage to the former Suzanne Kekech lasted until the
day Fritz Peterson died last week, not so much for
Mike Kekech. Mike Kekech and the ex Missus Peterson broke up, thus,
of course, leaving to the impossibly bad taste joke that
(34:05):
Mike Kekech was left waiting for the wife to be
named later in the trade. I regret to tell you
that that was my joke. Fritz Peterson, though, was so
much more than that event. He was a great Yankee pitcher,
and in fact such a great Yankee pitcher that when
(34:26):
the old Yankee Stadium, which ran from nineteen twenty three
to two thousand and eight, when it closed, ESPN did
the calculations, and of all the pitchers who threw more
than nine hundred and fifty nearly one thousand innings inside
Yankee Stadium, all the Hall of famers who pitched for
the Yankees in all of that span of eighty six seasons,
the number one earned run average. The pitcher who gave
(34:49):
up the fewest earned runs per appearance in Yankee Stadium
was Fritz Peterson. He was a great pitcher. Just before
the Yankees traded him in nineteen seventy four, he injured
his arm. We did not know that at the time.
When the Yankees traded Fritz Peterson in nineteen seventy four,
a couple of friends of mine and I put together
(35:09):
a huge banner to hang at the ballpark, protesting the trade.
Fritz Peterson and a couple of other popular Yankee pitchers
to the Cleveland Indians for a first basement, like you
couldn't get a first basement anywhere. Well, Fritz Peterson's career
was eventually over, but the first baseman was named Chris Chambliss,
and he hit a home run that won the American
(35:31):
League Pennant for the Yankees in nineteen seventy six and
was the stalwart of their infield for seven seasons. In
any event, none of those none of those stories, none
of those bad jokes, none of those wife swapping tales,
is my Fritz Peterson's story. It is the story that
(35:51):
will always be remembered as long as I remember anything
about baseball, largely because my hand still hurts. Cast your
mind back to a time when things like this actually happened.
In nineteen seventy three, my dad was in the second
season of being a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium.
(36:14):
The cost for this, for four tickets to each Yankee
game was one thousand dollars, plus parking, which I think
was another fifty dollars. In any event, they didn't play
eighty one separate games. They played a lot of double headers,
so technically these were four tickets to about I don't know,
seventy days' worth of baseball. But there were four tickets
(36:37):
to every game of the season. It cost one thousand dollars.
By the time the new Yankee Stadium opened in two
thousand and nine, there were individual tickets that cost one
thousand dollars and more than that. But in those old
days we few season ticket holders. Seeing those last dreadful
Yankee teams before the renaissance under George Steinbrenner, we knew
each other, and so as a very long Fourth of
(37:01):
July weekend approached, in the year nineteen seventy three, the
folks who sat in the front row of the row
we sat in. We sat in the fourth box from
the field. This was just behind first base, just to
the far end, the outfield end of the Yankee dugout
the folks in the front row, who we'd come to
know because they went to a lot of games, as
(37:21):
did my father and my mother and my sister and I.
They said, as they were leaving during I think the
Sunday game before the fourth of July, which was a
Wednesday that week, so we're talking Sunday July first, they said, listen,
we're going to the Hamptons for the weekend. Would you
like to sit in our box? To me, knowing I
(37:42):
was a huge fan, and I said, of course, they said, okay,
let's fix that with the usher. There was an usher.
There were ushers at ballparks who showed you to your
seats and cleaned them off for you, and you were
supposed to tip them, and we did, and we knew
them all by name. There was Irving, who is a
great friend to my young sister. There was mister McCarthy,
who was in charge of the entire areas worth of ushers.
(38:05):
There was Frenchy. There was a whole bunch of them
who used to By the way, there were so many
empty seats at Yankee Stadium in those days that when
their days were done, they would come over and sit
down along with all the groundskeepers near our seats behind
first base because there was plenty of good seats available
for the ushers and the groundskeepers and everybody else who
worked at Yankee Stadium. I knew some of those people
(38:27):
literally until I was in my fifties, some of them
still working in some of them just friends. In any event,
So the folks from the front row, whose name has
been lost to time, they walked me over to where
mister McCarthy, the chief of ushers for I guess the
box seats on the first base side of Yankee Stadium
where he was. And they said, listen, mister McCarthy, we're
(38:50):
going to be away next week for the Red Sox
series on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday were going to
be out in the Hamptons. Would you let this young
man sit in our seats. Make sure he's okay down there.
This is the way this worked. They didn't think about
selling the ta's because after all, a season ticket was
one thousand dollars. Each ticket cost four dollars, so the
(39:12):
front row seats at Yankee Stadium for a Yankee Red
Sox series would have been sixteen dollars for a game.
Maybe if there were a pennant race involving the Yankees
and the Red Sox, you might be able to get
a little bit more for them, but there were all
sorts of rules against selling tickets for more than face value.
Maybe they could have gotten their money back. And if
they were going to the Hamptons for the week in
nineteen seventy three, they didn't need the sixteen dollars or
(39:34):
the thirty two dollars for two games, or the forty
eight dollars for three games. So I had one of
the great experiences of my life spread out in front
of me. Not only could I go and sit in
the front row by myself, without my parents, without my sister,
and concentrate on the game and see the game without
anybody in front of me, and everybody was always standing up,
no ushers, no fans, nothing but me and Yankee Stadium.
(39:58):
To concentrate on my future career as a sportscaster and
enjoy the Yankees, who I dearly, dearly loved then but
noe longer. Not only that, but it was the Yankees
and the Red Sox. Fourth of July, fourteen years old.
Pretty much ideal and pretty much the last idealized moment
in between being a kid, being a boy, and becoming
(40:22):
a young man. I'd be going to college in two years.
This was like it, that transitional moment, and I'd get
to sit in the front row and watch my Yankees,
and yet also in the back of my mind, think
about what it would be like to be announcing that
game without any of the distractions of the people walking
in front of you, or your sister needing to go
to the restroom, or anything else happening back in those
(40:44):
seats way in the back, four boxes from the front row.
So now the big day comes. The weather is lovely.
It's Fourth of July weekend, except Fourth of July weekend
runs from Monday through Friday, because the fourth of July
is on a Wednesday. So this is Monday, July second,
nineteen seventy three, and Fritz Peterson is going to pitch
for the Yankees again. It's the Red Sox, and Fritz
(41:05):
Peterson was I won't claim he was my favorite player,
but he certainly was top five. He was always reliable,
always pitched well at Yankee Stadium, as those later statistics proved,
And he was an affable guy. And he played a
bunch of pranks. And I understood what it meant for
him to have changed wives and traded wives with one
(41:25):
of his teammates, who, by the way, Mike Kekich. The
Yankees got rid of him almost immediately. They traded him
to Cleveland in nineteen seventy three. I think he was
gone by the time of this series. So Fritz Peterson's
kids went with the Kekitches to I don't remember it.
In any event, Kekitch's gone, Fritz Peterson has gone, and
I am in the front row, in the box by myself.
(41:48):
It's important to remember. I am in the front row,
I think for the first time, after seven seasons as
a fan in which I never sat in the front row,
close to it, but never in the front row, never
bordering on the field of play, never literally inches from
the warning track. That was the field, that magical line
(42:09):
defined by Burt Lancaster in the movie Field of Dreams.
You step over into it, and you are part of
the game. You step off of it and you are gone. Well,
I'm right on the line and I'm only fourteen, and
I think this is the big time. Yankees in the
Red Sox scoreless in the first inning. Top of the
second inning, Orlando Sepaida is the designated hitter. This is
(42:33):
the first year of the designated hitter in the American League.
Who knew what a bad idea it would be? He
strikes out. Fritz Peterson has retired the first four men
he's faced for the Red Sox, and then it happens.
Rico Petrocelli a New York born Boston Red Sox whose
(42:53):
brother was a policeman who often worked at Yankee Stadium
during Red Sox Yankees games and look just like Rico Petrocelli.
Rico petris the third basement of the Red Sox, a
member of their great nineteen sixty seven team who then
stayed with them through the nineteen seventy six season and
(43:14):
was on the nineteen seventy five American League championship team too.
Rico Petrocelli pops a ball up behind first base where
I'm sitting, and I don't mean near where I'm sitting,
the ball is hit to where I am sitting. In
those days, pop ups seemed to go far higher into
the sky than they do nowadays. At least that's the
(43:35):
way it looked. Maybe it was the steepness of Yankee Stadium.
Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting there
under these circumstances gifted the front row seat at Yankee
Stadium something I could never buy or achieve in any
other way. I don't know, but it seemed like the
ball was in the air for upwards of half an hour,
and you have to now see it the way I
(43:57):
saw it. I stood up. I knew the ball was
near me in a way that had never been near
me before. There had been foul that had come a
few inches away. One of those friends from Yankee Stadium
I mentioned the vendor, Al Marcus, caught a ball maybe
ten feet from me once during a Milwaukee Brewers New
York Yankee game in nineteen seventy, flipped it to me.
(44:18):
All that was captured on television. Apparently that was my
TV debut. He'd made a great catch and flipped it
to me. That was the closest a foul ball had
ever come to me. But this one, I knew was
going to be far closer than that. In fact, it
was coming right to my box. It was coming right
to my seat. And as I looked up and I
could see the steepness of Yankee Stadium, then fifty years
(44:39):
old and about to be closed for renovations, I could
see it still in the air, a little white dot
high up above the top of the lights, these built
in lights that were added to the stadium in nineteen
forty six, and thus they rose another story or two
on top of this gigantic, majestic Yankee Stadium. I can
(45:00):
see the ball getting larger and larger as it came
down towards me, and I know that I'm going to
adjust to try to use the railing behind me as
support as I reach up to catch the ball. And
again I'm now turning. I'm now turning with my back
not towards the stands, but my back is now going
(45:22):
to be towards the field because I'm reaching with my
arms in the air and I'm reaching with my butt
against this railing to try to get a good stance
to catch this ball bare handed. Now, common sense from
that point on in my life would have told me
to run to the nearest exit under any circumstances, get
(45:42):
under the overhang of the upper deck. To not try
to catch a ball that has been hit more than
twenty seven stories into the air. All you can do
is break your hand or your head. This may be
the last moment of your life. Fourteen year old Keith,
get the hell out of there. But this is not
even the most important part of this. Somewhere in the
(46:03):
process in which I turned my back to the field,
I forgot completely that I had been gifted these tickets
for the front row to me in that moment in
which my concentration was on making this catch, and I
was not a good baseball player. That's why I became
an announcer. The concentration to make this catch erased everything
(46:24):
else from my mind, including where I was. To my mind,
I defaulted back to my seats, and to some a measure,
my dad was not with us that night, just my
sister and my mother. I was trying to protect my
mother and my sister from this flying object. Plus I
wanted to catch it. I wanted my own foul ball
from a Red Sox Yankee game pitched by Fritz Peterson,
(46:47):
hit by Rico Petrocelli. I'm going to catch that ball,
and I am in my box and I am protecting
my sister and my mother. But I'm not in my box.
I'm in the front row with my back to the field.
I have no idea what's happening around me. I don't
realize that there's anybody there. I don't realize that they're
any fan. It's just me and this baseball. And I
(47:07):
reach up and I do not lean back. I do
not lean forward, I do not lean sideways. My arms
are above my head, and the ball hits my hand
and it feels like I have had a spike driven
through my palm, into my arm, through my arm, into
my torso, and down to my feet. It hurts a
(47:29):
lot immediately, but that really doesn't register for a few seconds,
because what I hear behind me is a grunted good
dummit like that, kind of like the words goddamn it,
but said with a Spanish accent. That's when I suddenly
realize I'm in the front row with my back to
(47:50):
the field. Therefore, the ball might have been catchable by
the Yankee first basement. And I turn around and there
is the Yankee first baseman Felipe Alou. Felipe Alou, the
future manager of the Montreal Exposed and San Francisco Giants
in what was the last season of his major league career.
(48:10):
Felipe Alou standing there, hands on hips, looking like he
could kill me, because whereas it's my ball, the ball
was in the stands. I did not interfere with him.
If I had gotten out of the way, he could
have leaned in and made the catch. My immediate thought,
which was not to apologize, but was to say what
(48:32):
I said, why didn't you say something? The ball bounces
off my hand. I realized now that my hand is
now six or eight times its normal size already. Felipe
Alou just looks at me like he could spit and
kill me with his spit and walks back towards the
playing field, and the ball bounces back into the stands
(48:54):
and somebody else gets it. Because the ball was hit
so hard and so high that when it hit my hands,
it bounded back at least twenty rows. So now my
hand hurts. I have interfered, not with a baseball still
in play, but almost I have cost the Yankees and out,
and on the next pitch, Fritz Peterson throws. Rico Petrocelli
(49:15):
swings and singles to left field, the first hit of
the ball game. Petrocelli would be retired a moment later
on a double playball to win the second inning. In
the third inning, the Red Sox went down to Fritz
Peterson one, two three. In the fourth inning, Appotio Fisk,
(49:41):
somebody else all outs. As the fifth inning began and
Orlando Cepeda came up again, it became clear to me
I had cost Fritz Peterson a no hitter because I
did not get out of the way of Felipe Alou,
because I did not remember where I was on the
field relative to the field anyway, because I forgot because
(50:04):
I turned my back. I had cost Fritz Peterson a
no hitter against the Red Sox, or at least the
chance of a no hitter. And now we were in
the fifth inning and there had not been another hit.
I was responsible for that, not a no hitter. Supina
(50:25):
grounded out, and up comes Rico Petrocelli, who has the
only Boston hit so far courtesy of me. He flies out,
and now there's two out in the fifth inning, and
the only hit is the one Petrocelli nominally got He
will get credit for it in the Baseball Encyclopedia, but
it's mine. Fritz Peterson lost a no hitter when an
(50:47):
idiot fourteen year old fan did not get out of
the way of Yankee first baseman Felipe Alou pursuing a
foul pop up, which he must have just given up
on because he saw this gigantic fourteen year old kid
in his way. Dwight Evans came up. I believe he
was still a rookie with the Red Sox that year.
He should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He
(51:08):
is not. He had the best throwing arm I elvers
saw on any outfielder, and he played for the Red Sox.
I think until like last week, to some degree, I
was actually relieved when what happened next happened next. Dwight
Evans hit a home run. Dwight Evans hit a home run.
Of course, he shouldn't have been batting, I guess, or
(51:31):
maybe Fritz Peterson would have been pitching him differently if
he'd been carrying the no hitter he should have had
into the fifth inning in that other timeline. Who knows
what would have happened, but in any event Evans homeward.
I was not the cause of that directly, only indirectly,
and Fritz Peterson pitched the entire game, having give it
(51:52):
up only those two hits. The home run that beat
him one to nothing. Dwight Evans home run turned out
to be the only run scored in the game, one nothing,
and of course the Rico Petrocelli single that I caused.
I cannot tell you how badly I felt. It is
(52:13):
literally true that no matter what happened to my hand,
and it did not break, but it was swollen. For
let's see, that's July second, nineteen seventy three. I want
to say it was still swollen into the late eighties.
It hurt, but by no means did I feel that
pain compared to the pain of costing Fritz Peterson a
no hitter. My goodness, I never felt more guilt in
(52:36):
my life about anything before or since. And I wrote
Fritz Peterson a letter. I said, if you'd like to
come out and punch me before one of the games,
I'll be here. You can find me any day behind
the dugout. Just let me know when I'm sorry. It's
my fault. Years later, there was a play called the
(53:03):
Bartman ball play in a Chicago Cubs playoff game when
they were on the verge of going to the World Series.
This was when their nearly century old streak of never
having won the World Series since nineteen oh eight was
still in full flower. And they were playing the Florida Marlins,
and a fly ball was hit down the left field line,
and it was the legal play for the fans. It
(53:26):
was in the stands, and it was not interference, as
mine had not been interferenced. But this poor man, Steve Bartman,
reacted the way I did to my foul pop up
with Rico Petrocelli on July second, nineteen seventy three. And
he was in the front row down the left field
line at Wrigley Field, and I was in the front
row down the first base line at Yankee Stadium. And
we were joined through the decades by what happened next
(53:49):
to each of us. Bartman reached up for the ball.
It bounced off his hands, and he turned around to
see the Cubs left fielder looking at him, hands on hips,
as if, why didn't you get out of the way.
I could have caught that ball, And of course, the
Cubs lead in the game then collapsed utterly. They gave
(54:11):
the opportunity back to the Marlins, and the Cubs did
not go to the World Series that year, and would
not go to the World Series and would not win
the World Series for another what thirteen years, twenty sixteen,
and Steve Bartman to this day has to hide himself
so that people don't know it's him, because that left
fielder made a big deal about the play he did
(54:31):
not make. He kind of gave up on the ball too,
just as that Yankee first baseman did. And here's the
punchline to it, if you don't know it already. The
left fielder in the Cubs play in two thousand and
three with Steve Bartman was named Moys says Elu. He
was the son of Felipe Alu, my first baseman, who didn't,
as I suggested to him many years later in recounting
(54:53):
this story, he did not shove me out of the way.
Number one, he would have spared me the pain in
my hand, and more importantly, he would have spared me
the guilt. I don't think his son had that opportunity
to shove the guy who was in the stands, and
much higher up from the field than Moys's Alou was
(55:15):
the way the stands were configured at Wrigley Field. He
was maybe fifteen feet above the playing field, rather than
where I was level with Felipe Alu, where he could
have easily knocked me down and I would have gone,
nice catch, Felipe. In any event, I never heard back
from Fritz Peterson. But years after that, and in fact,
years after the Bartman play, sure enough, what happens. But
(55:38):
I am doing the Old Timers Day public address announcing
with my friend, the late Hall of Famer Bob Wolf
and Fritz Peterson comes back for Yankees Old Timer's Day
and I'm standing there before the game, and he introduced
himself and I said, we've kind of met before. I said,
do you remember a game in nineteen seventy three that
you lost to the Red Sox. He went, Dwight Evans Homer,
(56:00):
the one nothing game. I went yes, And I said,
do you remember the Rico Petrocelli hit earlier in the game. Yeah,
it was a base hit. I said, no, the foul
ball before it that Felipe Elu did not catch because
some kid did not get out of the way. He went, yeah, kinda,
I said, I was the kid, no kidding, And I said,
no kidding, I wrote you a letter offering you to
(56:22):
the opportunity to come punch me in the nose. Ha
ha ha, he laughed like anything. I said, you remember that,
he goes, No, I'd love to tell you it was otherwise.
I'd love to tell you that he'd harbor to grudge
all that year. I'd love to tell you that he
punched me in the nose on Old Timer's Day. He
did not. He did not. So there are many memories
(56:43):
of fred Ingeles Fritz Peterson, and most of the recollections
of him will always center around the Mike kekech exchange
and the wife to be named later and all the
rest or perhaps in another timeline, in another world of sports,
we remember the fact that his earned run average was
the lowest among all the pictures who ever pitched at
(57:05):
Yankee Stadium for a full time basis about a thousand
innings or so or more better than Whitey Ford and
Lefty Gomez and Red Roughing and all the other Yankee
Hall of famers. People will remember Fritz Peterson for a
variety of reasons, maybe even as the announcer, the color
announcer for the World Hockey Association team in New York.
(57:26):
And I will remember him because I cost him a
no hitter. Fritz Peterson was eighty two years old, and yes,
(57:52):
I assumed. I assumed he'd held a grudge all those years.
I really did hesitate to address him, but he introduced himself,
did not punch me as felife alou did not push
me out of the way. I wish he had. I've
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
(58:14):
for listening. Countdown. Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip
Schanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister
Ray on guitars, bass and drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
and keyboards. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music,
including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed
by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Oberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren
(58:37):
Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever.
Our announcer today was my friend Tony Kornheiser. Everything else,
including costing Fritz Peederson, his not editor, was pretty much
my fault. I mean I was looking for the umpire
(58:57):
to call fan interference on me. I may have even
said that, what about fed interference? Come on, let me
out of this. That's countdown for this the two hundred
and fourth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election.
In the one one hundred and ninety seventh day since dementia,
Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
(59:19):
of the United States, Use the fourteenth Amendment and the
not regularly given elector objection option, Use the Insurrection Act,
use the justice system, use the mental health system, use
fan interference to stop him from doing it again while
we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow bulletins.
(59:41):
As the news warrants, Fritz, I'll always be sorry til
next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the
(01:00:05):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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