August 2, 2022 • 44 mins
Even 10 years ago, Republicans ran on a simple platform: Vote For Us Or Al-Qaeda Will Kill You; Discount Terrorism And Your Career Is Over! Yet when we learned Monday night that under President Biden's direction, the architect of 9/11 and successor to Bin Laden had been killed, some Republicans MOCKED IT. The Democrats need to crush the Republicans on this and a dozen other controversies: look what Jon Stewart's public shaming did: the GOP just reversed itself and will support Health Insurance for Veterans exposed to Burn Pits. That's today's commentary. There's also news and sports and why if teams consider dealing stars like Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto, the Baseball Trade Deadline may be damaging the game itself. Worst Persons features Herschel Walker and Kim Guilfoyle, and in Things I Promised Not To Tell, it's the 43rd anniversary of one of the most shocking tragedies in sports history and I'll tell you what it was like to have to cover it on a 1000-station radio network on your 7th day on the job!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of I Heart Radio.
This is Countdown with Keith Alderman. This country killed Osama
(00:36):
bin Laden's successor, the architect of nine eleven Saturday in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush was re elected president in two thousand four.
The Republicans won the House and the Senate in two
thousand four, and all of American politics and culture rotated
around fear of and the Republicans promised to protect you
from al Qaeda in two thousand four. Today Republicans are
(01:01):
dismissing the execution of I'man al Zawari as a political stunt.
Representative cave Woman Marjorie Traitor Green tweeted minutes before President
Biden's announcement, quote, no one in America has been sweating
an attack from al Qaeda lately or even heard a
thing about them. Well, she's kind of right there. We
(01:23):
have been preoccupied with terrorists, like you know, Trump and
Marjorie Taylor Green. Her tweet finished quoting her again. But
Americans are extremely stressed about affording groceries and the Democrats
big tax hike. Later in her tweet threads, she rolled
out a conspiracy theory about Ukraine, and another one about
Iver Mecton, and and and and nothing defines the last
(01:48):
twenty years of the Republican Party like those tweets from
that idiot. If you believe the Republicans were exaggerating or
manipulating the al Qaeda threat in two thousand four, you
were politically dead. Today that the Republican Party literally tells
you not to sweat it. I once reported the correct
(02:09):
details of the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who was
not a hostage at an Iraqi hospital and was not
extracted by crack troops, but was turned over by a
brave Iraqi doctor who said her injuries needed better treatment
than they could provide. The chairman and chief executive officer
of NBC, Bob Wright, promptly insisted that I apologize on
(02:34):
the air just for reporting that. Now Marjorie Green can
tell you to ignore terrorism and instead concentrate on conspiracy
theories and crap like CRT and drag shows, and what's
behind that? The cultural purge the Republicans want, like Air
togn pulled off in Turkey, a cleansing of everybody Republicans
(02:56):
don't like. I don't really know who David Atkins is
but he wrote this quote. It sounds ridiculous when you
say it out loud, but the actual conservative game plan
is to rule with Putin or Bond style autocracy for
two generations, turn schools into right wing indoctrination zones, crushing
(03:18):
millennials and gen z underfoot, while training up jen alpha
as fascists. That's the through line for all of it.
They know everyone under forty hates them. They know they've
lost the broader public and can't win real majorities, so
their plan is authoritarian minority rule along orbanist lines to
(03:38):
crush opposition while indoctrinating a new generation. He continued. Meanwhile,
they absolutely intend on banning birth control, executing teenagers for
having abortions, and jailing women for crossing state lines for
reproductive care, all to punish women for daring to have
sex outside the dictates of fathers, husbands, and pastors for childbearing.
(04:02):
They also plan to end gay marriage and force LGBT
people back into the closet. Their game plan is to
destroy liberalism, train up a new generation of fascists, force
women into child bearing servitude for white supremacy, and reinstill
Putent style toxic masculinity in men. It's not a complicated plan,
(04:23):
Atkins rights. They see Russia and Hungary as global models
for it. They're planning and executing the plan right out
in the open. The only question Mr Atkins concluded is
whether the rest of us will take the necessary all
of society approach to stopping them. The thing is, in
spite of the affirmative action for aging white evangelicals that is,
(04:46):
the Senate, the Electoral College, and they're illegitimate Supreme Court,
the plan is unlikely to work. It can only succeed
if the rest of us fail to push back and
say no society wide. End quote David O. Atkin. So
he wrote all that on Twitter, which brings you that
(05:08):
and also brings you the honking sounds made by Marjorie
traitor Green. Mr Atkins identifies himself as a contributor to
Washington Monthly. And then this is the important part. Elected
Democratic National Committee member from California. I am pleasantly surprised
that Mr Atkins is on the d n C, because
if there are two bodies in this country working hardest
(05:30):
against what he warns us of, this slow cooking witches
brew of white supremacy, fraudulent religion, ginned up outrage, conspiracy theory, addiction, violence,
and misogyny, this fascism. While you wait, If there are
two bodies in this country right now working hardest against
his words, it can only succeed if the rest of
(05:52):
us fail to push back and say no. If there
are two bodies doing their damnedest to fail to push
back and to fail to say no, one of them
is the bureaucracy and establishment of the Democratic Party, as
typified by organizations like the Democratic National Committee. I mean,
think about this just for a second. The last president
(06:14):
of the United States was impeached twice. He blackmailed friends
and foes of this nation alike into burying the evidence
of his conspiracies with the help of a nation that
is an enemy of this country. He then openly called
for street thugs, gangs, and vigilantes to come to Washington
and stop our most sacred institution, the peaceful transfer power.
(06:37):
He left office reviled and under threat of indictment. He
is the leading candidate of his party, the Trump Putent Axis,
for its nomination for the White House in twenty four
and you know in your heart that it is his
intention to then seize control by election by corrupting the
electoral College, by being installed by the drunks and religious nuts,
(06:59):
he himself appointed to the Supreme Court by any means available.
And if he is restored to office, you also know
in your heart that he will attempt to remain there,
even though the Constitution of the United States of America
limits him to two terms. And they will do their
damned dist including a military coup this time, to keep
(07:20):
him there as long as he and they want. You
know that all of that is true. The plot of
January six, in fact, started on January two, thousand seventeen.
The first thing Crazy Trump did after the election was
to begin his campaign for re election. And the plot
is as active now as it was when the Traders
(07:42):
stormed up the Capitol steps and Marjorie Trader Greene was
tweeting about seventeen seventy six. They are operating, as David
Atkins of the Democratic National Committee so poetically noted right
out in the open, and when was the last time
you heard any of this screamed from the rooftops, shouted
(08:03):
from the campaign plaque forms, even just said aloud quietly,
but still allowed by anybody besides the January sixth Committee
by anybody from the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, or from the White House or from
the Justice Department. A Supreme Court with at least one
(08:25):
and more realistically three seats stolen from Democratic presidents invalidates
Roe v. Wade, And suddenly pro choice has jumped from
of the country to and which Democrats are running on
that the Democrats are playing defense on gas prices and inflation,
and still defaulting back to this idea that if they
(08:47):
can only do something really bipartisan, all the Republicans will
applaud and vote for them, and they'll win the next
vote a hundred and fifty million to nothing. And now,
in its simplest, most easily digestible construction, Joe Biden killed
the leader of al Qaeda, and the Republicans can get
away with claiming it is a distraction from gas prices
(09:10):
coming down Democrats. Let Democrats let slime buckets like Marjorie
Green say stuff like this without consequences, without making her
a pariah, without questioning her patriotism, without questioning her sanity.
I love Joe Biden. I mean that literally. I met
(09:32):
Joe Biden in March two thousand seven second time. Really,
He asked me to lunch so he could ask me
for advice about public speaking. If you can believe that,
I still can't. And when I asked him, wait, you've
been in the Senate thirty three years, this is the
first time you're asking about this, He did not storm
(09:53):
out or take offense or smile stiffly like any ordinary politician.
He laughed. He laughed like hell, and I have loved
him since then and recognized in him one of literally
only a dozen or fewer true public servants in my
adult lifetime and in any other era in our history.
(10:16):
His election after his path would have been one of
the epic sagas in all of American history. But deep
in his heart, Joe Biden believes Democrats will retain the
House and the Senate in the fall and he will
be re elected in twenty four because they did good things.
(10:36):
They served the people. They steered us out of the
madness of crazy Trump. They steered us beyond COVID through inflation,
past Ukraine that got bin Laden's deputy and successor. The
Democrats remain invested in the institution of American politics as
it was the day Joe Biden declared his candidacy for
(10:57):
president on June. Collaboration and a drink with Ronald Reagan
and the good rules of the vast American political and
media industrial complex back when both sides were in bipartisan
agreement that they could bargain it out, the bipartisan rules
that ultimately Joe McCarthy gets censured and the chairman of
(11:20):
the House and American Activities Committees get jail terms and
Huey Long get shot, and we beat crazy Trump once,
we'll beat him again. Unfortunately, the lead Democrats also believe
in the bad rules of the vast American political and
media industrial complex, like institutional self protection. You know, if
(11:42):
you can indict an ex president today, doesn't that mean
you can indict an ex Attorney general tomorrow. Sean Connery
says in the film The Untouchables, they pull a knife,
you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to
the hospital, You send one of his to the morgue.
The struggle to save American democracy is at that point
(12:03):
right now, and to a metaphorical knife fight for the
future of this country, when the mainstream Democrats are fighting
against crazy people and fascists, and when the mainstream Democrats
now have the body of bin Laden's deputy. The mainstream
Democrats have brought to this metaphorical knife fight for our
(12:25):
future a bio fuel plant in Iowa. But as I said,
the fascist plot to overthrow this government can, as David
Atkins wrote, only succeed if the rest of us fail
to push back and say no. And there are two
entities doing more than any others to make sure we,
(12:46):
in fact do fail to push back and we do
fail to say no. The Mainstream Democratic Party is one
of those entities, and the other entity is the American
news media. We can actually fix the American news media.
This is what we have to do. Turn up the
(13:07):
volume a little bit. I think I have to whisper
this part. Do not patronize the guy who I once
put on TV, who now writes things for CNN's website,
like how Elon Musk could quote rescue Donald Trump, as
if Elon Musk and a rescue Donald Trump wouldn't try
to imprison or kill everybody who works for CNN and
(13:29):
maybe everybody who watches CNN. Do not patronize him. Do
not patronize the network I worked at Last Century, where
the co new president hires one of the Trumpists who
blackmailed Ukraine and who now has Ukrainian blood on his hands.
The co president hires him and says, with people recording
him saying it, that he's doing it so his news
(13:51):
division can have access to the Republicans once they take
the House. As if those Republicans won't figure out a
way legal or not to destroy CBS News or turn
it into more fascist propaganda. But there is also a
secret cheat code for getting the American media, American television
to do what you want besides boycotting the parts that
(14:13):
don't get it. And it's simple. TV news loves noise.
This is not new today, It is just more today.
So make that noise. When Marjorie Green mocks the execution
of the leader of al Qaeda, When Trump while taking
Saudi money to host a golf tournament while this country
(14:36):
is killing bin Laden's deputy, When Trump says nobody ever
got to the bottom of nine eleven, every prominent Democrats
should call press conferences and call them both what they are. Disloyal.
They should say Green and Trump have spat on the
graves of the dead of nine eleven. They should call
them terrorists. Sympathizers, they should call them Green and Trump
(15:01):
what they are, terrorists, Whether Democrats like it or not.
The loud subtext of the elections of two months hence
will be which party loves and defends America and which
doesn't and wants to see millions of Americans disappear. And
(15:23):
if you send your thugs to invade the Capitol and
kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House,
and if you mock the nine eleven victims, and you
insist America must not sweat terrorism, you have to be
buried under a mountain of bad media placed there pound
by pound by the Democrats. Post Scripts to the News,
(15:58):
Worse Person's Sports, and why the baseball trade deadline is
actually an annual disaster for the sport, and also the
forty three anniversary of the death of a great athlete
and I had to cover it for a radio network
on my seventh night as a professional at the age
of twenty. Coming up on Countdown just to head my
(16:33):
postscripts to the news segment plus Worse Persons and Sports,
But first, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a
dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has
its day. You can help this one and all of
our subjects on my Twitter feed for pups in trouble.
That's at Tom Jumbo Grumbo today. Are you near Riverside, California?
Could you help adopt or foster Tilly. She's a seven
(16:57):
year old Siberian Husky mix, a beautiful white and gray
dog with piercing eyes. She has arthritis, but she's sweet
and she's in trouble. They're nineties six dogs on death
row at the kill shelter in Riverside. They're all listed
on the Instagram account I Love Rescue till he's been
there a month. You can save Tilly at the Riverside,
(17:17):
California City Shelter. Look her up on my dog Twitter
account Tom Jumbo Grumbo Tilly, She and all the others
in Riverside also on Instagram at I Love Rescue. Thank you.
(17:52):
All right, let's add to your knowledge with a little
more news. Time for postscripts to the news, some headlines,
some thoughts, some laughs, dateline d c apropos of the
earlier commentary. Whatever the publicans do, hit them over the
head with it. John Stewart just got them to reverse
on the veterans burn Pit Healthcare bill. The one cancoon
(18:14):
Cruise and Steve Danes blocked and we're fist bumping about
knowing that they were on the Senate Chamber camera. Mitch
McConnell on the bill last night, quote, it will pass
this week. Democrats will now, of course, forget about it.
Instead of putting Crews and Danes in blast in every ad,
every television station, every campaign in the mid terms, hit
(18:38):
them over the head with it. Dateline, the voting booths
primary day in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and Washington State. The
endorsement from Psycho Trump was much coveted for the Republican Senate.
Not in Missouri state Attorney General Eric Schmidt, or disgraced
resigned governor and accused domestic violence purp with a campaign
ad in which he threatened to shoot other Republicans. Eric
(19:00):
Grayden's The A Team So Trump super Genius wrote last night,
I am therefore proud to announce that Eric has my
complete and total endorsement Eric Schmidt. Brighton's idol L Douche
spokesman Taylor Butter, which says the statement quote speaks for itself.
(19:23):
You bet it does. Stateline Phoenix on the eve of
the primary, and Arizona Senate candidate Attorney General Mark Burnovitch.
She's the one who does not look like he was
hypnotized but didn't come out of it when the magician
snapped his fingers. That would be blake Masters. This is
the other guy Bernavite, who says he has wrapped up
the endless Arizona fraudulent fraudulent voter claims about dead voters.
(19:47):
He wrote the paranoid state Senate President Karen fan that
of the two dred and eighty two supposedly dead voters
that she and her sleuths found, two eight one of
them aren't even dead. Well, many aren't dead, and quote,
we're very surprised to learn that they were allegedly deceased.
Once again, you bet Dateline d C. Trump goon guy
(20:11):
refit the first January six terrorists to go to trial
gets seven years and three months in prison, add on
the extra three months because he was a three per center.
He did not, though, get the desired terror offense multiplier.
The FBI was tipped off by his son. Thank you,
(20:46):
Nancy Faust. Dateline Atlanta, the two day Atlanta Music Fat
Midtown Festival schedule for next month is canceled. Why four
It's in a city park, and the state Supreme Court
has ruled that Georgians can carry guns in city parks.
Some of the scheduled artists and Jack White, Future and
Fallout Boy were supposed to play, they refused to perform
(21:06):
where guns are allowed. Organizers were also afraid that if
they banned guns, they get sued. Sorry, Atlanta, this is
how fascist Republican state leaders will eventually be crushed. We
treat their cities and towns like they were South Africa
during apartheid and dateline Bedminster, New Jersey a follow up
(21:27):
on the Trump buried his first wife at the first
tea at his first golf course to get the first
tax break. The one in whole scandal found yesterday about
Trump's two thousand seven bid for a family mausoleum with
nineteen foot high obelisks in the middle of the course.
The then mayor of Bedminster, Robert Holt Away with a
(21:49):
prescient argument to the city council that the grave of
Donald Trump will attract the wrong sort of people, like
he said in Austria quote where a Nazi war criminal
was buried, and that became quote a tourist attraction to
thousand seven right on the money, Mr holt Away. This
(22:11):
is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This is
Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports Baseball's trade Deadline, six
(22:35):
pm Eastern today. The game's ended last night with Juan
Soto still Washington National, but after his last at bat
against the New York Mets, his batting coach came up
to Soto and gave him a big hug. It was
not about the at bat Soto had walked. It's amazing
to realize that possible. Ex Washington National Soto was second
in the m v P balloting last year to ex
(22:56):
Washington National Bryce Harper. Fifth in the same voting was
ex Washington National Trade Turner ex Washington National Ax Scherzer.
And you wonder why eight different Major League ball clubs
have moved out of Washington or gone bankrupt in Washington. Meanwhile,
the newspaper, the Orange County Register says, not that it
(23:18):
was expected, but the Angels will not trade m v
P show a Otani, the d h and pitcher. Those
who were traded the Oakland A's have delta way so
many stars they are now the Oakland vs. Pitchers Frankie
Montesse and Lou Trevino to the Yankees for prospects. Trey
Mancini goes from the Orioles to the Astros, ace reliever
(23:38):
Josh Hater from the Brewers to the Padres for a
package including apply named pitching prospect Robert Gasser and picture
den Nelson Lament And why isn't de Nelson Lament? A
met Tommy fam outfielder and angry Fantasy football league manager
goes from the Reds to the Red Sox, but in
a truly mixed message, Catcher Christian Basquez goes from the
(24:00):
Red Sox to the Astros. What's going on in Boston?
Any clue is But there's a bigger issue here, the
trade deadline itself, and the fans of Soto or Otani
or whoever else ultimately gets dealt now or next year
or whenever, the fans who will be heartbroken. Basketball has
turned player movement into a plus, a kind of frat trick.
(24:22):
Football has made it impossible. Baseball it's just pain. It
was posited by the website dead Spin last week that
if a team would rather trade Soto, who's just twenty
three years old, for a basketful of top minor league prospects,
many of whom are older than he is. To do
that rather than pay him, that means baseball is completely
(24:43):
screwed up. The suggestion was that the easiest fixed would
be to eliminate baseball's minor leagues as we know them,
not the leagues themselves, what they mean, and who owns
the teams. It sounds crazy, but there's the germ of
the idea here. This system, in which nearly every minor
league team is simply a training laboratory for its Major
(25:03):
league masters, was instituted by the legendary branch Rickey for
the St. Louis Cardinals of the nineteen twenties. In those days,
minor league teams signed nearly all the high school and
college players, trained them, developed them, and sold them to
the highest big league bidder. Joe DiMaggio wasn't drafted by
the New York Yankees. He was signed by the minor
(25:25):
league San Francisco Seals and traded to the Yankees for
four players and fifty thousand dollars in four Ted Williams
was bought by the Boston Red Sox from the minor
league team in San Diego for four players in thirty
five thousand and ninety eight in St. Louis branch Rickey
developed the farm system develop your own players because the
(25:47):
Cardinals were too poor to compete in that player's sale
market for the Dimaggios and the Williams. Is if dead
Spin argues, we went back to a world where major
league teams actually owned the contracts of only thirty or
forty players at a time, there would not be any
minor league prospects to trade Juan Soto four. It is
(26:09):
so novel an idea that it takes a long time
to recognize that it might be the right thing to do.
And if you don't think so, wait until your favorite
team trades your favorite player for five guys, four of
whom will almost certainly never make it today or next year.
(26:41):
And guess what time is it? Boys and girls. The
daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect
exhibits to constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
Silver to Tennessee Senator Marcia Blackburne, weekly candidate for the
dumbest elected officer of the land. She says on the
(27:03):
floor of the set at the Act the Climate Inflation
Deal quote the worst elements of a radical socialist agender
unquote are being pushed by Senator Joe Manchin. I wish.
Blackburn also said the bill included a quote multi hundred
dollar tax hike. Just to clarify, in case you're wondering,
(27:27):
Marsha Blackburn is an actual senator. She is not a
character performed by the actress Stephanie Courtney from the insurance
company commercial. That character is called flows Mom Runner up
Herschel Walker, the Georgia Senate candidate and the gift who
keeps on giving every couple of days. Weeks after it
(27:48):
was acknowledged that he had two more children, of whom
he did not acknowledge being the father two more than
we thought, Herschel has finally come up with an excuse,
and it relates to the campaign and how mean people
are to him, he told the equally dim Brian Kilmead
on Fox Nudes. Quote the thing I didn't acknowledge them
(28:09):
here because in now my two youngest kids, I'm not
going to acknowledge them because I don't want them to
be under any kind of scrutiny. Yeah, because Herschel, you
were anonymous before you ran for office. But the winner.
I mentioned Trump in the Eric Graighten's Eric Schmidt Senate
primary and Missouri finally endorsing last night and endorsing simply
(28:34):
Eric there was supposed to be some kind of subtlety
or pun or wiggle room or wit to this or
something this deliberately not mentioning which of the two erics
he was endorsing. But on the old Trump train, the
caboost did not get the message. Kimberly Gilfoyle, the one
(28:54):
with the photo album of all her old boyfriends. If
you know what I mean, the girlfriend of says somebody
fiance girl. What is she sitting nobody's sister? Letn't she something?
But if she just she just hangs around and takes
pictures of them. Anyway, she put out a video last
night and she's supporting Eric Grayden's calling him the true
(29:16):
hero of the MAGA movement. So we have a new
pronunciation on maga. In the video, the Maga video, Miss Gilfoyle,
who is now fifty three years old, is depicted wearing
a tight fitting red sweater with extra cleavage, neon pink lipstick,
partially dyed brown hair draped over her boosom, and size
thirty two fake eyelashes. Why given how the Lunatic Right
(29:41):
is going after drag shows and drag queens. Why do
all the leading women of the Lunatic Right the maga wagons?
Why did they dress and make up like drag queens? Kim,
I spoiled the joke? What joke? Eric? Eric? Who do
I go out with somebody named Eric? I don't get it?
Gilfoyle Today's worst Wirst the World. And Now, as we
(30:34):
always do, we always do. This is the second episode
of the podcast. Now, as we always do, we close
with the number one story on the countdown things I
promised not to tell. And back to my favorite topic. Me.
August second, nineteen seventy nine is now forty three years ago.
And if I sound incredulous about that, it's because I'm
(30:56):
incredulous about that. A certain part of me is always
living back there on August nine, and the rest of
that day is seared into my memory like my name
and address. One month earlier to the day, July nineteen
seventy nine, I had been in the stands in my
family seats back of first base at Yankee Stadium in
(31:17):
New York, a twenty year old Yankees fan, applauding Thurman
Munson's RBI double and Lou Panello's two for four day
and Roy White's appearance since Roy White was my mother's
favorite Yankee player months in particularly, he had been playing
for the Yankees since I was nine. I was now twenty,
thus more than half my life now. On August nine,
(31:41):
seventy nine, I was finishing the first month of my
professional broadcasting career. It was my seventh or eighth solo
shift anywhere for money. I was the nighttime sportscaster of
United Press Internationals Radio Network one thousand stations worldwide known
as u p I Audio. For my first sportscast of
(32:02):
the night due to go at five a m. I
had long since finished my script. Tom Watson was leading
Round one of the PGA Golf in Michigan. The lawyer
who owned Washington of the NFL, Edward Bennett Williams. He
had just bought the Baltimore Orioles. There was an exposed
Cubs matinee at baseball game in Montreal that prevailed through
(32:22):
three rain delays. It was just about five forty three
pm Eastern Time, and I was making the short walk
from the little sports cubbyhole to the little main on
air studio in UPI World headquarters in the Daily News building,
or if you saw the movie The Superman building on
Street in Manhattan. I was just walking past the bank
(32:44):
of thermal printers, each making their sluggish, muted hong honking
sound as they slowly printed stories out onto what wasn't
really paper. There was the main UPI wire, the UPI
Sports Wire, the UPI Business Wire, the UPI International Wire,
the UPI Radio wire, several internal message wires by which
(33:06):
the u p I bureaus around the world could communicate
with headquarters in New York, or as it was abbreviated
n X. Those message wires were the nine equivalent of texting.
As I got within a foot of these machines, one
of them made a noise I had never heard before,
a series of ten really loud bells. As I moved
(33:28):
over to see what the hell they could mean, the
news editor, Frank Rayphael came over to check as well.
We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously, Cleveland Bureau
to n X, Thurman Munson Catcher, Captain New York Yankees
dead piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport thirty Still it
(33:51):
stuns me to read those words aloud. As soon as
they finished printing, Cleveland sent it again. The bells went
off again. I could see I now had about a
minute until I went on the air. The editor pointed
this out to me, I have to add live the
sports cast, then come out here and do a voice
or just talk about his career. Keep repeating that it's
a bulletin that he's dead, and that he was piloting
a private plane. You know anything about him and planes?
(34:15):
And I remember saying, oh God, I do. And he said, well,
use whatever you think fits. If more details come in,
I'll bring them into you. I'll try to get somebody
at the airport for some sound. I don't remember anything
of what I said on the air that night, nor
in the special report the voice er the editor had
had me record. As soon as I finished that live
(34:35):
sports cast, it was all recorded. I never wanted to
hear any of it. I never wanted to keep any
of it. I have basically the rest of my career
on tape. But I knew my youth was over right then.
Thurman Munson had joined the Yankees when I was nine
years old, literally more than half my life ago. He
(34:57):
was the first good rookie I ever saw added to
my team. My family was convinced he looked like my mo.
There's cousin Billy. I met him a couple of times,
had photographed him once, interviewed him once. He was gruff
and forbidding, but I had never had a problem with him.
What I knew about him and his plane I spoke
of as generically as possible. In my mind. I flashed
(35:21):
back to lunch in the press room at Yankee Stadium
four months earlier, when I was still in college with
my friend Rick Serone, the editor, not the catcher Munson.
Rick said, almost surreptitiously, leaning in towards me over the
little table. Munson is flying his own plane back home
to Ohio on like every day off. The Yankees are
(35:45):
terrified he's not as good a pilot as he thinks
he is, honest to God, one of the executives is
trying to get George, that would be George Steinbrenner, the owner,
to trade him to Cleveland, just so he'll get out
of the damn plane. They're all terrified he might wind
up killing himself. I don't know how many special reports
(36:10):
I did forty three years ago today, in addition to
a new sportscast every hour. Later, a friend of mine
from college who didn't even know I had gotten the
job as a sportscaster. I was so new there, told
me he was driving in Buffalo listening to the all
news station on the radio. He heard them say munths
and had been killed and with more here's Keith, old
woman in New York. And he said he almost drove
(36:32):
off the road because of the double shock. And I
do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the morning
shift and would have only gotten home from it around
one or two pm. He came back into the office
to supervise things and to put together a long memorial
special to feed that the thousand stations that used our
(36:52):
stuff would all use. I was so glad to see
Sam that day. And then he handed me a piece
of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for lou
Panella and Roy White. Call them, try to do interviews.
Be gentle record first, ask later, like Munson. They had
(37:17):
played in that game a month before. Really was my
last as a fan. Roy White had been with the
Yankees since I was six years old. Luke van Ella
answered his phone and somehow I asked him if he
would talk to me for two minutes, and he did,
and almost immediately he burst into tears. There was such raw, immediate,
(37:37):
brutal pain in his voice. I did the only thing
I could think of. I said, listen, you should not
have to do this all night. I will make copies
of this interview and give it to the other radio
networks so they will leave you alone. And only then
did I think to ask my boss Sam, who by
the way, still does the New York Rangers games on TV,
(37:58):
if that was okay, and mercifully, Sam said, it was
a great idea. When I called Roy White, and Roy
White was literally on the Yankees the day I became
a Yankee fan, he begged me to tell him that
they had discovered some kind of a mistake that Thurman
Munson was not dead. Both he and Panella were blunt,
(38:20):
but gentle and courteous. And I did make copies of
the interviews, and I can see myself handing a cassette
to a guy from NBC Radio named Mike Levinthal, who
ran a kind of cartel, almost a black market among
New York radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts with
Panella and White, not me. We're all over radio that day.
(38:42):
I also remember discovering, after three or four hours of
literally working non stop, that I had never really known
what that meant before. I remember I was supposed to
be done at eleven PM, that was the end of
the shift, but I stayed until one am, and I
just may rarely made the train the last one of
the night back to my house. I remember my boss
Sam Rose and talking to our stringer in San Francisco,
(39:04):
fellow named Rob Navius, and he said, they're killing my team.
I should go to Mexico and smoke myself blind. The
things you remember at a time of stress and tragedy.
In my youthful misunderstanding of how these things worked, I
found myself coming back to the thought that I had
somehow failed Thurman months and by not telling somebody about
(39:25):
that Yankee fear from April, that he was not as
good a pilot as he thought he was. Although even
then I asked myself, who were you going to tell?
There are two postscripts to my story of the twenty
year old me covering the night Thurman Monthson died. Twenty
years later, I was hosting baseball's game of the Week
(39:45):
on Fox, and I asked by producer what we were
doing for the months in anniversary. He asked what anniversary.
He was younger than I was. I had to explain
it to him. Even then, you want to write something
we can pre produce, like a minute and a half
minute and a half, I did it. I didn't think
(40:05):
much of it. A couple of years later, I was
one of the public address announcers at Old Timer's Day
at Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director Rick Serone.
Same Rick Serone who in April nineteen seventy nine told
me about Munthson and the private planes and the Yankees
feares it is a small world. The twenty fifth anniversary
of Thurman Munson's death was just days away. His widow,
(40:28):
Diane was there. We had never met. Then she saw
me on the field and raced up to me and
hugged me. That piece you did on him on the
Game of the Week, when was it five years ago?
That was the best memorial I've ever seen to Thurman.
We both cheered up. I couldn't believe she said that.
I told her about that night in nineteen seventy nine,
(40:49):
what had been like for me, I said, I knew
it was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought
it was important somehow to share. She hugged me again.
It was deeply moving and it is still The other
PostScript I only learned of last year. For forever, and
the coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam
(41:10):
Rosen being the Hall of Fame announcer of the New
York Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But for forever, the
reporter covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper,
The New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had
forgotten until last year that the year that Thurman Munson
was killed, Larry was a very very young beat reporter
covering not Rangers hockey, but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent
(41:33):
me a clipping from the New York Post from Saturday July,
five days before Munson's fatal plane crash. It is almost
beyond belief. Larry Brooks's story began quote reports of Thurman
Munson's death are exaggerated, at least slightly unquote. Of course,
(41:58):
he was using a metaphor. Munson's knees had been giving
him trouble, and the manager of the Yankees. Billy Martin
was given him more time off between catching assignments than usual,
but Larry's story also included an even more jaw dropping quote.
Asked about the rumors he might not catch again this year,
Munson said, I don't know who started them. It was Martin.
(42:21):
Asked after the game how his knees felt, he said,
quote sore, real sore. Hey, you might be seeing my
last hurrah unquote. Larry says that since August three years ago,
(42:41):
that story has haunted him. Now it haunts me, maybe
it haunts you. All right, I've done all the damage
I can do here for another day. The Countdown theme
(43:02):
from Beethoven's Ninth Range Produce stand performed by Countdown musical
directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by
Brian Ray. Produced by t Ko Brothers. Beethoven Selections like
this one performed by No Horns allowed our sports music.
The Olberman theme written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
(43:25):
the ESPN, Inc. The famous Nancy Faust on the organ.
Our announcer today was my friend John Deane everything else
is my fault. If you've listened thus far and this far,
you will be as pleased as I was to discover
We debuted at number seventeen on the Apple Podcasts News Chart.
So thanks for your reviews, rates, and subscriptions. And so
(43:47):
that is countdown for this the five and seventy third
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Keith Olberman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. M Countdown with
(44:08):
Keith Olderman is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olberman is a production of I Heart Radio.
This is Countdown with Keith Alderman. This country killed Osama
(00:36):
bin Laden's successor, the architect of nine eleven Saturday in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush was re elected president in two thousand four.
The Republicans won the House and the Senate in two
thousand four, and all of American politics and culture rotated
around fear of and the Republicans promised to protect you
from al Qaeda in two thousand four. Today Republicans are
(01:01):
dismissing the execution of I'man al Zawari as a political stunt.
Representative cave Woman Marjorie Traitor Green tweeted minutes before President
Biden's announcement, quote, no one in America has been sweating
an attack from al Qaeda lately or even heard a
thing about them. Well, she's kind of right there. We
(01:23):
have been preoccupied with terrorists, like you know, Trump and
Marjorie Taylor Green. Her tweet finished quoting her again. But
Americans are extremely stressed about affording groceries and the Democrats
big tax hike. Later in her tweet threads, she rolled
out a conspiracy theory about Ukraine, and another one about
Iver Mecton, and and and and nothing defines the last
(01:48):
twenty years of the Republican Party like those tweets from
that idiot. If you believe the Republicans were exaggerating or
manipulating the al Qaeda threat in two thousand four, you
were politically dead. Today that the Republican Party literally tells
you not to sweat it. I once reported the correct
(02:09):
details of the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch, who was
not a hostage at an Iraqi hospital and was not
extracted by crack troops, but was turned over by a
brave Iraqi doctor who said her injuries needed better treatment
than they could provide. The chairman and chief executive officer
of NBC, Bob Wright, promptly insisted that I apologize on
(02:34):
the air just for reporting that. Now Marjorie Green can
tell you to ignore terrorism and instead concentrate on conspiracy
theories and crap like CRT and drag shows, and what's
behind that? The cultural purge the Republicans want, like Air
togn pulled off in Turkey, a cleansing of everybody Republicans
(02:56):
don't like. I don't really know who David Atkins is
but he wrote this quote. It sounds ridiculous when you
say it out loud, but the actual conservative game plan
is to rule with Putin or Bond style autocracy for
two generations, turn schools into right wing indoctrination zones, crushing
(03:18):
millennials and gen z underfoot, while training up jen alpha
as fascists. That's the through line for all of it.
They know everyone under forty hates them. They know they've
lost the broader public and can't win real majorities, so
their plan is authoritarian minority rule along orbanist lines to
(03:38):
crush opposition while indoctrinating a new generation. He continued. Meanwhile,
they absolutely intend on banning birth control, executing teenagers for
having abortions, and jailing women for crossing state lines for
reproductive care, all to punish women for daring to have
sex outside the dictates of fathers, husbands, and pastors for childbearing.
(04:02):
They also plan to end gay marriage and force LGBT
people back into the closet. Their game plan is to
destroy liberalism, train up a new generation of fascists, force
women into child bearing servitude for white supremacy, and reinstill
Putent style toxic masculinity in men. It's not a complicated plan,
(04:23):
Atkins rights. They see Russia and Hungary as global models
for it. They're planning and executing the plan right out
in the open. The only question Mr Atkins concluded is
whether the rest of us will take the necessary all
of society approach to stopping them. The thing is, in
spite of the affirmative action for aging white evangelicals that is,
(04:46):
the Senate, the Electoral College, and they're illegitimate Supreme Court,
the plan is unlikely to work. It can only succeed
if the rest of us fail to push back and
say no society wide. End quote David O. Atkin. So
he wrote all that on Twitter, which brings you that
(05:08):
and also brings you the honking sounds made by Marjorie
traitor Green. Mr Atkins identifies himself as a contributor to
Washington Monthly. And then this is the important part. Elected
Democratic National Committee member from California. I am pleasantly surprised
that Mr Atkins is on the d n C, because
if there are two bodies in this country working hardest
(05:30):
against what he warns us of, this slow cooking witches
brew of white supremacy, fraudulent religion, ginned up outrage, conspiracy theory, addiction, violence,
and misogyny, this fascism. While you wait, If there are
two bodies in this country right now working hardest against
his words, it can only succeed if the rest of
(05:52):
us fail to push back and say no. If there
are two bodies doing their damnedest to fail to push
back and to fail to say no, one of them
is the bureaucracy and establishment of the Democratic Party, as
typified by organizations like the Democratic National Committee. I mean,
think about this just for a second. The last president
(06:14):
of the United States was impeached twice. He blackmailed friends
and foes of this nation alike into burying the evidence
of his conspiracies with the help of a nation that
is an enemy of this country. He then openly called
for street thugs, gangs, and vigilantes to come to Washington
and stop our most sacred institution, the peaceful transfer power.
(06:37):
He left office reviled and under threat of indictment. He
is the leading candidate of his party, the Trump Putent Axis,
for its nomination for the White House in twenty four
and you know in your heart that it is his
intention to then seize control by election by corrupting the
electoral College, by being installed by the drunks and religious nuts,
(06:59):
he himself appointed to the Supreme Court by any means available.
And if he is restored to office, you also know
in your heart that he will attempt to remain there,
even though the Constitution of the United States of America
limits him to two terms. And they will do their
damned dist including a military coup this time, to keep
(07:20):
him there as long as he and they want. You
know that all of that is true. The plot of
January six, in fact, started on January two, thousand seventeen.
The first thing Crazy Trump did after the election was
to begin his campaign for re election. And the plot
is as active now as it was when the Traders
(07:42):
stormed up the Capitol steps and Marjorie Trader Greene was
tweeting about seventeen seventy six. They are operating, as David
Atkins of the Democratic National Committee so poetically noted right
out in the open, and when was the last time
you heard any of this screamed from the rooftops, shouted
(08:03):
from the campaign plaque forms, even just said aloud quietly,
but still allowed by anybody besides the January sixth Committee
by anybody from the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, or from the White House or from
the Justice Department. A Supreme Court with at least one
(08:25):
and more realistically three seats stolen from Democratic presidents invalidates
Roe v. Wade, And suddenly pro choice has jumped from
of the country to and which Democrats are running on
that the Democrats are playing defense on gas prices and inflation,
and still defaulting back to this idea that if they
(08:47):
can only do something really bipartisan, all the Republicans will
applaud and vote for them, and they'll win the next
vote a hundred and fifty million to nothing. And now,
in its simplest, most easily digestible construction, Joe Biden killed
the leader of al Qaeda, and the Republicans can get
away with claiming it is a distraction from gas prices
(09:10):
coming down Democrats. Let Democrats let slime buckets like Marjorie
Green say stuff like this without consequences, without making her
a pariah, without questioning her patriotism, without questioning her sanity.
I love Joe Biden. I mean that literally. I met
(09:32):
Joe Biden in March two thousand seven second time. Really,
He asked me to lunch so he could ask me
for advice about public speaking. If you can believe that,
I still can't. And when I asked him, wait, you've
been in the Senate thirty three years, this is the
first time you're asking about this, He did not storm
(09:53):
out or take offense or smile stiffly like any ordinary politician.
He laughed. He laughed like hell, and I have loved
him since then and recognized in him one of literally
only a dozen or fewer true public servants in my
adult lifetime and in any other era in our history.
(10:16):
His election after his path would have been one of
the epic sagas in all of American history. But deep
in his heart, Joe Biden believes Democrats will retain the
House and the Senate in the fall and he will
be re elected in twenty four because they did good things.
(10:36):
They served the people. They steered us out of the
madness of crazy Trump. They steered us beyond COVID through inflation,
past Ukraine that got bin Laden's deputy and successor. The
Democrats remain invested in the institution of American politics as
it was the day Joe Biden declared his candidacy for
(10:57):
president on June. Collaboration and a drink with Ronald Reagan
and the good rules of the vast American political and
media industrial complex back when both sides were in bipartisan
agreement that they could bargain it out, the bipartisan rules
that ultimately Joe McCarthy gets censured and the chairman of
(11:20):
the House and American Activities Committees get jail terms and
Huey Long get shot, and we beat crazy Trump once,
we'll beat him again. Unfortunately, the lead Democrats also believe
in the bad rules of the vast American political and
media industrial complex, like institutional self protection. You know, if
(11:42):
you can indict an ex president today, doesn't that mean
you can indict an ex Attorney general tomorrow. Sean Connery
says in the film The Untouchables, they pull a knife,
you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to
the hospital, You send one of his to the morgue.
The struggle to save American democracy is at that point
(12:03):
right now, and to a metaphorical knife fight for the
future of this country, when the mainstream Democrats are fighting
against crazy people and fascists, and when the mainstream Democrats
now have the body of bin Laden's deputy. The mainstream
Democrats have brought to this metaphorical knife fight for our
(12:25):
future a bio fuel plant in Iowa. But as I said,
the fascist plot to overthrow this government can, as David
Atkins wrote, only succeed if the rest of us fail
to push back and say no. And there are two
entities doing more than any others to make sure we,
(12:46):
in fact do fail to push back and we do
fail to say no. The Mainstream Democratic Party is one
of those entities, and the other entity is the American
news media. We can actually fix the American news media.
This is what we have to do. Turn up the
(13:07):
volume a little bit. I think I have to whisper
this part. Do not patronize the guy who I once
put on TV, who now writes things for CNN's website,
like how Elon Musk could quote rescue Donald Trump, as
if Elon Musk and a rescue Donald Trump wouldn't try
to imprison or kill everybody who works for CNN and
(13:29):
maybe everybody who watches CNN. Do not patronize him. Do
not patronize the network I worked at Last Century, where
the co new president hires one of the Trumpists who
blackmailed Ukraine and who now has Ukrainian blood on his hands.
The co president hires him and says, with people recording
him saying it, that he's doing it so his news
(13:51):
division can have access to the Republicans once they take
the House. As if those Republicans won't figure out a
way legal or not to destroy CBS News or turn
it into more fascist propaganda. But there is also a
secret cheat code for getting the American media, American television
to do what you want besides boycotting the parts that
(14:13):
don't get it. And it's simple. TV news loves noise.
This is not new today, It is just more today.
So make that noise. When Marjorie Green mocks the execution
of the leader of al Qaeda, When Trump while taking
Saudi money to host a golf tournament while this country
(14:36):
is killing bin Laden's deputy, When Trump says nobody ever
got to the bottom of nine eleven, every prominent Democrats
should call press conferences and call them both what they are. Disloyal.
They should say Green and Trump have spat on the
graves of the dead of nine eleven. They should call
them terrorists. Sympathizers, they should call them Green and Trump
(15:01):
what they are, terrorists, Whether Democrats like it or not.
The loud subtext of the elections of two months hence
will be which party loves and defends America and which
doesn't and wants to see millions of Americans disappear. And
(15:23):
if you send your thugs to invade the Capitol and
kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House,
and if you mock the nine eleven victims, and you
insist America must not sweat terrorism, you have to be
buried under a mountain of bad media placed there pound
by pound by the Democrats. Post Scripts to the News,
(15:58):
Worse Person's Sports, and why the baseball trade deadline is
actually an annual disaster for the sport, and also the
forty three anniversary of the death of a great athlete
and I had to cover it for a radio network
on my seventh night as a professional at the age
of twenty. Coming up on Countdown just to head my
(16:33):
postscripts to the news segment plus Worse Persons and Sports,
But first, in each edition of Countdown, we feature a
dog in need whom you can help. Every dog has
its day. You can help this one and all of
our subjects on my Twitter feed for pups in trouble.
That's at Tom Jumbo Grumbo today. Are you near Riverside, California?
Could you help adopt or foster Tilly. She's a seven
(16:57):
year old Siberian Husky mix, a beautiful white and gray
dog with piercing eyes. She has arthritis, but she's sweet
and she's in trouble. They're nineties six dogs on death
row at the kill shelter in Riverside. They're all listed
on the Instagram account I Love Rescue till he's been
there a month. You can save Tilly at the Riverside,
(17:17):
California City Shelter. Look her up on my dog Twitter
account Tom Jumbo Grumbo Tilly, She and all the others
in Riverside also on Instagram at I Love Rescue. Thank you.
(17:52):
All right, let's add to your knowledge with a little
more news. Time for postscripts to the news, some headlines,
some thoughts, some laughs, dateline d c apropos of the
earlier commentary. Whatever the publicans do, hit them over the
head with it. John Stewart just got them to reverse
on the veterans burn Pit Healthcare bill. The one cancoon
(18:14):
Cruise and Steve Danes blocked and we're fist bumping about
knowing that they were on the Senate Chamber camera. Mitch
McConnell on the bill last night, quote, it will pass
this week. Democrats will now, of course, forget about it.
Instead of putting Crews and Danes in blast in every ad,
every television station, every campaign in the mid terms, hit
(18:38):
them over the head with it. Dateline, the voting booths
primary day in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, and Washington State. The
endorsement from Psycho Trump was much coveted for the Republican Senate.
Not in Missouri state Attorney General Eric Schmidt, or disgraced
resigned governor and accused domestic violence purp with a campaign
ad in which he threatened to shoot other Republicans. Eric
(19:00):
Grayden's The A Team So Trump super Genius wrote last night,
I am therefore proud to announce that Eric has my
complete and total endorsement Eric Schmidt. Brighton's idol L Douche
spokesman Taylor Butter, which says the statement quote speaks for itself.
(19:23):
You bet it does. Stateline Phoenix on the eve of
the primary, and Arizona Senate candidate Attorney General Mark Burnovitch.
She's the one who does not look like he was
hypnotized but didn't come out of it when the magician
snapped his fingers. That would be blake Masters. This is
the other guy Bernavite, who says he has wrapped up
the endless Arizona fraudulent fraudulent voter claims about dead voters.
(19:47):
He wrote the paranoid state Senate President Karen fan that
of the two dred and eighty two supposedly dead voters
that she and her sleuths found, two eight one of
them aren't even dead. Well, many aren't dead, and quote,
we're very surprised to learn that they were allegedly deceased.
Once again, you bet Dateline d C. Trump goon guy
(20:11):
refit the first January six terrorists to go to trial
gets seven years and three months in prison, add on
the extra three months because he was a three per center.
He did not, though, get the desired terror offense multiplier.
The FBI was tipped off by his son. Thank you,
(20:46):
Nancy Faust. Dateline Atlanta, the two day Atlanta Music Fat
Midtown Festival schedule for next month is canceled. Why four
It's in a city park, and the state Supreme Court
has ruled that Georgians can carry guns in city parks.
Some of the scheduled artists and Jack White, Future and
Fallout Boy were supposed to play, they refused to perform
(21:06):
where guns are allowed. Organizers were also afraid that if
they banned guns, they get sued. Sorry, Atlanta, this is
how fascist Republican state leaders will eventually be crushed. We
treat their cities and towns like they were South Africa
during apartheid and dateline Bedminster, New Jersey a follow up
(21:27):
on the Trump buried his first wife at the first
tea at his first golf course to get the first
tax break. The one in whole scandal found yesterday about
Trump's two thousand seven bid for a family mausoleum with
nineteen foot high obelisks in the middle of the course.
The then mayor of Bedminster, Robert Holt Away with a
(21:49):
prescient argument to the city council that the grave of
Donald Trump will attract the wrong sort of people, like
he said in Austria quote where a Nazi war criminal
was buried, and that became quote a tourist attraction to
thousand seven right on the money, Mr holt Away. This
(22:11):
is Sports Center. Wait check that not anymore. This is
Countdown with Keith Alberman in Sports Baseball's trade Deadline, six
(22:35):
pm Eastern today. The game's ended last night with Juan
Soto still Washington National, but after his last at bat
against the New York Mets, his batting coach came up
to Soto and gave him a big hug. It was
not about the at bat Soto had walked. It's amazing
to realize that possible. Ex Washington National Soto was second
in the m v P balloting last year to ex
(22:56):
Washington National Bryce Harper. Fifth in the same voting was
ex Washington National Trade Turner ex Washington National Ax Scherzer.
And you wonder why eight different Major League ball clubs
have moved out of Washington or gone bankrupt in Washington. Meanwhile,
the newspaper, the Orange County Register says, not that it
(23:18):
was expected, but the Angels will not trade m v
P show a Otani, the d h and pitcher. Those
who were traded the Oakland A's have delta way so
many stars they are now the Oakland vs. Pitchers Frankie
Montesse and Lou Trevino to the Yankees for prospects. Trey
Mancini goes from the Orioles to the Astros, ace reliever
(23:38):
Josh Hater from the Brewers to the Padres for a
package including apply named pitching prospect Robert Gasser and picture
den Nelson Lament And why isn't de Nelson Lament? A
met Tommy fam outfielder and angry Fantasy football league manager
goes from the Reds to the Red Sox, but in
a truly mixed message, Catcher Christian Basquez goes from the
(24:00):
Red Sox to the Astros. What's going on in Boston?
Any clue is But there's a bigger issue here, the
trade deadline itself, and the fans of Soto or Otani
or whoever else ultimately gets dealt now or next year
or whenever, the fans who will be heartbroken. Basketball has
turned player movement into a plus, a kind of frat trick.
(24:22):
Football has made it impossible. Baseball it's just pain. It
was posited by the website dead Spin last week that
if a team would rather trade Soto, who's just twenty
three years old, for a basketful of top minor league prospects,
many of whom are older than he is. To do
that rather than pay him, that means baseball is completely
(24:43):
screwed up. The suggestion was that the easiest fixed would
be to eliminate baseball's minor leagues as we know them,
not the leagues themselves, what they mean, and who owns
the teams. It sounds crazy, but there's the germ of
the idea here. This system, in which nearly every minor
league team is simply a training laboratory for its Major
(25:03):
league masters, was instituted by the legendary branch Rickey for
the St. Louis Cardinals of the nineteen twenties. In those days,
minor league teams signed nearly all the high school and
college players, trained them, developed them, and sold them to
the highest big league bidder. Joe DiMaggio wasn't drafted by
the New York Yankees. He was signed by the minor
(25:25):
league San Francisco Seals and traded to the Yankees for
four players and fifty thousand dollars in four Ted Williams
was bought by the Boston Red Sox from the minor
league team in San Diego for four players in thirty
five thousand and ninety eight in St. Louis branch Rickey
developed the farm system develop your own players because the
(25:47):
Cardinals were too poor to compete in that player's sale
market for the Dimaggios and the Williams. Is if dead
Spin argues, we went back to a world where major
league teams actually owned the contracts of only thirty or
forty players at a time, there would not be any
minor league prospects to trade Juan Soto four. It is
(26:09):
so novel an idea that it takes a long time
to recognize that it might be the right thing to do.
And if you don't think so, wait until your favorite
team trades your favorite player for five guys, four of
whom will almost certainly never make it today or next year.
(26:41):
And guess what time is it? Boys and girls. The
daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruger effect
exhibits to constitute today's worst persons in the world. The
Silver to Tennessee Senator Marcia Blackburne, weekly candidate for the
dumbest elected officer of the land. She says on the
(27:03):
floor of the set at the Act the Climate Inflation
Deal quote the worst elements of a radical socialist agender
unquote are being pushed by Senator Joe Manchin. I wish.
Blackburn also said the bill included a quote multi hundred
dollar tax hike. Just to clarify, in case you're wondering,
(27:27):
Marsha Blackburn is an actual senator. She is not a
character performed by the actress Stephanie Courtney from the insurance
company commercial. That character is called flows Mom Runner up
Herschel Walker, the Georgia Senate candidate and the gift who
keeps on giving every couple of days. Weeks after it
(27:48):
was acknowledged that he had two more children, of whom
he did not acknowledge being the father two more than
we thought, Herschel has finally come up with an excuse,
and it relates to the campaign and how mean people
are to him, he told the equally dim Brian Kilmead
on Fox Nudes. Quote the thing I didn't acknowledge them
(28:09):
here because in now my two youngest kids, I'm not
going to acknowledge them because I don't want them to
be under any kind of scrutiny. Yeah, because Herschel, you
were anonymous before you ran for office. But the winner.
I mentioned Trump in the Eric Graighten's Eric Schmidt Senate
primary and Missouri finally endorsing last night and endorsing simply
(28:34):
Eric there was supposed to be some kind of subtlety
or pun or wiggle room or wit to this or
something this deliberately not mentioning which of the two erics
he was endorsing. But on the old Trump train, the
caboost did not get the message. Kimberly Gilfoyle, the one
(28:54):
with the photo album of all her old boyfriends. If
you know what I mean, the girlfriend of says somebody
fiance girl. What is she sitting nobody's sister? Letn't she something?
But if she just she just hangs around and takes
pictures of them. Anyway, she put out a video last
night and she's supporting Eric Grayden's calling him the true
(29:16):
hero of the MAGA movement. So we have a new
pronunciation on maga. In the video, the Maga video, Miss Gilfoyle,
who is now fifty three years old, is depicted wearing
a tight fitting red sweater with extra cleavage, neon pink lipstick,
partially dyed brown hair draped over her boosom, and size
thirty two fake eyelashes. Why given how the Lunatic Right
(29:41):
is going after drag shows and drag queens. Why do
all the leading women of the Lunatic Right the maga wagons?
Why did they dress and make up like drag queens? Kim,
I spoiled the joke? What joke? Eric? Eric? Who do
I go out with somebody named Eric? I don't get it?
Gilfoyle Today's worst Wirst the World. And Now, as we
(30:34):
always do, we always do. This is the second episode
of the podcast. Now, as we always do, we close
with the number one story on the countdown things I
promised not to tell. And back to my favorite topic. Me.
August second, nineteen seventy nine is now forty three years ago.
And if I sound incredulous about that, it's because I'm
(30:56):
incredulous about that. A certain part of me is always
living back there on August nine, and the rest of
that day is seared into my memory like my name
and address. One month earlier to the day, July nineteen
seventy nine, I had been in the stands in my
family seats back of first base at Yankee Stadium in
(31:17):
New York, a twenty year old Yankees fan, applauding Thurman
Munson's RBI double and Lou Panello's two for four day
and Roy White's appearance since Roy White was my mother's
favorite Yankee player months in particularly, he had been playing
for the Yankees since I was nine. I was now twenty,
thus more than half my life now. On August nine,
(31:41):
seventy nine, I was finishing the first month of my
professional broadcasting career. It was my seventh or eighth solo
shift anywhere for money. I was the nighttime sportscaster of
United Press Internationals Radio Network one thousand stations worldwide known
as u p I Audio. For my first sportscast of
(32:02):
the night due to go at five a m. I
had long since finished my script. Tom Watson was leading
Round one of the PGA Golf in Michigan. The lawyer
who owned Washington of the NFL, Edward Bennett Williams. He
had just bought the Baltimore Orioles. There was an exposed
Cubs matinee at baseball game in Montreal that prevailed through
(32:22):
three rain delays. It was just about five forty three
pm Eastern Time, and I was making the short walk
from the little sports cubbyhole to the little main on
air studio in UPI World headquarters in the Daily News building,
or if you saw the movie The Superman building on
Street in Manhattan. I was just walking past the bank
(32:44):
of thermal printers, each making their sluggish, muted hong honking
sound as they slowly printed stories out onto what wasn't
really paper. There was the main UPI wire, the UPI
Sports Wire, the UPI Business Wire, the UPI International Wire,
the UPI Radio wire, several internal message wires by which
(33:06):
the u p I bureaus around the world could communicate
with headquarters in New York, or as it was abbreviated
n X. Those message wires were the nine equivalent of texting.
As I got within a foot of these machines, one
of them made a noise I had never heard before,
a series of ten really loud bells. As I moved
(33:28):
over to see what the hell they could mean, the
news editor, Frank Rayphael came over to check as well.
We saw the words simultaneously. We gasped simultaneously, Cleveland Bureau
to n X, Thurman Munson Catcher, Captain New York Yankees
dead piloting private plane, Canton Akron Airport thirty Still it
(33:51):
stuns me to read those words aloud. As soon as
they finished printing, Cleveland sent it again. The bells went
off again. I could see I now had about a
minute until I went on the air. The editor pointed
this out to me, I have to add live the
sports cast, then come out here and do a voice
or just talk about his career. Keep repeating that it's
a bulletin that he's dead, and that he was piloting
a private plane. You know anything about him and planes?
(34:15):
And I remember saying, oh God, I do. And he said, well,
use whatever you think fits. If more details come in,
I'll bring them into you. I'll try to get somebody
at the airport for some sound. I don't remember anything
of what I said on the air that night, nor
in the special report the voice er the editor had
had me record. As soon as I finished that live
(34:35):
sports cast, it was all recorded. I never wanted to
hear any of it. I never wanted to keep any
of it. I have basically the rest of my career
on tape. But I knew my youth was over right then.
Thurman Munson had joined the Yankees when I was nine
years old, literally more than half my life ago. He
(34:57):
was the first good rookie I ever saw added to
my team. My family was convinced he looked like my mo.
There's cousin Billy. I met him a couple of times,
had photographed him once, interviewed him once. He was gruff
and forbidding, but I had never had a problem with him.
What I knew about him and his plane I spoke
of as generically as possible. In my mind. I flashed
(35:21):
back to lunch in the press room at Yankee Stadium
four months earlier, when I was still in college with
my friend Rick Serone, the editor, not the catcher Munson.
Rick said, almost surreptitiously, leaning in towards me over the
little table. Munson is flying his own plane back home
to Ohio on like every day off. The Yankees are
(35:45):
terrified he's not as good a pilot as he thinks
he is, honest to God, one of the executives is
trying to get George, that would be George Steinbrenner, the owner,
to trade him to Cleveland, just so he'll get out
of the damn plane. They're all terrified he might wind
up killing himself. I don't know how many special reports
(36:10):
I did forty three years ago today, in addition to
a new sportscast every hour. Later, a friend of mine
from college who didn't even know I had gotten the
job as a sportscaster. I was so new there, told
me he was driving in Buffalo listening to the all
news station on the radio. He heard them say munths
and had been killed and with more here's Keith, old
woman in New York. And he said he almost drove
(36:32):
off the road because of the double shock. And I
do know my boss, Sam Rosen, who did the morning
shift and would have only gotten home from it around
one or two pm. He came back into the office
to supervise things and to put together a long memorial
special to feed that the thousand stations that used our
(36:52):
stuff would all use. I was so glad to see
Sam that day. And then he handed me a piece
of paper. Those are the home phone numbers for lou
Panella and Roy White. Call them, try to do interviews.
Be gentle record first, ask later, like Munson. They had
(37:17):
played in that game a month before. Really was my
last as a fan. Roy White had been with the
Yankees since I was six years old. Luke van Ella
answered his phone and somehow I asked him if he
would talk to me for two minutes, and he did,
and almost immediately he burst into tears. There was such raw, immediate,
(37:37):
brutal pain in his voice. I did the only thing
I could think of. I said, listen, you should not
have to do this all night. I will make copies
of this interview and give it to the other radio
networks so they will leave you alone. And only then
did I think to ask my boss Sam, who by
the way, still does the New York Rangers games on TV,
(37:58):
if that was okay, and mercifully, Sam said, it was
a great idea. When I called Roy White, and Roy
White was literally on the Yankees the day I became
a Yankee fan, he begged me to tell him that
they had discovered some kind of a mistake that Thurman
Munson was not dead. Both he and Panella were blunt,
(38:20):
but gentle and courteous. And I did make copies of
the interviews, and I can see myself handing a cassette
to a guy from NBC Radio named Mike Levinthal, who
ran a kind of cartel, almost a black market among
New York radio sports reporters. Those interviews, the parts with
Panella and White, not me. We're all over radio that day.
(38:42):
I also remember discovering, after three or four hours of
literally working non stop, that I had never really known
what that meant before. I remember I was supposed to
be done at eleven PM, that was the end of
the shift, but I stayed until one am, and I
just may rarely made the train the last one of
the night back to my house. I remember my boss
Sam Rose and talking to our stringer in San Francisco,
(39:04):
fellow named Rob Navius, and he said, they're killing my team.
I should go to Mexico and smoke myself blind. The
things you remember at a time of stress and tragedy.
In my youthful misunderstanding of how these things worked, I
found myself coming back to the thought that I had
somehow failed Thurman months and by not telling somebody about
(39:25):
that Yankee fear from April, that he was not as
good a pilot as he thought he was. Although even
then I asked myself, who were you going to tell?
There are two postscripts to my story of the twenty
year old me covering the night Thurman Monthson died. Twenty
years later, I was hosting baseball's game of the Week
(39:45):
on Fox, and I asked by producer what we were
doing for the months in anniversary. He asked what anniversary.
He was younger than I was. I had to explain
it to him. Even then, you want to write something
we can pre produce, like a minute and a half
minute and a half, I did it. I didn't think
(40:05):
much of it. A couple of years later, I was
one of the public address announcers at Old Timer's Day
at Yankee Stadium, invited by the PR director Rick Serone.
Same Rick Serone who in April nineteen seventy nine told
me about Munthson and the private planes and the Yankees
feares it is a small world. The twenty fifth anniversary
of Thurman Munson's death was just days away. His widow,
(40:28):
Diane was there. We had never met. Then she saw
me on the field and raced up to me and
hugged me. That piece you did on him on the
Game of the Week, when was it five years ago?
That was the best memorial I've ever seen to Thurman.
We both cheered up. I couldn't believe she said that.
I told her about that night in nineteen seventy nine,
(40:49):
what had been like for me, I said, I knew
it was almost insulting to tell her, but I thought
it was important somehow to share. She hugged me again.
It was deeply moving and it is still The other
PostScript I only learned of last year. For forever, and
the coincidence here with my friend and former boss Sam
(41:10):
Rosen being the Hall of Fame announcer of the New
York Rangers hockey team is extraordinary. But for forever, the
reporter covering that hockey team, the Rangers, for the newspaper,
The New York Post, has been Larry Brooks. I had
forgotten until last year that the year that Thurman Munson
was killed, Larry was a very very young beat reporter
covering not Rangers hockey, but Yankees baseball. And somebody sent
(41:33):
me a clipping from the New York Post from Saturday July,
five days before Munson's fatal plane crash. It is almost
beyond belief. Larry Brooks's story began quote reports of Thurman
Munson's death are exaggerated, at least slightly unquote. Of course,
(41:58):
he was using a metaphor. Munson's knees had been giving
him trouble, and the manager of the Yankees. Billy Martin
was given him more time off between catching assignments than usual,
but Larry's story also included an even more jaw dropping quote.
Asked about the rumors he might not catch again this year,
Munson said, I don't know who started them. It was Martin.
(42:21):
Asked after the game how his knees felt, he said,
quote sore, real sore. Hey, you might be seeing my
last hurrah unquote. Larry says that since August three years ago,
(42:41):
that story has haunted him. Now it haunts me, maybe
it haunts you. All right, I've done all the damage
I can do here for another day. The Countdown theme
(43:02):
from Beethoven's Ninth Range Produce stand performed by Countdown musical
directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. All orchestration and
keyboards by John Philip Chanelle. Guitars, bass and drums by
Brian Ray. Produced by t Ko Brothers. Beethoven Selections like
this one performed by No Horns allowed our sports music.
The Olberman theme written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
(43:25):
the ESPN, Inc. The famous Nancy Faust on the organ.
Our announcer today was my friend John Deane everything else
is my fault. If you've listened thus far and this far,
you will be as pleased as I was to discover
We debuted at number seventeen on the Apple Podcasts News Chart.
So thanks for your reviews, rates, and subscriptions. And so
(43:47):
that is countdown for this the five and seventy third
day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically
elected government of the United States. Keith Olberman, good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. M Countdown with
(44:08):
Keith Olderman is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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