August 3, 2022 • 37 mins
My friend of 34 years, the voice of baseball, Vin Scully, has died at the age of 94. He has often been depicted as a saint, but he was better than that: warm, funny, sometimes profane and uncertain and even almost another team's announcer. I'll tell you what I can of a man who didn't know he was a legend, and was always happy to see YOU. In news, we have the Kansas Abortion Vote, the Alex Jones "Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" trial, a "whoops" in the Arizona Fake Electors Scheme, Bill O'Reilly trying to make a TV comeback and Alan Dershowitz getting "cancelled" for the fourth time in four years. Plus, Postscripts to the News, Worst Persons in the World, Every Dog Has Its Day, other sports news, and Things I Promised Not To Tell: My TV career started 42 years ago Wednesday because...Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out on his wife!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
On April four, the New York Yankees played an exhibition
game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in
Los Angeles, and my friend, the Yankees play by play
announcer Michael Kay, was shaking like a leaf. He spoke
(00:28):
softly to me, almost in a whisper. Michael does not
speak softly. I need you to do me a favor.
I'm nervous just asking. I'm embarrassed, just asking. Can you
He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair.
Can you introduced me to Vince Scully. Michael Kay was
(00:50):
starting his eighth season that day as a Major League
baseball play by play announcer. He had that in common
with Vince Scully. They did the same job. He also
went to the same college as Vin Scully, Fordham University.
He had no reason to be nervous about meeting Vince
Gully except that's Vince Scully. I told Mike there was
no reason to be nervous, though I knew he would be.
(01:12):
But I also told him sincerely, there really was no
reason to be embarrassed. I first moved to Los Angeles
in August, and I went right to the top of
the guys doing sports on the local TV newscasts. They're
back when that meant something. Soon I was also on
the all news radio station during drive time, which in
l A is literally drive time. Vince Gully was technically
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a colleague of mine, and that did not matter a lick.
Through the rest of the baseball season, I could not
summon the courage to go and introduce myself to Vince Gully.
Through the rest of the nineteen eight six season, I
could not summon the courage to introduce myself to and
through the rest of the nineteen eight seven season, through
almost all the nine eight season, and then late in
(01:58):
that year, I switched jobs got a big pay raise.
I was nearly thirty, and I said I have to
do this now. And when I finally said, excuse me, Vin,
my name is, and at that point I did not
remember what my name was, found it somewhere, blurted it out,
said something possibly in English, and Vince Scully beamed, I'm
(02:22):
glad you said hello. I thought I had done something
to offend you. He said, Also, I have a question
I've been meaning to ask you about baseball research. So
forgive me for not introducing myself to you. So I
don't think I've passed out, but I sure understood why
Michael was, as he put it, shaking like a leaf.
(02:45):
Vin shortly thereafter appeared in the Dodger dugout. I brought
the two of them together. We all chatted for ten minutes.
We got a picture. I got out of the way
and they got a picture. We talked about Fordham, where
they went to school, and where I was born. And
then Vin excused himself to go do an interview, and
Michael Kay said, God, I'm still shaking like a leaf.
That's how we all felt about him. Those of us
(03:08):
who with incomplete accuracy would say, we're in the same
business as Vin Scully, we were, in fact part of
to turn the phrase he always used about others who
had fans and supporters, the Vin Scully Marching and Chowder Society.
Because yeah, he was the greatest broadcaster I've ever met.
(03:29):
But more importantly, he was the nicest man in the world,
and also delightfully profane when he got to trust you,
and like anybody else, he could be fiercely and sometimes
bitterly territorial about his broadcasts, and he had problems with
certain players, and at least twice in the nineteen sixties
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he almost left the Dodgers to go home and broadcast
for the Yankees, and he had doubts that he had
made all the right career decisions. And unless you knew
him pretty well, you would never have known any of that.
And no complaint or cuss or uncertainty ever made its
way into the public domain. And even when I had
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known him thirty years and had the privilege of having
our visits start with a hug and end with dinner,
I would still think the same thing I thought every
time I ever saw him coming towards me, Well, here
comes God. And there was not one moment that he
(04:32):
acted like he was anything more than maybe a pretty good,
fairly popular baseball announcer. If you don't know, Vincent Edwards
Scully died yesterday. He was ninety four years old. He
spent the years, all the years between his twenty second
birthday and his eighty ninth birthday, as the play by
(04:54):
play announcer of the Brooklyn and then the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The day he started on the job was so long
ago it was barely three years since the Dodgers Jackie
Robinson had broken the color line in baseball, there were
just sixteen Major League Baseball teams, and the ones Furthest.
West and Furthest. South were in St. Louis, Missouri. Before
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the Second World War, one of those St. Louis teams
had planned to move to Los Angeles, but the year
then started nineteen fifty, baseball in Los Angeles still seemed
like the most impractical of pipe dreams. Within eight years,
it would be Vince Scully's job to introduce Major League
Baseball to the nation's second largest metropolitan area, and in
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large part also to prevent the Dodgers who just moved
in from moving out. They almost did. There was a
referendum vote on whether or not to give them the
land for their new stadium in Los Angeles, and it
was really close, and it was Vince scully sincere and
smiling salesmanship that helped Yes to win narrowly. And then
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there are the many recordings still extant of games in
that new field Dodger Stadium from the nineteen sixties and
nineteen seventies. And if the recording you hear is of
the visiting team's announcers. You will hear for the length
of the game something that sounds like a very distant,
very melodic public address system. It was thousands of transistor
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radios held by fans to their ears, and all of
them tuned to Vin Scully. It was not a Dodger
game unless you were listening to Vince Scully, even if
you were at the Dodger game, and that did not
end in the nineteen seventies. Between two thousand eight and
two thousand and fourteen, while visiting l A, I went
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to a bunch of games at Dodger Stadium with a
big Dodger fan named Jason Bateman. I would bring my scorebook.
He would bring his earpiece so he could listen to
Vince Scully streaming. We talked during the commercial breaks. On
the occasion of Bevin's retirement in two thousand sixteen, I
wrote a long piece for g Q magazine about the
(07:14):
importance of not viewing him as a saint. I told
as many of the inside stories I could of the
delightful day he compared a player's haircut to that of
Charles Manson, the mass murderer, of his wonderful swearing about
a Dodger player and the reporter who broke up the
player's marriage of his inability to stomach the people at
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Fox TV who tried to make his broadcast, as he said,
look just like Pittsburgh's, and their decision to remove his
friend Keith from the National Baseball broadcasts. I can't tell
all the stories here, but the article is online and
the stories are pretty good because well it was Vince Scully,
but Charles Manson clip. I still have that on my phone.
(07:57):
I last saw Van late in his last season two
thousand sixteen, the year he retired. We took a picture,
and as happy as I am to see him in
that picture, he looks happier to see me. And while
some of that basic, deep abiding goodness in this man
was not forced, not fake, not embellished, but maybe a
(08:17):
little managed, that part was one seven real, honest Vin Scully.
He was happy to see you, friend, co worker, player fan,
usually a fan about to pass out, which I saw
(08:39):
nearly happen when I introduced a friend of mine to
him in Grown Man, Well it's nice to meet you Andy.
Andy collapsed backwards towards a wall in the ballpark and
somehow managed to stay upright and conscious. Vin Scully stayed
in touch with me by email. I'm so proud of that.
My last exchange with him was in as the life
(09:02):
of his beloved wife, Sandy ebbed Way. Every time, every
time I sent him birthday wishes or I just checked in,
or when he wrote me, it was as if I
had done him some kind of honor. One email, all caps,
I have preserved them all reads high Keith. I'm at
that age when I think of someone, I try to
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make contact with him. Happy Easter, blessings, then blessings Vinn.
That was him. What a wonderful habit to adopt a
friend comes to mind you reach out. Imagine my thrill
to see an email from his Dodgers team address, which
I guess I can now reveal was simply read. There
(09:47):
is one story I wrote about for g Q that
I love to tell about Vince Skelly above all the others,
and I feel like I should tell it here. In August,
I was watching from my TV station in l A.
It was a hot night. The Dodgers were in Cincinnati,
and Vince Scully mistakenly announced on the air that Gil
(10:08):
Hodges was at bat for the Dodgers, when in fact
it was Mike Sosha. Gil Hodges had retired in nineteen
sixty three, he had died in nineteen seventy two, just
went into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The l A
newspapers then began to wonder if Vince Scully had lost
it he retired in anyway. On the next night's broadcast,
(10:31):
Vin appeared on camera mid game and explained what happened.
This is roughly how I remember it. There is no tape.
I think I'm doing him justice, he said. More or less,
I had been thinking of the late Gil Hodges. If
you don't know, Gil Hodges was a great Dodger first
baseman and my great friend, and a great man who
(10:52):
was taken from us far too soon. And like Mike Sosha,
Gil war number fourteen. And it was awfully hot in
that booth, And for some reason, instead of saying two
and oh to Sosha, I said too and oh to Hodges.
But I think the weather and the uniform number were
not the only reasons I confused them. Mike reminds me
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a lot of my friend Gil, and like Gil, I
think he may be a fine major League manager. Someday anyway,
I just wanted to apologize for the mistake. Beautiful there.
Then the game reappeared on the camera and Vin paused
speaking off camera, and he said something that still takes
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my breath away. I wish I could bring Gil Hodges
back that easily. I am agnostic about an afterlife, but
I will confess I frequently hope with all my heart
that there is one, and this is one of those days.
So Vin can be reunited with family members whom tragedy
(11:59):
took too early from him, and all those players like
Gil Hodges. I'm Jackie Robinson, who saw in him what
we who watched or listened or had the privilege to
really know him also could say. Here is this deeply decent,
brilliantly talented man, and the last person to claim either
of those descriptions for himself, here is my friend Vin Scully.
(12:24):
So blessings, Ben, I wish I could bring you back
that easily. Just ahead of vote on a constitutional amendment
prohibiting abortion in Kansas was supposed to be a coin flip.
(12:44):
Turned out it wasn't. You won't believe which side one 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. For four years now, I've been
trying to save as many dogs as I can at
the NYC a c see, which is a big euphemism
(13:06):
for the kill shelter here in New York. A dozen
more on the list to be killed as early as tomorrow.
There's a Kira dumped on the street in Brooklyn, three
years old, fifty six pounds, gorgeous brindle coach. She's friendly,
big wagging tail, and while on death row, she's caught pneumonia,
so they'll kill her. You can see her and pledge
a little cash to help rescue pull her out in
(13:28):
time on my Dogs in Need Twitter account Tom Jumbo Grumbo.
Look for Kira at Tom Jumbo Grumbo on Twitter. Thank you.
(13:59):
Time for postscripts to the news, some headlines, some thoughts,
some wise ass remarks. The big news turns out to
be the proposed Kansas state constitutional amendment to remove the
protections of abortion rights. There lost dateline Austin, Texas. The
Alex Jones trial or guilty by reason of insanity. Last week,
(14:19):
one of Jones's henchmen talked about what went on in
the courtroom, even though he had been a witness and
witnesses are warned not to talk about what went on
in the courtroom. The judge swatted his pp big time.
Now Jones, being sued for a hundred and fifty million
by two Sandy Hook parents because he claimed that never happened,
took the stand, but not before telling his audience that
(14:41):
the lawyers and the judge all acted quote demonically possessed.
This is a guy doesn't know where he is Earth
or Pluto twenty three hours and fifty eight minutes a day.
Maybe we can shut up with the demonically possessed nonsense.
The judge ordered Jones to stop chewing gum in court.
Jones says it wasn't gum, it was dental gauze, asked
(15:04):
or whackemer shaw you and opened his mouth wide. Judge
Maya Gara Gamble spoke for the Planet when she replied,
I don't want to see the inside of your mouth. Incidentally,
we also don't want to hear anything that comes out
of the inside of Alex Jones's mouth. Dateline, Phoenix. If
not funny, it's still rewarding when one of the big
(15:24):
lie leaders turns out to have known in advance they
were playing with fire. The New York Times as an
email from a Trump attorney to the other Trump attorneys
like wacky Rudy Giuliani in about the wackiest of the
many wackiest Arizona politicians, State geop Chack. Kelly Ward and
a colleague are mentioned in this They were worried that
(15:45):
the Arizona fake electors scheme might turn out to be treason.
Quoting the email, Ward in Townsend are concerned it could
appear treasons for the azy electors to vote on Monday
if there is no pending court proceeding that might eventually
lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones
end quote. The lawyer put The word reason is in bold,
(16:07):
good old fore knowledge of guilt, good luck in the
courts mss Ward Dateline, Philadelphia. Will Bunch's new book, After
the Ivory Tower Falls, about the one point seven trillion
dollars in student loan debt and how it has helped
fracture this Country, has been published and gotten a great
review in the New York Times quote the pros is tight,
(16:27):
direct and often bracing, and in his newsletter yesterday, Will
Bunch added a note about his writing, quoting him. Every
journalist has a story about their very first editor. Mine
was a boisterous and cantankerous baseball fanatic who left quite
an impression on me and other folks who've dealt with
him over the years. Perhaps you've even heard of him
(16:48):
if Alberman, who's editing of my wretched copy for the
Hackley Dial high school newspaper in n apparently prepped him
for a career at ESPN, MSNBC and the rest of
the big media alphabet nonsense. Will bunches oros was tight,
direct and often bracing. In I Recommend his book, he
(17:09):
recommended this podcast, said it was the perfect format for me,
by which he means I don't have to work for
the man, and I know this sounds like log rolling,
which I guess it is. Might be that way anyway,
even if we both actually me and our compliments, which
reminds me. After two episodes, this thing is ranked number
two on Apple Podcasts list of political podcasts. It's ranked
(17:30):
number nine in news podcasts, number forty six overall. I
am almost humbled. Almost Maybe I should retire with these
ratings and dateline Moscow. More U S sanctions against Russian
politicians on Oligarch's including Alina Kabayeva, the former Olympic gymnasts
(17:51):
now member of the Russian Duma and believed to be
Vladimir Putin's girlfriend. Ah. Yes, it was just the other day,
as I remember it, when Britney Spears was singing Douma
Baby one more time. This is Sports Center. Wait, check
that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman in
(18:31):
sports We hit this yesterday. If you have to trade
a twenty three year old superstar today because you can't
afford his contract two years from now, get out of
the sports ball business. The Washington Nationals actually did it,
Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres for a peck
of pickled prospects, no combination of which will ever add
up to Juan Soto. And again, the Gnats have now
(18:53):
lost or traded Bryce Harper, Trade Turner, Max Scherzer, Anthony Rendon,
and now Soto in just the last five years. The
Gnats used to be the Montreal Expos, but they were
taken over by baseball and move to Washington when the
owners proved incapable of aunting up. This would seem to
have happened again, revoke the franchise. Among other trade deadline
(19:15):
deals in baseball, closer David Robertson from the Cubs to
the Phillies, outfielder Brandon marsh and picture Noah Synderguard from
the Angels to the Phillies for former number one draft
pick Mickey Moniac and others. Angels closer Rice l Iglesias
to the Braves. And yes, the Angels collapse was all
fired manager Joe Madden's fault. Clearly, they may not win
(19:35):
another game this year. New York City native Harrison Bader
from the Cardinals to the Yankees for Jordan Montgomery actually
went to a rival school of mine. But I guess
he's a good player. And whenever he went to some
school like Harsman or something. And Jesse Chavez the picture
dealt from the Angels to the Braves. He's played fifteen
years and he knows he's wanted. He's now been traded
(19:56):
ten times. I mean, he makes my resume look short.
But best of all last months, when Kansas City the
Royals went in to play Toronto in Toronto. Ten of
their guys did not go with them because they refused
to be vaccinated, and you can't enter Canada unless you
are vaccinated. The foremost of the refuse nicks second baseman
(20:17):
with Maryfield. He said the vaccine doesn't do what it
was supposed to. Apparently he believes it's magic, but he
said he would sell out his principles dumb as they are. Quote.
If something happens and I happen to get on a
team that has a chance to go play in Canada
and the postseason, well wit something happened. Kansas City just
(20:39):
traded second basement with Maryfield to Toronto. Let me see
your arms and your legs. You'll be needing four shots.
Oh yeah, and there's one actual score from last night.
Two traditions returned to the New York Mets. Jacob deGrom
started a game for them for the first time in
just under thirteen months, and the Mets promptly resumed not
getting Jacob Degram any runs. De Grom through five innings
(21:02):
of one hit, ball, struck out, six walked, none reached
a hundred and two miles an hour on the radar gun,
left with the score tied one one, but most importantly,
his arm did not come off at the shoulder final.
Washington's without Sotos, five New York's with the grom one.
(21:35):
I'll still ahead. This is the anniversary of the start
of my TV career, and I owe it all to
Lou Dobbs. But first, the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and dunning Krueger effect exhibits who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. The silver to the l I
V Golf Tour, the Saudi Blood Money tournaments, the most
(21:55):
recent of which was held at Crazy Trump's golf course
and Discount Mausoleum. Come on down just off Interstate eight
seven bed Menster, New Jersey. How I did not notice
this on Sunday, I don't know. I apologize, but there
it was yesterday on my feed. Photos of the winner,
Henrik sten Rick, whatever his name was, holding the tournament trophy,
(22:17):
bought and paid for by the sudis presented a few
days after Trump had said nobody had gotten to the
bottom of nine eleven, and the trophy is four long,
raised vertical bars with a kind of corrugated quality to them,
leaning off at about a sixty degree angle from the
base with four small hockey puck sized horizontal bars at
(22:38):
the right of the base, and that's when you realize
it looks exactly like one of the terrifying multi story
shards of the kind of corrugated vertical bars that fell
intact off the destroyed World Trade Center. On nine eleven,
Trump Saudi Arabia, you bastards. The runner up Fox Nudes
(23:01):
host little Jesse Waters comparing teaching kids about gender reassignment
and lgbt Q. He says, that's well, let me quote him.
I'm not alleging that this teacher or that teacher is
doing this to have sex with the child, but they're
exhibiting the same kinds of behaviors that people do use
when they do groom children to exploit them for sexual purposes. Jesse,
(23:26):
please exploitation for sexual purposes. You started at Fox as
a producer for Bill O'Reilly, please pick a different q
and on conspiracy than pressure for sex to pedal to
the morons, which reminds me. Lochland Cartwright at The Daily
Beast is reporting Billow is negotiating to get back on
(23:48):
TV at News Nation, which since you and billions of
others have never seen it, is that kind of nick
at night for x Cable news hosts. Chris Cuomo just
went there, joining Dan Abram's billow back on TV on
a network nobody watches, but still spewing out content for
worst persons in the world. I am in favor of
this right you are, Mr Mayo Hoffer, but our winner,
(24:12):
Alan Dershowitz canceled again, tells Gretabann suster In that people
want to hear me speak on Martha's Vineyard, but the
whole community has censored him again. That would be the
second time this summer has been canceled four times in
four years. Last year, Larry David, one of our celebrity
announcers here, canceled him by just speaking harshly to him
(24:36):
in the Martha's Vineyard General Store. This is countdown with Keith,
Thank you, Larry. Mr Dershowitz says this is persecution because
they will not let him speak at the chill Mark
(24:58):
Library or the Martha's Vineyard Community Center, the Martha's Vineyard
Hebrew Center, that they won't let him go there and
sell his latest stupid book. Alan Dershowitz is whiny and
paranoid and jumped the shark during the O. J. Simpson trial,
and there may yet be much, much worse to come
for him. Alan He's been silenced again. Can't you hear
(25:22):
him yelling about it? Dershowitz Today's worst Person and the
World Finally our number one story on the Countdown Things
(25:55):
I promised not to tell And back to my favorite
topic me. Everybody has a different career path and mind
veered sharply forty two years ago today, because Lou Dobbs
was rumored to be stepping out on his wife. I
went to work at Cable News Network CNN, then just
(26:19):
starting its second year on the air on the morning
of Monday, August third one, because Lou Dobbs was rumored
to be stepping out on his wife. On my first day,
my first interview was with Joe Tory, who was still
a friend. On my first day, I learned you have
to take the Lavelier microphone off your lapel before you
(26:41):
walk away from the camera. And on my first day
I learned that if you are videotaping near airport radar,
the cameraman has to take steps to protect the camera,
often with tinfoil. Otherwise almost everything you record will have
radar blips. Imbedded into it and be unusable. And I
(27:03):
learned all this all because was Lou Dobbs was rumored
to be stepping out on his wife. So I was
a radio sportscaster in twenty two years old and having
already moved from the United Press International Network, which I've
mentioned before, where my boss was as I've also mentioned before,
Sam Rosen, who has been the play by play man
(27:24):
of the New York Rangers for most of the forty
one years since, and I moved from working for him
to the much better paying r k OH Radio network,
where my boss was Charlie Steiner, who still does play
by play of the Los Angeles Dodgers games. But two
years into my radio career, I had almost topped out
salary wise, and my ambitions had always been to do
(27:46):
TV anyway, I just wasn't sure how to do it.
Turned out my career was not a question of my
doing it. It was a question of Lou Dobbs doing it.
My alma mater, Cornell University, had one of the best
student radio stations in the world, but the tire University
offered one television course and to take it you had
(28:08):
to rent the camera for fifty dollars an hour, and
it was black and white, and you needed three guys
to lift it. So as well as I had done
starting in network radio in New York straight out of college,
I was somewhat stymied re TV. One local news director
offered me the chance to have a kind of audition
at his station, but that never worked out. The Lou
(28:30):
Dobbs thing worked out. I actually interviewed with Cable News
Network twice, once in April nine eight, when they were
not on the air yet, and I saw no reason
they ever would be. Because the New York bureau consisted
of one coffee table, one coffee machine, one stairwell, one
unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief, Mary Alice Williams.
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Plus the day I went there, CNN Sports president Bill
McPhail up from Atlanta, was visiting, so it was technically
two staffers. After a law long year, my phone rang
one day and McPhail asked me to fill in for
two weeks. In two weeks for their New York sports reporter.
She was going on vacation August three, sooner, McPhail added,
(29:16):
if the baseball strike ended before then. Her name was
Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation. Turned out
it was part vacation, part get out of town quickly,
very very quickly. See when CNN started, it wasn't just news,
news and commentary and opinion shows. There was a half
(29:37):
hour business show every night, and a half hour sportscast
at seven thirty and another one at eleven, and a
fashion program, an hourly stock reports and meteorologists, and short sportscasts.
And the business anchor based in the New York Bureau
in the World Trade Center was Lou Dobbs, and as
the producer they had sent up to work with me.
(29:58):
Phil Griffin later, the president of MSNBC, explained to me
when we got in the car to go out to
Chase Adium to interview all those Mets guys. Forty two
years ago, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife with the CNN New York sports reporter,
Debbie and Mrs Dobbs had found out, and there was
(30:20):
even another rumor there was somebody else who also worked
in the CNN New York bureau. And thus Bill McPhail's
hurried call asking me to fill in for her for
two weeks in two weeks because she was going on
quote vacation unquote. Dobbs and the first Mrs Dobbs eventually split,
(30:41):
but apparently the ill will persisted. Everybody decided it would
be better off for all concerned if Dobbs and Debbie Cigura,
or as she was then called behind her back, Debbie
does Dobbs, if all of them and most of the
New York Bureau business staff moved to CNN headquarters in Atlanta.
This left New York without a sports reporter, and they
(31:02):
tried another one of the Atlanta anchors for a while,
but they kept giving him extra vacation time, so they
would have to bring me in freelance every month, and
finally the following March they offered me the job full time.
And I have not earned an honest paycheck since. And
I mean that in two ways. They were paying me
five dollars a week, which was about less than what
(31:23):
I made for like three days a week in radio.
I pointed this out acceptingly. I was learning how to
do TV while on TV and getting paid for it,
and that's when they told me that five dollars a
week was already more than they were paying Debbie Sigura
or the guy who was their reporter in Los Angeles.
(31:45):
And then Bill McPhail, the president, called and offered me
a contract for twenty five grand and I said, wait,
that's less. Why would it take less? Is their health
insurance or something? And he said no, there's just security.
And I said, I'd rather have the thousand dollars just
cut out of my salary, and they found it somewhere.
(32:07):
But they always reminded me how generous they'd been and
how many meetings they've had to have just to get
me the thousand dollars back. I didn't have to do
much with Dobbs in New York, but there is something
about TV. Either it's a really small world or the
people in it will do anything to stay in it.
I might be an example of the ladder. When Dobbs
(32:30):
moved to Atlanta, the guy who stepped up to become
CNN's number one business reporter in New York was named
Stewart Varney, and he was great to me. One night,
our sports producer in Atlanta call up around five and said, congratulations,
you get to do a commentary on the seven tonight
and I croaked, what and she said, yeah, you'll do
(32:50):
it live. And I said, I have no idea how
to read a teleprompter, and she said, better learn fast click,
And I told Stu, and he taught me how to
use a teleprompter in like ten minutes, and I was
always grateful. And then he had some would have religious
conversion or a hit his head on something, or we're both,
(33:11):
and he's still one of the most virulent fascists on
Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs and Debbie got married and lou
settled in and as part of the deal, Debbie Sigura
Dobbs became a CNN sports anchor in Atlanta. Except while
she could get through those short three or in four
minutes sports updates she used to do in New York,
which I inherited during the longer half hour and hour
(33:34):
long shows, she could not read the prompter to save
her life. About two months into her time in Atlanta
came the night she got so lost in the tell
of prompter that about twenty minutes in, she got up
and left the studio. Her boss. By this point, my boss,
Bill McPhail, had to take her off the longer shows
(33:57):
and return her to doing those three minute updates. In
the middle of the afternoon. She was secretly relieved her
husband Lou Dobbs, who started MY TV career because he
was rumored to be stepping out on his first wife.
He was not relieved. He promptly went into Bill McPhail's
office and challenged him to a fist fight. I have
looked this up on the Internet. The day this happened,
(34:20):
Lou Dobbs was thirty six years old and Bill McPhail
was sixty one. Debbie's TV career ended not long after,
as my began. She went into horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately,
she and Dobbs made it back to the New York Bureau.
I worked with him again in two thousand one. Two.
(34:42):
He deteriorated into a running joke spewing anti immigrant and
anti Latino bile while she raised their family in New
Jersey and the rest of us marveled that Lou and
his Latino family made millions off his anti Latino bile.
Jersey was where Debbie Cigura Dobbs was on Tuesday January
two thousand three, when she tried to board a light
(35:04):
for Florida at Newark Airport and a T S A
agent found a loaded gun in her handbag. She was arrested,
released on bail. I never did hear what happened to
that charge. It carried the possibility of prison that clearly
did not happen. Can't find anything in the newspaper archives
or anywhere online. But Dobbs later explained the whole thing.
(35:25):
It was all a misunderstanding. He said that loaded gun
had been in his wife's handbags since the previous autumn,
and she'd just forgotten about it. Although exactly what that
explained I still haven't figured out. All right, I've done
(35:49):
all the damage I can do. Here The Countdown theme
from Beethoven's Ninth arranged, produced and performed by Countdown Music
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.
(36:12):
The Old Berman theme written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of the ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faus. The
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was the
great Stevie van Zant with a cameo from Larry David.
Everything else is my fault. If you've listened this far,
you'll be as pleased as I was to discover we
(36:33):
are charting. So thanks for your reviews, rates, and subscriptions.
That's countdown for this the seventy four day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the government of the US.
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(36:57):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcast from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
On April four, the New York Yankees played an exhibition
game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in
Los Angeles, and my friend, the Yankees play by play
announcer Michael Kay, was shaking like a leaf. He spoke
(00:28):
softly to me, almost in a whisper. Michael does not
speak softly. I need you to do me a favor.
I'm nervous just asking. I'm embarrassed, just asking. Can you
He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair.
Can you introduced me to Vince Scully. Michael Kay was
(00:50):
starting his eighth season that day as a Major League
baseball play by play announcer. He had that in common
with Vince Scully. They did the same job. He also
went to the same college as Vin Scully, Fordham University.
He had no reason to be nervous about meeting Vince
Gully except that's Vince Scully. I told Mike there was
no reason to be nervous, though I knew he would be.
(01:12):
But I also told him sincerely, there really was no
reason to be embarrassed. I first moved to Los Angeles
in August, and I went right to the top of
the guys doing sports on the local TV newscasts. They're
back when that meant something. Soon I was also on
the all news radio station during drive time, which in
l A is literally drive time. Vince Gully was technically
(01:36):
a colleague of mine, and that did not matter a lick.
Through the rest of the baseball season, I could not
summon the courage to go and introduce myself to Vince Gully.
Through the rest of the nineteen eight six season, I
could not summon the courage to introduce myself to and
through the rest of the nineteen eight seven season, through
almost all the nine eight season, and then late in
(01:58):
that year, I switched jobs got a big pay raise.
I was nearly thirty, and I said I have to
do this now. And when I finally said, excuse me, Vin,
my name is, and at that point I did not
remember what my name was, found it somewhere, blurted it out,
said something possibly in English, and Vince Scully beamed, I'm
(02:22):
glad you said hello. I thought I had done something
to offend you. He said, Also, I have a question
I've been meaning to ask you about baseball research. So
forgive me for not introducing myself to you. So I
don't think I've passed out, but I sure understood why
Michael was, as he put it, shaking like a leaf.
(02:45):
Vin shortly thereafter appeared in the Dodger dugout. I brought
the two of them together. We all chatted for ten minutes.
We got a picture. I got out of the way
and they got a picture. We talked about Fordham, where
they went to school, and where I was born. And
then Vin excused himself to go do an interview, and
Michael Kay said, God, I'm still shaking like a leaf.
That's how we all felt about him. Those of us
(03:08):
who with incomplete accuracy would say, we're in the same
business as Vin Scully, we were, in fact part of
to turn the phrase he always used about others who
had fans and supporters, the Vin Scully Marching and Chowder Society.
Because yeah, he was the greatest broadcaster I've ever met.
(03:29):
But more importantly, he was the nicest man in the world,
and also delightfully profane when he got to trust you,
and like anybody else, he could be fiercely and sometimes
bitterly territorial about his broadcasts, and he had problems with
certain players, and at least twice in the nineteen sixties
(03:51):
he almost left the Dodgers to go home and broadcast
for the Yankees, and he had doubts that he had
made all the right career decisions. And unless you knew
him pretty well, you would never have known any of that.
And no complaint or cuss or uncertainty ever made its
way into the public domain. And even when I had
(04:12):
known him thirty years and had the privilege of having
our visits start with a hug and end with dinner,
I would still think the same thing I thought every
time I ever saw him coming towards me, Well, here
comes God. And there was not one moment that he
(04:32):
acted like he was anything more than maybe a pretty good,
fairly popular baseball announcer. If you don't know, Vincent Edwards
Scully died yesterday. He was ninety four years old. He
spent the years, all the years between his twenty second
birthday and his eighty ninth birthday, as the play by
(04:54):
play announcer of the Brooklyn and then the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The day he started on the job was so long
ago it was barely three years since the Dodgers Jackie
Robinson had broken the color line in baseball, there were
just sixteen Major League Baseball teams, and the ones Furthest.
West and Furthest. South were in St. Louis, Missouri. Before
(05:17):
the Second World War, one of those St. Louis teams
had planned to move to Los Angeles, but the year
then started nineteen fifty, baseball in Los Angeles still seemed
like the most impractical of pipe dreams. Within eight years,
it would be Vince Scully's job to introduce Major League
Baseball to the nation's second largest metropolitan area, and in
(05:40):
large part also to prevent the Dodgers who just moved
in from moving out. They almost did. There was a
referendum vote on whether or not to give them the
land for their new stadium in Los Angeles, and it
was really close, and it was Vince scully sincere and
smiling salesmanship that helped Yes to win narrowly. And then
(06:04):
there are the many recordings still extant of games in
that new field Dodger Stadium from the nineteen sixties and
nineteen seventies. And if the recording you hear is of
the visiting team's announcers. You will hear for the length
of the game something that sounds like a very distant,
very melodic public address system. It was thousands of transistor
(06:29):
radios held by fans to their ears, and all of
them tuned to Vin Scully. It was not a Dodger
game unless you were listening to Vince Scully, even if
you were at the Dodger game, and that did not
end in the nineteen seventies. Between two thousand eight and
two thousand and fourteen, while visiting l A, I went
(06:52):
to a bunch of games at Dodger Stadium with a
big Dodger fan named Jason Bateman. I would bring my scorebook.
He would bring his earpiece so he could listen to
Vince Scully streaming. We talked during the commercial breaks. On
the occasion of Bevin's retirement in two thousand sixteen, I
wrote a long piece for g Q magazine about the
(07:14):
importance of not viewing him as a saint. I told
as many of the inside stories I could of the
delightful day he compared a player's haircut to that of
Charles Manson, the mass murderer, of his wonderful swearing about
a Dodger player and the reporter who broke up the
player's marriage of his inability to stomach the people at
(07:35):
Fox TV who tried to make his broadcast, as he said,
look just like Pittsburgh's, and their decision to remove his
friend Keith from the National Baseball broadcasts. I can't tell
all the stories here, but the article is online and
the stories are pretty good because well it was Vince Scully,
but Charles Manson clip. I still have that on my phone.
(07:57):
I last saw Van late in his last season two
thousand sixteen, the year he retired. We took a picture,
and as happy as I am to see him in
that picture, he looks happier to see me. And while
some of that basic, deep abiding goodness in this man
was not forced, not fake, not embellished, but maybe a
(08:17):
little managed, that part was one seven real, honest Vin Scully.
He was happy to see you, friend, co worker, player fan,
usually a fan about to pass out, which I saw
(08:39):
nearly happen when I introduced a friend of mine to
him in Grown Man, Well it's nice to meet you Andy.
Andy collapsed backwards towards a wall in the ballpark and
somehow managed to stay upright and conscious. Vin Scully stayed
in touch with me by email. I'm so proud of that.
My last exchange with him was in as the life
(09:02):
of his beloved wife, Sandy ebbed Way. Every time, every
time I sent him birthday wishes or I just checked in,
or when he wrote me, it was as if I
had done him some kind of honor. One email, all caps,
I have preserved them all reads high Keith. I'm at
that age when I think of someone, I try to
(09:24):
make contact with him. Happy Easter, blessings, then blessings Vinn.
That was him. What a wonderful habit to adopt a
friend comes to mind you reach out. Imagine my thrill
to see an email from his Dodgers team address, which
I guess I can now reveal was simply read. There
(09:47):
is one story I wrote about for g Q that
I love to tell about Vince Skelly above all the others,
and I feel like I should tell it here. In August,
I was watching from my TV station in l A.
It was a hot night. The Dodgers were in Cincinnati,
and Vince Scully mistakenly announced on the air that Gil
(10:08):
Hodges was at bat for the Dodgers, when in fact
it was Mike Sosha. Gil Hodges had retired in nineteen
sixty three, he had died in nineteen seventy two, just
went into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The l A
newspapers then began to wonder if Vince Scully had lost
it he retired in anyway. On the next night's broadcast,
(10:31):
Vin appeared on camera mid game and explained what happened.
This is roughly how I remember it. There is no tape.
I think I'm doing him justice, he said. More or less,
I had been thinking of the late Gil Hodges. If
you don't know, Gil Hodges was a great Dodger first
baseman and my great friend, and a great man who
(10:52):
was taken from us far too soon. And like Mike Sosha,
Gil war number fourteen. And it was awfully hot in
that booth, And for some reason, instead of saying two
and oh to Sosha, I said too and oh to Hodges.
But I think the weather and the uniform number were
not the only reasons I confused them. Mike reminds me
(11:14):
a lot of my friend Gil, and like Gil, I
think he may be a fine major League manager. Someday anyway,
I just wanted to apologize for the mistake. Beautiful there.
Then the game reappeared on the camera and Vin paused
speaking off camera, and he said something that still takes
(11:37):
my breath away. I wish I could bring Gil Hodges
back that easily. I am agnostic about an afterlife, but
I will confess I frequently hope with all my heart
that there is one, and this is one of those days.
So Vin can be reunited with family members whom tragedy
(11:59):
took too early from him, and all those players like
Gil Hodges. I'm Jackie Robinson, who saw in him what
we who watched or listened or had the privilege to
really know him also could say. Here is this deeply decent,
brilliantly talented man, and the last person to claim either
of those descriptions for himself, here is my friend Vin Scully.
(12:24):
So blessings, Ben, I wish I could bring you back
that easily. Just ahead of vote on a constitutional amendment
prohibiting abortion in Kansas was supposed to be a coin flip.
(12:44):
Turned out it wasn't. You won't believe which side one 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. For four years now, I've been
trying to save as many dogs as I can at
the NYC a c see, which is a big euphemism
(13:06):
for the kill shelter here in New York. A dozen
more on the list to be killed as early as tomorrow.
There's a Kira dumped on the street in Brooklyn, three
years old, fifty six pounds, gorgeous brindle coach. She's friendly,
big wagging tail, and while on death row, she's caught pneumonia,
so they'll kill her. You can see her and pledge
a little cash to help rescue pull her out in
(13:28):
time on my Dogs in Need Twitter account Tom Jumbo Grumbo.
Look for Kira at Tom Jumbo Grumbo on Twitter. Thank you.
(13:59):
Time for postscripts to the news, some headlines, some thoughts,
some wise ass remarks. The big news turns out to
be the proposed Kansas state constitutional amendment to remove the
protections of abortion rights. There lost dateline Austin, Texas. The
Alex Jones trial or guilty by reason of insanity. Last week,
(14:19):
one of Jones's henchmen talked about what went on in
the courtroom, even though he had been a witness and
witnesses are warned not to talk about what went on
in the courtroom. The judge swatted his pp big time.
Now Jones, being sued for a hundred and fifty million
by two Sandy Hook parents because he claimed that never happened,
took the stand, but not before telling his audience that
(14:41):
the lawyers and the judge all acted quote demonically possessed.
This is a guy doesn't know where he is Earth
or Pluto twenty three hours and fifty eight minutes a day.
Maybe we can shut up with the demonically possessed nonsense.
The judge ordered Jones to stop chewing gum in court.
Jones says it wasn't gum, it was dental gauze, asked
(15:04):
or whackemer shaw you and opened his mouth wide. Judge
Maya Gara Gamble spoke for the Planet when she replied,
I don't want to see the inside of your mouth. Incidentally,
we also don't want to hear anything that comes out
of the inside of Alex Jones's mouth. Dateline, Phoenix. If
not funny, it's still rewarding when one of the big
(15:24):
lie leaders turns out to have known in advance they
were playing with fire. The New York Times as an
email from a Trump attorney to the other Trump attorneys
like wacky Rudy Giuliani in about the wackiest of the
many wackiest Arizona politicians, State geop Chack. Kelly Ward and
a colleague are mentioned in this They were worried that
(15:45):
the Arizona fake electors scheme might turn out to be treason.
Quoting the email, Ward in Townsend are concerned it could
appear treasons for the azy electors to vote on Monday
if there is no pending court proceeding that might eventually
lead to the electors being ratified as the legitimate ones
end quote. The lawyer put The word reason is in bold,
(16:07):
good old fore knowledge of guilt, good luck in the
courts mss Ward Dateline, Philadelphia. Will Bunch's new book, After
the Ivory Tower Falls, about the one point seven trillion
dollars in student loan debt and how it has helped
fracture this Country, has been published and gotten a great
review in the New York Times quote the pros is tight,
(16:27):
direct and often bracing, and in his newsletter yesterday, Will
Bunch added a note about his writing, quoting him. Every
journalist has a story about their very first editor. Mine
was a boisterous and cantankerous baseball fanatic who left quite
an impression on me and other folks who've dealt with
him over the years. Perhaps you've even heard of him
(16:48):
if Alberman, who's editing of my wretched copy for the
Hackley Dial high school newspaper in n apparently prepped him
for a career at ESPN, MSNBC and the rest of
the big media alphabet nonsense. Will bunches oros was tight,
direct and often bracing. In I Recommend his book, he
(17:09):
recommended this podcast, said it was the perfect format for me,
by which he means I don't have to work for
the man, and I know this sounds like log rolling,
which I guess it is. Might be that way anyway,
even if we both actually me and our compliments, which
reminds me. After two episodes, this thing is ranked number
two on Apple Podcasts list of political podcasts. It's ranked
(17:30):
number nine in news podcasts, number forty six overall. I
am almost humbled. Almost Maybe I should retire with these
ratings and dateline Moscow. More U S sanctions against Russian
politicians on Oligarch's including Alina Kabayeva, the former Olympic gymnasts
(17:51):
now member of the Russian Duma and believed to be
Vladimir Putin's girlfriend. Ah. Yes, it was just the other day,
as I remember it, when Britney Spears was singing Douma
Baby one more time. This is Sports Center. Wait, check
that not anymore. This is countdown with Keith Alberman in
(18:31):
sports We hit this yesterday. If you have to trade
a twenty three year old superstar today because you can't
afford his contract two years from now, get out of
the sports ball business. The Washington Nationals actually did it,
Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres for a peck
of pickled prospects, no combination of which will ever add
up to Juan Soto. And again, the Gnats have now
(18:53):
lost or traded Bryce Harper, Trade Turner, Max Scherzer, Anthony Rendon,
and now Soto in just the last five years. The
Gnats used to be the Montreal Expos, but they were
taken over by baseball and move to Washington when the
owners proved incapable of aunting up. This would seem to
have happened again, revoke the franchise. Among other trade deadline
(19:15):
deals in baseball, closer David Robertson from the Cubs to
the Phillies, outfielder Brandon marsh and picture Noah Synderguard from
the Angels to the Phillies for former number one draft
pick Mickey Moniac and others. Angels closer Rice l Iglesias
to the Braves. And yes, the Angels collapse was all
fired manager Joe Madden's fault. Clearly, they may not win
(19:35):
another game this year. New York City native Harrison Bader
from the Cardinals to the Yankees for Jordan Montgomery actually
went to a rival school of mine. But I guess
he's a good player. And whenever he went to some
school like Harsman or something. And Jesse Chavez the picture
dealt from the Angels to the Braves. He's played fifteen
years and he knows he's wanted. He's now been traded
(19:56):
ten times. I mean, he makes my resume look short.
But best of all last months, when Kansas City the
Royals went in to play Toronto in Toronto. Ten of
their guys did not go with them because they refused
to be vaccinated, and you can't enter Canada unless you
are vaccinated. The foremost of the refuse nicks second baseman
(20:17):
with Maryfield. He said the vaccine doesn't do what it
was supposed to. Apparently he believes it's magic, but he
said he would sell out his principles dumb as they are. Quote.
If something happens and I happen to get on a
team that has a chance to go play in Canada
and the postseason, well wit something happened. Kansas City just
(20:39):
traded second basement with Maryfield to Toronto. Let me see
your arms and your legs. You'll be needing four shots.
Oh yeah, and there's one actual score from last night.
Two traditions returned to the New York Mets. Jacob deGrom
started a game for them for the first time in
just under thirteen months, and the Mets promptly resumed not
getting Jacob Degram any runs. De Grom through five innings
(21:02):
of one hit, ball, struck out, six walked, none reached
a hundred and two miles an hour on the radar gun,
left with the score tied one one, but most importantly,
his arm did not come off at the shoulder final.
Washington's without Sotos, five New York's with the grom one.
(21:35):
I'll still ahead. This is the anniversary of the start
of my TV career, and I owe it all to
Lou Dobbs. But first, the daily roundup of the miscreants,
morons and dunning Krueger effect exhibits who constitute today's worst
persons in the world. The silver to the l I
V Golf Tour, the Saudi Blood Money tournaments, the most
(21:55):
recent of which was held at Crazy Trump's golf course
and Discount Mausoleum. Come on down just off Interstate eight
seven bed Menster, New Jersey. How I did not notice
this on Sunday, I don't know. I apologize, but there
it was yesterday on my feed. Photos of the winner,
Henrik sten Rick, whatever his name was, holding the tournament trophy,
(22:17):
bought and paid for by the sudis presented a few
days after Trump had said nobody had gotten to the
bottom of nine eleven, and the trophy is four long,
raised vertical bars with a kind of corrugated quality to them,
leaning off at about a sixty degree angle from the
base with four small hockey puck sized horizontal bars at
(22:38):
the right of the base, and that's when you realize
it looks exactly like one of the terrifying multi story
shards of the kind of corrugated vertical bars that fell
intact off the destroyed World Trade Center. On nine eleven,
Trump Saudi Arabia, you bastards. The runner up Fox Nudes
(23:01):
host little Jesse Waters comparing teaching kids about gender reassignment
and lgbt Q. He says, that's well, let me quote him.
I'm not alleging that this teacher or that teacher is
doing this to have sex with the child, but they're
exhibiting the same kinds of behaviors that people do use
when they do groom children to exploit them for sexual purposes. Jesse,
(23:26):
please exploitation for sexual purposes. You started at Fox as
a producer for Bill O'Reilly, please pick a different q
and on conspiracy than pressure for sex to pedal to
the morons, which reminds me. Lochland Cartwright at The Daily
Beast is reporting Billow is negotiating to get back on
(23:48):
TV at News Nation, which since you and billions of
others have never seen it, is that kind of nick
at night for x Cable news hosts. Chris Cuomo just
went there, joining Dan Abram's billow back on TV on
a network nobody watches, but still spewing out content for
worst persons in the world. I am in favor of
this right you are, Mr Mayo Hoffer, but our winner,
(24:12):
Alan Dershowitz canceled again, tells Gretabann suster In that people
want to hear me speak on Martha's Vineyard, but the
whole community has censored him again. That would be the
second time this summer has been canceled four times in
four years. Last year, Larry David, one of our celebrity
announcers here, canceled him by just speaking harshly to him
(24:36):
in the Martha's Vineyard General Store. This is countdown with Keith,
Thank you, Larry. Mr Dershowitz says this is persecution because
they will not let him speak at the chill Mark
(24:58):
Library or the Martha's Vineyard Community Center, the Martha's Vineyard
Hebrew Center, that they won't let him go there and
sell his latest stupid book. Alan Dershowitz is whiny and
paranoid and jumped the shark during the O. J. Simpson trial,
and there may yet be much, much worse to come
for him. Alan He's been silenced again. Can't you hear
(25:22):
him yelling about it? Dershowitz Today's worst Person and the
World Finally our number one story on the Countdown Things
(25:55):
I promised not to tell And back to my favorite
topic me. Everybody has a different career path and mind
veered sharply forty two years ago today, because Lou Dobbs
was rumored to be stepping out on his wife. I
went to work at Cable News Network CNN, then just
(26:19):
starting its second year on the air on the morning
of Monday, August third one, because Lou Dobbs was rumored
to be stepping out on his wife. On my first day,
my first interview was with Joe Tory, who was still
a friend. On my first day, I learned you have
to take the Lavelier microphone off your lapel before you
(26:41):
walk away from the camera. And on my first day
I learned that if you are videotaping near airport radar,
the cameraman has to take steps to protect the camera,
often with tinfoil. Otherwise almost everything you record will have
radar blips. Imbedded into it and be unusable. And I
(27:03):
learned all this all because was Lou Dobbs was rumored
to be stepping out on his wife. So I was
a radio sportscaster in twenty two years old and having
already moved from the United Press International Network, which I've
mentioned before, where my boss was as I've also mentioned before,
Sam Rosen, who has been the play by play man
(27:24):
of the New York Rangers for most of the forty
one years since, and I moved from working for him
to the much better paying r k OH Radio network,
where my boss was Charlie Steiner, who still does play
by play of the Los Angeles Dodgers games. But two
years into my radio career, I had almost topped out
salary wise, and my ambitions had always been to do
(27:46):
TV anyway, I just wasn't sure how to do it.
Turned out my career was not a question of my
doing it. It was a question of Lou Dobbs doing it.
My alma mater, Cornell University, had one of the best
student radio stations in the world, but the tire University
offered one television course and to take it you had
(28:08):
to rent the camera for fifty dollars an hour, and
it was black and white, and you needed three guys
to lift it. So as well as I had done
starting in network radio in New York straight out of college,
I was somewhat stymied re TV. One local news director
offered me the chance to have a kind of audition
at his station, but that never worked out. The Lou
(28:30):
Dobbs thing worked out. I actually interviewed with Cable News
Network twice, once in April nine eight, when they were
not on the air yet, and I saw no reason
they ever would be. Because the New York bureau consisted
of one coffee table, one coffee machine, one stairwell, one
unisex bathroom, and one staffer, the bureau chief, Mary Alice Williams.
(28:55):
Plus the day I went there, CNN Sports president Bill
McPhail up from Atlanta, was visiting, so it was technically
two staffers. After a law long year, my phone rang
one day and McPhail asked me to fill in for
two weeks. In two weeks for their New York sports reporter.
She was going on vacation August three, sooner, McPhail added,
(29:16):
if the baseball strike ended before then. Her name was
Debbie Sigura, and all I knew was vacation. Turned out
it was part vacation, part get out of town quickly,
very very quickly. See when CNN started, it wasn't just news,
news and commentary and opinion shows. There was a half
(29:37):
hour business show every night, and a half hour sportscast
at seven thirty and another one at eleven, and a
fashion program, an hourly stock reports and meteorologists, and short sportscasts.
And the business anchor based in the New York Bureau
in the World Trade Center was Lou Dobbs, and as
the producer they had sent up to work with me.
(29:58):
Phil Griffin later, the president of MSNBC, explained to me
when we got in the car to go out to
Chase Adium to interview all those Mets guys. Forty two
years ago, Lou Dobbs was rumored to be stepping out
on his wife with the CNN New York sports reporter,
Debbie and Mrs Dobbs had found out, and there was
(30:20):
even another rumor there was somebody else who also worked
in the CNN New York bureau. And thus Bill McPhail's
hurried call asking me to fill in for her for
two weeks in two weeks because she was going on
quote vacation unquote. Dobbs and the first Mrs Dobbs eventually split,
(30:41):
but apparently the ill will persisted. Everybody decided it would
be better off for all concerned if Dobbs and Debbie Cigura,
or as she was then called behind her back, Debbie
does Dobbs, if all of them and most of the
New York Bureau business staff moved to CNN headquarters in Atlanta.
This left New York without a sports reporter, and they
(31:02):
tried another one of the Atlanta anchors for a while,
but they kept giving him extra vacation time, so they
would have to bring me in freelance every month, and
finally the following March they offered me the job full time.
And I have not earned an honest paycheck since. And
I mean that in two ways. They were paying me
five dollars a week, which was about less than what
(31:23):
I made for like three days a week in radio.
I pointed this out acceptingly. I was learning how to
do TV while on TV and getting paid for it,
and that's when they told me that five dollars a
week was already more than they were paying Debbie Sigura
or the guy who was their reporter in Los Angeles.
(31:45):
And then Bill McPhail, the president, called and offered me
a contract for twenty five grand and I said, wait,
that's less. Why would it take less? Is their health
insurance or something? And he said no, there's just security.
And I said, I'd rather have the thousand dollars just
cut out of my salary, and they found it somewhere.
(32:07):
But they always reminded me how generous they'd been and
how many meetings they've had to have just to get
me the thousand dollars back. I didn't have to do
much with Dobbs in New York, but there is something
about TV. Either it's a really small world or the
people in it will do anything to stay in it.
I might be an example of the ladder. When Dobbs
(32:30):
moved to Atlanta, the guy who stepped up to become
CNN's number one business reporter in New York was named
Stewart Varney, and he was great to me. One night,
our sports producer in Atlanta call up around five and said, congratulations,
you get to do a commentary on the seven tonight
and I croaked, what and she said, yeah, you'll do
(32:50):
it live. And I said, I have no idea how
to read a teleprompter, and she said, better learn fast click,
And I told Stu, and he taught me how to
use a teleprompter in like ten minutes, and I was
always grateful. And then he had some would have religious
conversion or a hit his head on something, or we're both,
(33:11):
and he's still one of the most virulent fascists on
Fox Nudes. Anyway, Dobbs and Debbie got married and lou
settled in and as part of the deal, Debbie Sigura
Dobbs became a CNN sports anchor in Atlanta. Except while
she could get through those short three or in four
minutes sports updates she used to do in New York,
which I inherited during the longer half hour and hour
(33:34):
long shows, she could not read the prompter to save
her life. About two months into her time in Atlanta
came the night she got so lost in the tell
of prompter that about twenty minutes in, she got up
and left the studio. Her boss. By this point, my boss,
Bill McPhail, had to take her off the longer shows
(33:57):
and return her to doing those three minute updates. In
the middle of the afternoon. She was secretly relieved her
husband Lou Dobbs, who started MY TV career because he
was rumored to be stepping out on his first wife.
He was not relieved. He promptly went into Bill McPhail's
office and challenged him to a fist fight. I have
looked this up on the Internet. The day this happened,
(34:20):
Lou Dobbs was thirty six years old and Bill McPhail
was sixty one. Debbie's TV career ended not long after,
as my began. She went into horses equestrian stuff. Ultimately,
she and Dobbs made it back to the New York Bureau.
I worked with him again in two thousand one. Two.
(34:42):
He deteriorated into a running joke spewing anti immigrant and
anti Latino bile while she raised their family in New
Jersey and the rest of us marveled that Lou and
his Latino family made millions off his anti Latino bile.
Jersey was where Debbie Cigura Dobbs was on Tuesday January
two thousand three, when she tried to board a light
(35:04):
for Florida at Newark Airport and a T S A
agent found a loaded gun in her handbag. She was arrested,
released on bail. I never did hear what happened to
that charge. It carried the possibility of prison that clearly
did not happen. Can't find anything in the newspaper archives
or anywhere online. But Dobbs later explained the whole thing.
(35:25):
It was all a misunderstanding. He said that loaded gun
had been in his wife's handbags since the previous autumn,
and she'd just forgotten about it. Although exactly what that
explained I still haven't figured out. All right, I've done
(35:49):
all the damage I can do. Here The Countdown theme
from Beethoven's Ninth arranged, produced and performed by Countdown Music
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.
(36:12):
The Old Berman theme written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy
of the ESPN, Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faus. The
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was the
great Stevie van Zant with a cameo from Larry David.
Everything else is my fault. If you've listened this far,
you'll be as pleased as I was to discover we
(36:33):
are charting. So thanks for your reviews, rates, and subscriptions.
That's countdown for this the seventy four day since Donald
Trump's first attempted coup against the government of the US.
I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
(36:57):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I heart Radio.
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Host
Keith Olbermann
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