February 9, 2023 • 34 mins
EPISODE 130: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: I want to congratulate House Oversight Committee Chairman Comer for letting the Democrats hijack his Hunter Biden express and turn it into "Would you like me to give the direct quote? Chrissy Teigen referred to Donald Trump as a 'pussy ass bitch.'" The Republicans made every mistake they could make, down to not being able to keep the lights on in the hearing room. Elsewhere in Washington, while the GOP continued to insist Biden was lying and none of its members ever called to cut, re-define, sunset, or privatize Social Security, the White House produced reports and proposals and quotes and videos from Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Mike Pence, Lindsey Graham, and dozens of other Republicans to do exactly that.
And if you needed a punchline: two organizations whined about Biden's speech. One was the Republican Party and the other was...the Chinese Communist Party.
B-Block (15:02) IN SPORTS: NHL shoots itself over Pride Night yet again. Home team doesn't show up for its own game. College hoops game delayed because they installed the court wrong! (19:10) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Who crashed Twitter and Instagram and Pokemon Go and all the other key apps and sites? Even Project Veritas has had enough of Little Jimmy O'Keefe. And book-banning in Florida has now extended to works about Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente - and Jackie Robinson!
C-Block (24:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Gemma in New York (25:33) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A listener asks 'how many people HAVE tried to get you fired?' Well I have a team working on trying to get an estimate within 100, but for now I've got the story of the Major League Baseball team that actually got me fired from a network before I even started a new job at the sport's network.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio.
I want to congratulate Chairman Jamie Comber and the Republicans
(00:26):
on what they accomplished, the message, the indelible words they
sent to America on the first day of their hearings
about Twitter. Would you like me to give the direct quote? Yeah, um,
please excuse my language, this is a direct quote. But
Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as a pussy aspitch.
Thank you Congressman Comber and Congressman Jordan's and Speaker McCarthy
(00:50):
and everybody else for getting that accurate characterization of Donald
Trump into the congressional record at your own hearing. I
in fact would like to associate myself with the witnesses remarks.
That's ex actually what Trump is? Um, what was it again?
Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as a pussy aspect.
(01:11):
But of course it's more than the Republican's success in
giving that tweet its own congressional hearing between the news
speaker unsuccessfully trying to shush his own human garbage like
Bobert and Green and the others from yelling, and then
getting owned by the President during the State of the
Union address and the Twitter hearing about you know, and
(01:32):
the Social Security cutting debate. Kevin McCarthy and members of
the Oversight Committee and other Republican congressmen and senators have
now presided over what might have been the biggest string
of self inflicted humiliations for one party in a thirty
six hour span in the history of the legislative branch.
(01:55):
Let's start at that Twitter Hunter Biden laptop hearing, or
what was supposed to be the Twitter Hunter Biden laptop hearing.
I want to congratulate Chair and Comber on revealing to
the American public how the government of the United States
really did try to censor Twitter and get it to
delete material at the direct instructions of President Trump. According
(02:20):
to notes from a conversation with you, msn Vorli's counsel.
Your counsel the White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter
to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?
Thank you for the question. In my role, I was
not responsible for receiving any sort of request from the government. However,
(02:42):
what I was Privy two was my supervisors letting us
know that we had received something along those lines or
something of a request. That's Representative Jerry Connolly of Massachusetts,
who also pointed out that from the White House, Trump
said Twitter had totally silenced conservatives, so he was ready
to shut Twitter down. On May twenty twenty, President Donald J.
(03:08):
Trump tweeted an I quote Republicans feel that social media
platforms totally silence conservatives, by the way, something that would
come as news to you, apparently, Mr Roth, because you're
still the subject of conservative harassment. We will strongly regulate,
he went on to say, or close them down before
(03:28):
we ever allow this to happen. Unquote msn Aroli. Doesn't
that sound eerily like a govern official telling Twitter that
there's a threat, will shut you down if we don't
like the content. Day one for the Republicans long anticipated,
even in some quarters, feared hearings into Twitter and and
(03:50):
communism and the First Amendment and censorship and Hunter Biden
had a laptop and pants and the weaponization of weapons
and guess what where Jamie Comber and company. The lights
were on, but no one was home until the lights
went off. On June three, the Iranian autowah, KAMENI did
(04:17):
do that? Did Twitter do that? Turn a lots off?
I'm beginning to think Lauren Bobart and Marjorie Trader Green
may not be the dumbest Republicans in Congress. After all,
Jim Jordan's had to admit that the First Amendment does
not apply to a private company's editorial policies. Paul Goes
(04:37):
are in the throes of something that made him literally
so unintelligible that four different witnesses asked him to repeat
his question. Jamie Comer had to listen to Twitter executives
explained no, they actually did have to kill tweets that
had revenge porn nude photos in them, even if they
were of Hunter Biden. Just About the only thing that
(05:00):
did not happen to the Republicans in this long, painful
backfire was Comber's college girlfriend coming into testify about her
claims that he beat her. Plus, we're always going to
be left with these words to live by Donald Trump
as a pussy aspect. I think I am speaking for
(05:20):
a lot of us when I say there was a
certain fear that the new McCarthy is m of Kevin
McCarthy and Jamie Comber and Jim Jordan might do more
than just provide grist for the fascist mill and sound
bites for the Tucker Curlson Show that it might like
the House on American Activities Committee of the forties and fifties,
or even the Menghazi investigations actually do some damage to
(05:41):
Democrats and liberals in government and out. Yeah, maybe not
if you missed it. The Republican talking point about the
state of the Union both Tuesday night and all day
yesterday was our President Biden supposedly lied about the GOP
stance on gutting social Security and Medicare. I even saw
a liberal writer say that Kevin McCarthy had made it
(06:04):
clear that those were now third rail issues and they
would not be part of the financial crisis. The Republicans
intend to force as usual about raising the debt ceiling.
But Biden was not talking just about raising the debt ceiling.
He was talking about the repeated, forceful, widespread spoken, tweeted, written,
(06:25):
prayed to promises by Republicans that they would cut, gut, alter,
and privatize Social Security and Medicare. So the Republicans spent
a night and a day denying something very specific and
very small, while the White House and the Democrats circulated
all the sound bites and all the quotes and all
the tweets confirming that Biden was right that Republican after
(06:47):
Republican has insisted on cutting or altering Social Security and Medicare,
and as he answered their childish cat calls during the
State of the Union, he baited them into their as
he put it, conversion to defending both programs. And then
he baited them again, lying about what large numbers of
them have said on the record. And yesterday in Wisconsin,
(07:09):
Biden went further. He named names. He held up a
copy of Senator Rick Scott of Florida's Rescue America plan,
in which Social Security and Medicare would not just be cut,
they would sunset. They would automatically stop every five years
unless Congress voted them back into existence. Biden also held
(07:31):
up print outs from Wisconsin's own and of course Russia's own,
Ron Johnson saying sunset every five years. That's outrageous. We
need to sunset it every year. Another sitting Senator, Mike
Lee on tape, saying it was his object to phase
out Social Security, to pull it out by the roots.
(07:52):
Lindsey Graham wanting the age of eligibility to go up
and the payouts to go down Steve Scalise, proposing all
of it, privatizing, delaying, cutting, and ineligibility if you earned
too much in your lifetime. Him and just a week
ago today, the last Republican Vice President of the United
States not just call for cutting Social Security. He said
(08:13):
he wanted to privatize it so that the money could
go into the stock market and the banking industry. And
he didn't mention this part so all his donors can
get a cut of the money you paid into Social Security.
Other Republicans who have called for cutbacks or cutouts or
privatizations Senator Marker Rubio, Senator John Thune, Congressman Jim Banks,
(08:35):
Congressman Michael Waltz, Senate nominee Blake Masters, Senator Tom Tillis,
Congressman Jody Arrington, Congressman Buddy Carter, and Congressman Lloyd Smucker,
and Congressman Jason Smith. And last November, then Minority Leader
Kevin McCarthy and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and presidential candidate
Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush. But that's it
(08:59):
only then, oh and and the members of the Republican
Study Committee, just a few Republican congress seven of them,
as if it could somehow have gotten worse for the Republicans,
it did. Yesterday. There were two groups who spent the
day bitching and moaning about what Joe Biden had said
(09:19):
about them on Tuesday night in the State of the Union, or,
as the Republicans view it, the Night of the massive
but hurt. One of them was the Republican Party, and
the other complainant was the Foreign Ministry of the People's
Republic of China. The Associated Press headline China says it
was smeared in biden State of the Union speech the
(09:42):
Republicans arm and arm with the Chinese Communists, and if
that were not punchline enough, the punch line of all
punchlines for all time. The Chinese statement was made by
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mawning Joe Biden under attack by Speaker
(10:05):
McCarthy and spokesman Mao. Not enough rakes to go around
the Republican Party spokesman Mao still ahead. Why has the
(10:29):
ironically named Project Veritas ousted Little Jimmy O'Keefe. Maybe something
to do with a stolen diary. Maybe is Twitter back
up for you? Instagram, Facebook, Google, Aws, your McDonald's app YouTube.
How about Pokemon Go? Were you denied Pokemon Go? During
the big app out of the National Hypocrisy League rides again,
(10:54):
a team says it's not going to wear Pride Night
uniforms because it never chooses to wear such special uniforms itself.
It only wears them when the league demands it, like
on Military pre station night or St. Patrick's Day. The
league demands you wear a special uniform on St. Patrick's Day,
my ass and a regular listener has now asked me
(11:16):
how many times somebody has tried to get me fired? Anybody?
He means President, small players, Sportscarencer. Let me tell you this.
No man can count that. I but once an entire
Major League Baseball franchise got me fired from a job
I had not even started yet, things I promised not
to tell. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown
(11:46):
with Keith Olberman. This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that not anymore.
This is countdown with Keith Alberman in sports Man. The
(12:12):
National Hockey League just keeps digging. First, the Philadelphia Flyers
applauded one of their players who refused to participate in
Pride Night, even just to the extent of wearing a
pregame warm up shirt with his number in rainbow colors
rather than the usual white. Then, with the crowd already
in the stands for their seventh Pride Night, the New
(12:33):
York Rangers abandoned their pregame Pride warm up shirts and
didn't explain why. Then, the commissioner of the League, Gary Bettman,
said the NHL had to be safe for all diversity.
So the Russian players, whose Russian Orthodox Religion advocates, you know,
attacking Ukraine because Ukraine has Pride parades, their hatred and
(12:54):
homophobia is prioritized by the National Hypocrisy League over the
LGBTQ community that the NHL always boasts about serving with
its obviously meaningless and rather cynical merchandizing effort. Hockey is
for everyone, unless you happen to offend some Russian Orthodox
Church member. Now, the NHL's New York Islanders confirmed they
(13:18):
will hold their Pride Night this evening, but they will
again not wear any special warm up uniforms. The team
says it has never warned them, and in fact, it
has an organizational policy against wearing any specialized warmups. The
Islanders say they do wear specialized warmups on Hockey Fights,
Cancer Night and Hockey Military Night and St. Patrick's Day,
(13:40):
but only because the National Hockey League makes them. Those
are league wide initiatives. The NHL makes the New York
Islanders where St. Patrick's Day uniforms and Military Night uniforms,
but its teams are now reneging on Pride Night. And
as if the NHL needed another problem, last night was
(14:02):
Black History Month Night at Madison's Square Garden in the
New York Rangers war special warm ups and had great ceremonies,
all good, and then their TV reporter Michelle Jingras announced
that they would be auctioned off. The uniforms would with
proceeds going to the quote United Negro Fund. That would
be the United Negro College Fund, which I guess she's
(14:23):
never heard of since it's only been operating since nineteen
A lighter note from hockey unless you happen to be
the owner of the Vermillion County Bobcats of the Southern
Professional Hockey League. Vermillion County, that is, Danville, Illinois was
hosting the visiting Quad City Storm add At the scheduled
puck drop time, the road team was on the ice
(14:45):
and warming up and the fans were at the rank
and the home team was nowhere to be found. After
a brief wait, the referees declared the visiting team, the Storm,
as winners by forfeit, and their players were gracious enough
to invite the Vermillion County fans to join them on
the ice for a group's gate. What happened to the
(15:06):
Vermillion County Bobcats? For some reason, the thought is they're
about to go out of business, possibly because in their
nearly two seasons of existence in that league, the Bobcats
have played eighty six games and lost seventy seven of them,
and yet somebody else always has it worse. Last night's
basketball game, Vermont at Maine delayed because Maine put its
(15:30):
basketball court in wrong. You heard me. A lot of
the wooden panels that make up the court were installed incorrectly,
kind of not backwards per se, but the left side
went where the right side should be, and as a result,
the baseline under the basket looked not like the straight
line it was supposed to be, but rather like a
dotted line on a rural highway. It took about eighty
(15:54):
minutes to fix, and now the question becomes, how in
the hell did this happen in the first place? Time
now for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
(16:16):
done in Krueger effects specimens, who constitute today's worst persons
in the world, The Bronze Twitter. It went down yesterday.
First it was direct messages, Then any attempt to tweet
was greeted by a message that said you couldn't, or
you couldn't because you had already tweeted once too often
today And while users rightly fumed, it appears it was
(16:39):
hardly just Twitter, and for once it wasn't Elmo's fault.
There were outages at or at about the same time Instagram, Facebook,
Fox News, Tweet Deck, run Escape, Run Escape for Ruin
Arledge fans, Facebook Messenger, Google a WS, the McDonald's app YouTube,
(17:01):
and Pokemon Go the Big app out of three. No explanation,
lots of speculation. Our runner up, James O'Keefe, the Lee
Harvey Oswald look alike who runs the Dirty Tricks Gang,
sarcastically titled Project Very Toss or he did until yesterday,
(17:21):
when O'Keefe suddenly went on paid leave pending a board
hearing Friday. No official explanation from the group for the
not very successful Provocateurs departure. But New York Magazine reports
that quote internal turmoil, lawsuits from former employees, leaks about
its internal workings, and a federal investigation into its conduct
(17:41):
in purchasing a diary stolen from Ashley Biden, the president's
daughter may have paid, played a part, including the health
of the organization, the firing of two executives by O'Keefe,
who were then reinstated. The Daily Beast says at one
point O'Keefe took away a sandwich he wanted from a
pregnant woman who worked there. Maybe it was that, or maybe,
like the rest of us, they just don't like him.
(18:04):
But the winners Governor Rohn de Santis of Florida and
the chairperson of the Board of Education of Duval County, Florida, Dr.
Kelly Coker Duval That's Jacksonville. More than a year ago,
Dr Coker's board removed several dozen books from classrooms for
quote review. Nothing has been heard from these books since.
It turns out among the titles deemed dangerous enough that
(18:26):
kids have not been able to see them for the
last year. Henry Aaron's Dream, Roberto Clemente Pride to the
Pittsburgh Pirates. Unstoppable, How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians
School football team defeated Army one of the Baron Stain
Bears books, and most stunning of all. Another book called
(18:47):
The Hero two Doors Down, based on the true story
of friendship between a boy and a baseball legend. The
book is about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson, whose first game
in the uniform of an integrated team in spring training
of n when he broke the color barrier in major
sports in this country took place in Daytona Beach, Florida,
(19:11):
oh And the book that Duval County, Florida Band about
Jackie Robinson. It was written by Sharon Robinson, Jackie's daughter,
Florida Dictator Ron DeSantis and his educational ava Braun Duval
County Board of Education chairperson Dr Kelly Let's Band books
about integrating baseball. Coker two Days, Worst Parsons in the
(19:37):
World still ahead on countdown. A regular listener followed up
on a joke I made yesterday, and he asked, how
many people have tried to get you fired? That made
me think of the time a Major League baseball team
(19:59):
got me fired from Baseball's own network before I even
started on the job. They had just offered to me
coming up on things I promised not to tell first.
In each addition of Countdown, we feature dog in need
you can help. Every dog has its day back to
New York. This time Second Chance Rescue in Queens has
a terrible story, hopefully with a good outcome. Somebody moved
(20:22):
and left their three dogs abandoned on the property. Were
that not bad enough? Somehow? One of the dogs, a
girl named Gemma looks like a cross between a shepherd
and a husky maybe even a malamute, had a tail
injury so severe she was bleeding to death. Second Chance
picked her up is now running a fundraiser for her
on giving Grid. If you can donate, you can find
(20:43):
Gemma on giving Grid or on my Twitter feed, and
your retweets will also help her greatly. I thank you,
and of course Gemma thanks you. The owners of at
(21:13):
least five different Major League Baseball teams have tried to
get me fired over the years, and one, the New
York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On November two thousand twelve,
Why Agent followed the instructions of Tony Pettiti, than the
president of the TV publicity channel owned by Major League
Baseball MLB Network, and called Petiti to finalize a deal
(21:34):
by which I would join the channel to do a
daily show, probably at five thirty at night. It was
going to be weird. MLB Network and its sister hockey channel,
NHL Network originate in the same studios in Caucus, New
Jersey that MSNBC used every day from the day I
started there in October through the day in October two
(21:55):
thousand seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City.
I had been asked to do something for MLB Network
in two thousand eight and two thousand nine, before it
ever got on the air. The request came directly from
the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Sealing. He also asked
me to write for Baseball's website, MLB dot Com. We
actually got that done, but the TV show was impossible
(22:17):
because of my schedule until I was a free agent
in the fall of two thousand twelve. So I was
invited in the fall of two thousand twelve to do
a couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they
went well except for this crazy deja vu kind of
thing that hit me when I went into the building
and found that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars
to upgrade all the technical stuff in the studio designs,
(22:40):
they had not touched anything else from the MSNBC era.
The carpet tiles were the same, the ping pong table
in the break room was the same. The signs on
the back of the bathroom door telling you who to
call if the John overflows were the same. It was
(23:01):
like having a dream where you're back in your childhood
home when everything is exactly the way it was, including
the creeks and the floorboards, except oh, by the way,
there's a nuclear reactor in the middle of your den,
and you keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway,
The guest appearances on MLB Network went well, and this
guy Pettiti, the president, asked if I would fill in
(23:23):
for two days on their new morning show the week
of Thanksgiving two thousand twelve. I certainly knew how to
get to the building. I did the shows with Brian
Kenny and Ken Rosenthal and Bob Costas, his son Keith,
and Alana Rizzo, and we had a good time and
Tony Pettiti, the president of MLB Network, attended the meetings
that we would have before and after each show. I
mean full staff meetings, fifteen or so people standing around
(23:47):
a bunch of cubicles, and in front of all of them,
Tony Petiti began asking me if I thought my new
show for MLB Network would do better at five or
five thirty, and if I agreed with him that I
should work only during the baseball season and spring training
and playoffs and winter meetings, and then stay fresh by
taking the rest of the year off. He asked me
(24:07):
if there were people on the staff of the morning
show who I would like to work with. I mean,
this is in front of all of the staff of
the morning show. He warned me they couldn't pay me
the kind of salary I was used to, and I
said that happily, the kind of salary I was used
to meant I did not need the kind of salary
I was used to. He told me to remind my
agent to call him the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished
(24:27):
me a happy Turkey, and everybody left, and everybody heard
his plans, and a couple of the producers asked me
if I was recommending them to be on my new
show on MLB Network. So how come I don't have
a new show on MLB network, Or how come we're
not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my new show on
MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my agent calls me
(24:50):
and says he's just gotten off the phone with Tony
Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation he had had
since he became an agent. No, let me rephrase that,
he said, because it wasn't a conversation, it was an
attempted conversation. I kept asking him what he told me
to call him about, and he would then say nothing.
(25:11):
Initially I did not understand what you mean he said nothing,
My agent said he meant literally that. I say, so, Tony,
what's your offer to Keith? And then there was silence,
and I thought the phone call had dropped out. So
I said, Tony, are you there? And he say sure,
am So again I asked him, you know what's your
offer to Keith? And again literally silence, Only this time
(25:32):
I can hear him breathing. I tried, like ten different ways,
are we talking about Keith? Now? Silence? Is there a
reason you're being silent about Keith Tony silence. If I
changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he was his
normal self. If I mentioned your name, he went silent.
The next day, the agent calls me back. Fatiti just
(25:55):
did this again with me on the phone. He wouldn't speak, literally,
wouldn't say any words in any language if I mentioned
your name. Took me a long time to find now
what had actually happened. The next baseball season, after I'd
gone back to work at ESPN, I'm at a game.
There's one of the MLB network officials whom I had
met on my two days before Thanksgiving two thousand twelve,
(26:16):
and this person comes up to me and apologizes. We
all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Patiti is such
a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
I never found out which one. There was some kind
of conference call on Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the
teams about your new show, and whoever was on the
call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like,
if you put them on MLB Network, we will disable
(26:38):
your cameras at Yankee Stadium and never let any of
you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father
before me, a season ticket holder for forty two years
for Yankee games, and for ten of those years, I
was also one of the two announcers who did a
(26:59):
kind of play by play over the public address system
at Yankee Stadium on Old time His Day. And then
one day in two thousand eleven, I tweeted a photo
of a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort
of hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last
(27:20):
pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a
supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself
from on the field what the last pitch had been.
I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees
and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and
a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees
(27:42):
management said they were not mad at me. And then
three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked
to the papers that I had been fired as Old
Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted
that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands,
so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my
season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate
(28:04):
and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year,
and relax, I gave about se them to make a wish.
But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were furious that I
would not give them four hundred thousand dollars a year anyway,
so they told MLB Network if MLB Network gave me
a show, they would unplug MLB network cameras. Actually they
(28:25):
did more than that. I asked my friend, the MLB
network official, the real puzzler of the saga, why this
MLB Network President Tony Petiti, literally would not speak, would
not say anything, not even deals off to my agent. Oh,
the officials said, the Yankees were specific about that if
(28:46):
you say anything to him or his people, we will
get you fired. So Petiti took it literally. He said,
if you called or your agent called, to just give
you the silent treatment. These are adults, mind you, and
they say that on air. Talent are the prima donnas.
As I said, the Yankees are the closest of five
(29:07):
different teams who tried to act have actually gotten me
fired sort of. When I was in local news in
Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went from being
Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife, tried to
get me fired from my station in l A because
I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She tried
again a few years later after I got to ESPN.
(29:28):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well the devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was
convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He
could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid,
actually hated him so much that this person called me
(29:48):
up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went
on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's
the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a
mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB
network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big
fan of mine, but for forty four years the team
(30:10):
has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Ransdorff,
and Jerry Ryan'sdorff was one of the key figures in
the strike that killed the baseball season during that terrible
winter that followed, my sources in the Baseball Players Association
showed me a copy of their offer to the owners.
The owners were led by Ryansdorff, and in the players offer,
(30:32):
they were willing to actually negotiate one of the players
Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They were willing to cut
it or maybe eliminate it outright. But after complaining about
salary arbitration for twenty years, the owner's committee, led by
this Rhinsdorff idiot, turned the players down. Apparently most of
(30:54):
the owners did not know that Ryansdorff had passed on
a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a kind of automatic
inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they came down on
Rhinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What do you mean
you turned down the chance to stop salary arbitration. So
naturally he blamed me, and he called up ESPN and
(31:16):
he demanded they fire me, which to their credit, they
never did do. Revenge is a dish which people have
taste prefer to eat cold goes. The old Italian proverb
Rhinsdorff is today despised within baseball. He has once again
ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa Bay Rays owner
named Oley sold the team unknowingly, obviously to a man
(31:39):
named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to be married to
a friend of mine from college. So whenever the Rays
would come into New York, I would sit with Stu
and his wife Lisa in their box. Their eldest son
interned for me. MLB network, which started out pretty good,
is now just a propaganda machine in which every team
is unbeaten and every player is the greatest ever. And
they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal because he dared
(32:02):
to write something critical of the idiot Commissioner Robert Manfred
and Mr renege on the offer Petiti, he really got
his three years later he was promoted to Deputy Commissioner
of Baseball, but that new commissioner Manfred squeezed him out
and he had to go work as the president of
some e sports company. And then they offered him a
(32:24):
year later. And I have not heard anything about Tony
Pettiti since literally, it's been absolute silence, not a single
spoken word. And why does that sound so familiar? To
(32:54):
the larger point, how many people have tried to get
me fired? I gotta make a list. This may take weeks.
It's gotta be at least twenty. In addition to that,
baseball owner Jackie Autrey, one guy I worked with a sportscaster,
tried to get me fired at ESPN and then tried
to get me fired at Fox. Countdown has come to
you from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters
(33:16):
in the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Thank you
for listening. Here the credits. Most of the music, including
our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed
by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitars based and drums by Brian Ray,
all orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle produced by
t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
(33:39):
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Alderman theme from ESPN Too, and it was written
by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN inc musical comments
or Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven hundred
(33:59):
and sixty fifth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow, and until then, I'm Keith all Reman, good morning,
good afternoon. What was that name again? And I'm Keith Olberman,
(34:24):
good morning, good afternoon, good night. And this is the
reason you should listen to the end of the podcast.
Every day. Good Luck Countdown with Keith old Reman is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(34:46):
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.
I want to congratulate Chairman Jamie Comber and the Republicans
(00:26):
on what they accomplished, the message, the indelible words they
sent to America on the first day of their hearings
about Twitter. Would you like me to give the direct quote? Yeah, um,
please excuse my language, this is a direct quote. But
Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as a pussy aspitch.
Thank you Congressman Comber and Congressman Jordan's and Speaker McCarthy
(00:50):
and everybody else for getting that accurate characterization of Donald
Trump into the congressional record at your own hearing. I
in fact would like to associate myself with the witnesses remarks.
That's ex actually what Trump is? Um, what was it again?
Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as a pussy aspect.
(01:11):
But of course it's more than the Republican's success in
giving that tweet its own congressional hearing between the news
speaker unsuccessfully trying to shush his own human garbage like
Bobert and Green and the others from yelling, and then
getting owned by the President during the State of the
Union address and the Twitter hearing about you know, and
(01:32):
the Social Security cutting debate. Kevin McCarthy and members of
the Oversight Committee and other Republican congressmen and senators have
now presided over what might have been the biggest string
of self inflicted humiliations for one party in a thirty
six hour span in the history of the legislative branch.
(01:55):
Let's start at that Twitter Hunter Biden laptop hearing, or
what was supposed to be the Twitter Hunter Biden laptop hearing.
I want to congratulate Chair and Comber on revealing to
the American public how the government of the United States
really did try to censor Twitter and get it to
delete material at the direct instructions of President Trump. According
(02:20):
to notes from a conversation with you, msn Vorli's counsel.
Your counsel the White House almost immediately thereafter contacted Twitter
to demand the tweet be taken down. Is that accurate?
Thank you for the question. In my role, I was
not responsible for receiving any sort of request from the government. However,
(02:42):
what I was Privy two was my supervisors letting us
know that we had received something along those lines or
something of a request. That's Representative Jerry Connolly of Massachusetts,
who also pointed out that from the White House, Trump
said Twitter had totally silenced conservatives, so he was ready
to shut Twitter down. On May twenty twenty, President Donald J.
(03:08):
Trump tweeted an I quote Republicans feel that social media
platforms totally silence conservatives, by the way, something that would
come as news to you, apparently, Mr Roth, because you're
still the subject of conservative harassment. We will strongly regulate,
he went on to say, or close them down before
(03:28):
we ever allow this to happen. Unquote msn Aroli. Doesn't
that sound eerily like a govern official telling Twitter that
there's a threat, will shut you down if we don't
like the content. Day one for the Republicans long anticipated,
even in some quarters, feared hearings into Twitter and and
(03:50):
communism and the First Amendment and censorship and Hunter Biden
had a laptop and pants and the weaponization of weapons
and guess what where Jamie Comber and company. The lights
were on, but no one was home until the lights
went off. On June three, the Iranian autowah, KAMENI did
(04:17):
do that? Did Twitter do that? Turn a lots off?
I'm beginning to think Lauren Bobart and Marjorie Trader Green
may not be the dumbest Republicans in Congress. After all,
Jim Jordan's had to admit that the First Amendment does
not apply to a private company's editorial policies. Paul Goes
(04:37):
are in the throes of something that made him literally
so unintelligible that four different witnesses asked him to repeat
his question. Jamie Comer had to listen to Twitter executives
explained no, they actually did have to kill tweets that
had revenge porn nude photos in them, even if they
were of Hunter Biden. Just About the only thing that
(05:00):
did not happen to the Republicans in this long, painful
backfire was Comber's college girlfriend coming into testify about her
claims that he beat her. Plus, we're always going to
be left with these words to live by Donald Trump
as a pussy aspect. I think I am speaking for
(05:20):
a lot of us when I say there was a
certain fear that the new McCarthy is m of Kevin
McCarthy and Jamie Comber and Jim Jordan might do more
than just provide grist for the fascist mill and sound
bites for the Tucker Curlson Show that it might like
the House on American Activities Committee of the forties and fifties,
or even the Menghazi investigations actually do some damage to
(05:41):
Democrats and liberals in government and out. Yeah, maybe not
if you missed it. The Republican talking point about the
state of the Union both Tuesday night and all day
yesterday was our President Biden supposedly lied about the GOP
stance on gutting social Security and Medicare. I even saw
a liberal writer say that Kevin McCarthy had made it
(06:04):
clear that those were now third rail issues and they
would not be part of the financial crisis. The Republicans
intend to force as usual about raising the debt ceiling.
But Biden was not talking just about raising the debt ceiling.
He was talking about the repeated, forceful, widespread spoken, tweeted, written,
(06:25):
prayed to promises by Republicans that they would cut, gut, alter,
and privatize Social Security and Medicare. So the Republicans spent
a night and a day denying something very specific and
very small, while the White House and the Democrats circulated
all the sound bites and all the quotes and all
the tweets confirming that Biden was right that Republican after
(06:47):
Republican has insisted on cutting or altering Social Security and Medicare,
and as he answered their childish cat calls during the
State of the Union, he baited them into their as
he put it, conversion to defending both programs. And then
he baited them again, lying about what large numbers of
them have said on the record. And yesterday in Wisconsin,
(07:09):
Biden went further. He named names. He held up a
copy of Senator Rick Scott of Florida's Rescue America plan,
in which Social Security and Medicare would not just be cut,
they would sunset. They would automatically stop every five years
unless Congress voted them back into existence. Biden also held
(07:31):
up print outs from Wisconsin's own and of course Russia's own,
Ron Johnson saying sunset every five years. That's outrageous. We
need to sunset it every year. Another sitting Senator, Mike
Lee on tape, saying it was his object to phase
out Social Security, to pull it out by the roots.
(07:52):
Lindsey Graham wanting the age of eligibility to go up
and the payouts to go down Steve Scalise, proposing all
of it, privatizing, delaying, cutting, and ineligibility if you earned
too much in your lifetime. Him and just a week
ago today, the last Republican Vice President of the United
States not just call for cutting Social Security. He said
(08:13):
he wanted to privatize it so that the money could
go into the stock market and the banking industry. And
he didn't mention this part so all his donors can
get a cut of the money you paid into Social Security.
Other Republicans who have called for cutbacks or cutouts or
privatizations Senator Marker Rubio, Senator John Thune, Congressman Jim Banks,
(08:35):
Congressman Michael Waltz, Senate nominee Blake Masters, Senator Tom Tillis,
Congressman Jody Arrington, Congressman Buddy Carter, and Congressman Lloyd Smucker,
and Congressman Jason Smith. And last November, then Minority Leader
Kevin McCarthy and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and presidential candidate
Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush. But that's it
(08:59):
only then, oh and and the members of the Republican
Study Committee, just a few Republican congress seven of them,
as if it could somehow have gotten worse for the Republicans,
it did. Yesterday. There were two groups who spent the
day bitching and moaning about what Joe Biden had said
(09:19):
about them on Tuesday night in the State of the Union, or,
as the Republicans view it, the Night of the massive
but hurt. One of them was the Republican Party, and
the other complainant was the Foreign Ministry of the People's
Republic of China. The Associated Press headline China says it
was smeared in biden State of the Union speech the
(09:42):
Republicans arm and arm with the Chinese Communists, and if
that were not punchline enough, the punch line of all
punchlines for all time. The Chinese statement was made by
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mawning Joe Biden under attack by Speaker
(10:05):
McCarthy and spokesman Mao. Not enough rakes to go around
the Republican Party spokesman Mao still ahead. Why has the
(10:29):
ironically named Project Veritas ousted Little Jimmy O'Keefe. Maybe something
to do with a stolen diary. Maybe is Twitter back
up for you? Instagram, Facebook, Google, Aws, your McDonald's app YouTube.
How about Pokemon Go? Were you denied Pokemon Go? During
the big app out of the National Hypocrisy League rides again,
(10:54):
a team says it's not going to wear Pride Night
uniforms because it never chooses to wear such special uniforms itself.
It only wears them when the league demands it, like
on Military pre station night or St. Patrick's Day. The
league demands you wear a special uniform on St. Patrick's Day,
my ass and a regular listener has now asked me
(11:16):
how many times somebody has tried to get me fired? Anybody?
He means President, small players, Sportscarencer. Let me tell you this.
No man can count that. I but once an entire
Major League Baseball franchise got me fired from a job
I had not even started yet, things I promised not
to tell. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown
(11:46):
with Keith Olberman. This is SportsCenter. Wait, check that not anymore.
This is countdown with Keith Alberman in sports Man. The
(12:12):
National Hockey League just keeps digging. First, the Philadelphia Flyers
applauded one of their players who refused to participate in
Pride Night, even just to the extent of wearing a
pregame warm up shirt with his number in rainbow colors
rather than the usual white. Then, with the crowd already
in the stands for their seventh Pride Night, the New
(12:33):
York Rangers abandoned their pregame Pride warm up shirts and
didn't explain why. Then, the commissioner of the League, Gary Bettman,
said the NHL had to be safe for all diversity.
So the Russian players, whose Russian Orthodox Religion advocates, you know,
attacking Ukraine because Ukraine has Pride parades, their hatred and
(12:54):
homophobia is prioritized by the National Hypocrisy League over the
LGBTQ community that the NHL always boasts about serving with
its obviously meaningless and rather cynical merchandizing effort. Hockey is
for everyone, unless you happen to offend some Russian Orthodox
Church member. Now, the NHL's New York Islanders confirmed they
(13:18):
will hold their Pride Night this evening, but they will
again not wear any special warm up uniforms. The team
says it has never warned them, and in fact, it
has an organizational policy against wearing any specialized warmups. The
Islanders say they do wear specialized warmups on Hockey Fights,
Cancer Night and Hockey Military Night and St. Patrick's Day,
(13:40):
but only because the National Hockey League makes them. Those
are league wide initiatives. The NHL makes the New York
Islanders where St. Patrick's Day uniforms and Military Night uniforms,
but its teams are now reneging on Pride Night. And
as if the NHL needed another problem, last night was
(14:02):
Black History Month Night at Madison's Square Garden in the
New York Rangers war special warm ups and had great ceremonies,
all good, and then their TV reporter Michelle Jingras announced
that they would be auctioned off. The uniforms would with
proceeds going to the quote United Negro Fund. That would
be the United Negro College Fund, which I guess she's
(14:23):
never heard of since it's only been operating since nineteen
A lighter note from hockey unless you happen to be
the owner of the Vermillion County Bobcats of the Southern
Professional Hockey League. Vermillion County, that is, Danville, Illinois was
hosting the visiting Quad City Storm add At the scheduled
puck drop time, the road team was on the ice
(14:45):
and warming up and the fans were at the rank
and the home team was nowhere to be found. After
a brief wait, the referees declared the visiting team, the Storm,
as winners by forfeit, and their players were gracious enough
to invite the Vermillion County fans to join them on
the ice for a group's gate. What happened to the
(15:06):
Vermillion County Bobcats? For some reason, the thought is they're
about to go out of business, possibly because in their
nearly two seasons of existence in that league, the Bobcats
have played eighty six games and lost seventy seven of them,
and yet somebody else always has it worse. Last night's
basketball game, Vermont at Maine delayed because Maine put its
(15:30):
basketball court in wrong. You heard me. A lot of
the wooden panels that make up the court were installed incorrectly,
kind of not backwards per se, but the left side
went where the right side should be, and as a result,
the baseline under the basket looked not like the straight
line it was supposed to be, but rather like a
dotted line on a rural highway. It took about eighty
(15:54):
minutes to fix, and now the question becomes, how in
the hell did this happen in the first place? Time
now for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
(16:16):
done in Krueger effects specimens, who constitute today's worst persons
in the world, The Bronze Twitter. It went down yesterday.
First it was direct messages, Then any attempt to tweet
was greeted by a message that said you couldn't, or
you couldn't because you had already tweeted once too often
today And while users rightly fumed, it appears it was
(16:39):
hardly just Twitter, and for once it wasn't Elmo's fault.
There were outages at or at about the same time Instagram, Facebook,
Fox News, Tweet Deck, run Escape, Run Escape for Ruin
Arledge fans, Facebook Messenger, Google a WS, the McDonald's app YouTube,
(17:01):
and Pokemon Go the Big app out of three. No explanation,
lots of speculation. Our runner up, James O'Keefe, the Lee
Harvey Oswald look alike who runs the Dirty Tricks Gang,
sarcastically titled Project Very Toss or he did until yesterday,
(17:21):
when O'Keefe suddenly went on paid leave pending a board
hearing Friday. No official explanation from the group for the
not very successful Provocateurs departure. But New York Magazine reports
that quote internal turmoil, lawsuits from former employees, leaks about
its internal workings, and a federal investigation into its conduct
(17:41):
in purchasing a diary stolen from Ashley Biden, the president's
daughter may have paid, played a part, including the health
of the organization, the firing of two executives by O'Keefe,
who were then reinstated. The Daily Beast says at one
point O'Keefe took away a sandwich he wanted from a
pregnant woman who worked there. Maybe it was that, or maybe,
like the rest of us, they just don't like him.
(18:04):
But the winners Governor Rohn de Santis of Florida and
the chairperson of the Board of Education of Duval County, Florida, Dr.
Kelly Coker Duval That's Jacksonville. More than a year ago,
Dr Coker's board removed several dozen books from classrooms for
quote review. Nothing has been heard from these books since.
It turns out among the titles deemed dangerous enough that
(18:26):
kids have not been able to see them for the
last year. Henry Aaron's Dream, Roberto Clemente Pride to the
Pittsburgh Pirates. Unstoppable, How Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indians
School football team defeated Army one of the Baron Stain
Bears books, and most stunning of all. Another book called
(18:47):
The Hero two Doors Down, based on the true story
of friendship between a boy and a baseball legend. The
book is about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson, whose first game
in the uniform of an integrated team in spring training
of n when he broke the color barrier in major
sports in this country took place in Daytona Beach, Florida,
(19:11):
oh And the book that Duval County, Florida Band about
Jackie Robinson. It was written by Sharon Robinson, Jackie's daughter,
Florida Dictator Ron DeSantis and his educational ava Braun Duval
County Board of Education chairperson Dr Kelly Let's Band books
about integrating baseball. Coker two Days, Worst Parsons in the
(19:37):
World still ahead on countdown. A regular listener followed up
on a joke I made yesterday, and he asked, how
many people have tried to get you fired? That made
me think of the time a Major League baseball team
(19:59):
got me fired from Baseball's own network before I even
started on the job. They had just offered to me
coming up on things I promised not to tell first.
In each addition of Countdown, we feature dog in need
you can help. Every dog has its day back to
New York. This time Second Chance Rescue in Queens has
a terrible story, hopefully with a good outcome. Somebody moved
(20:22):
and left their three dogs abandoned on the property. Were
that not bad enough? Somehow? One of the dogs, a
girl named Gemma looks like a cross between a shepherd
and a husky maybe even a malamute, had a tail
injury so severe she was bleeding to death. Second Chance
picked her up is now running a fundraiser for her
on giving Grid. If you can donate, you can find
(20:43):
Gemma on giving Grid or on my Twitter feed, and
your retweets will also help her greatly. I thank you,
and of course Gemma thanks you. The owners of at
(21:13):
least five different Major League Baseball teams have tried to
get me fired over the years, and one, the New
York Yankees, kind of succeeded. On November two thousand twelve,
Why Agent followed the instructions of Tony Pettiti, than the
president of the TV publicity channel owned by Major League
Baseball MLB Network, and called Petiti to finalize a deal
(21:34):
by which I would join the channel to do a
daily show, probably at five thirty at night. It was
going to be weird. MLB Network and its sister hockey channel,
NHL Network originate in the same studios in Caucus, New
Jersey that MSNBC used every day from the day I
started there in October through the day in October two
(21:55):
thousand seven when NBC finally moved us to New York City.
I had been asked to do something for MLB Network
in two thousand eight and two thousand nine, before it
ever got on the air. The request came directly from
the then Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Sealing. He also asked
me to write for Baseball's website, MLB dot Com. We
actually got that done, but the TV show was impossible
(22:17):
because of my schedule until I was a free agent
in the fall of two thousand twelve. So I was
invited in the fall of two thousand twelve to do
a couple of guest appearances at MLB Network, and they
went well except for this crazy deja vu kind of
thing that hit me when I went into the building
and found that while Baseball had spent sixty million dollars
to upgrade all the technical stuff in the studio designs,
(22:40):
they had not touched anything else from the MSNBC era.
The carpet tiles were the same, the ping pong table
in the break room was the same. The signs on
the back of the bathroom door telling you who to
call if the John overflows were the same. It was
(23:01):
like having a dream where you're back in your childhood
home when everything is exactly the way it was, including
the creeks and the floorboards, except oh, by the way,
there's a nuclear reactor in the middle of your den,
and you keep saying, where did that come from? Anyway,
The guest appearances on MLB Network went well, and this
guy Pettiti, the president, asked if I would fill in
(23:23):
for two days on their new morning show the week
of Thanksgiving two thousand twelve. I certainly knew how to
get to the building. I did the shows with Brian
Kenny and Ken Rosenthal and Bob Costas, his son Keith,
and Alana Rizzo, and we had a good time and
Tony Pettiti, the president of MLB Network, attended the meetings
that we would have before and after each show. I
mean full staff meetings, fifteen or so people standing around
(23:47):
a bunch of cubicles, and in front of all of them,
Tony Petiti began asking me if I thought my new
show for MLB Network would do better at five or
five thirty, and if I agreed with him that I
should work only during the baseball season and spring training
and playoffs and winter meetings, and then stay fresh by
taking the rest of the year off. He asked me
(24:07):
if there were people on the staff of the morning
show who I would like to work with. I mean,
this is in front of all of the staff of
the morning show. He warned me they couldn't pay me
the kind of salary I was used to, and I
said that happily, the kind of salary I was used
to meant I did not need the kind of salary
I was used to. He told me to remind my
agent to call him the monday after Thanksgiving. He wished
(24:27):
me a happy Turkey, and everybody left, and everybody heard
his plans, and a couple of the producers asked me
if I was recommending them to be on my new
show on MLB Network. So how come I don't have
a new show on MLB network, Or how come we're
not celebrating the tenth anniversary of my new show on
MLB Network. Well, on Monday afternoon, my agent calls me
(24:50):
and says he's just gotten off the phone with Tony
Pettiti and it was the strangest conversation he had had
since he became an agent. No, let me rephrase that,
he said, because it wasn't a conversation, it was an
attempted conversation. I kept asking him what he told me
to call him about, and he would then say nothing.
(25:11):
Initially I did not understand what you mean he said nothing,
My agent said he meant literally that. I say, so, Tony,
what's your offer to Keith? And then there was silence,
and I thought the phone call had dropped out. So
I said, Tony, are you there? And he say sure,
am So again I asked him, you know what's your
offer to Keith? And again literally silence, Only this time
(25:32):
I can hear him breathing. I tried, like ten different ways,
are we talking about Keith? Now? Silence? Is there a
reason you're being silent about Keith Tony silence. If I
changed the subject, talked about somebody else, he was his
normal self. If I mentioned your name, he went silent.
The next day, the agent calls me back. Fatiti just
(25:55):
did this again with me on the phone. He wouldn't speak, literally,
wouldn't say any words in any language if I mentioned
your name. Took me a long time to find now
what had actually happened. The next baseball season, after I'd
gone back to work at ESPN, I'm at a game.
There's one of the MLB network officials whom I had
met on my two days before Thanksgiving two thousand twelve,
(26:16):
and this person comes up to me and apologizes. We
all heard what happened. It's so embarrassing. Patiti is such
a coward. The Yankees got to him and another club,
I never found out which one. There was some kind
of conference call on Monday after Thanksgiving to tell the
teams about your new show, and whoever was on the
call for the Yankees went ballistic. They said something like,
if you put them on MLB Network, we will disable
(26:38):
your cameras at Yankee Stadium and never let any of
you inside the building again. Instantly I knew why the
Yankees would have done that. I was, and my father
before me, a season ticket holder for forty two years
for Yankee games, and for ten of those years, I
was also one of the two announcers who did a
(26:59):
kind of play by play over the public address system
at Yankee Stadium on Old time His Day. And then
one day in two thousand eleven, I tweeted a photo
of a Yankee employee in the stands giving some sort
of hand signals to Alex Rodriguez in the on deck circle.
The guy was clearly telling Alex Rodriguez what the last
(27:20):
pitch had been. It wasn't cheating, it was helping a
supposed superstar who apparently could not figure out for himself
from on the field what the last pitch had been.
I tweeted the photo. Major League Baseball called the Yankees
and told them to cut it out. The Yankees and
a Rod looked stupid in the newspapers, and the Yankees
(27:42):
management said they were not mad at me. And then
three months later, days before Old Timer's Day, they leaked
to the papers that I had been fired as Old
Timer's Day play by play man because I had tweeted
that photo of Alex Rodriguez and the guy in the stands,
so rather naturally, my response was to not renew my
season tickets. And my tickets were right behind home plate
(28:04):
and they cost like four hundred thousand dollars a year,
and relax, I gave about se them to make a wish.
But the Yankees, being the Yankees, were furious that I
would not give them four hundred thousand dollars a year anyway,
so they told MLB Network if MLB Network gave me
a show, they would unplug MLB network cameras. Actually they
(28:25):
did more than that. I asked my friend, the MLB
network official, the real puzzler of the saga, why this
MLB Network President Tony Petiti, literally would not speak, would
not say anything, not even deals off to my agent. Oh,
the officials said, the Yankees were specific about that if
(28:46):
you say anything to him or his people, we will
get you fired. So Petiti took it literally. He said,
if you called or your agent called, to just give
you the silent treatment. These are adults, mind you, and
they say that on air. Talent are the prima donnas.
As I said, the Yankees are the closest of five
(29:07):
different teams who tried to act have actually gotten me
fired sort of. When I was in local news in
Los Angeles, Jackie Autrey, the woman who went from being
Gene Autry's banker to being his second wife, tried to
get me fired from my station in l A because
I had criticized their team, the California Angels. She tried
again a few years later after I got to ESPN.
(29:28):
Then there were the Tampa Bay Rays, well the devil
Rays at that point, whose first owner, Vince Namoli, was
convinced I had a vendetta against his team and was
making up stories about them that were accidentally true. He
could not conceive that somebody in his organization who he paid,
actually hated him so much that this person called me
(29:48):
up and volunteered to feed me anything bad that went
on there. But that is exactly what happened. So that's
the Yankees, the Angels, and the Rays, and there's a
mystery fifth team that was also involved in the MLB
network thing. And then there were the Chicago White Sox.
One of their co owners, Eddie Einhorn, was a big
fan of mine, but for forty four years the team
(30:10):
has been run by the other co owner, Jerry Ransdorff,
and Jerry Ryan'sdorff was one of the key figures in
the strike that killed the baseball season during that terrible
winter that followed, my sources in the Baseball Players Association
showed me a copy of their offer to the owners.
The owners were led by Ryansdorff, and in the players offer,
(30:32):
they were willing to actually negotiate one of the players
Union's sacred cows, salary arbitration. They were willing to cut
it or maybe eliminate it outright. But after complaining about
salary arbitration for twenty years, the owner's committee, led by
this Rhinsdorff idiot, turned the players down. Apparently most of
(30:54):
the owners did not know that Ryansdorff had passed on
a chance to eliminate salary arbitration, a kind of automatic
inflation thing within baseball contracts. And they came down on
Rhinsdorff like a ton of bricks. What do you mean
you turned down the chance to stop salary arbitration. So
naturally he blamed me, and he called up ESPN and
(31:16):
he demanded they fire me, which to their credit, they
never did do. Revenge is a dish which people have
taste prefer to eat cold goes. The old Italian proverb
Rhinsdorff is today despised within baseball. He has once again
ruined the Chicago White Sox. The Tampa Bay Rays owner
named Oley sold the team unknowingly, obviously to a man
(31:39):
named Stuart Sternberg, who turned out to be married to
a friend of mine from college. So whenever the Rays
would come into New York, I would sit with Stu
and his wife Lisa in their box. Their eldest son
interned for me. MLB network, which started out pretty good,
is now just a propaganda machine in which every team
is unbeaten and every player is the greatest ever. And
they fired their best reporter, Ken Rosenthal because he dared
(32:02):
to write something critical of the idiot Commissioner Robert Manfred
and Mr renege on the offer Petiti, he really got
his three years later he was promoted to Deputy Commissioner
of Baseball, but that new commissioner Manfred squeezed him out
and he had to go work as the president of
some e sports company. And then they offered him a
(32:24):
year later. And I have not heard anything about Tony
Pettiti since literally, it's been absolute silence, not a single
spoken word. And why does that sound so familiar? To
(32:54):
the larger point, how many people have tried to get
me fired? I gotta make a list. This may take weeks.
It's gotta be at least twenty. In addition to that,
baseball owner Jackie Autrey, one guy I worked with a sportscaster,
tried to get me fired at ESPN and then tried
to get me fired at Fox. Countdown has come to
you from the studios of Alderman Broadcasting Empire World headquarters
(33:16):
in the Sports Capsule Building in New York. Thank you
for listening. Here the credits. Most of the music, including
our theme from Beethoven's Ninth, was arranged, produced, and performed
by Brian Ray and John Philip Channel. They are the
Countdown musical directors. Guitars based and drums by Brian Ray,
all orchestration and keyboards by John Philip Chanelle produced by
t k O Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
(33:39):
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Alderman theme from ESPN Too, and it was written
by Mitch Warren Davis. Courtesy of ESPN inc musical comments
or Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our
announcer today was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else is pretty much
my fault. So that's countdown for this, the seven hundred
(33:59):
and sixty fifth day since Donald Trump's first attempted coup
against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest
him now while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
is tomorrow, and until then, I'm Keith all Reman, good morning,
good afternoon. What was that name again? And I'm Keith Olberman,
(34:24):
good morning, good afternoon, good night. And this is the
reason you should listen to the end of the podcast.
Every day. Good Luck Countdown with Keith old Reman is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
(34:46):
I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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