SUPREME COURT IN CRISIS; FEINSTEIN MUST BE EXPELLED - 5.1.23 - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. If
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California will not resign, a motion

(00:26):
to expel her from the Senate must be brought and
carried because the Supreme Court, the supremely corrupt Court, has
gone to hell in a handbasket over the weekend, and
Feinstein is not physically capable of casting the deciding votes
for the subpoenas that are absolutely necessary just to give
democracy a small chance of not being sold down the

(00:48):
river by Chief Justice John Roberts, an influenced peddler, Justice
Brett Cavanaugh obviously a perjuring sexual predator, Justice Samuel Alito
a condescending thief, and to expand upon Roy Wood Junior's
pitch perfect line from a White House Correspondence dinner, Clarence
Thomas and Neil Gorsich, who are both NFTs and as

(01:12):
if all of them were somehow not enough, Justice antonin Scalia,
who is dead but is still managing to institutionalize Supreme
Court corruption, money laundering, and perfidy, and the barely breathing
forces of democracy and constitutional government in this country cannot
even start to begin to commence to try to hope

(01:36):
to just expose these biblical levels of misconduct and fraud,
because people like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin will not
even say Dianne Feinstein should resign, let alone force it
to happen, even though she has not been seen since February,
just before the quote shingles unquote attack began. And that

(01:57):
was when she said she had not made a decision
about her future, when her office had already released a
statement confirming she was retiring at the end of her term.
It is better for democracy to die at the hands
of the supremely corrupt court than for Diane Feinstein's supporters
to be offended expel her. Somebody in the Senate with

(02:22):
some balls introduce a measure to expel her, and if
she can make a defense against that measure, fine, withdraw it.
I'll apologize for it. But representative government in this country
hangs by a thread, and every measure we can possibly
take to protect it can be vetoed by a group

(02:44):
of lifetime appointees with no accountability and no standards and
no floor to their personal moral putrefaction. And it got
that way in part because we already conflated respect and
equality and inclusion with inertia and inaction and magical thinking that, oh,
she'll get better, we have nothing to worry about. How

(03:04):
did that end up? Last time? It ended up with
a Justice Amy Cony Barrett until the year twenty sixty
three or something. This is not a game. Business Insider
reported over the weekend that the wife of the Chief
Justice of the United States of America has for fifteen

(03:25):
years been making millions of dollars as a legal headhunter,
placing lawyers in corporations. In other words, she has been
going to the largest law firms and companies in this
country and saying, Hi, I'm Jane Roberts. Roberts like the
Chief Justice, he's my husband. I want you law firms

(03:49):
to pay me money. Maybe it isn't really influenced pedling.
Maybe the Chief Justice has never met his own wife.
Maybe it just looks like the worst possible thing you
could have at the Supreme Court. A chief Justice whose
wife's business is asking for money from law firms that
want to take cases to the Supreme Court. If you

(04:13):
don't recognize what that looks like, it looks like the
thing that they call in organized crime circles protection money
a whistleblower revealed all this. His name is Kendall Price,
and he worked with Jane Roberts at a legal recruiting
firm and told Insider quote, even the law firms who

(04:33):
were Jane's clients had nowhere to go. They were being
asked by the spouse of the Chief Justice for business
worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no
one to complain to. Price went on. Most of these
firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the
Supreme Court. It's natural that they do anything they felt

(04:56):
was necessary to be competitive. We don't know how much
Jane Roberts has made doing this. Insider reports that the
internal records from her employer show she generated ten million,
three hundred thousand dollars in commissions from the corporations and
law firms that participated in her lawyer matchmaking service ten million,

(05:19):
three hundred thousand in the years two thousand and seven
to twenty fourteen. How much is it since at the
rate from two thousand and seven to twenty fourteen, it
would be at least twelve million more since then twenty
two million dollars, But of course we don't know how
much she has made from what is at best only

(05:40):
the appearance that she is peddling influence with her husband,
the Chief Justice, and we cannot find out how much
she has made since, or what other whistleblowers might know
about her husband's involvement or innocence. Because the Senate Judiciary
Committee cannot vote out a subpoena against John Roberts or
Jane Roberts or Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, because

(06:02):
the necessary eleventh vote on the Senate to Share Committee
is Dianne Feinstein. We don't have any idea if she
has shingles or really has a chance of returning to
the Senate, because our consideration for her feelings and the
feelings of her supporters and staffers, who would all be
out of work, by the way, is much much more
important than you know, staving off dictatorship in this country.

(06:24):
This is not a game. Last Thursday, Nicki Haley one
of out of an extraordinarily large field of candidates, one
of the stupidest people walking the earth today, running for
the presidential nomination of a party that hates women, and

(06:45):
hates people of color, and hates immigrants and the recent
descendants of immigrants. Nicki Haley had the audacity, the utter
contempt to go on Fox and say, quote, I think
that we can all be very clear and say with
a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden,
you really are counting on a president Harris, because the

(07:06):
idea that he would make it until eighty six years
old is not something that I think is likely. And
the only thing that happened to Nicky Haley was a
zinger from the White House about how until she said
that they had forgotten she was running. She can get
away with that, but God forbid, Chuck Schumer or Dick

(07:29):
Durbin says, yes, either Senator Feinstein retires now or we
will expel her. We need subpoenas issued to John Roberts
and Jane Roberts. And in a world where Nicki Haley
says that about Biden, Biden, who verbally mopped the floor
with Tucker Carlson and Fox and Elon Muskin didn't even

(07:49):
bother with Haley over the weekend, nothing happens to her, nothing,
no serious criticism. But we are tiptoeing around the zombie
senator like nothing bad could possibly happen because of the
zombie senator. Between now and January third, twenty twenty five,
nothing bad could happen that would make somebody say, gee,

(08:11):
if only we had had Feinstein's vote, we could have
stopped that. But you know, she's been a wonderful public servant.
A pressuring her to retire would have been unseemly and
impolite In a time when morons who are spending actual
money are campaigning on the premise that they know when
the current president of the United States is going to die.

(08:35):
I mean, there are so many Supreme Court scandals at
the moment. They are backing up like Harlan Crowe's private
jets trying to land in Indonesian airspace. You've got Crow's
vacation trip gifts to Thomas. You've got Crow buying Thomas's
mother's house. You've got Crow letting Thomas's mothers live there
rent free. You've got Thomas disclosing none of that. You've

(08:57):
got Neil Gorsich selling a house to the head of
a giant law firm nine days after he was confirmed
to the Court, not disclosing that either. You got Jane Roberts,
you got John Roberts, You've got Alito who claims he
knows who leaked the Dobbs draft, but he won't say who,
but he knows he can prove it wasn't a conservative,
because why would a conservative leak it? When leaking it
meant the conservatives like him became assassination targets. And you

(09:21):
want to shake this clown and say, asshole in the
America you and your fellow fascists have created, everybody in
politics is a target for assassination. The magabomber with the
pipe bombs had a file on me in his computer.
And oh, by the way, Alito, everybody in this country,
in politics or not, is a target for assassination because
of you. Because there are four hundred million guns in

(09:43):
this country and twenty five million of them are ar
fifteen's have a nice day, Sam. We can't subpoena Alito
about the Dobbs leak or anybody else about anything else
until January third, twenty twenty five, presuming the Democrats don't

(10:04):
the Senate next year, because you know, Diane Feinstein might
be offended. And I don't even know if I put
just the new Supreme Court scandals in the correct order,
is gene, Hey, let me tell you some lawyers, and
I'll say something nice to my husband about you, Roberts.
Is she worse than the Kavanaugh story? You've heard the

(10:28):
new Kavanaugh story. You didn't hear the new Kavanaugh story
just because the Sunday Morning shows ignored it, but found
time to interview another Republican vanity candidate, the one who
makes NICKI Haley seem like Abraham Lincoln. The Guardian newspaper
out with an interview that blew a hole in the
excuse that they had concocted during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings

(10:50):
about the charge that he exposed himself to fellow student
Deborah Ramirez at Yale. If you recall, Chuck Grassley sold
the premise that she was likely to have been mistaken
about that identification of Kavanaugh, because no, it was another
Yale student who was allegedly known for exposing himself. The

(11:12):
Guardian found an unredacted email chain from a Colorado attorney,
Joseph C. Smith Junior, a buddy of the then lead
counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee whose name is Mike Davis.
This Smith suggested that excuse and said Ramirez was probably
victimized by another Yale student named Jack Maxie, who supposedly

(11:35):
had a reputation for doing this. Ah. But now it
turns out Jack Maxi was not at Yale when Ramirez
says Kavanaugh exposed himself, quoting him, I was a senior
in high school at the time, Jack Maxie said in
an interview with The Guardian, I was not in New Haven.

(11:57):
He said, no investigator ever contacted him. These people can
say what they want and there are no consequences. Ever,
he said on there's a newly found recording of a
Max Steer recounting what he says was another event in
which Kavanaugh exposed himself at Yale. And thus there is
probably a case to be made that Kavanaugh perjured himself

(12:21):
at his Senate confirmation hearing, and then the chairman, Chuck
Grassley covered up the perjury in his report, and they
could both be prosecuted, But of course the present Senate
Judiciary Committee would have to start with a subpoena of
Grassley and Kavanaugh, and we can't do that because of

(12:41):
something that rhymes with mylon Rhine Flyines lamentia O. There's
the antonin Scalia Law School, which used to be the
George Mason University Law School until another one of these
Republican billionaires paid thirty million dollars to rename it, and

(13:01):
the New York Times did a story on it yesterday.
And it's a country club for Republican members of the
Supreme Court, and it can get them lucrative teaching opportunities
and trips overseas, and it can help maximize their outside income.
Because look how many fohcs can there be out there, fhocs,
fhoc's friends of Harlan Crowell when The Times could only

(13:27):
see redacted records about Scalia Law and its relationship with
the Supreme Court. Because the body that has to approve
what documents you and I and the Times can read
about the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court. So I
don't know what's worse the Roberts's and the Supreme Court
version of protection money, Scalia law, the Gorsach House sale,

(13:50):
the endless Kavanaugh case, the countless Thomas cases, Alito's whiney,
cheesy self martyrdom, let's get those subpoena never mind, And
you know what, Ultimately, you know what the most frustrating
thing is about this, Despite all this corruption in the

(14:10):
Supreme Court, Thomas Gorsch, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Alito all clearly compromised,
each worthy of impeachment, self satisfied and projecting invulnerability. They
are actually at their most vulnerable right now. They are
scared right now. Senate hearings right now, even if they

(14:34):
didn't produce one impeachment or one resignation or one indictment,
Senate hearings right now might actually snap these leeches out
of their sense that they are untouchable. Because for all
his preening and posturing this worm, Alito confessed something to
The Wall Street Journal that gives away their realization that

(14:55):
they are crooks and they have been found out. Alito said, quote,
we are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly
in a lot of instances, he said, And nobody, practically,
nobody is defending us. The idea has always been the
judges are not supposed to respond to criticisms. But if
the courts are being unfairly attacked, the organized bar will

(15:19):
come to their defense. And here's the real tell, the
real sense that Alito knows, and this is the time
to hit him hard. If anything, he says, the bar,
the institution of self protection for sleazy lawyers everywhere. Quote
they've participated to some degree in these attacks. That is

(15:45):
the cue. There is the rallying cry. Thus comes the
signal that the time is ripe for American democracy to
push back against our self anointed fascist king overlords. But
of course to do that, to do what's necessary to
do that, well, you know we can't because it might

(16:09):
worsen Diane Feinstein's shingles still ahead. On this Editionive countdown,
I'm going to try to make sense of this latest
Trump investigation news. They got capone on taxes. It's looking

(16:33):
to me like they may get Trump on fundraising fraud.
If it is possible to have treated the murder by
mass gun madness of five people in his state more
disrespectfully than did Texas Governor Greg Abbott, I don't know
how you do it. Abbott called the victims illegal, and
right after the shooting he wrote all smiles for the

(16:55):
Weekend Worst Person's Next. Thirty nine years ago this week,
I started work as a rookie TV sportscaster in Boston,
and two weeks later, the Boston Red Sox called up
a rookie pitcher and his name was Roger Clemens and
sixteen years after that, Roger Clemens threw part of a
broken bat at me during the two thousand World Series. Well, anyway,

(17:16):
that's how I saw it. I believe this fella Mike
Piazza saw it differently. All that stacks. This is countdown.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
This is countdown with Keith Olberman.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Coming up. The book she wants banned, the one she
says she will have to involve law enforcement over. It's
the Handmaid's Tale. Strange but true. Worst persons in a moment.
First postscripts to the news, some headlines, some updates, some snarks,
some predictions. Dateline Washington, the impeccable Ryan Goodman of Just
Security and a writer named Thomas Jocelyn have pretty much

(17:58):
figured out what Mike Pence probably testified to last week
to the Special Council by unearthing a secret hidden document
Pence's book, So Help Me God. Jocelyn and Goodman say
if prosecutors simply asked Pence to read a couple of
passages from the book and then confirmed they were true,
that may have been enough to prove that Trump knew

(18:19):
he had lost and ran his coups. Anyway, Malice of
Forethought from the January fourth meeting.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
John Eastman was in the next chair to my right.
I turned to him and asked, do you think I
have the authority to reject or return votes? He stammered, well,
it's never been tested in the courts, so I think
it is an open question. At that I turned to
the President, who was distracted at the time, and said,
mister President, did you hear that. He turned his attention
to me, and I said, even your lawyer doesn't think
I have the authority to return electoral votes. The President nodded. Unquote.

(18:51):
After Pence told Trump the constitution did not give him
the right to return votes, Pence quotes, Trump, these people cheated,
and you want to play by marquis of Queensbury rules again,
Trump confessing in advance he was going to cheat. And
on January fifth, Pence quotes, Trump is saying to him, Pence,
you're too honest. Why does that matter? Because dateline also

(19:14):
Washington also from the underground secret layer of special counsel
Jack Smith. The New York Times quote, Federal prosecutors have
also been drilling down on whether mister Trump and a
range of political aids knew that he had lost the
race but still raised money off claims that they were
fighting widespread fraud in the vote results. Prosecutors are trying
to determine whether mister Trump and his aides violated federal

(19:37):
wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as two
hundred and fifty million dollars. The prosecutors are looking at
the inner workings of the committee Save America Pack. Unquote
Why did that sound so familiar when I read it? Well,
i'll tell you. Let me quote me, also quoting the
New York Times, but this is from last September eighth quote.

(19:59):
There is a new grand jury in Washington looking at
Trump's Save America Pack, nominally created to support his legal
challenges to the twenty twenty election, but as the fine
print read, not requiring Trump to spend any money on
anything but himself. There are already subpoenas sent to junior
and mid level aides who worked in the White House
and for mister Trump's presidential campaign. According to the New

(20:22):
York Times, what's nice about all this this part of
the Special Council's investigation is that there are soft targets here.
Turns out Trump's team hired two firms, Simpatico Software and
Berkeley research group to find fraud for him. Neither found
any each has been contacted by the Special Council, and

(20:45):
it looks like they have already sung like birds because
Trump used their findings, ignored their findings, and raised two
hundred and fifty million dollars fraudulently.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Anyway, this is Sports Center Wait, check that not anymore.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
This is Countdown with Keith Ulberman in Sports ABC's NBA
playoff coverage yesterday under fire after a video bumper of
New York City showed stock footage, old stock footage of
New York City?

Speaker 1 (21:34):
How old it depicted? The Statue of Liberty and behind
the statue the World Trade Center twin towers. I've already
told you that the woman over whom my old lying
ex Fox Sports friend now x NBC CEO Jeff Schell
ended his career a week ago, was not only dallying
with him, but also the now eighty year old owner

(21:55):
of Hockey Seattle Krack and David Bonderman, leading to the
rhetorical question let it come right in my zamboni now.
The New York Post says had Lee Gamble was also
in a relationship with the now seventy six year old
California billionaire Tom Barrack, also the Trump fundraiser. There's outtake
video of her trying to get him and he's barefoot

(22:16):
and wearing shorts to move out of frame of her
camera apparently her CNBC camera during a live shot from
Turkey in twenty twenty. It also reports that she did
other shows from his penthouse, and that there was an
HR investigation at CNBC into whether or not Tom Barrack
arranged an interview for Hadley Gamble with Jared Kushner. Nice

(22:42):
dating choices, Jeff Schell, Thank you, Nancy Faust and Saint

(23:02):
Louis has lost one of its sports icons. Mike Shannon,
a member of three Saint Louis Cardinals pennant winners and
two World Series champs in the nineteen sixties and after
a kidney ailment forced him into early retirement, a team
broadcaster since nineteen seventy two, died yesterday at the age
of eighty three. Mike Shannon hit three homers and drove
in eight runs in twenty one World Series games, but

(23:25):
perhaps the enduring image of him came at the end
of one of the games of the nineteen sixty four
World Series. Mickey Mantle of the Yankees won that game
with the bottom of the ninth inning home run off
Barney Schultz to right field at Yankee Stadium. Shannon raced
to the outfield fence and was ready to leap to
try to get Mantles blast when it landed in the

(23:45):
upper deck about halfway up fifty or sixty rows deep,
at least one hundred and twenty feet above Mike Shannon's head.
Shannon's teammate, Bob Gibson asked Shannon what the heck he
was doing if he really thought he could catch a
ball that was basically ten stories above his head. Shannon answered,

(24:05):
you never know, big boy, you never know. Still ahead
on countdown, he threw the bat at me, not at
Mike Piazza, not at the ground, and the next thing

(24:27):
I knew, Mike Piazza was threatening to sue me. I'll
explain first time for the Daily rite up, the Miss Greens, Morons,
and Dunn Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons
in the world. Lebrons, Elon Musk. Did you see him
with mar I didn't like everybody else. I saw the
clips while they were congratulating each other and being super geniuses.

(24:49):
Were searchers at USC UCLA, you see Mercaid and Oregon
State determined that under Musk, the big spreaders of hate
speech on Twitter have doubled their hate output twice as
much hate speech under the sun of an apartheid South
afric and mine owner who to thunk it? Runner up
Carol Ratchner, member of the Denton County School District in Texas.

(25:12):
She's one of those book banners, and the book she
wants banned with no evident sense of irony, is handmanaged
Maid's Tale. There is two page form that Texas's fascists
have to fill out so we can see these stupidity
dripping out of every one of Ratchner's words about the book,
especially when she tried checking all the boxes she had
to check and she could not find the one she wanted,

(25:33):
So she drew her own box and checked it and
wrote next to it, wh I ever approved this book
should be fired. I believe I will have to involve
law enforcement, trash it and order a mental health exam
for the author unquote fascist heal thyself. Unclear how the
form she filled out went viral, but Rachner clearly did

(25:53):
not notice that she put her home address on it.
But our winner, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas. After neighbors
approached a drunken man firing his AR fifteen and asked
him if he would stuck because their baby was sleeping,
man went over and killed five of the execution style.
Hours later, this slime bucket Abbot, who may or may
not actually be a human being, tweeted a photo of

(26:17):
a dog with the caption all smiles for the weekend.
Bad enough, But then last night he followed it up
with another tweet announcing a reward in the case and
to smear the victims of the gun he Greg Abbot
has personally fueled. He referred to these dead people as
quote illegal immigrants unquote. Sometimes this award is not meant

(26:40):
at all seriously, other times it's hyperbolic. Other times, Now
I mean it, Greg Abbot, Today's worst person in the
world still ahead on countdown over the weekend. I was
reminded thirty nine years ago this week I arrived in
Boston as a rookie local TV sportscaster, and two weeks

(27:02):
after that, the Red Sox called up rookie pitcher Roger Clemens,
and that reminded me of the World Series game in
which Mike Piazzas swung and broke his bat. Roger Clemens
picked up a piece of the bat and threw it
at well. Mike thought he threw it at him. From
my reporting perch and the Yankee dugout, I thought Clemens
threw it at me. The story of bat Day next first.

(27:23):
In each edition of Countdown, we feature a dog in need.
You can help. Every dog has its day. Bubbles somehow
escaped the kill Liss Saturday at the New York Pound
they killed other dogs. Bubbles full name is Jacuzzie. Bubbles,
two years old, about fifty pounds, a kind of pity mix,
and so terrified she's pinned her ears back. She was
found wandering at the Old World's Fair Sight in Queens

(27:46):
just a week ago and already went immediately onto death row.
She needs pledges to help defray the costs for a
rescue group to save and train her. You can find
Bubbles on my Twitter feeds and pledge if you want,
or just retweet her. It is her only chance. I
thank you, and Bubbles thanks you. It started on the

(28:18):
night of October twenty second, two thousand and it ended
well I'll let you know if and when it ever ends.
I was enjoying the second night of one of my
childhood dreams come true. I was the host not just
of the telecast of the World Series, but it was
an all New York City series, a Mets versus Yankee series,
a subway series. I'd literally dreamt of it since nineteen

(28:42):
sixty seven. The manager of the Yankees had been the
first person I ever interviewed on TV. Fifteen years earlier,
I had worked with him in TV. He was a
friend of mine. I had just covered the Mets through
their playoff run and knew all of their players. My
face had been on an advertisement in dead center field
in the Mets Stadium for the entirety of the year before,

(29:04):
and the player all knew me my name. Where we
were that night, Yankee Stadium was not only where I
saw my first baseball game, but was about seven eighths
of a mile from the hospital in which I had
been born, and my first home was four subway stops away.
The night before this event, as I hosted the start
of the first game of this Keith of Palooza, I

(29:26):
was supposed to introduce the public address announcer of Yankee Stadium,
Bob Sheppard, whose voice I had heard nearly every day
since I was eight years old. So he could then
introduce the players and this epic world series would begin.
And it dawned on me in the seconds before I
was supposed to do this that I literally had the
power to stop the two thousand World Series from ever

(29:48):
happening if I just kept talking and never actually said,
here is Bob Shephard. Well, I could delay it briefly
until they cut my mic off and then fired me
on the spot. Anyway, this was Game two, and now
that our pregame show was over, and I had waved
to my mother, who I had seen her first game
at Yankee Stadium just ooh sixty six years previously, and

(30:09):
she was seated in the family seats that were just
nine rows up from our on field set. I had
crawled into the position I would assume for the entire
game as the dugout reporter. I was hunched over on
a stool, squeezed between the far end of the Yankee
dugout and our Fox Sports first base camera. A thin
chicken wire fence separated me from the dugout himself. In fact,

(30:31):
it was a formality. I was more or less in
the dugout players coaches, and that night, as I settled in,
my friend, the Yankee manager all came over to say hello,
Roger Clemens of the Yankees, who I had also known
since we were both rookies in Boston sports in nineteen
eighty four. He lasted, I didn't Roger Clemens had struck
out the first two Mets hitters. Clemens was a strange

(30:54):
man about whom I had heard a strange tale of
teammates in a college summer baseball league who were all
wearing their wallets in their uniform pants back pockets during
a game because one of them explained to a friend
of mine, we have this crazy kid Clemens from Texas
on this team, and we don't trust him. In Boston,
I had found him a little nervous, little standoffish, but

(31:17):
doing his best to be professional. But by now there
were rumors swirling around Roger Clemens about amphetamines and performance
enhancing drugs, and you knew not to talk to him
before or after a game unless you had to, and
if you had to, you chose your words very carefully,
then made sure that whatever you did you had to
start with something mundane, like the score of the game,

(31:39):
and if you could let him bring up anything controversial
or complex, he would then probably do it. So now,
as this game continued, after two batters had struck out,
Lee Mazzilli, the former Mets star now Yankees coach, another
friend of mine, was on the other side of a
little fence, and as Mets superstar Mike Piazza stepped in

(32:00):
as the third batter of the game, Mozilly leaned in
and said, conspiratorily, let's see if flips him again. In
Midsummer two thousand, Roger Clemens had beamed Mike Piazza with
a fastball. There was a hospital visit involved. Nobody was
convinced it had not been intentional, or that Clemens would
not do it again, even though it was the World Series.
Mozilli and I leaned forward. Piazza was a deeply complicated

(32:23):
guy too. During the playoffs, he had walked up to
me and asked me if it was true I was
from New York, and then he quizzed me about the
relative merits of the suburbs, and then he wanted to
know if I had really taken up residence in his
favorite Southern California hotel, and we talked for fifteen minutes
about that. The next night I saw him smiled, said heloone,
and he looked at me like I had just sworn
a vendetta against his family. For a long time I

(32:46):
thought it was me until about ten years later, the
Great Vin Scully said that Piazza was with the Dodgers,
and when they were both together there in Los Angeles,
Vin had had the identical experience with Piazza. Best friends
on the team bus one day, and then no indication
Piazza remembered even meeting him the next I mean that
was Ben's golly. Clemens, as it turned out, did not

(33:08):
throw a baseball at Piazza, but instead pitched him inside
in on his hands, and Piazza tried to stop a
swing that was half self defense, but instead the odd
angle and the force of the pitch shattered Piazza's bat.
The ball veered to the right, describing a circle into
foul territory. The head of the bat shot out towards
Clemens on the mound. A second piece flew briefly into

(33:30):
the infield. Piazza was left holding just the handle, and
it looked as foolish as that sounds, but lost in
this description as the fact that all happened at once,
and even from our signe angle in the Yankee dugout,
it looked to Mozilli in me as if Piazza's bat
had simply exploded, like it was a trick device of
some sort. I saw Clemens reach for the baseball. I

(33:52):
thought it was the baseball right in front of him,
and then just as quickly he and I, at the
same moment, realized it was not the baseball. It was
the barrel of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just
a little darker than a baseball, but could in the
heat of an instant following a bat explosion, it could
be mistaken for a ball. So far, so good. But
right then Clemens, realizing it was part of a bat

(34:16):
and not a ball, promptly threw that part of the
bat at me. Jesus Mas, I said to Mizilly, why
did Clemens throw that bat barrel at me? The Yankee
coach looked incredulously at me. He didn't throw it you.
He threw it at me. That's what it looked like.
We were lined up perfectly. Roger Clemens had thrown the
barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say, one hundred and twenty

(34:38):
feet instead of just six or seven feet, he would
have hit either me or Lee Mozilly in the Yankee dugout.
As it was, since nobody knew exactly what was happening,
Piazza had started to run down to first base in
case the ball was fair. He didn't know where the
ball was either. For that initial split second, you really

(34:58):
couldn't tell which flying object was the ball, and also
whether the ball was fair or foul. So Roger Clemens's
throw certainly looked like it was aimed at Piazza as
Piazza went down the first baseline, and as Piazza took umbrage,
and there was another split second of confusion when it
looked like Piazza might charge out to the mound to

(35:19):
try to sock Clemens for this and for the Midsummer beating.
I said to Missilly, wait, did he throw that bat
at Piazza. Miszilly just shook his head. I don't think so.
Hun Hell knows he's been here two years. I haven't
figured out anything he's done so far. As the umpires
then got involved, Clemens repeatedly tapped his own chest, and

(35:40):
not in a bragging way, but in a kind of
what looked like that's on me way. Two bat boys
collected the three main pieces of the bat and a
bunch of smaller shards, some of them smaller than a toothpick.
The Fox play by play man threw it to me
in the dugout well, I said, I can tell you
the Yankee dugout doesn't know what happened or why. Joe
Missilly laughed quietly and then hit me in the arm.

(36:03):
While I was on the air, prustulated that Clemens was
looking for a ball hit back to him instead found
the piece of the bat, and then discarded that piece
of the bat so he could keep looking for the ball.
That he discarded it kind of where Piazza was running
might have been delivered, might have been a coincidence. I
do remember suggesting that if Clemens had really aimed the
bat at Piazza, that from that distance, with the strength

(36:26):
and accuracy of a major league pitcher, he clearly would
have hit him with it. Piazza then promptly grounded out
to end the inning, and as Clemens came back towards
the Yankee dugout, where Mozilly and I were. He again
stopped to talk to the umpire, who was Charlie Reliford.
Over the noise of fifty six thousand fans at Yankee Stadium,
I couldn't hear a damn thing, but it sure looked
like Clemens was again saying that was on me. I

(36:50):
asked missillly if he could find out if that's what
Clemens was doing, And half an inning later, Missilly reported
that Clemens indeed thought for a second it was the ball,
and that he threw it, and that it was on him,
and that it was not intentional and it was not
directed at Piazza. I did something kind of stupid. I
suggested to my bosses that I should go ask the
Commissioner Baseball, who in a World Series game had the

(37:12):
power to eject any player for any reason, although that
power had not actually been used since nineteen thirty four.
What he thought of all this? The producer said yes,
and I thought me and my big mouth. I now
had to crawl out of that little space between camera
and dugout, and I mean literally crawl hands and knees

(37:32):
to exit back into the seats via where the groundskeepers
kept all the extra dirt. I knew where in the
stands the commissioner was sitting. I went there, I got
to him, I asked him. He assured me there was
no discipline coming for Clemens, and they'd look at the
tape of the game again that night or in the morning.
But he really didn't think Clemens had tried to hit
Piazza with the bat. Well, they would look at the tape,

(37:55):
and they decided both that Clemens did not try to
hit Piazza with the bat, and that he should be
fined fifty thousand dollars for I don't know, not trying
to hit him with the So I made it back
to the dugout, reversing my crawl like I was recreating
the movie The Great Escape. As it turned out, Piazza's
little squib shot that caused all the trouble with the

(38:17):
exploding bat was about the hardest thing they hit off
Clemens all night. Over eight innings, he struck out nine
Mets batters, he walked none, he gave up only two hits,
and he only hit one batter. And then, incredibly, after
Clemens left the game, the Yankees almost blew a six
to nothing lead in the ninth inning, a Met outfielder
named Jay Payton hit a three run homer off future

(38:40):
Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the Mets had a
chance to tie the game or go ahead off Rivera
in the top of the ninth, and then he got
out of it, and the final score was six to
five Yankees. And with the game over now it was
Keith interviews Clemens' time. I went to the pre arranged
spot at the other end of the Yankee dugout, where
another friend of mine, the Yankees pr director, had guaranteed

(39:02):
me he would go and get Clemens and they would emerge.
After Clemens left the clubhouse to do what was a
contractually obligated interview with Fox and me. Apparently, Roger Clemens
started making his way towards me the moment the Yankees
finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, security
closed the only runway from the Yankee dugout to the

(39:25):
clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as an
exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader, And while
Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every
one of its stations in the country, even on the
West coast, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver kept showing

(39:47):
replays again and again and promising my interview with Roger Clemens.
Rudy Juliani took his goddamn time leaving the field. His
idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I
half expected him to eat it. Instead, he stuffed it
in his jacket pockets. And he now waited for his
entire entourage, one of his wives, some of his I

(40:10):
guess they were friends, assorted political riff raff, and as
my producer screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani
waited until they were all together on the field, and
finally he marched them down into the dugout and up
through the runway. And after all this delay, Clemens came
out and finally I could ask him about throwing the

(40:30):
bat shard at or near piazza. And at that moment
I remembered what I had learned about Clemens in Boston.
If you started an interview with something controversial, he might
very well walk away. If, on the other hand, you
did the boring game outcome question. He would answer anything
you asked, and he might even bring up anything controversial himself.
But you had to do the stupid game stuff first.

(40:53):
So which was harder work? Roger? I asked eight innings
of two hit ball or watching the Mets nearly tie
it in the ninth. His answer was not bad, but
he did not bring up the bats. So I asked
another quot about what he thought of his performance in
that game. Well, that did it. He started talking about
having to overcome his emotions in the first inning, and

(41:13):
now I could say, well, since you brought up the
emotions the bat throwing incident, did you throw that piece
of broken bat at Mike Piazza. There is a freeze
frame from that interview in which Roger Clemens's eyes are
bugged wide open. Well, Glemmens basically confirmed what the guys
in the dugout had told me. He had told them.
You can believe him or not, but he thought the

(41:35):
thing he grabbed was the ball, and when it wasn't,
he threw it away just in case the ball was
somewhere else near him and he had to have a
free hand with which to pick it up. He explained,
the chest taps. He was indeed saying to the umpire
Umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his apologies to
the Umps for throwing the bat, He said he didn't
even know where Piazza was at the point he threw

(41:55):
the bat. It was as straight and nonpartisan and frankly,
as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile, everybody
else in that stadium, everybody else in that city, everybody
else in the Tri State area, was convinced of one
of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to impale
Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat, or

(42:20):
the Mets were crybabies who could not tell that Clemens
obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza with his
own bat. There was no middle ground. I found this
out specifically the next day when the TV sports columnist
of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who was a
friend of mine, called to interview me about the interview.
Why didn't you ask him about the bat first? Nobody
cared about how he pitched. He threw a bat at Piazza.

(42:44):
I said, you're a Met fan, and I explained the
theory of not making Clemens end an interview before he
said what you needed to know. I went through the
whole thing I just recited here. It was amazing to
see those few days how every sports reporter and columnist
in New York self identified as either a Met fan
or ex Met fan, or a Yankee fan or Yankee fan.

(43:05):
And you can still see it today as this story
from twenty two years ago is recollected by others. They
wrote what they felt as kids, Clemens was the victim,
or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazza like he was
a dracula, and they had the wooden steak to go

(43:25):
through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently from Joe Torri,
the Yankee manager, another one of my friends, that they
all hid something from us that night, the thing about emotions.
After the incident in the first inning, Roger Clemens went
back to the Yankee clubhouse and started to cry. This
might have had something to do with embarrassment or grief.

(43:46):
But since he had noted that he had had to
check his emotions, I always thought, well, he might have
been a little overamped for that game, naturally or otherwise.
All right, So before I present anything else out of
chronological order. Let me go back to the moment. I
think Roger Clemens for the interview and threw it back
to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the Fox booth

(44:09):
because this is when the real trouble started. They were
pretty much done for the night, but I had another
two hours to go in a live postgame show on
Fox's cable Sports network. We had about four minutes until
that show started, and it suddenly occurred to me that
although this was not the most important event in the
history of the World Series, the bat would become part
of the iconography of baseball. I had been at Yankee

(44:32):
Stadium often enough over the years to know the two
kids who ran the visiting clubhouse, and right then they
were still packing up the Mets bats and equipment, and
the Mets dugout. So I ran over and asked the
senior of them what happened to the pieces of the
piazza bat well. The guy explained that Bobby Valentine, the
Mets manager, had asked that one of the pieces go

(44:54):
to a friend of his in the stands, and he,
the clubhouse attended, had handed it to the guy. A
second piece he believed was kept by the Yankees. He
wasn't sure about that. The third piece past the handle
was where was it? Where is it? He asked the
other attendant. It's here in the garbage, the kid said.
I did a double take the garbage. Yeah, the kid said,

(45:15):
under the dugout bench, and there it was, stuffed in
amid all the empty bags of sunflower seeds and the
crushed gatorade cups. I said, what happens to it?

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Now?

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Gets thrown out? They clean out the dugouts first, So
I said, look, can I borrow it? This would make
a great prop for our postgame show? And the attendant
says sure, and he pulls it out of the pile
and hands it to him, just about seven inches of
a baseball bat, and all there is is Piazza's uniform
number thirty one written in magic marker on the bottom. Listen.

(45:44):
I said, I won't be able to bring this back
to you for like two hours. We're on for two hours.
Will you still be in the clubhouse? And he said,
are you kidding? We have to be here at eight
He and I'll be out of here in ten minutes.
And I said, you want me to bring it back
to you for Game three, and he says, garbage. You're
going to bring back garbage, throw it out, keep it whatever,
What do I care? So I use the bat fragment

(46:08):
as a prop in the show repeatedly, and I stuck
it in my shoulder bag, and I thought, I'm not
a scrounger, but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia
and I'd like to keep it. So either I'll auction
it off for charity and bid against myself or something,
or I'll make a donation to a baseball charity and
I'll keep it. And that was it. And two days later,

(46:28):
as the World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shae Stadium,
I got a phone call from one of the PR
guys at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And
I said, no, not yet, And he says, Piazza told
the guy from Newsday that you stole his back and
he wants it back. And I said, what if I
hadn't asked about it, it would be on a garbage scale
right now, being towed out to be dumped in the

(46:49):
Atlantic Ocean. And he says maybe, but Piazza told this
John Hayman, He's going to sue you. To get it back.
So now I go to the ballpark with extra excitement
on my plate. I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell
me he's going to sue me. So I go out
onto the field. I'm wondering how long it's going to
be before I run into Piazza. In like two minutes
after I step on the field, I turn around and

(47:10):
he's walking towards me. He looks at me and he says, hey,
Keith wild One the other night, huh say listen, when
you lived at Shutters, did you ever eat at Ivy
at the Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat.
We're talking about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah,
but did you ever eat at Shae Jay's. And a
big smile from Piazza. Oh, man, I love Shade Jay's.

(47:31):
I love Jay. Give me your number this winner. When
I'm home, Let's go eat at Shaye Jay's. And I said,
I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs.
Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand
dabs at a restaurant? And then he says, hey, sorry,
I gotta go ahead. Have a good show. That was it.
He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see

(47:51):
each other on the field, he starts the conversation. No
mention of suing me, not one word. Next day in
the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's going to
sue me for stealing his bat. Next night game the
World Series, we're just about to go on the air
with the pregame show. And now Piazza comes over again,
coming in from the outfield to the dugout and he says, hey,
this must be really cool to do what you guys

(48:13):
are doing. Have a great show, and by now the
only thing I can think of. He does not know
I'm the same Keith Olderman. He keeps threatening to sue.
So the World Series ends and the Yankees beat the Mets,
and if you look for it, there's this photo of
the traditional postgame awarding of the World Series Trophy and
the Most Valuable Player award at its commissioner Bud Selig

(48:35):
and Derek Jeter, the Yankees and me, And just before
it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yankees.
He's crying, leans in and I give him a hug
and reassure him, and he asked me if my mother
went to the game, and I said, you know, my mother,
she'd never come to Shay Stadium. She hates it more
than you do. And he says, I.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Love her more than ever before.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Now, So the series ends, and it's not been that
greatest series, but it's been exciting and it was the
dream from my childhood. And the Yankees have won and
my friends are and I've not heard another word about
this lawsuit, nothing from Mike Piazza. And I told the
Fox people, well, if I'm not going to hear anything
more from them, it's easy. I'm going to keep the

(49:15):
bat and I'm going to donate twenty five thousand dollars
to this charity, the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex
ball players in financial need, because A I'm not a scrounger.
B it's a great cause. C that's actually much more
than the bat handle would be worth on the open market.
And D the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team is

(49:35):
bat bat and that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat. You
get it. And then nothing for a month, whereupon Fox
gets another letter, now from Piazza's agent fellow named Monzon
and he threatens to sue again, and that's the end
of it. Never heard from him again. So now it's
the next year, two thousand and one, and I'm back

(49:56):
in New York working for CNN doing the news, and
I go to a Mets game and I see Piazza
and I give him a big smile and I offer
my hand and I say, still any of those from
Shay Jay And he just stares at me and walks
right past me. And I see a cop I know
who works next to the Mets dugout, and the cop says,
Mike has been asking him about me? Is that Keith

(50:16):
Olderman the one who stole my bat? So now I'm
not just keeping the bat. I want to sue Mike
Piazza for being a pain in the ass. And then
nine to eleven happens, and ball players are doing charity things,
and sportscasters and newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well,

(50:37):
this is the time when the baseball season resumes. I
throw the bat handle in my bag and I go
out to a Mets game and I go up to
Piazza's locker before the game, and I pull the bat
chart out and I say, take this, Mike, auction it
off for charity. Let's do some good with this. Or
if it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll
auction it off. We can leave my name out of it,
whatever you want, however you want to do it. And

(50:58):
he looks at me like I've just insulted his mother
and says, no, it's too complicated, and he turns away,
and I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete
I have ever met. And just before the season ends,
I go to another Mets game. Now this time it's
one of his teammates who takes me aside and says,
you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his

(51:20):
bat from the Clemens game last year. He says, he
still wants.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
To sue you.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Didn't you try to give him the bat back in
the clubhouse to auction off, Didn't I see that? And
I say, yeah I did, And he refused to take it.
And the guy laughs and he says, great player, excellent catcher.
I love him, strangest player I have ever met. Comes
two thousand and two, nothing happens. See Piazza at several
Mets games. Nothing happens. Two thousand and three, nothing happens now.

(51:47):
I can't pin the year down on this. It's one
of the Red Sox Yankees playoff series, either two thousand
and three or two thousand and four. And I'm leaving
the field as they're clearing the media off just before
the game starts, and I'm going out through the Red
Sox dugout, literally at the same spot where the kid
handed me Piazza's bat handle three or four years earlier,
where the trouble all began. And I see the new

(52:09):
owner of the Red Sox team approaching from the other
end of the dugout, Keith John Henry. Nice to meet you.
Have you got a minute? And I said, well, yeah,
they're kicking the media off the field, so and he
laughs and he says, I can take care of that.
And he yells at the plane clothes clop and he
says he's with me and the cop nods and John Henry,
the owner of the Red Sox, and I sit down
on the Red Sox bench before the start of a

(52:31):
Red Sox Yankees playoff game, and there are no other
reporters out there, and I think, Okay, what did I
say about the Red Sox. What is he pissed off about? Instead?
John Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza?
And I laugh and I say sure, what about him?
And he says, you have part of his back from

(52:53):
the World Series with Clemens, right, And I say yeah,
and he says, tell me the whole story. So I
do what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's
what I was told. Thank you, huh. I thought it
was me. So that other piece of the bat that
was handed to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game,
that friend is a great friend of mine. And after
nine to eleven he said, wouldn't it be great to

(53:14):
get Mike Piazza to sign this and then we can
auction it off for the victims' families or the cops
or some other charity. And he gives me the bat
and I call the Mets and they approach Mike and
they call me and they say, Mike loves the idea
and I should come to one of the spring training
games and he'll sign it. So the next March, I
go to one of the Mets spring training games and
I go up to him in the clubhouse and I
introduce myself and he looks at me like I'm from Mars,

(53:36):
and I say, well, I brought the bat and he
says what bat? And I explained that we had arranged
to have him sign the bat from the World Series
for a nine to eleven charity and he erupts at me,
I'm not signing that bat? Sure for charity? Do you
think I was born yesterday? And now I say something
to John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, like welcome
to the club. Did he threaten to sue you too?

(53:58):
And he laughs and says yes. That's the next part
of the story. So while we're trying to straighten that out,
his agent calls me and asks if I will give
them the bat to auction off for charity, and I
say sure, And I go to another Mets game and
I go to the clubhouse and I have the bat again.
Now Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because
of pending litigation, but if I want him to, he'll

(54:21):
sign it for me. All I have to do is
come back a couple of weeks later. So this is
what I wanted to ask Keith. Is he the strangest
ballplayer you've ever met or is it just me? There's
one more part to this. Flash forward to twenty fourteen.
I still have the Piazza bat handle, the one I

(54:44):
unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza. The middle portion,
the one John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza,
has been sold, with the proceeds going to charity. So
where is the third piece, the barrel of the bat,
the part that Clemens through at Piazza. If you're a
Met fan or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza,
if you're not a Met fan the d The answer

(55:05):
finally arrives in a sports memorabilia auction catalog that year.
While one of the visiting bat boys was handing the
middle part of the bat to a friend of Bobby
Valentine and John Henry's in the stands, the barrel, which
landed near the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the
Yankee bat boy, who put it in the pile of
Yankee broken bats, and as it turned out, right at

(55:26):
that point, the Yankee strengthened conditioning coach Jeff Mangold, who
was on the bench, said, wait a minute, that's the
pile of broken bats they're going to throw out. They
shouldn't throw it out. It's history. And he grabs that
part of the Piazza bat and puts it up in
his home office. And now it's fourteen years later and
he wants to auction it off for charity. So he
auctions it off, and I think, well, hell, it should

(55:47):
be alongside the other piece of the bat, My other
piece of the bat, the handle, So I win the auction.
There it is on my wall, complete with a baseball
card showing Roger Clemens about to throw the barrel. Reasons
left to your imagination, two thirds of the famous bat.
I'll sell it someday, I'm sure, but I'll always have

(56:09):
the memories, my memories and John Henry's memories. And if
you're wondering, no, unlike John Henry and I, that Yankee
strength coach Jeff Mangold never tried to give it back
to Piazza, or get it signed by Piazza, or auctioned
off for charity with Piazza, Which means that, on top
of everything else, Jeff Mangold is smarter than John Henry
and I put together. I've done all the damage I

(56:44):
can do. Here and by the way, thank you. I
don't have the final numbers, but as of recording time,
downloads for the month of April were a record three
hundred eighteen thousand, so again thanks tell the others. Here
are the credits. Most of the music was arranged, produced,
and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, who
are the Countdown musical directors. All orchestration and keyboards by

(57:06):
John Phillips Schaneil, Guitars, bass and drums by Brian Ray,
produced by TKO Brothers. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged
and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is
the Olderman theme from ESPN two and it was written
by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments
from Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever and

(57:26):
our announcer today with Stevie van zandt everything else pretty
much my fault. So that's countdown for this, the eight
hundred and forty sixth day since Donald Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Don't forget to keep arresting him while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Until then, I'm Keith Oulremman.
Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown

(58:01):
with Keith Olreman is a production of iHeartRadio. More podcasts
from iHeartRadio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts.

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