April 20, 2023 • 44 mins
EPISODE 182: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:43) Ok I'm sorry for all the scatological references; I'm just fed up. A Federalist Society judge discovered by Chump's worms sitting on a bankruptcy court has ordered that the former Assistant DA for Manhattan HAS to sit for a deposition for Jim Jordan's Dog-And-Pony-Dung-Eating show and aid Jordan's effort to wipe Trump's ass with the Constitution. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil has the nerve to insist no one is above the law and others are playing politics. Alvin Bragg should charge her with Obstruction of Justice. It's just more evidence that we must remember the GOP - The Party of Human Skid Marks - declared war on the rest of us in 2015 and we need to stop pretending they didn't. This country must be saved from the Republicans.
B-Block (17:20) IN SPORTS: Max Scherzer of the Mets ejected for a game for allegedly using unauthorized sticky substances on his hand. Problem is: they've had this rule three years, there have only been three objections, and they've all been by the same umpire: Phil Cuzzi. We may be returning to the infamous 1998 era of "UmpShow" in which the arbiters ejected everybody they could find, including once, during a game that decided which team would go to the World Series - me. (26:07) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Nancy Mace is proud she once waitressed at Waffle House. She may be headed back there after what she said about Biden. RFK Jr makes the mistake of running for president and running on the records of his father and uncles. And OH THE HUMANITY: a Matt WalshBlog speech is terrorized by "Antifa" armed with... marbles?
C-Block (31:25) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: 39 years ago this month I packed up and moved to Boston to start my dream job, for which they - and I - had waited ten months. The job lasted... FIVE months. The anticipation is truly greater than the event!
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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 iHeartRadio. A
Trump Federalist Society judge has now refused to protect a
(00:27):
former assistant Manhattan District Attorney from being dragged in front
of Jim Jordan's dog and pony dung eating show and
subjected to a deposition and to possible testimony. And frankly,
the ex Ada Mark Pomeran should ignore the Jim Jordan subpoena,
ignore his pathetic perversion of the House Judiciary Committee into
(00:47):
a criminal enterprise designed solely to exonerate the traitor Donald J. Chump.
And if this Federalist society hacked Judge Mary ka Weiss Cassil,
who once ruled for Tucker Carlson after he slandered Karen
McDougall and said she had extorted money from if this
judge tries to act against Pomerants in defense of her
(01:09):
politically corrupted ruling, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should
pursue a case against the judge for obstruction of justice
and for interference in a criminal investigation and slap her
sorry Trump kissing ass in jail. Enough of this Republican shit.
(01:31):
For reasons unknown, presumably the remaining quaint notion or desire
that through his judicial appointments, Trump has not infected every
benchure in the Supreme Court to the Traffic and Parking
Court with dishonesty and theocratic narcissism. DA Bragg and his
former deputy Pomerance did not do what their Trumpian counterparts
(01:55):
would have done and have done, which was to ignore
Jim Jordan, to tell him to shove his subpoena, and
to ask his own grand jury to indict Jordan for obstruction. Instead,
they sought to join the subpoena, and they got this
idiot Trump Judge Mary k Weiss CAASIL, whom Trump's army
(02:17):
of worms literally found somewhere serving out her meaningless life
as a commercial attorney with three years in a Manhattan
bankruptcy court. And they saw those magic words member Federalist Society,
and all of a sudden, she gets to rule not
on deadbeat businessmen who did not pay their insurance claims,
(02:39):
but on matters of actual importance, like helping Jim Jordan
smear the manhattanan district attorney who had the loyalty to
this country and the fealty to the law to actually
indict and arrest Trump for just one episode in his
lifetime of scumbaggery, while the rest of the officers of
the law have sat on their hands for three years
(03:00):
and three months. Jim Jordan ignored a congressional subpoena. Nothing
happened to him. Merrick Garland and the Justice Department did nothing.
Mark Pomerantz and Alvin Bragg should have ignored any action
by this tainted political whore and let Jordan see if
(03:22):
he could talk Garland into acting on a contempt citation
on his behalf. And then let Jordan see if he
would need to see a hearing specialist after he was
deafened by the laughter. This all has to stop. The
Republican chump thugs have to be ignored, they have to
(03:43):
be boycotted, they have to be stonewalled, they have to
be humiliated, they have to be emasculated, they have to
be ruined, and they have to be metaphorically buried. They
get nothing. They declared war on this country eight years
ago and the Democrats are still playing by rules the
Republicans don't even remember ever existed. It is a war.
(04:04):
They arted it. Stop treating it like a negotiation. Mister
Pomerantz wrote this quote, Judge unquote, who owes her paycheck
to Trump, must appear for the Congressional deposition. No one
is above the law unquote. Fine, judge, let's see how
(04:25):
much you understand those six words. No one is above
the law. Indict her for obstructing justice, mister Bragg, there's
politics going on on both sides. Let's be honest about that, Judge.
VIIs Casil had the nerve to say during yesterday's here,
I know there isn't There is politics going in on
your own brain, judge, and in the addled brain of
the creature who owns you, you disgrace. I'm talking about
(04:49):
the subpoena. That's what it's in front of me, Not
all the political rhetoric that's been flying back and forth.
That's all color. It's all theater, the contempt, the nerve,
the diseased mind, a political appointee pretending to be a judge,
a hack appointed to someday repay Trump's favor to her,
(05:11):
like a crime land lawyer or doctor. It's not my place,
under all the case law to tell them, she said,
of the Judiciary Committee, what and how they ought to
conduct their inquiry unquote, and yet that is exactly what
she just did with the DA's office. She ruled it
was her place, under all the case law, to tell
them what and how they ought to conduct their inquiry.
(05:33):
She is an utter, flaming, corrupt fraud. Alvin Bragg sued
Jim Jordan and described his manipulation and exploitation of the
laws of the United States as quote, a direct threat
to federalism and the sovereign interests of the State of
New York, two things Republicans claim to believe in, and
(05:57):
of course they do not, because Republicans believe in nothing.
They are, in fact, nihilists. I hope mister brad can
now amend his suit to include this Judge Vice Casil
and correctly Charger and Jordan with using the Constitution of
the United States with which to wipe Donald Trump's ass. Enough.
(06:18):
The Republicans are not legislators. They're not acting for the
United States of America. They are not even acting for
their own constituents and whatever version of eighteenth century America
they want to drag us back to. They are simply
performance artists and bad ones, mediocrites, punks, morons, bilking, the Rubes,
and sacrificing this nation on the altar of chump, and
(06:42):
the time has come to barricade them inside their bubble
and leave them there for the rest of their lives.
Because this is who Jim Jordan is. And I mentioned
this in passing yesterday in the Worst Person's segment, but
it requires a longer explanation. Jim Jordan goes to Manhattan
and holds a field hearing with other members of his
(07:04):
Manure in human form Republicans, in which they try to
smear Alvin Bragg on Trump's behalf by portraying Alvin Bragg
as soft on crime and Manhattan as a hellscape, even
though it is ten times safer by all metrics than
the cursed town in Ohio from which Jim Jordan hails.
(07:25):
And so Jim Jordan brought in a woman named Jennifer Harrison,
who founded a group called Victim Rights n Why And
she tells her story, and I understand that people get
warped when violence touches or claims people near them, I
mean hell. Nancy Grace's fiance was murdered, a horrible act
which she then embellished for twenty years for reasons which
(07:48):
remain unclear. Well this. Jennifer Harrison goes on to tell
the story of the day her boyfriend was murdered too,
stabbed to death quote at a nightclub, and Jordan and
the committee members bark on Q like seals, and they
all decry what a night mar or Manhattan has become
under Alvin Bragg. And you can't trust anything Alvin Bragg does.
(08:10):
And the video of that goes wall to wall on Fox,
and the New York media eats it up because violence
sells papers and increases audiences and drives up clicks. And
nobody bothers to google Jennifer Harrison. And if they had
googled Jennifer Harrison, they would have found three rather unfortunate
things about this story and the death of her boyfriend,
Kevin Davis. Number one, he was stabbed in the year
(08:33):
two thousand and five, which would be seventeen years before
Alvin Bragg became the DA in Manhattan. Number two, he
was stabbed in what newspaper accounts of the time characterized
as a go go bar in a dispute over a woman,
and none of those accounts indicate the woman was Jennifer Harrison.
And number three, the most relevant part and see if
(08:55):
you can see where the whole Jim Jordan argument falls
to the ground. He was stabbed in a bar called
Lookers in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Elizabeth, New Jersey is fifty
miles outside of alviin Bragg's jurisdiction. And what the hell
was this woman who was warped enough to politicize and
(09:15):
exploit her own boyfriend's murder on behalf of Donald Trump
and the Republicans doing in front of a hearing about
a place that, for all we know, her boyfriend never
even lived in. Congratulations, Jim Jordan, you see through con
Man your lead example of what a bad job Alvin
Bragg is doing in Manhattan was murdered in another city,
(09:37):
in another state, an hour plus away by car, seventeen
years ago. We have to free this country. We must
liberate it of the Republican Party at all levels, from
Chump to his corrupted judges like this idiot Vice Casil
to Clarence Thomas, to Samuel Alito, who just last night
(10:01):
extended the Mafeperstone case another two days, presumably to give
himself enough time to try to bully another justice or
two into supporting a ban on the flimsiest political pretext
of the drug the FDA approved more than twenty years
ago that has been working without issue ever since. Why
else do you think Alito postponed this? And we must
(10:25):
liberate this country from Jim Jordan and do his little sidekick,
this witch Marjorie Taylor Green, because just listen to what
she tried to do yesterday, the House rules and federal laws.
She tried to make up out of whole cloth at
a congressional hearing, and thank god Dan Goldman was able
(10:48):
to rack her up. How long are you going to
let this go on?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Congresswoman? Let me assure you that we're not letting it
go on.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
We are fighting this scrip.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No, I reclaim my time.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
You're a liar. You are letting this go on in
the numbers.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
So, in making a rule on this, it's pretty clear
that the rules state you can't impugne someone's character. Identifying
or calling someone a liar is unacceptable in this committee,
and I make the ruling that we strike those words.
My understanding is if words are taken down, that means
that the member can no longer speak and whatever the
(11:25):
proceeding is that those words were.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Set personal inquiry, point of personal inquiry.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
There's no such thing. When we strike, it does terminate
the time of the individual who is speaking. So the
general Lady is no longer recognized. The chair now recognizes
mister Ivy, I believe. Can I make a point of inquiry,
mister chairman, you can. So the ruling was that because
you use the word liar, that was taken down, which
(11:58):
I agree with. Yes, but accusing a statement of fact
is very similar to the posters that mister there's no statement.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
There's no statement actual basis for the statement.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
We're not here to debate this, Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
They all have to go. When they can be subpoenaed
like Clarence Thomas and humiliated, they must be subpoened and humiliated.
When they can be ignored like this Jim Jordan, they
must be ignored. When they can be indicted for obstruction,
like this Judge Mary Ann Viscasil, they must be indicted
for obstruction. And when they can be expelled from the
(12:34):
House of Representatives, like this human skid mark Marjorie Green,
they must be expelled. Still ahead on this edition of Countdown,
(12:57):
remember Nancy Mace, the reasonable Republican congresswoman who said the
draconian stance on abortion was going to kill the party.
She's just accused, with no evidence at all, President Biden,
of involvement in a prostitution ring. Republicans are all power
mad monsters, and we have to rid this country of them.
(13:21):
Baseball sees only its third in game ejection ever of
a pitcher who allegedly had too much sticky substance on
his hands. This time it's the star Max Scherzer. But
this is not a Max Scherzer problem. This is an
umpire problem. Three years, only three ejections, but all three
ejections have been by the same umpire. And thirty nine
(13:44):
years ago today, I was packing the last of my
belongings for the first great adventure of my television career.
I was moving to Boston to become the new rival
of the top TV sportscaster in that town. I had
fought for nearly a year to get the chance just
to take the job, and the job would last five months.
(14:07):
You mean oops? Don't you just say oops and get
out oops things I promised not to tell coming up?
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith Olberman in sports. Pitcher Max Scherzer
of the New York Mets was ejected from a game
in Los Angeles in the fourth inning yesterday by the
first base umpire Phil Coozy. Couzy decided Schurezer was using
(15:04):
an on all authorized sticky substance on his hands. Without
getting into the arcane rule or the even more arcane
timeline here, Schuzer had already been questioned earlier in the
game about sticky stuff, and so during the third inning
he washed his hands clean while a baseball official watched
him do so. Scherzer said he knew he would be
(15:24):
examined again in the fourth inning, and as he said,
I'd have to be an absolute idiot to try to
do anything when I'm coming back out in the fourth.
He said. The substance the umpire saw was rosin mixed
with sweat, and both are legal, and umpire Phil Couzy
ejected him anyway. The reason this matters is that baseball
has had this rule about sticky substances for almost exactly
(15:46):
three years now, and only three times has a pitcher
ever been ejected from a game for violating this rule.
But each time it happened, the umpire was this same guy,
Phil Couzy, And once again the big problem facing baseball
is what is known colloquially in the game as quote
(16:07):
ump show. Every few years, the empires decide, for some
reason they are not being noticed enough, we're paid enough,
we're thanked enough, and suddenly they make themselves the story
in every other game. Twenty five years ago this thing
peaked for the first time. Ejections of players and managers
and coaches was at an all time high. Umpires were
(16:27):
chasing after players and managers who were walking off the field,
seemingly trying to bake them into arguments and dejections. It
was when the term ump show was born, and even
they got around to threatening the announcers. That October, before
the sixth, then final game of the American League Championship Series,
(16:48):
I was part of the telecast of the game on NBC.
I was based in the camera well, adjoining the visitors
dugout on the third base side at Yankee Stadium in
New York. We had a very brief pregame show and
I did about a one minute report on the various
Cleveland injuries and the third base cameraman then handed me
the tiny monitor that had been stuck atop his camera lens,
and he said, here you go, enjoy. It was black
(17:11):
and white. The screen measured about two inches wide by
about an inch and a half high. It existed solely
to tell somebody the answer to one question, whether or
not they were actually on TV. Anything smaller than me
basically was impossible to see on this inch and a
half by two inch monitor untwo and unless you held
(17:33):
it up to your eye and then squinted. As I
climbed into my little crawl space back next to the
Cleveland dugout the third base umpire for the game, John
Sholock trotted over. Hey, he barked, I don't want to
see any players looking at that. I literally did not
know what he meant. I thought at first that Sholock
did not like my tie at what. He barked again,
(17:55):
you know, God, Dan, well what I don't want players
looking at replays on that television of yours, and then
telling me I blew the call. I laughed. I said, John,
please look at it. You can barely tell if the
thing is on or off. He looked, he was unmoved.
I don't want to see players looking at it understood.
I had been covering Cleveland on NBC game telecasts for
(18:17):
two years throughout the nineteen ninety seven World Series, throughout
the nineteen ninety eight playoffs. You get to know the players.
That way, bottom of the third inning, there's a close
play as Bernie Williams of the Yankees slides into second
base and he's called safe by the umpire Ted Hendry,
and some of the Cleveland players thought he was out.
And during that inning, a couple of them on the
bench came over to my perch, slowly, not urgently, not angrily.
(18:41):
They didn't run. Was the replay clear? Could you tell?
I said it didn't seem decisive. I mean, I really
couldn't see it. But since on my screen Bernie Williams
was about three quarters of an inch tall, I actually
thought the umpires were right. And one of the Cleveland
players left. When Cleveland pitcher finally got the Yankees out
(19:02):
that inning, what do I see but that third base
umpire John Shulock running at me full speed. I told
you expletive deleted not to show them the expletive deleted replays,
And if you expletive deleted, do it again, I'll throw
you in your expletive deleted camera out of this expletive
deleted ballpark. I noticed at this point some of the
Cleveland players on the bench staring at both of us.
(19:25):
I was not in a good mood that day, so
I shouted back at the umpire the hell you expletive
deleted are? Two guys asked me what I saw? I said,
I thought Hendry got the expletive deleted call right, So
go ahead throw me the expletive deleted out of here.
When NBC is paying millions of expletive deleted dollars for
(19:46):
me to expletive deleted be here, see how expletive deleted
long you expletive deleted last in this expletive deleted league.
After expletive deleted that, he left. To his credit. After
the next inning, John Shulock came back over from third
base and apologized, the league's really been getting on us.
(20:09):
I'm sorry, I said, I was sorry, I said again.
Nobody can see anything on this TV, I know, he said,
and he left again. Well, by now I was the
hero of the Cleveland bench. One of the pitchers, Steve
Cars and one of the infielders, Joey Korra came over
and said, welcome to the club, and they told me
this amazing story of a day that summer in the
(20:31):
old ballpark in Milwaukee. One of their coaches, Johnny Gorel,
was trying to read an out of town score on
the scoreboard, and from where he stood in the third
base dugout at County Stadium in Milwaukee, wouldn't you know it,
his view of that exact spot on the scoreboard where
that exact score was was blocked by where the second
(20:52):
base umpire was standing. So Gorel just moved down towards
the far end of the dugout, and at the same time, unknowingly,
the ump moved to his right, and so the ump
managed to remain blocking that of the scoreboard that Johnny
Gorel needed to see. So Johnny Gorel moved back towards
the near end of the dugout. Sure enough, the umpire
moved again, and so when Gorel moved a third time,
(21:14):
the second base umpire suddenly called time and dejected Johnny
Gorel from the game. Gorel and his manager, Mike Hargrove
ran onto the field to try to understand what had happened,
and they were told that Johnny Gorel had been mocking
and distracting the second base umpire by moving around too
much in the dugout. And just as the guys were
(21:35):
getting to this part of the story, who joins them
at my end of the dugout? But manager Mike har
Grove himself, and he says, you guys telling Keith the
Gorel story. The epidemic of ump show in nineteen ninety eight,
which we may be on the verge of repeating, was
so bad that when Cleveland lost that day and did
not go to the World Series and instead saw their
(21:57):
season end, I went into the clubhouse to say goodbye
to a couple of the players who I had come
to note pretty well, and sure enough, the big catcher,
sand Alamar Junior sees me and he runs over and
mind you, they've just lost. Their season is over. He
grabs both my arms and sincerely asks you're all right, man,
And he's serious. I hear you just joined the club.
(22:19):
Welcome to ump show. Baseball has another developing time of
ump show because that ejection yesterday was not a sticky
substance problem, and it was not a max Scherzer problem.
It's a Phil Coozy problem still ahead on countdown. The
(22:49):
definition of that old phrase, the anticipation is greater than
the event. I waited nearly a month for the first
big time job of my career, local TV sportscaster in Boston,
thirty nine years ago. This month I finally got to
move there. It was a month of waiting on top
of a year of waiting, and the job lasted all
(23:10):
the way to thirty nine years ago this October things
I promised not to tell. Coming up first time for
the daily round up with the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning krug effect specimens who constitute today's worse persons in
the world, Ask not what worse persons in the world
can do for you? Because the bronze goes to Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. Yesterday he announced his boy is he going
(23:33):
to be Surprised campaign to supplant Joe Biden as the
Democratic presidential nominee next year. His announcement was basically an
experiment to see how many times he could mention his father,
and his uncle and his other uncle the ask not
President over the course of a two hour speech, again
(23:54):
and again and again and again, except for the part
where he said President Trump gets blamed for a lot
of things he didn't do, unquote, which is certain to
get them all kinds of support in Democratic primaries. Oh God, Bob,
just go home please. From a former friend, Just go home.
Runner up Nancy Mace, congresswoman from North Carolina and until
(24:17):
this week's supposedly serious person. Ah, but this week was
when she posted a video in which she's recording herself
as she walks on a Washington street watch out for potholes,
saying she's just been looking at suspicious activity reports at
the Treasury Department about the Biden family and one of
them ties the president to shell companies, prostitution rings, et cetera.
(24:42):
No evidence, just what she says she saw in a
report at the Treasury Department that would be called slander,
you know. Ms Mace proudly notes that she is a
former waitress at a waffle house, which is a career
she can resume if the President sues her. Gets my grits,
but the winner is right wing trolls Matt Walsh Blog
(25:04):
and and Andy No. Not a good week for mister
Walsh Blog. Mister Walshblog's Twitter account was hacked, and then
at a speech at the University of Iowa last night,
he claimed his YouTube channel had been demonetized because he
insisted on misgendering Dylan mulvaney. So he's losing about a
million dollars a year so he can get people to
(25:26):
mindlessly hate for no real reason. Damn shame boy. Maybe
you can go into something more morally defensible, like becoming
a hit man. Nah, but it gets worse for mister
Matt Walsh Blog. The other guy, Andy No reported in fact,
posted a video of this of a terrifying, vicious, near
(25:47):
fatal attack on Walshblog and his supporters before his speech
last night. To quote Nose tweet, Antifa and far left
extremists tried causing attendees to fall down the stairs by
dumping marbles all over the ground. What no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Not marbles, my god, you vicious fiend.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Antifas marbles, we're all gonna die. Antifa's now armed with marbles.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
What about the children?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
When somebody think about the children who played marbles? Andy
No and Matt Walsh Blog, May I have ten thousand
marbles please, Today's worst marbles in the world.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Love marbles?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
At Boston Red Sox spring training in nineteen eighty three,
a fellow named Bob Clark introduced himself as the sports
producer at this Boston station and said they were all
fans of my CNN work and that there would be
a job opening that summer as sports anchor, and could
he go to his bosses and say I was interested?
And I said sure, And in fact, if he wanted
me to go with him to tell his bosses that,
or if he needed me to carry him to go
(27:15):
tell his bosses that, I was ready. Things advanced so
quickly that by Monday, July eighteenth, nineteen eighty three, I
found myself flying up from New York with my agent,
and as Boston appeared out the window of the plane,
she said, you will own this town. Not so much
maybe later. I went out to the station's headquarters in
(27:36):
a barren suburb called Needham, and interviewed with everybody, sports producers,
the news director, finally the general manager. Everybody beamed at
me and all was going great, having laughed at several
of my jokes and told me he loved my tape.
The general manager, a man named Coppersmith, who was about
to usher me out of his office with a big
hand on my shoulder when I made a terrible, terrible mistake.
(28:01):
I told him we had met before, when I was
a TV inn and he was the general manager of
his parent company station in New York. I remember him
looking at me quizzically, and only later did I find
out that all of his people had lied to him
without telling me, and they had told him I was
twenty eight years old. They did not tell me that
(28:22):
since I was twenty four years old. Coppersmith's last year
at Channel five in New York had been nineteen seventy eight,
and even giving me the benefit of the aged out,
he decided I was no longer anything older than twenty
six and ultimately he thought that was too young to
be a sports anchor in a major television market, back
(28:43):
when those used to be important jobs that paid important money.
They're sportscasters. Since the station had gone on the air
in the nineteen fifties, had been an avuncular, pleasant, gifted
man named Don Gillis, but he was cutting back where
they had decided to cut him back to special feature duty.
The next day, back in New York City, I went
out to find out if the Boston newspapers had found
(29:05):
anything out about my surreptitious trip there. I went to
a place so wonderful and now so impossible to explain
to anybody, the out of town newspaper and magazine shop
in the lobby of the pan Am building, adjacent to
the Grand Central train station. This was one of the
smaller of the out of town newsstands in New York.
(29:26):
It carried about two hundred different American newspapers, dozens more
from around the world, and every imaginable international magazine was
always packed. Its entire glory has been wiped out by
the Internet. Anyway. I bought the Boston Globe and the
Boston Herald from the same day, and there it was
on page thirty two of the Globe, a headline over
(29:48):
a feature by the TV sports columnist Jack Craig. Gillis
departing soon on horizon. Olberman's credentials good Young. Keith Olberman
of Cable News Network CNN reportedly was very favorably interviewed
at Channel five yesterday, possibly signaling the end of the
Don Gillis era more quickly than anticipated. I was young then,
(30:11):
but look credentials good, it said in the headline. This
was it the start of my TV career for real.
No more having to explain to doubting athletes, doubting colleagues,
doubting relatives, doubting team executives that there really was a
TV place called Cable News Network Parenthesis CNN, big money
(30:33):
and big fame in one of the best sports cities
in the nation. As even the Globes article noted, there
is a hitch. Alderman's contract with CNN does not expire
until next May and whether he would be let out
for Channel five is uncertain. Well, sure it was, but
CNN would be nice guys about it, right. This was
real TV, not some perpetual verge of bankruptcy. Cable thing
(30:54):
was really just a big delusion by Ted Turner, and
they needed eight cameras in New York, but that could
only afford seven, So after being used in the field
for ten hours, one cameraman would have to lash his
camera to a tripod for the wide shot shot for
the nightly Sandy Freeman audio talk show. Even after the
inevitable occurred one night and the overworked camera burst into
(31:16):
flames on live TV, CNN would understand by the way
Sandy Freeman was replaced about a year later by Larry King.
That's how long ago this actually was. Anyway, CNN's less
than happy reaction to this was academic. I had unwittingly
(31:37):
blown it when I revealed to that guy Coppersmith that
I was not twenty eight years old. Sure enough, on
August fifteenth, WCBB Channel five Boston announced the hiring of
a Miami sportscaster named Lee Webb to succeed Don Gillis.
Webb was a lot of things, and he wasn't a
lot of other things, but hot damn. He was thirty
years old, and that made him the man in the
(31:58):
eyes of the general manager, mister Coppersmith. On the other hand,
Coppersmith thought his station should still hire me as a reporter.
The news director, a man who went by the imposing
name of Philip Scribner Balboni, offered me a spot as
a feature news reporter a producer, and I would look
for offbeat, on usual, unique stories and go cover them.
(32:18):
It was not the sports anchor's job, but it wasn't
CNN either. LCBB would also wait until CNN finally accepted
that it was over between the two of us. Whenever
that was then three more things happened in quick succession.
Channel five hired a new sports director, a producer who
would run the department and set its editorial tone. His
(32:39):
name was Mike Frnandi's, and even after working with him
for six months, the only thing I knew about him
was that he had no sense of humor. He understood
that I was making jokes, but he never got one
of them. And his principal interest in sports was apparently
determining which players were Don Juan's so he could refer
to them endlessly in the office as quote swordsman. The
(33:01):
second thing that happened was that the sports reporter at
Channel five, I'm Bob Ryan, already very famous at the
Boston Globe later even more so nationally at ESPN, told
management he just could not do both the TV and
newspaper jobs anymore and he needed to quit. Mind you,
this was how important sports was on local TV in
Boston in nineteen eighty three. They had an on air sportscast.
(33:22):
You're a weekend sportscast. You're a sportscaster emeritus and an
on air sports reporter, plus all the producers and the
off air sports director. Often the sportscast in the hour
long six o'clock news, and there was only the one
hour of news. The sportscast lasted ten minutes. So, now
having already offered me the feature news reporting job, news
(33:43):
director Philip Scribner Balboni offered me my choice of that
job or Bob Ryan's sports reporting job. And while I
was debating that, I managed to resist all efforts to
turn me into a newsman for fifteen years. While I
was debating that, another Boston station suddenly jumped into the fray.
Channel seven was a perennial all so ran compared to
(34:05):
Channel five, whose newscasts were among the best, if not
the best, in the country. Without as much as asking
me to even come visit, Channel seven offered me the
job as its sports director, anchored the sports at six
and eleven, run the department, and get much more money
than Channel five. It offered me, and I turned it
down out of loyalty to Channel five because they asked first.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I turned it down moren.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Channel five was out in the as I said, baron suburbs,
Channel seven was in downtown Boston. I would be making
like one hundred thousand a year at age twenty five,
with no responsibilities, living and working in downtown Boston in
nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Four morn.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So anyway, I get to Boston at the end of
April nineteen eighty four at Channel five, and on my
first day out in the barren suburbs, I walk up
a circular staircase to the sports department office and I
hit my head on the staircase and bled so much
they all thought I was going to need stitches. And
I went back to the half a house I had
moved to, one of exactly two rental properties in the
(35:15):
entire town of Nita, Massachusetts, and I thought, what the
hell have I done? No things improved. I was not
just in the field. I did a lot of substitute anchoring,
especially on weekends. And the first time I did that,
Susan Warnick, one of our reporters and the wife of
the big sportscaster in town, Bob Lobell from Channel four.
(35:35):
Susan came up to me in the office on Monday
and gave me a big wet kiss on the lips
and said, you were terrific. Lobell is scared crapless. I
love you. The first time I did a live shot
before a Celtics game at Boston Garden. I wandered around
the arena without being recognized. Once. Two weeks later, I
went back to the garden and I went to get
(35:55):
a hot dog and turned to find a crowd of
several dozen viewers, all shouting at me in the singular
language of the Boston sports fan. On Monday, June eleventh,
nineteen eighty four, Balboni, the news director, called me in
and said he wanted me to start anchoring every night
on the eleven o'clock news. Lee Webb would continue on
the six but the intimation was if it went the
(36:16):
way he thought it was going to, I would get
that show too. But the problem was, and I don't
know if you've noticed this, but occasionally I like to
make jokes, Okay, I need to make jokes, and several
of the executives at the station were real fans of
the Red Sox and Celtics and Patriots and Bruins, and
(36:36):
they did not like the jokes. Even if the viewers
liked the jokes, they didn't. One day, I was supposed
to go with a cameraman to shoot a piece in
which I pretended to interview the Green Monster, the famed
left field wall at Fenway Park. The punchline was it
would turn out the Green Monster didn't like baseball. Not
a bad idea for nineteen eighty four. Just as we're
(36:59):
leaving the station, the sports director for Nandy said, change
of plans, needs you to go to Smithfield. That was
where the football team held its training camp. Patriots just
put their back up middle lineback on waivers, go get
some sound. He didn't need any sound. The executives who
didn't like my jokes had gotten the executive who didn't
get my jokes to stop giving me the chance to
(37:20):
do my jokes. It was an hour and a half
to Smithfield. I was done for the day. I went
home for a little trip to New York. In early September,
met with my agent. Told her that after all the
time and all the energy we had spent to get
that job, this was the most impossible to imagine outcome.
But it was the wrong station, in the wrong suburb,
in the right town, and I didn't know how we
(37:42):
could ever fix it. She agreed. She said I should
go in and tell the news director I wanted to quit,
and then I'd stay as long as he needed me,
but that if they weren't going to let me do
the jokes. What was the point. I was an okay reporter,
I was an okay sportscaster, But only with the jokes
was I me so? September tenth, nineteen eighty four, a Monday,
(38:02):
the news director was not happy. He offered in fack
to fire Lee Webb on the spot and give me
the six o'clock show immediately, like that night. Like Lee,
Lee Web out of the building that minute. But I
told him that would mean he would be keeping somebody
who wanted to leave and firing somebody who wanted to stay.
He angrily agreed, and I became a secret leam duck,
(38:22):
and I stayed on getting fewer and fewer chances to
be me, although they stuck to their end of it.
They sent me to cover the World Series in San
Diego and Detroit, where the guy next to me in
the press box covering it for Channel seven. The place
I should have gone to work was their new sports reporter,
a just retired Red Sox Hall of Fame player named
Carl Yastremsky. I hit a ball over here, I hit
(38:44):
a ball over there. I hit three balls over that roof. Then,
when I got back from the World Series. It happened
on Friday, October nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, that TV sports
columnist from the Boston Globe, Jack Craig, called me up
at home and told me Channel five was firing me
because of bad ratings at eleven o'clock. I didn't have
(39:05):
bad ratings at eleven o'clock. In fact, I had great ratings,
and six weeks earlier they'd offered me the six o'clock
show as well. I hung up with Craig to call
my agent, and instead of a dial tone, I heard
the voice of the TV sports columnist from the Boston Herald,
Jim Baker. I had answered his call fort rang. He
told me Channel five was firing me and Lee Webb
so it could instead hire Ken the Hawk Harrelson, the
(39:28):
former Red Sox star and TV announcer who had moved
to Chicago. So now I call my agent. She says,
your deal with Channel five is off. They want to
make it look like you stink. They want to make
it look like they just fired you. You called Jim
Baker and Jack Craig right now and tell them the
whole story. Wherever you go next, it has to be
clear that you weren't fired. You quit and you stayed
(39:49):
on because you're a pro, which you know was true.
So I called. I told both writers everything, and two
minutes after I got off the phone with Jack Craig
from The Globe, the phone rang and it was Jim
Baker from The Harold calling back, and he says, you'll
never this. Their negotiations with Hawk Harrelson are dead. Apparently
(40:10):
he wanted four hundred thousand dollars a year and to
guarantee that he only had to come in five minutes
before each show to get makeup and then read the
script that somebody else wrote. So you are now our
lead story. Sure enough. Backpage of the Boston Herald, Saturday,
October twenty, nineteen eighty four, above the masthead Overman quits
(40:31):
Channel five. At the same hour, I was supposed to
go to Morgantown, West Virginia, the place that was designed
simply to make that lovely town of Needham, Massachusetts, look
like I don't know, the riviera. I was supposed to
go to Morgantown to cover Doug Flute and Boston College
against the University of West Virginia. Since I lived between
(40:54):
the television station and the airport. The cameraman was going
to swing by my house to pick me up. Do
it like seven am. He never showed. By this point,
I'm thinking I just I had to call my lying
bosses liars in both Boston newspapers that are on every
newsstand in the city and the surrounding area. Why am
I going to race the clock to get to the
(41:14):
airport on my own when this idiot cameraman forgot to
come get me. When we had made the arrangements the
day before. The cameraman had gotten my name wrong and
called me Dick. At least that's why I thought he'd
called me Dick. Anyway, I was twenty five. I went
back to bed, and while I was asleep, Channel five
fired me from a job that I had not only quit,
(41:36):
but I had quit twice, including on the front page
of the newspapers that morning. The Channel five people were furious.
I put up a brave front, but beneath the surface,
I was a little scared until two more things happened
before I could move back to New York. The news
director Phil Balboni told Craig of the Globe that it
was all too bad because quote Keith was potentially such
(41:58):
a major talent. Ooh, and then the general manager, Coppersmith,
was so angry that he told my agent he will
never again work in this business. I am not a
big believer in motivational quotes, but those two those really worked.
Number one and two on my all time list, and
(42:21):
as always, beyond that, there's a punchline. In two thousand
and seven, an email popped into my inbox at MSNBC.
It was glowing and warm and lovely, and it indicated
the writer was a huge fan. It was signed You're
old Channel five News director Phil Balboni. His email did
(42:42):
not mention that I was potentially such a major talent.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
(43:03):
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All the
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Chanelle. Guitars, bass drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed. The
(43:23):
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
and our announcer today was my friend Larry David, and
everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
for this, the eight hundred and thirty fifth day Saint
(43:44):
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 Oldraman good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(44:11):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. A
Trump Federalist Society judge has now refused to protect a
(00:27):
former assistant Manhattan District Attorney from being dragged in front
of Jim Jordan's dog and pony dung eating show and
subjected to a deposition and to possible testimony. And frankly,
the ex Ada Mark Pomeran should ignore the Jim Jordan subpoena,
ignore his pathetic perversion of the House Judiciary Committee into
(00:47):
a criminal enterprise designed solely to exonerate the traitor Donald J. Chump.
And if this Federalist society hacked Judge Mary ka Weiss Cassil,
who once ruled for Tucker Carlson after he slandered Karen
McDougall and said she had extorted money from if this
judge tries to act against Pomerants in defense of her
(01:09):
politically corrupted ruling, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should
pursue a case against the judge for obstruction of justice
and for interference in a criminal investigation and slap her
sorry Trump kissing ass in jail. Enough of this Republican shit.
(01:31):
For reasons unknown, presumably the remaining quaint notion or desire
that through his judicial appointments, Trump has not infected every
benchure in the Supreme Court to the Traffic and Parking
Court with dishonesty and theocratic narcissism. DA Bragg and his
former deputy Pomerance did not do what their Trumpian counterparts
(01:55):
would have done and have done, which was to ignore
Jim Jordan, to tell him to shove his subpoena, and
to ask his own grand jury to indict Jordan for obstruction. Instead,
they sought to join the subpoena, and they got this
idiot Trump Judge Mary k Weiss CAASIL, whom Trump's army
(02:17):
of worms literally found somewhere serving out her meaningless life
as a commercial attorney with three years in a Manhattan
bankruptcy court. And they saw those magic words member Federalist Society,
and all of a sudden, she gets to rule not
on deadbeat businessmen who did not pay their insurance claims,
(02:39):
but on matters of actual importance, like helping Jim Jordan
smear the manhattanan district attorney who had the loyalty to
this country and the fealty to the law to actually
indict and arrest Trump for just one episode in his
lifetime of scumbaggery, while the rest of the officers of
the law have sat on their hands for three years
(03:00):
and three months. Jim Jordan ignored a congressional subpoena. Nothing
happened to him. Merrick Garland and the Justice Department did nothing.
Mark Pomerantz and Alvin Bragg should have ignored any action
by this tainted political whore and let Jordan see if
(03:22):
he could talk Garland into acting on a contempt citation
on his behalf. And then let Jordan see if he
would need to see a hearing specialist after he was
deafened by the laughter. This all has to stop. The
Republican chump thugs have to be ignored, they have to
(03:43):
be boycotted, they have to be stonewalled, they have to
be humiliated, they have to be emasculated, they have to
be ruined, and they have to be metaphorically buried. They
get nothing. They declared war on this country eight years
ago and the Democrats are still playing by rules the
Republicans don't even remember ever existed. It is a war.
(04:04):
They arted it. Stop treating it like a negotiation. Mister
Pomerantz wrote this quote, Judge unquote, who owes her paycheck
to Trump, must appear for the Congressional deposition. No one
is above the law unquote. Fine, judge, let's see how
(04:25):
much you understand those six words. No one is above
the law. Indict her for obstructing justice, mister Bragg, there's
politics going on on both sides. Let's be honest about that, Judge.
VIIs Casil had the nerve to say during yesterday's here,
I know there isn't There is politics going in on
your own brain, judge, and in the addled brain of
the creature who owns you, you disgrace. I'm talking about
(04:49):
the subpoena. That's what it's in front of me, Not
all the political rhetoric that's been flying back and forth.
That's all color. It's all theater, the contempt, the nerve,
the diseased mind, a political appointee pretending to be a judge,
a hack appointed to someday repay Trump's favor to her,
(05:11):
like a crime land lawyer or doctor. It's not my place,
under all the case law to tell them, she said,
of the Judiciary Committee, what and how they ought to
conduct their inquiry unquote, and yet that is exactly what
she just did with the DA's office. She ruled it
was her place, under all the case law, to tell
them what and how they ought to conduct their inquiry.
(05:33):
She is an utter, flaming, corrupt fraud. Alvin Bragg sued
Jim Jordan and described his manipulation and exploitation of the
laws of the United States as quote, a direct threat
to federalism and the sovereign interests of the State of
New York, two things Republicans claim to believe in, and
(05:57):
of course they do not, because Republicans believe in nothing.
They are, in fact, nihilists. I hope mister brad can
now amend his suit to include this Judge Vice Casil
and correctly Charger and Jordan with using the Constitution of
the United States with which to wipe Donald Trump's ass. Enough.
(06:18):
The Republicans are not legislators. They're not acting for the
United States of America. They are not even acting for
their own constituents and whatever version of eighteenth century America
they want to drag us back to. They are simply
performance artists and bad ones, mediocrites, punks, morons, bilking, the Rubes,
and sacrificing this nation on the altar of chump, and
(06:42):
the time has come to barricade them inside their bubble
and leave them there for the rest of their lives.
Because this is who Jim Jordan is. And I mentioned
this in passing yesterday in the Worst Person's segment, but
it requires a longer explanation. Jim Jordan goes to Manhattan
and holds a field hearing with other members of his
(07:04):
Manure in human form Republicans, in which they try to
smear Alvin Bragg on Trump's behalf by portraying Alvin Bragg
as soft on crime and Manhattan as a hellscape, even
though it is ten times safer by all metrics than
the cursed town in Ohio from which Jim Jordan hails.
(07:25):
And so Jim Jordan brought in a woman named Jennifer Harrison,
who founded a group called Victim Rights n Why And
she tells her story, and I understand that people get
warped when violence touches or claims people near them, I
mean hell. Nancy Grace's fiance was murdered, a horrible act
which she then embellished for twenty years for reasons which
(07:48):
remain unclear. Well this. Jennifer Harrison goes on to tell
the story of the day her boyfriend was murdered too,
stabbed to death quote at a nightclub, and Jordan and
the committee members bark on Q like seals, and they
all decry what a night mar or Manhattan has become
under Alvin Bragg. And you can't trust anything Alvin Bragg does.
(08:10):
And the video of that goes wall to wall on Fox,
and the New York media eats it up because violence
sells papers and increases audiences and drives up clicks. And
nobody bothers to google Jennifer Harrison. And if they had
googled Jennifer Harrison, they would have found three rather unfortunate
things about this story and the death of her boyfriend,
Kevin Davis. Number one, he was stabbed in the year
(08:33):
two thousand and five, which would be seventeen years before
Alvin Bragg became the DA in Manhattan. Number two, he
was stabbed in what newspaper accounts of the time characterized
as a go go bar in a dispute over a woman,
and none of those accounts indicate the woman was Jennifer Harrison.
And number three, the most relevant part and see if
(08:55):
you can see where the whole Jim Jordan argument falls
to the ground. He was stabbed in a bar called
Lookers in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Elizabeth, New Jersey is fifty
miles outside of alviin Bragg's jurisdiction. And what the hell
was this woman who was warped enough to politicize and
(09:15):
exploit her own boyfriend's murder on behalf of Donald Trump
and the Republicans doing in front of a hearing about
a place that, for all we know, her boyfriend never
even lived in. Congratulations, Jim Jordan, you see through con
Man your lead example of what a bad job Alvin
Bragg is doing in Manhattan was murdered in another city,
(09:37):
in another state, an hour plus away by car, seventeen
years ago. We have to free this country. We must
liberate it of the Republican Party at all levels, from
Chump to his corrupted judges like this idiot Vice Casil
to Clarence Thomas, to Samuel Alito, who just last night
(10:01):
extended the Mafeperstone case another two days, presumably to give
himself enough time to try to bully another justice or
two into supporting a ban on the flimsiest political pretext
of the drug the FDA approved more than twenty years
ago that has been working without issue ever since. Why
else do you think Alito postponed this? And we must
(10:25):
liberate this country from Jim Jordan and do his little sidekick,
this witch Marjorie Taylor Green, because just listen to what
she tried to do yesterday, the House rules and federal laws.
She tried to make up out of whole cloth at
a congressional hearing, and thank god Dan Goldman was able
(10:48):
to rack her up. How long are you going to
let this go on?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Congresswoman? Let me assure you that we're not letting it
go on.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
We are fighting this scrip.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
No, I reclaim my time.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
You're a liar. You are letting this go on in
the numbers.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
So, in making a rule on this, it's pretty clear
that the rules state you can't impugne someone's character. Identifying
or calling someone a liar is unacceptable in this committee,
and I make the ruling that we strike those words.
My understanding is if words are taken down, that means
that the member can no longer speak and whatever the
(11:25):
proceeding is that those words were.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Set personal inquiry, point of personal inquiry.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
There's no such thing. When we strike, it does terminate
the time of the individual who is speaking. So the
general Lady is no longer recognized. The chair now recognizes
mister Ivy, I believe. Can I make a point of inquiry,
mister chairman, you can. So the ruling was that because
you use the word liar, that was taken down, which
(11:58):
I agree with. Yes, but accusing a statement of fact
is very similar to the posters that mister there's no statement.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
There's no statement actual basis for the statement.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
We're not here to debate this, Okay.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
They all have to go. When they can be subpoenaed
like Clarence Thomas and humiliated, they must be subpoened and humiliated.
When they can be ignored like this Jim Jordan, they
must be ignored. When they can be indicted for obstruction,
like this Judge Mary Ann Viscasil, they must be indicted
for obstruction. And when they can be expelled from the
(12:34):
House of Representatives, like this human skid mark Marjorie Green,
they must be expelled. Still ahead on this edition of Countdown,
(12:57):
remember Nancy Mace, the reasonable Republican congresswoman who said the
draconian stance on abortion was going to kill the party.
She's just accused, with no evidence at all, President Biden,
of involvement in a prostitution ring. Republicans are all power
mad monsters, and we have to rid this country of them.
(13:21):
Baseball sees only its third in game ejection ever of
a pitcher who allegedly had too much sticky substance on
his hands. This time it's the star Max Scherzer. But
this is not a Max Scherzer problem. This is an
umpire problem. Three years, only three ejections, but all three
ejections have been by the same umpire. And thirty nine
(13:44):
years ago today, I was packing the last of my
belongings for the first great adventure of my television career.
I was moving to Boston to become the new rival
of the top TV sportscaster in that town. I had
fought for nearly a year to get the chance just
to take the job, and the job would last five months.
(14:07):
You mean oops? Don't you just say oops and get
out oops things I promised not to tell coming up?
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
This is Countdown with Keith Olberman.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
This is Sports Center. Wait, check that not anymore. This
is Countdown with Keith Olberman in sports. Pitcher Max Scherzer
of the New York Mets was ejected from a game
in Los Angeles in the fourth inning yesterday by the
first base umpire Phil Coozy. Couzy decided Schurezer was using
(15:04):
an on all authorized sticky substance on his hands. Without
getting into the arcane rule or the even more arcane
timeline here, Schuzer had already been questioned earlier in the
game about sticky stuff, and so during the third inning
he washed his hands clean while a baseball official watched
him do so. Scherzer said he knew he would be
(15:24):
examined again in the fourth inning, and as he said,
I'd have to be an absolute idiot to try to
do anything when I'm coming back out in the fourth.
He said. The substance the umpire saw was rosin mixed
with sweat, and both are legal, and umpire Phil Couzy
ejected him anyway. The reason this matters is that baseball
has had this rule about sticky substances for almost exactly
(15:46):
three years now, and only three times has a pitcher
ever been ejected from a game for violating this rule.
But each time it happened, the umpire was this same guy,
Phil Couzy, And once again the big problem facing baseball
is what is known colloquially in the game as quote
(16:07):
ump show. Every few years, the empires decide, for some
reason they are not being noticed enough, we're paid enough,
we're thanked enough, and suddenly they make themselves the story
in every other game. Twenty five years ago this thing
peaked for the first time. Ejections of players and managers
and coaches was at an all time high. Umpires were
(16:27):
chasing after players and managers who were walking off the field,
seemingly trying to bake them into arguments and dejections. It
was when the term ump show was born, and even
they got around to threatening the announcers. That October, before
the sixth, then final game of the American League Championship Series,
(16:48):
I was part of the telecast of the game on NBC.
I was based in the camera well, adjoining the visitors
dugout on the third base side at Yankee Stadium in
New York. We had a very brief pregame show and
I did about a one minute report on the various
Cleveland injuries and the third base cameraman then handed me
the tiny monitor that had been stuck atop his camera lens,
and he said, here you go, enjoy. It was black
(17:11):
and white. The screen measured about two inches wide by
about an inch and a half high. It existed solely
to tell somebody the answer to one question, whether or
not they were actually on TV. Anything smaller than me
basically was impossible to see on this inch and a
half by two inch monitor untwo and unless you held
(17:33):
it up to your eye and then squinted. As I
climbed into my little crawl space back next to the
Cleveland dugout the third base umpire for the game, John
Sholock trotted over. Hey, he barked, I don't want to
see any players looking at that. I literally did not
know what he meant. I thought at first that Sholock
did not like my tie at what. He barked again,
(17:55):
you know, God, Dan, well what I don't want players
looking at replays on that television of yours, and then
telling me I blew the call. I laughed. I said, John,
please look at it. You can barely tell if the
thing is on or off. He looked, he was unmoved.
I don't want to see players looking at it understood.
I had been covering Cleveland on NBC game telecasts for
(18:17):
two years throughout the nineteen ninety seven World Series, throughout
the nineteen ninety eight playoffs. You get to know the players.
That way, bottom of the third inning, there's a close
play as Bernie Williams of the Yankees slides into second
base and he's called safe by the umpire Ted Hendry,
and some of the Cleveland players thought he was out.
And during that inning, a couple of them on the
bench came over to my perch, slowly, not urgently, not angrily.
(18:41):
They didn't run. Was the replay clear? Could you tell?
I said it didn't seem decisive. I mean, I really
couldn't see it. But since on my screen Bernie Williams
was about three quarters of an inch tall, I actually
thought the umpires were right. And one of the Cleveland
players left. When Cleveland pitcher finally got the Yankees out
(19:02):
that inning, what do I see but that third base
umpire John Shulock running at me full speed. I told
you expletive deleted not to show them the expletive deleted replays,
And if you expletive deleted, do it again, I'll throw
you in your expletive deleted camera out of this expletive
deleted ballpark. I noticed at this point some of the
Cleveland players on the bench staring at both of us.
(19:25):
I was not in a good mood that day, so
I shouted back at the umpire the hell you expletive
deleted are? Two guys asked me what I saw? I said,
I thought Hendry got the expletive deleted call right, So
go ahead throw me the expletive deleted out of here.
When NBC is paying millions of expletive deleted dollars for
(19:46):
me to expletive deleted be here, see how expletive deleted
long you expletive deleted last in this expletive deleted league.
After expletive deleted that, he left. To his credit. After
the next inning, John Shulock came back over from third
base and apologized, the league's really been getting on us.
(20:09):
I'm sorry, I said, I was sorry, I said again.
Nobody can see anything on this TV, I know, he said,
and he left again. Well, by now I was the
hero of the Cleveland bench. One of the pitchers, Steve
Cars and one of the infielders, Joey Korra came over
and said, welcome to the club, and they told me
this amazing story of a day that summer in the
(20:31):
old ballpark in Milwaukee. One of their coaches, Johnny Gorel,
was trying to read an out of town score on
the scoreboard, and from where he stood in the third
base dugout at County Stadium in Milwaukee, wouldn't you know it,
his view of that exact spot on the scoreboard where
that exact score was was blocked by where the second
(20:52):
base umpire was standing. So Gorel just moved down towards
the far end of the dugout, and at the same time, unknowingly,
the ump moved to his right, and so the ump
managed to remain blocking that of the scoreboard that Johnny
Gorel needed to see. So Johnny Gorel moved back towards
the near end of the dugout. Sure enough, the umpire
moved again, and so when Gorel moved a third time,
(21:14):
the second base umpire suddenly called time and dejected Johnny
Gorel from the game. Gorel and his manager, Mike Hargrove
ran onto the field to try to understand what had happened,
and they were told that Johnny Gorel had been mocking
and distracting the second base umpire by moving around too
much in the dugout. And just as the guys were
(21:35):
getting to this part of the story, who joins them
at my end of the dugout? But manager Mike har
Grove himself, and he says, you guys telling Keith the
Gorel story. The epidemic of ump show in nineteen ninety eight,
which we may be on the verge of repeating, was
so bad that when Cleveland lost that day and did
not go to the World Series and instead saw their
(21:57):
season end, I went into the clubhouse to say goodbye
to a couple of the players who I had come
to note pretty well, and sure enough, the big catcher,
sand Alamar Junior sees me and he runs over and
mind you, they've just lost. Their season is over. He
grabs both my arms and sincerely asks you're all right, man,
And he's serious. I hear you just joined the club.
(22:19):
Welcome to ump show. Baseball has another developing time of
ump show because that ejection yesterday was not a sticky
substance problem, and it was not a max Scherzer problem.
It's a Phil Coozy problem still ahead on countdown. The
(22:49):
definition of that old phrase, the anticipation is greater than
the event. I waited nearly a month for the first
big time job of my career, local TV sportscaster in Boston,
thirty nine years ago. This month I finally got to
move there. It was a month of waiting on top
of a year of waiting, and the job lasted all
(23:10):
the way to thirty nine years ago this October things
I promised not to tell. Coming up first time for
the daily round up with the miss Grants, morons and
Dunning krug effect specimens who constitute today's worse persons in
the world, Ask not what worse persons in the world
can do for you? Because the bronze goes to Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. Yesterday he announced his boy is he going
(23:33):
to be Surprised campaign to supplant Joe Biden as the
Democratic presidential nominee next year. His announcement was basically an
experiment to see how many times he could mention his father,
and his uncle and his other uncle the ask not
President over the course of a two hour speech, again
(23:54):
and again and again and again, except for the part
where he said President Trump gets blamed for a lot
of things he didn't do, unquote, which is certain to
get them all kinds of support in Democratic primaries. Oh God, Bob,
just go home please. From a former friend, Just go home.
Runner up Nancy Mace, congresswoman from North Carolina and until
(24:17):
this week's supposedly serious person. Ah, but this week was
when she posted a video in which she's recording herself
as she walks on a Washington street watch out for potholes,
saying she's just been looking at suspicious activity reports at
the Treasury Department about the Biden family and one of
them ties the president to shell companies, prostitution rings, et cetera.
(24:42):
No evidence, just what she says she saw in a
report at the Treasury Department that would be called slander,
you know. Ms Mace proudly notes that she is a
former waitress at a waffle house, which is a career
she can resume if the President sues her. Gets my grits,
but the winner is right wing trolls Matt Walsh Blog
(25:04):
and and Andy No. Not a good week for mister
Walsh Blog. Mister Walshblog's Twitter account was hacked, and then
at a speech at the University of Iowa last night,
he claimed his YouTube channel had been demonetized because he
insisted on misgendering Dylan mulvaney. So he's losing about a
million dollars a year so he can get people to
(25:26):
mindlessly hate for no real reason. Damn shame boy. Maybe
you can go into something more morally defensible, like becoming
a hit man. Nah, but it gets worse for mister
Matt Walsh Blog. The other guy, Andy No reported in fact,
posted a video of this of a terrifying, vicious, near
(25:47):
fatal attack on Walshblog and his supporters before his speech
last night. To quote Nose tweet, Antifa and far left
extremists tried causing attendees to fall down the stairs by
dumping marbles all over the ground. What no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Not marbles, my god, you vicious fiend.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Antifas marbles, we're all gonna die. Antifa's now armed with marbles.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
What about the children?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
When somebody think about the children who played marbles? Andy
No and Matt Walsh Blog, May I have ten thousand
marbles please, Today's worst marbles in the world.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Love marbles?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
At Boston Red Sox spring training in nineteen eighty three,
a fellow named Bob Clark introduced himself as the sports
producer at this Boston station and said they were all
fans of my CNN work and that there would be
a job opening that summer as sports anchor, and could
he go to his bosses and say I was interested?
And I said sure, And in fact, if he wanted
me to go with him to tell his bosses that,
or if he needed me to carry him to go
(27:15):
tell his bosses that, I was ready. Things advanced so
quickly that by Monday, July eighteenth, nineteen eighty three, I
found myself flying up from New York with my agent,
and as Boston appeared out the window of the plane,
she said, you will own this town. Not so much
maybe later. I went out to the station's headquarters in
(27:36):
a barren suburb called Needham, and interviewed with everybody, sports producers,
the news director, finally the general manager. Everybody beamed at
me and all was going great, having laughed at several
of my jokes and told me he loved my tape.
The general manager, a man named Coppersmith, who was about
to usher me out of his office with a big
hand on my shoulder when I made a terrible, terrible mistake.
(28:01):
I told him we had met before, when I was
a TV inn and he was the general manager of
his parent company station in New York. I remember him
looking at me quizzically, and only later did I find
out that all of his people had lied to him
without telling me, and they had told him I was
twenty eight years old. They did not tell me that
(28:22):
since I was twenty four years old. Coppersmith's last year
at Channel five in New York had been nineteen seventy eight,
and even giving me the benefit of the aged out,
he decided I was no longer anything older than twenty
six and ultimately he thought that was too young to
be a sports anchor in a major television market, back
(28:43):
when those used to be important jobs that paid important money.
They're sportscasters. Since the station had gone on the air
in the nineteen fifties, had been an avuncular, pleasant, gifted
man named Don Gillis, but he was cutting back where
they had decided to cut him back to special feature duty.
The next day, back in New York City, I went
out to find out if the Boston newspapers had found
(29:05):
anything out about my surreptitious trip there. I went to
a place so wonderful and now so impossible to explain
to anybody, the out of town newspaper and magazine shop
in the lobby of the pan Am building, adjacent to
the Grand Central train station. This was one of the
smaller of the out of town newsstands in New York.
(29:26):
It carried about two hundred different American newspapers, dozens more
from around the world, and every imaginable international magazine was
always packed. Its entire glory has been wiped out by
the Internet. Anyway. I bought the Boston Globe and the
Boston Herald from the same day, and there it was
on page thirty two of the Globe, a headline over
(29:48):
a feature by the TV sports columnist Jack Craig. Gillis
departing soon on horizon. Olberman's credentials good Young. Keith Olberman
of Cable News Network CNN reportedly was very favorably interviewed
at Channel five yesterday, possibly signaling the end of the
Don Gillis era more quickly than anticipated. I was young then,
(30:11):
but look credentials good, it said in the headline. This
was it the start of my TV career for real.
No more having to explain to doubting athletes, doubting colleagues,
doubting relatives, doubting team executives that there really was a
TV place called Cable News Network Parenthesis CNN, big money
(30:33):
and big fame in one of the best sports cities
in the nation. As even the Globes article noted, there
is a hitch. Alderman's contract with CNN does not expire
until next May and whether he would be let out
for Channel five is uncertain. Well, sure it was, but
CNN would be nice guys about it, right. This was
real TV, not some perpetual verge of bankruptcy. Cable thing
(30:54):
was really just a big delusion by Ted Turner, and
they needed eight cameras in New York, but that could
only afford seven, So after being used in the field
for ten hours, one cameraman would have to lash his
camera to a tripod for the wide shot shot for
the nightly Sandy Freeman audio talk show. Even after the
inevitable occurred one night and the overworked camera burst into
(31:16):
flames on live TV, CNN would understand by the way
Sandy Freeman was replaced about a year later by Larry King.
That's how long ago this actually was. Anyway, CNN's less
than happy reaction to this was academic. I had unwittingly
(31:37):
blown it when I revealed to that guy Coppersmith that
I was not twenty eight years old. Sure enough, on
August fifteenth, WCBB Channel five Boston announced the hiring of
a Miami sportscaster named Lee Webb to succeed Don Gillis.
Webb was a lot of things, and he wasn't a
lot of other things, but hot damn. He was thirty
years old, and that made him the man in the
(31:58):
eyes of the general manager, mister Coppersmith. On the other hand,
Coppersmith thought his station should still hire me as a reporter.
The news director, a man who went by the imposing
name of Philip Scribner Balboni, offered me a spot as
a feature news reporter a producer, and I would look
for offbeat, on usual, unique stories and go cover them.
(32:18):
It was not the sports anchor's job, but it wasn't
CNN either. LCBB would also wait until CNN finally accepted
that it was over between the two of us. Whenever
that was then three more things happened in quick succession.
Channel five hired a new sports director, a producer who
would run the department and set its editorial tone. His
(32:39):
name was Mike Frnandi's, and even after working with him
for six months, the only thing I knew about him
was that he had no sense of humor. He understood
that I was making jokes, but he never got one
of them. And his principal interest in sports was apparently
determining which players were Don Juan's so he could refer
to them endlessly in the office as quote swordsman. The
(33:01):
second thing that happened was that the sports reporter at
Channel five, I'm Bob Ryan, already very famous at the
Boston Globe later even more so nationally at ESPN, told
management he just could not do both the TV and
newspaper jobs anymore and he needed to quit. Mind you,
this was how important sports was on local TV in
Boston in nineteen eighty three. They had an on air sportscast.
(33:22):
You're a weekend sportscast. You're a sportscaster emeritus and an
on air sports reporter, plus all the producers and the
off air sports director. Often the sportscast in the hour
long six o'clock news, and there was only the one
hour of news. The sportscast lasted ten minutes. So, now
having already offered me the feature news reporting job, news
(33:43):
director Philip Scribner Balboni offered me my choice of that
job or Bob Ryan's sports reporting job. And while I
was debating that, I managed to resist all efforts to
turn me into a newsman for fifteen years. While I
was debating that, another Boston station suddenly jumped into the fray.
Channel seven was a perennial all so ran compared to
(34:05):
Channel five, whose newscasts were among the best, if not
the best, in the country. Without as much as asking
me to even come visit, Channel seven offered me the
job as its sports director, anchored the sports at six
and eleven, run the department, and get much more money
than Channel five. It offered me, and I turned it
down out of loyalty to Channel five because they asked first.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
I turned it down moren.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Channel five was out in the as I said, baron suburbs,
Channel seven was in downtown Boston. I would be making
like one hundred thousand a year at age twenty five,
with no responsibilities, living and working in downtown Boston in
nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Four morn.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So anyway, I get to Boston at the end of
April nineteen eighty four at Channel five, and on my
first day out in the barren suburbs, I walk up
a circular staircase to the sports department office and I
hit my head on the staircase and bled so much
they all thought I was going to need stitches. And
I went back to the half a house I had
moved to, one of exactly two rental properties in the
(35:15):
entire town of Nita, Massachusetts, and I thought, what the
hell have I done? No things improved. I was not
just in the field. I did a lot of substitute anchoring,
especially on weekends. And the first time I did that,
Susan Warnick, one of our reporters and the wife of
the big sportscaster in town, Bob Lobell from Channel four.
(35:35):
Susan came up to me in the office on Monday
and gave me a big wet kiss on the lips
and said, you were terrific. Lobell is scared crapless. I
love you. The first time I did a live shot
before a Celtics game at Boston Garden. I wandered around
the arena without being recognized. Once. Two weeks later, I
went back to the garden and I went to get
(35:55):
a hot dog and turned to find a crowd of
several dozen viewers, all shouting at me in the singular
language of the Boston sports fan. On Monday, June eleventh,
nineteen eighty four, Balboni, the news director, called me in
and said he wanted me to start anchoring every night
on the eleven o'clock news. Lee Webb would continue on
the six but the intimation was if it went the
(36:16):
way he thought it was going to, I would get
that show too. But the problem was, and I don't
know if you've noticed this, but occasionally I like to
make jokes, Okay, I need to make jokes, and several
of the executives at the station were real fans of
the Red Sox and Celtics and Patriots and Bruins, and
(36:36):
they did not like the jokes. Even if the viewers
liked the jokes, they didn't. One day, I was supposed
to go with a cameraman to shoot a piece in
which I pretended to interview the Green Monster, the famed
left field wall at Fenway Park. The punchline was it
would turn out the Green Monster didn't like baseball. Not
a bad idea for nineteen eighty four. Just as we're
(36:59):
leaving the station, the sports director for Nandy said, change
of plans, needs you to go to Smithfield. That was
where the football team held its training camp. Patriots just
put their back up middle lineback on waivers, go get
some sound. He didn't need any sound. The executives who
didn't like my jokes had gotten the executive who didn't
get my jokes to stop giving me the chance to
(37:20):
do my jokes. It was an hour and a half
to Smithfield. I was done for the day. I went
home for a little trip to New York. In early September,
met with my agent. Told her that after all the
time and all the energy we had spent to get
that job, this was the most impossible to imagine outcome.
But it was the wrong station, in the wrong suburb,
in the right town, and I didn't know how we
(37:42):
could ever fix it. She agreed. She said I should
go in and tell the news director I wanted to quit,
and then I'd stay as long as he needed me,
but that if they weren't going to let me do
the jokes. What was the point. I was an okay reporter,
I was an okay sportscaster, But only with the jokes
was I me so? September tenth, nineteen eighty four, a Monday,
(38:02):
the news director was not happy. He offered in fack
to fire Lee Webb on the spot and give me
the six o'clock show immediately, like that night. Like Lee,
Lee Web out of the building that minute. But I
told him that would mean he would be keeping somebody
who wanted to leave and firing somebody who wanted to stay.
He angrily agreed, and I became a secret leam duck,
(38:22):
and I stayed on getting fewer and fewer chances to
be me, although they stuck to their end of it.
They sent me to cover the World Series in San
Diego and Detroit, where the guy next to me in
the press box covering it for Channel seven. The place
I should have gone to work was their new sports reporter,
a just retired Red Sox Hall of Fame player named
Carl Yastremsky. I hit a ball over here, I hit
(38:44):
a ball over there. I hit three balls over that roof. Then,
when I got back from the World Series. It happened
on Friday, October nineteenth, nineteen eighty four, that TV sports
columnist from the Boston Globe, Jack Craig, called me up
at home and told me Channel five was firing me
because of bad ratings at eleven o'clock. I didn't have
(39:05):
bad ratings at eleven o'clock. In fact, I had great ratings,
and six weeks earlier they'd offered me the six o'clock
show as well. I hung up with Craig to call
my agent, and instead of a dial tone, I heard
the voice of the TV sports columnist from the Boston Herald,
Jim Baker. I had answered his call fort rang. He
told me Channel five was firing me and Lee Webb
so it could instead hire Ken the Hawk Harrelson, the
(39:28):
former Red Sox star and TV announcer who had moved
to Chicago. So now I call my agent. She says,
your deal with Channel five is off. They want to
make it look like you stink. They want to make
it look like they just fired you. You called Jim
Baker and Jack Craig right now and tell them the
whole story. Wherever you go next, it has to be
clear that you weren't fired. You quit and you stayed
(39:49):
on because you're a pro, which you know was true.
So I called. I told both writers everything, and two
minutes after I got off the phone with Jack Craig
from The Globe, the phone rang and it was Jim
Baker from The Harold calling back, and he says, you'll
never this. Their negotiations with Hawk Harrelson are dead. Apparently
(40:10):
he wanted four hundred thousand dollars a year and to
guarantee that he only had to come in five minutes
before each show to get makeup and then read the
script that somebody else wrote. So you are now our
lead story. Sure enough. Backpage of the Boston Herald, Saturday,
October twenty, nineteen eighty four, above the masthead Overman quits
(40:31):
Channel five. At the same hour, I was supposed to
go to Morgantown, West Virginia, the place that was designed
simply to make that lovely town of Needham, Massachusetts, look
like I don't know, the riviera. I was supposed to
go to Morgantown to cover Doug Flute and Boston College
against the University of West Virginia. Since I lived between
(40:54):
the television station and the airport. The cameraman was going
to swing by my house to pick me up. Do
it like seven am. He never showed. By this point,
I'm thinking I just I had to call my lying
bosses liars in both Boston newspapers that are on every
newsstand in the city and the surrounding area. Why am
I going to race the clock to get to the
(41:14):
airport on my own when this idiot cameraman forgot to
come get me. When we had made the arrangements the
day before. The cameraman had gotten my name wrong and
called me Dick. At least that's why I thought he'd
called me Dick. Anyway, I was twenty five. I went
back to bed, and while I was asleep, Channel five
fired me from a job that I had not only quit,
(41:36):
but I had quit twice, including on the front page
of the newspapers that morning. The Channel five people were furious.
I put up a brave front, but beneath the surface,
I was a little scared until two more things happened
before I could move back to New York. The news
director Phil Balboni told Craig of the Globe that it
was all too bad because quote Keith was potentially such
(41:58):
a major talent. Ooh, and then the general manager, Coppersmith,
was so angry that he told my agent he will
never again work in this business. I am not a
big believer in motivational quotes, but those two those really worked.
Number one and two on my all time list, and
(42:21):
as always, beyond that, there's a punchline. In two thousand
and seven, an email popped into my inbox at MSNBC.
It was glowing and warm and lovely, and it indicated
the writer was a huge fan. It was signed You're
old Channel five News director Phil Balboni. His email did
(42:42):
not mention that I was potentially such a major talent.
I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
you for listening. Here are the credits. Most of the
(43:03):
music arrange produced and performed by Brian Ray and John
Phillip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. All the
orchestration and keyboards by John Phillip Chanelle. Guitars, bass drums
by Brian Ray, produced by Tko Brothers. Other Beethoven selections
have been arranged and performed by No Horns allowed. The
(43:23):
sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and
it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Musical comments by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
and our announcer today was my friend Larry David, and
everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
for this, the eight hundred and thirty fifth day Saint
(43:44):
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 Oldraman good morning, good afternoon, good night,
and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production
(44:11):
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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