October 22, 2024 • 38 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 54: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Ignore, for the moment, the horserace numbers in the national and even swing state polls and consider two "interior numbers." Emerson says those 20% or so of voters who hadn't decided for whom to vote until the last week or last month are breaking 60/36 for Harris.
The implications for this are profound. With two percent still undecided (around 3,250,000 people) if the pattern holds, Harris could see a net gain of 648,000 votes (perhaps a net 28,000 in Pennsylvania alone). That kind of gain applied to her swing state leads from The Washington Post poll could secure victory.
There's also some impressive work out of CNN's Harry Enten and his analysis of a small but important decline in the core of Trump's support: Non-College Whites in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Polls show he's down about 13% in that demographic and since in those states that demographic is a majority of likely voters, that's a world of hurt.
And then there is the Associated Press polling on economic issues where Harris is ahead of Trump on everything but handling gas and grocery prices (and trailing him by only two points in that).
Be of good cheer.
PLUS TRUMP KEEPS SAYING STUPID THINGS: Assassination attempt survivor Trump has now endorsed the threatening of FEMA officials by armed gunmen in North Carolina, and has said we have to go back to 1798 (you know, when it was illegal to criticize the government but legal to own other human beings).
I wonder how a pro-slavery position polls with late deciders?.
B-Block (20:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Dr. Said Masih Noori certainly appears to be what he claims: a British doctor who wrote that he would like to "vanish" Jews. His fulsome apology didn't work, so he went back on the attack and just to ratchet it up a notch he endorsed the Trump-Musk campaign. New York Magazine asks 57 experts you've never heard of if Media can survive. Not if people like those running New York Magazine keep running the field. Hours after publication they fired Olivia Nuzzi. And National Review promotes Rich Lowry's non-insightful criticism of the WNBA basketball finals. All 83 words of it. Which, like anything else he writes about women, requires another reading of his 2008 masturbatory paean to Sarah Palin after the VP debate.
C-Block (32:00) SPORTSBALLCENTER: We're on the eve of the World Series! Well, the eve of the eve OF the eve, because baseball can't get anything right. It's another legendary match-up between the legendary Yankees and legendary Dodgers who are, unfortunately, now legendary for being two of the most under-performing franchises in sports. But I can offer you an amazing fact you can stun your friends with, about how the starting pitching in THIS World Series is likely to be better than that in the 1955 Dodgers-Yankees clash.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Reading
the poll numbers just about now is like juggling flaming chainsaws.
(00:29):
But there in between dismemberment and conflagration are the late deciders,
and the late deciders are breaking for Kamala Harris. The
Emerson College poll is forty nine, forty eight Harris, and
two percent undecided. But Emerson reports that the late deciders,
(00:49):
those who have made their choice in the last month
or even the last week, have been breaking for Kamala
Harris sixty to thirty six. Sixty percent of those deciding
in real time right now are picking the vice president.
And the math after that is pretty simple. If you
have your own chalkboard. There's something like three and one
(01:13):
quarter million people who will vote by two weeks from
today who have not yet decided. If they break the
same way those who have decided in the last month have,
she gets a net of about six hundred and fifty
thousand votes. I'm not saying she gets six hundred and
fifty thousand more votes. I'm saying expect the probable Trump
(01:37):
votes and the probable Harris votes. Subtract the probable Trump
votes from the probable Harris votes, and she will add
to her lead nationally by a net gain of six
hundred and forty eight thousand votes six forty nine, six fifty.
If they break this way in Pennsylvania sixty percent to her,
(02:01):
she will add another twenty seven thousand, six hundred and
sixty votes to her lead in Pennsylvania. Trump one Pennsylvania
by a margin of forty five thousand votes. Biden won
Pennsylvania by eighty thousand votes. Do you see it now?
Sixty percent late breakers going to Harris, and her one
or two point leads in the swing states become victories,
(02:25):
and her one or two point deficits in other swing
states can become victories as well. A little bit more subtle,
the Emerson poll also says three percent of the decideds
could still change their mind. That group is also favoring
Harris by five points, and the impact of that number
(02:46):
five points is a lot more dangerous to predict in theory,
I mean, all the undecided decideds, including those now supporting Harris,
could all go for Trump one hundred percent for Trump
extraordinarily unlikely, obviously, just as it is extraordinarily unlikely that
they would all go for her, But in any subset
(03:08):
like this, late deciders might change their minds. Left handed voters,
you want to be ahead today, not behind, and you
want to be ahead by more than the national lead.
If she's ahead in this group by five and leading
in the polls by one or two, you are happy
to be ahead by five points in the might change
(03:30):
their mind demographic. You are ecstatic to be ahead by
twenty four points in the late deciders. All right, stay
with me here a little bit further on the numbers,
because CNN has taken its average of polls and identified
a Trump damn break in his core group. In twenty sixteen,
(03:51):
Trump won non college white voters nationally by thirty three points.
In twenty twenty, he won them by thirty one points.
Right now he is winning them by twenty seven points.
Doesn't sound like a lot of a difference there. It's
still an extraordinarily large victory in this demographic. But once again,
(04:11):
as CNN did, apply that damn break just to Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin, and it could be suddenly decisive for Harris.
Likely voters in those three states are fifty one percent
non college whites. The core of Trump's voting block is
(04:32):
a majority in those states. And again, the term likely
voters is like the term chance of rain. But when
you produce any number that big that it's like half
of everybody, you pay attention because even close matters. Here.
Half the voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are non
college whites. Trump's support among non college whites is down
(04:57):
four points since twenty twenty. It's down three points in
just those three states since twenty twenty. That's a loss
of thirteen percent of his support in that group, and
that more than balances out any gains he makes in
any of the demographic groups, particularly the ones that are smaller.
And guess what. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all other
(05:19):
demographic groups are smaller, non college whites are majorities there.
The Associated Press and NORK did an issues poll, and
suddenly Harris is more trusted on economics, trusted by two
points more on jobs and unemployment, trusted on housing costs
(05:39):
by five points more than Trump, trusted on middle class
taxes by ten points more than Trump. Even on the
core issue cost of groceries and gas, he is favored
over her, but by only two points If those numbers
are even close to reality, Trump is in a world
(06:00):
of hurt. And the other thing about the Emerson Interior
numbers I wanted to come back to, and these other
numbers threaded out by Harry Enton at CNN, is that
they render the big national polls and even the big
swing state poles even more fluid and even more good
looking for Kamala Harris. The Washington Post, as I'm sure
(06:23):
you saw, came out yesterday with Harris up by two
in Georgia, two in Michigan, two in Pennsylvania, three in Wisconsin,
tied in Nevada, trailing in Arizona, and North Carolina by
three each. What do you suppose those numbers would look
like if each state matches that key Emerson number, two
(06:43):
percent undecided, sixty percent of late deciders breaking for Harris. Well,
those numbers look nicer, much nicer, much much nicer. They
look in fact, friendly and alluring and like they are
baking us all apple pies for election Day. Also, Trump
(07:13):
is crazy, and he does keep saying crazy things. Assassination
attempt survivor. Trump yesterday endorsed the threatening of public officials
by armed gunmen. Swanna Noah North Carolina, twelve thirty pm
Eastern yesterday. I am Martin Gunman was arrested in charge
of making friends It's FEMA workers Saturdays ago, Tema had
(07:37):
a safety stand down here an incredible friends isn't helping
to recovery up in North Carolina, complaining he's playing with Mima's.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Not doing their job.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Well, I think you have to let people know how
they're doing. If they were doing a great job, I
think we should say that too, because I think they
should be rewarded. But if they're not doing does that
mean that if they're doing a poor job, we're supposed
to not say it. These people are entitled to say it.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yes, let them know they're doing a bad job with
a gun. This is this lie that he keeps pushing,
and they keep letting him push it, and they keep
not saying it's a lie that FEMA money went to
immigrants and that there's a big meeting. The big meeting
would be the House of Representatives putting money into FEMA,
(08:22):
which it is refusing to do. Trump encouraging North Carolinians
to threaten FEMA employees overlies that McDonald's Trump tells and
Trump cultists believe. While by the way, the Republican Congressman
Chuck Edwards stands behind him at that news conference, hours
(08:43):
after Edwards's latest statement praising FEMA and the Biden administration
for the job it is doing in North Carolina. Trump
then says guns, threats, shootings, Edward's silence and tell me,
are we still waiting for Trump's post assassination attempt reset?
(09:04):
By the way, raised not this congressman Edwards. He lied
by omission because he owns a bunch of McDonald's. And
after this latest photo op, Edwards presented Trump with a
pin for his lapel signifying Trump's graduation from French fry
(09:25):
School or Ronald McDonald clown College. I couldn't bear to
look now. The likeliest explanation for this whole thing at
Swannanoa is that Trump didn't hear or didn't remember the
reference to armed gunmen in the question I'm betting on
not remembered. I mean, I mean, hellot, it did happen
(09:47):
nearly thirty seconds earlier, and it didn't have anything to
do with him personally, So why would he remember something
that happened thirty seconds ago? Oh yeah, and as the
fake McDonald's employee, in the size xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx l apron in
the closed McDonald's with the fake customers. As he was
(10:10):
winched back into his car in North Carolina, somebody asked
him about the Republican candidate for governor there, the one
Trump endorsed, good old Mark Nude Africa Robinson. It is
difficult to hear, but you will hear Natalie Allison of
Politico asking Trump if North Carolinians should still support Mark Robinson.
(10:34):
Trump's answer is not Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson who? But
it might as well have been, because what he did,
in fact say was I'm not familiar with the state
of the race right now. I haven't looked. I haven't
seen it. Kind of a bigger traced that I was
(10:54):
talking about him.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Coincidentally, I believe quote I haven't looked, I haven't seen
it was Lieutenant Governor Robinson's first response when they discovered
he had figuratively added a porn wing to his home,
and also that he was pro Jim Crow, pro slavery,
and pro whipping. By the way, the reporter there, Miss Allison,
(11:17):
I don't know her deal, but her story appeared in
Dos Politico. The one that occurred after Trump pretended Mark
Robinson wasn't one of his guys, and after Trump told
more lies about FEMA and immigrants and money, and after
Trump at minimum sloppily implied you should threaten government employees
with a gun, even after somebody shot at him, and
(11:39):
after Trump got some kind of memorial French fry lapel pin.
Her story had this headline slapped on it. Back at
DOS Politico headquarters, Trump strikes somber tone while touring storm
ravaged North Carolina. Your daily reminder to dos Politico that
(12:02):
you can sell your soul to Trump, like my one
time co anchor, Sage Page Rage whatever her name was, Steel,
Like Rage Steel found out on Sunday. If there's a problem,
you can depend on him. He'll always pretend to not
know you. Mark, who flick flick did you say? And
(12:27):
your daily reminder that all the data and all the
polling and all the interior numbers tend to discount the
reality that Trump's decline is accelerating and his chances of
saying exactly the wrong thing to the people who matter
right now, the two percent undecided who are already breaking
sixty to forty for Kamala Harris. Those chances are also
(12:51):
accelerating the closer we get to election day. He's dead
on his feet out there. Whether those people that two percent,
whether they are agonizing over their decisions or are just
more worried right now about which neighborhood kid to hire
to rake the leaves, and they'll get to their decision
about the election on the way to vote. They will
(13:15):
still be influenced by the events of the next two weeks,
like Trump's daily moment of stupid and yesterday's Trump Daily
moment of stupid was in Greenville, North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of eighteen to
oh of seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Seven.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Think of that seventeen ninety eight. That's when we had
real politicians that said, we're not going to play games.
We have to go back to seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yes, yes, yes, we have to go back to seventeen
ninety eight, when we had real politicians who weren't woke woke,
which is what he called them the last time he
harkened back to that wonderful year seventeen ninety eight. Where
were you and what were you doing when laws went
into effect making it a crime to go to size
(14:05):
the federal government out loud or in print, and when,
of course we still had slavery, And no, Trump did
not just endorse slavery, but you know what he is
at slavery endorsement adjacent And keep this in your heart
(14:27):
going forward the next two weeks. Trump is just crazy enough.
I'm not saying he's going to I'm saying he's crazy
enough to maybe cross that street and come up upon
slavery and before election day give slavery a big old hug.
(14:53):
The only wild card is considering his base. Would that
hurt Trump or help him? Also of interest here on
this all new edition of Countdown, So Newsy got fired.
This is days after Cheryl Hines showed up at the
Al Smith dinner with her husband, Robert F. The f
(15:17):
is not for the future, mister Olivia Newsy Kennedy Junior.
She's done. I mean, she can get some money for
her memoir, but not if she struggles with acknowledging it
it was not all a plot against her, and she
struggles with that, You'll have to take my work for them.
She factors into worse persons upcoming, but not actually in
(15:39):
the way you would expect, sort of peripherally, and I
should mention the comedian who actually did juggle chainsaws, Michael Davis. Also,
I am so tired that yesterday I said it was
only a week until the election. It's two weeks. So
the good news is Kamala Harris has got two weeks
(16:01):
to turn those late deciders going sixty four for her
into a big win. The bad news is it's two weeks.
I'm so tired. The other bad news, I think what
I basically meant was it's only one week until the
World Series finally starts. All of that's next. This is Countdown.
(16:28):
This is Countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend still
(16:53):
ahead on this all new edition of Countdowns. Sportsball time.
That's exciting baseball season now, rachels, it's climax with the
World Series beginning only four days from now. Boy, have
they screwed this up? The Dodgers and Yankees will play
a World Series. It would take me literally eight minutes
(17:16):
to walk to the subway and like twenty two minutes
to get to the stadium on the subway, and it's
not worth it. On the other hand, now I'll have
to stay home and like listen to John Smoltz complain
about how the pictures aren't as good as he was.
Oh no, that's not gonna listen to my friend Boog
Shambie on ESPN Radio instead. And I have a fact
(17:39):
for you about how the pictures in this Yankees Dodgers
World series are likely to be better than the pictures
were in the nineteen fifty five Yankees Dodgers World series.
And you can surprise your friends with this fact. Next. First,
there are still more new idiots to talk about, the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
(18:00):
effects specimens who constitute two days where's paces in the word?
Sorry to invoke my late friend Vin Scully, but it's
a Dodger Yankees World series. The bronze worse, doctor said
Newi of London, the old how it started, how it's
going thing? Doctor Newi writes, I am a Muslim. Daily
(18:20):
I treat Jews, and I have taken a hippocritical oath
that outlines my responsibilities in the Buckingham Crew. However, I
must admit that if I had the power, I would
vanish every Jew. Okay, that's how it started. Now, he writes,
I want to clarify that my apology is genuine and
not motivated by fear of my position. Every organization, including
(18:44):
NHS England, NHS UK and GMC UK, knows me and
my commitment to providing compassionate care. I sincerely felt the
impact of my words and recognize the need to apologize.
My intention has always been to promote understanding and respect,
and I will continue to strive for that in my work.
(19:04):
Thank you for your understanding. Doctor Nouri, evidently still employed
and evidently not some sort of troll fake account, tried
a few more apologies, tried reaching out to a few
people that he might have said he wanted to vanish,
and when that didn't work, he started back on anti
Semitic attacks, but with a twist. Yesterday he posted his
(19:24):
own campaign ad for Trump and Elon Musk. Trump must
connection is crucial. Must gives Trump media boost Ya exprooting
free speech that's stupid. Musk gives Trump internationale business boost
via Tesla Okay. Musk reigns in Trump on wars. Elon
(19:45):
Musk wouldn't stop a war if it saved some of
his children. Must gives Trump economic boost for American prosperity.
Two business geniuses vote Trump. It's unbelievable. You can talk
about killing people and that turns out not to be
your dumbest tweet of the week, Doctor Newry, trying to
(20:05):
help tap down Trump's reputation as an anti Semite and
Musks as a pro apartheid druggie. What's next trashing the
World Series? Oh no, no, no, that's my department the runner
up wor Sir, New York Magazine. I mean this is timing,
This is all time great timing. Today it is devoted
(20:28):
most of its issue that came out yesterday to a
huge feature interviewing a bunch of people you never heard of,
but not one progressive media critic. And the summary of this,
can the media survive? Fifty seven of the most powerful
people in media on its future? Big tech, feckless owners,
cord cutters, restive staff, smaller audiences, and the return of print.
(20:52):
By the way, New York Magazine thinks, Gail King is
one of the fifty seven most powerful people in media,
So they publish this joke with all these powerful people
that no one knows because the media is about who
can get the biggest salary before the whole thing goes
under and hours after they published this, they fired Olivia Newsy.
(21:13):
Last month, the magazine enlisted the law firm Davis Wright
Tremaine to review Olivia Newsy's work during the twenty twenty
four campaign. They reached the same conclusion as the magazine's
initial internal review of her published work, finding no inaccuracies
nor evidence of bias. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the magazine and Newsy
(21:33):
agreed that the best course forward is to part ways.
Newsy is a uniquely talented writer, and we have been
proud to publish her work over her nearly eight years
as our Washington correspondent. We wish her the best. No inaccuracies,
no evidence of bias, no pants. Whatever you want to
(21:54):
say about Olivia, and whatever you do want to say,
get in line behind me. I helped negotiate her new
job with New York Magazine her story and the fact
that her personal relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Junior went
on for a year during a presidential campaign without her
(22:14):
employers at New York Magazine knowing about it or if
they did, doing anything about it, and then her ex fiance,
Ryan Liz's response to that, which may have been blackmail
or may have been something that went on for at
least half of that time without his employers at Politico
knowing about it. This actually answers the question. Know our
(22:37):
current form of media, news media in particular, cannot survive
because it is run by idiots, idiots who do not
understand that it could survive if it did one thing,
if it rehired all the copy editors and producers it
has laid off, fire reporters, fire anchors in particular, fire writers,
(23:01):
cancel shows, cut back from five primetime news hours to three.
You know, MSNBC made more profit off of a smaller
investment when we had two shows on at night, only
two shows, and we kept rerunning them than they do now,
and I mean a lot more. Re hire your mistake finders,
(23:23):
so you'd find mistakes like like Olivia, which brings us
to the winner the worst one of the Hall of
Famers of the Worst Person segment. Rich Lowry of the
National Review Online, I offer you his detailed, heavily promoted
online analysis of the WNBA Basketball Championship series. You ready,
(23:45):
I'm going to read this in full? Have you got
forty seconds? As I've mentioned before, I've acquired an interest
in the WNBA after climbing aboard the Caitlin Clark bandwagon.
So I did something I never would have done before
and watched some of the WNBA finals last night, and man,
it was bad. It was a very close to stay
of Game five won by the Liberty. But the scoring
(24:07):
is about what you'd expect to see from a first
round game in the ACC tournament, with the number eleven
and fourteen seeds futilely battling it out. That's that's it.
Let me check on the back here? Is there more?
Is that? All? Lowry? Oury? Okay? Now you can like
the WNBA or hate the WNBA, and let me just
(24:30):
say it correctly once WNBA. But that's the whole feast.
They pay this man to do this. That's his entire analysis.
It was bad. Gee, thanks Rich, Thanks for your insight.
It was bad. You got anything else on this? No,
it was bad. Plus anytime Rich Lowry writes about women,
(24:53):
this requires one to go back and reread the worst
political column ever written Rich Lowry, October three, two thousand
and eight, after the Vice presidentidential debate, also writing for
the National Review. Because what in sixteen years you think
he's going to get a real job after writing crap
like this quote. A very wise TV executive once told
(25:17):
me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen.
Hits one of the keys to the success of Sayah
Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen, comes through the
screen and grabs you by the throat. Sarah. Palin too
projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not
the only male in America who when Palin dropped her
(25:39):
first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch
and said, Hey, I think she just winked at me.
And her smile by the end, when she clearly knew
she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was
almost mesmerizing. It sent a little starbushs through the screen
and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is
(26:02):
a quality that can't be learned. It's either some thing
you have her you don't, and men, she's got it.
I mean, the masturbatory quality of that from Rich Lowry
is one thing. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that,
the masturbatory quality. I don't think I've ever mentioned that
more than one or two thousand times. But in focusing
(26:22):
on the Bobby Kennedy Junior Mark Robinson quality to the story.
We lose sight of the utter lack of political insight
and foresight that is hiding right there in plain sight.
His comp for Sarah Palin was Bill O'Reilly. It is
presumed the very wise TV executive he quotes is Roger Ales,
who's now broadcasting live from Hell. And the point of
(26:46):
the piece is how much better Palin did that her
opponent in the two thousand and eight vice presidential debate?
What was his name again? Oh yeah, Joe Biden. Whatever
happened at Joe Biden? I mean, besides him saving democracy
at least once rich maybe if the WNBA players stared
into my living room and sent little starbursts through the
(27:06):
screen ricocheting into my pants lowry two days why by.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Sending this is sports Center Wait, check that not anymore.
(27:41):
This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Ulberman and from the sports Ball Central Center newsdesk tonight, dateline,
Los Angeles and New York. We are on the eve
of the World Series. Are on the eve of the
(28:08):
eve of the eve of the World Series. Because if
nothing else, one hundred and fifty four seasons of professional
baseball has proved that the more time you give the
players off during the Championships in October and November, and however,
the hell late they hope to play this, the better
the games are. I'm being facetious. Hitters and particularly bullpen
(28:29):
pitchers get stale fast, so fast you wouldn't believe it,
especially in the postseason, especially in October on the East Coast.
By the time they play game one Friday night here,
the New York Yankees will have been off for five
days and the Los Angeles Dodgers off for four. The
Dodgers and the Yankees used to face each other all
(28:50):
the time in the World Series, six times in fact,
in the ten years ending in nineteen fifty six, eleven
times over forty years, almost two more times in that
forty year span, but this is the first one since
nineteen eighty one, when the Yankees blew a lead of
two games to none, just as the Dodgers had blown
a two games to none lead in nineteen seventy eight.
(29:10):
Nineteen eighty one was the year Yankee owner George Steinbrenner
ordered his public relations director IRV k Is, a friend
of mine, to read a public apology for how the
Yankees had done that year, and IRV read it and
then got out of New York as fast as he
could after that was also when the Yankees benched Reggie
Jackson in the middle of the World Series, and when
Steinbrenner showed up at Dodger Stadium, one hand bandaged and
(29:32):
the other cut up with a fat lip, claiming that
two Dodger fans had accosted him in a hotel elevator
and he'd had to clock both of them, and almost
nobody believed him forty three years later, and there's no
evidence that it didn't happen that way. All the cynics
me included, who believe the somebody's Husboden theory or the
(29:54):
George punched a wall theory or the George had a
fight with his players theory have never been supported by
any evidence whatsoever. The George punched a wall theory also
could never explain the fat lip. Then again, the two
alleged Dodger fans never came forward either, and there were
lots of outlets willing to pay them to unless George
(30:16):
didn't just fight them, but he killed them anyway. Lots
of amazing things have happened in Yankee Dodger World Series.
Don Larson's perfect game for the Yankees in nineteen fifty six.
The Mickey Owen dropped third strike in nineteen forty one,
which should probably now be reclassified as the Hugh Casey
(30:36):
spitball broke so sharply nobody could stop it missed third
strike in nineteen forty one. There were Reggie Jackson's three
homers in Game six in nineteen seventy seven, and Sandy
Kofax's fifteen strikeouts in Game one in nineteen sixty three.
But here are my favorite stats that you can actually
use and pressure friends with them. The first is from
nineteen fifty five. Today we rightly bellyate that starting pitching
(31:00):
is crap, and the whole premise of baseball, the stout
hearted whirler stopping good hitting, especially in the World Series,
that is as forgotten and as lost as alchemy. In
the nineteen fifty five World Series, however, the first one
the Dodgers ever won, after five straight losses to the Yankees,
there were seven games, and the starting pitching was so
(31:23):
bad on both teams that the Yankees and the Dodgers
in those seven games used eleven different starting pitchers between them.
The Dodgers in a seven game World Series used six
different starting pitchers. They did not call them bullpen games then,
but that's what they were. Moreover six times in that
(31:45):
World Series the starting pitcher did not record an out
in the fifth inning, the second stat you can use this.
The famous Yankees and Dodgers are actually two of the
most disastrously underperforming franchises in sports. If you consider the
year two thousand as the last year of the twentieth
cente the Yankees have won won World Series in this century.
(32:10):
Even if you don't, they've won one World Series since
two thousand. The Dodgers have won one World Series in
a full season since nineteen sixty five. Yeah, they won
in nineteen eighty one when the season was only one
hundred and ten games long because of the player strike.
They won in nineteen eighty eight, which was the legit year.
Then they didn't win again until twenty twenty, the COVID year.
They're all championships, but those two are championships with asterisks.
(32:35):
Then again, all baseball championships have asterisks now because they've
so screwed up the point, which was that the long
regular season and the quick playoffs were designed to establish
which team was best that year. You played, and you played,
and you played from spring through summer into fall, and
you beat everybody in your league, and then you face
(32:57):
the team that had played and beaten everybody in their league,
and the result was a series that was always novel
and fresh and exciting, and faced pitchers against hitters they'd
never seen before. The number is somewhat conjectural, but it
is believed that about sixty million people watched Game seven
of the nineteen eighty six World Series on television. If
(33:19):
sixty million people watch the entirety of this World Series
on television, if that's the total audience for seven games,
they will hold two parades afterwards, one for the winning
team and one for all the TV and advertising executives.
And by the way, if they get sixty million total
(33:40):
audience on TV, the ad executives and the TV executives
will get drunker than the winning players do. I don't
know what's going to happen in this World Series. I
loved working in Los Angeles. I loved going to Dodger Stadium.
I loved working in New York. I grew up in
the Yankee Stadia and I covered Dodger Yankees World Series
(34:02):
when I was eighteen and nineteen years old, and I
own Reggie Jackson's third home run ball, and I own
two baseballs pitched in Don Larson's Perfect Game by Don Larson.
But baseball has gradually pissed away my love of it.
The new rules are stupid. This obsession with the forty
seventy club or the one point six two hundred and
(34:24):
twenty nine b club, it's ridiculous. The game has been
dumbed down. The regular season is virtually as meaningless as basketball,
and this utterly tedious season goes on forever, and then
the teams that do best in it, they don't do
very well in the postseason. We're just amazed that the
(34:48):
two best teams on paper are actually in the World Series.
And how did they get there? They beat the wild
card teams. The athletes have never been better in baseball,
never been better, and their ability to actually play baseball,
to do what to do and when to do it
other than to swing or to throw, that has never
(35:08):
been worse. I asked a friend of mine, who covers
a major League team and has done so for nearly
all of his life, how many, I said, there's like
two or three guys on each team that actually could
play baseball without written instructions, And he said, you're exaggerating.
I went, no, I think it's only two or three.
He went, that's not what I meant. I think it's
(35:29):
only one or two per team. I did not go
to a game this year, and after forty years as
a Yankee season ticket holder, I long ago vowed to
never again pay my way into that ballpark until a
paternity test is produced proving that hal Steinbrenner is actually
the son of my friend George Steinbrenner. I mean, I
(35:51):
might go if somebody invites me and pays for the
ticket and covers the five dollars and eighty cent round
trip on the subway. I'd have gone if the Mets
had beaten the Dodgers and the Mets we're in it,
or if that Steinbrenner paternity test had come back. I've
(36:26):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Follow me for the
podcast promo videos too on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram,
and facetick. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown. Please
send this podcast to somebody who doesn't know that they
need to listen, but should. Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel,
(36:49):
the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most
of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nance Faust.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc.
(37:12):
Don't forget to listen to the Baseball World Series on
ESPN Radio, where the broadcast is likely to be better
than the game. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was by coincidence,
ESPN's Tony Korneiser. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for today, two weeks until the twenty twenty
(37:32):
four presidential election. I think I have that right, and
the three and eighty six day since convicted felon dissociative
fugue j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the election, use the
metal health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
doing it again while we still have a chance. The
(37:56):
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news requires
till the next one on Keith Olderman good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good Luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(38:23):
a production 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. Reading
the poll numbers just about now is like juggling flaming chainsaws.
(00:29):
But there in between dismemberment and conflagration are the late deciders,
and the late deciders are breaking for Kamala Harris. The
Emerson College poll is forty nine, forty eight Harris, and
two percent undecided. But Emerson reports that the late deciders,
(00:49):
those who have made their choice in the last month
or even the last week, have been breaking for Kamala
Harris sixty to thirty six. Sixty percent of those deciding
in real time right now are picking the vice president.
And the math after that is pretty simple. If you
have your own chalkboard. There's something like three and one
(01:13):
quarter million people who will vote by two weeks from
today who have not yet decided. If they break the
same way those who have decided in the last month have,
she gets a net of about six hundred and fifty
thousand votes. I'm not saying she gets six hundred and
fifty thousand more votes. I'm saying expect the probable Trump
(01:37):
votes and the probable Harris votes. Subtract the probable Trump
votes from the probable Harris votes, and she will add
to her lead nationally by a net gain of six
hundred and forty eight thousand votes six forty nine, six fifty.
If they break this way in Pennsylvania sixty percent to her,
(02:01):
she will add another twenty seven thousand, six hundred and
sixty votes to her lead in Pennsylvania. Trump one Pennsylvania
by a margin of forty five thousand votes. Biden won
Pennsylvania by eighty thousand votes. Do you see it now?
Sixty percent late breakers going to Harris, and her one
or two point leads in the swing states become victories,
(02:25):
and her one or two point deficits in other swing
states can become victories as well. A little bit more subtle,
the Emerson poll also says three percent of the decideds
could still change their mind. That group is also favoring
Harris by five points, and the impact of that number
(02:46):
five points is a lot more dangerous to predict in theory,
I mean, all the undecided decideds, including those now supporting Harris,
could all go for Trump one hundred percent for Trump
extraordinarily unlikely, obviously, just as it is extraordinarily unlikely that
they would all go for her, But in any subset
(03:08):
like this, late deciders might change their minds. Left handed voters,
you want to be ahead today, not behind, and you
want to be ahead by more than the national lead.
If she's ahead in this group by five and leading
in the polls by one or two, you are happy
to be ahead by five points in the might change
(03:30):
their mind demographic. You are ecstatic to be ahead by
twenty four points in the late deciders. All right, stay
with me here a little bit further on the numbers,
because CNN has taken its average of polls and identified
a Trump damn break in his core group. In twenty sixteen,
(03:51):
Trump won non college white voters nationally by thirty three points.
In twenty twenty, he won them by thirty one points.
Right now he is winning them by twenty seven points.
Doesn't sound like a lot of a difference there. It's
still an extraordinarily large victory in this demographic. But once again,
(04:11):
as CNN did, apply that damn break just to Michigan, Pennsylvania,
and Wisconsin, and it could be suddenly decisive for Harris.
Likely voters in those three states are fifty one percent
non college whites. The core of Trump's voting block is
(04:32):
a majority in those states. And again, the term likely
voters is like the term chance of rain. But when
you produce any number that big that it's like half
of everybody, you pay attention because even close matters. Here.
Half the voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are non
college whites. Trump's support among non college whites is down
(04:57):
four points since twenty twenty. It's down three points in
just those three states since twenty twenty. That's a loss
of thirteen percent of his support in that group, and
that more than balances out any gains he makes in
any of the demographic groups, particularly the ones that are smaller.
And guess what. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all other
(05:19):
demographic groups are smaller, non college whites are majorities there.
The Associated Press and NORK did an issues poll, and
suddenly Harris is more trusted on economics, trusted by two
points more on jobs and unemployment, trusted on housing costs
(05:39):
by five points more than Trump, trusted on middle class
taxes by ten points more than Trump. Even on the
core issue cost of groceries and gas, he is favored
over her, but by only two points If those numbers
are even close to reality, Trump is in a world
(06:00):
of hurt. And the other thing about the Emerson Interior
numbers I wanted to come back to, and these other
numbers threaded out by Harry Enton at CNN, is that
they render the big national polls and even the big
swing state poles even more fluid and even more good
looking for Kamala Harris. The Washington Post, as I'm sure
(06:23):
you saw, came out yesterday with Harris up by two
in Georgia, two in Michigan, two in Pennsylvania, three in Wisconsin,
tied in Nevada, trailing in Arizona, and North Carolina by
three each. What do you suppose those numbers would look
like if each state matches that key Emerson number, two
(06:43):
percent undecided, sixty percent of late deciders breaking for Harris. Well,
those numbers look nicer, much nicer, much much nicer. They
look in fact, friendly and alluring and like they are
baking us all apple pies for election Day. Also, Trump
(07:13):
is crazy, and he does keep saying crazy things. Assassination
attempt survivor. Trump yesterday endorsed the threatening of public officials
by armed gunmen. Swanna Noah North Carolina, twelve thirty pm
Eastern yesterday. I am Martin Gunman was arrested in charge
of making friends It's FEMA workers Saturdays ago, Tema had
(07:37):
a safety stand down here an incredible friends isn't helping
to recovery up in North Carolina, complaining he's playing with Mima's.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Not doing their job.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Well, I think you have to let people know how
they're doing. If they were doing a great job, I
think we should say that too, because I think they
should be rewarded. But if they're not doing does that
mean that if they're doing a poor job, we're supposed
to not say it. These people are entitled to say it.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yes, let them know they're doing a bad job with
a gun. This is this lie that he keeps pushing,
and they keep letting him push it, and they keep
not saying it's a lie that FEMA money went to
immigrants and that there's a big meeting. The big meeting
would be the House of Representatives putting money into FEMA,
(08:22):
which it is refusing to do. Trump encouraging North Carolinians
to threaten FEMA employees overlies that McDonald's Trump tells and
Trump cultists believe. While by the way, the Republican Congressman
Chuck Edwards stands behind him at that news conference, hours
(08:43):
after Edwards's latest statement praising FEMA and the Biden administration
for the job it is doing in North Carolina. Trump
then says guns, threats, shootings, Edward's silence and tell me,
are we still waiting for Trump's post assassination attempt reset?
(09:04):
By the way, raised not this congressman Edwards. He lied
by omission because he owns a bunch of McDonald's. And
after this latest photo op, Edwards presented Trump with a
pin for his lapel signifying Trump's graduation from French fry
(09:25):
School or Ronald McDonald clown College. I couldn't bear to
look now. The likeliest explanation for this whole thing at
Swannanoa is that Trump didn't hear or didn't remember the
reference to armed gunmen in the question I'm betting on
not remembered. I mean, I mean, hellot, it did happen
(09:47):
nearly thirty seconds earlier, and it didn't have anything to
do with him personally, So why would he remember something
that happened thirty seconds ago? Oh yeah, and as the
fake McDonald's employee, in the size xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx l apron in
the closed McDonald's with the fake customers. As he was
(10:10):
winched back into his car in North Carolina, somebody asked
him about the Republican candidate for governor there, the one
Trump endorsed, good old Mark Nude Africa Robinson. It is
difficult to hear, but you will hear Natalie Allison of
Politico asking Trump if North Carolinians should still support Mark Robinson.
(10:34):
Trump's answer is not Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson who? But
it might as well have been, because what he did,
in fact say was I'm not familiar with the state
of the race right now. I haven't looked. I haven't
seen it. Kind of a bigger traced that I was
(10:54):
talking about him.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Haven't seen it.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Coincidentally, I believe quote I haven't looked, I haven't seen
it was Lieutenant Governor Robinson's first response when they discovered
he had figuratively added a porn wing to his home,
and also that he was pro Jim Crow, pro slavery,
and pro whipping. By the way, the reporter there, Miss Allison,
(11:17):
I don't know her deal, but her story appeared in
Dos Politico. The one that occurred after Trump pretended Mark
Robinson wasn't one of his guys, and after Trump told
more lies about FEMA and immigrants and money, and after
Trump at minimum sloppily implied you should threaten government employees
with a gun, even after somebody shot at him, and
(11:39):
after Trump got some kind of memorial French fry lapel pin.
Her story had this headline slapped on it. Back at
DOS Politico headquarters, Trump strikes somber tone while touring storm
ravaged North Carolina. Your daily reminder to dos Politico that
(12:02):
you can sell your soul to Trump, like my one
time co anchor, Sage Page Rage whatever her name was, Steel,
Like Rage Steel found out on Sunday. If there's a problem,
you can depend on him. He'll always pretend to not
know you. Mark, who flick flick did you say? And
(12:27):
your daily reminder that all the data and all the
polling and all the interior numbers tend to discount the
reality that Trump's decline is accelerating and his chances of
saying exactly the wrong thing to the people who matter
right now, the two percent undecided who are already breaking
sixty to forty for Kamala Harris. Those chances are also
(12:51):
accelerating the closer we get to election day. He's dead
on his feet out there. Whether those people that two percent,
whether they are agonizing over their decisions or are just
more worried right now about which neighborhood kid to hire
to rake the leaves, and they'll get to their decision
about the election on the way to vote. They will
(13:15):
still be influenced by the events of the next two weeks,
like Trump's daily moment of stupid and yesterday's Trump Daily
moment of stupid was in Greenville, North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of eighteen to
oh of seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Seven.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Think of that seventeen ninety eight. That's when we had
real politicians that said, we're not going to play games.
We have to go back to seventeen ninety eight.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yes, yes, yes, we have to go back to seventeen
ninety eight, when we had real politicians who weren't woke woke,
which is what he called them the last time he
harkened back to that wonderful year seventeen ninety eight. Where
were you and what were you doing when laws went
into effect making it a crime to go to size
(14:05):
the federal government out loud or in print, and when,
of course we still had slavery, And no, Trump did
not just endorse slavery, but you know what he is
at slavery endorsement adjacent And keep this in your heart
(14:27):
going forward the next two weeks. Trump is just crazy enough.
I'm not saying he's going to I'm saying he's crazy
enough to maybe cross that street and come up upon
slavery and before election day give slavery a big old hug.
(14:53):
The only wild card is considering his base. Would that
hurt Trump or help him? Also of interest here on
this all new edition of Countdown, So Newsy got fired.
This is days after Cheryl Hines showed up at the
Al Smith dinner with her husband, Robert F. The f
(15:17):
is not for the future, mister Olivia Newsy Kennedy Junior.
She's done. I mean, she can get some money for
her memoir, but not if she struggles with acknowledging it
it was not all a plot against her, and she
struggles with that, You'll have to take my work for them.
She factors into worse persons upcoming, but not actually in
(15:39):
the way you would expect, sort of peripherally, and I
should mention the comedian who actually did juggle chainsaws, Michael Davis. Also,
I am so tired that yesterday I said it was
only a week until the election. It's two weeks. So
the good news is Kamala Harris has got two weeks
(16:01):
to turn those late deciders going sixty four for her
into a big win. The bad news is it's two weeks.
I'm so tired. The other bad news, I think what
I basically meant was it's only one week until the
World Series finally starts. All of that's next. This is Countdown.
(16:28):
This is Countdown with Keith Oberman, my crazy friend still
(16:53):
ahead on this all new edition of Countdowns. Sportsball time.
That's exciting baseball season now, rachels, it's climax with the
World Series beginning only four days from now. Boy, have
they screwed this up? The Dodgers and Yankees will play
a World Series. It would take me literally eight minutes
(17:16):
to walk to the subway and like twenty two minutes
to get to the stadium on the subway, and it's
not worth it. On the other hand, now I'll have
to stay home and like listen to John Smoltz complain
about how the pictures aren't as good as he was.
Oh no, that's not gonna listen to my friend Boog
Shambie on ESPN Radio instead. And I have a fact
(17:39):
for you about how the pictures in this Yankees Dodgers
World series are likely to be better than the pictures
were in the nineteen fifty five Yankees Dodgers World series.
And you can surprise your friends with this fact. Next. First,
there are still more new idiots to talk about, the
daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger
(18:00):
effects specimens who constitute two days where's paces in the word?
Sorry to invoke my late friend Vin Scully, but it's
a Dodger Yankees World series. The bronze worse, doctor said
Newi of London, the old how it started, how it's
going thing? Doctor Newi writes, I am a Muslim. Daily
(18:20):
I treat Jews, and I have taken a hippocritical oath
that outlines my responsibilities in the Buckingham Crew. However, I
must admit that if I had the power, I would
vanish every Jew. Okay, that's how it started. Now, he writes,
I want to clarify that my apology is genuine and
not motivated by fear of my position. Every organization, including
(18:44):
NHS England, NHS UK and GMC UK, knows me and
my commitment to providing compassionate care. I sincerely felt the
impact of my words and recognize the need to apologize.
My intention has always been to promote understanding and respect,
and I will continue to strive for that in my work.
(19:04):
Thank you for your understanding. Doctor Nouri, evidently still employed
and evidently not some sort of troll fake account, tried
a few more apologies, tried reaching out to a few
people that he might have said he wanted to vanish,
and when that didn't work, he started back on anti
Semitic attacks, but with a twist. Yesterday he posted his
(19:24):
own campaign ad for Trump and Elon Musk. Trump must
connection is crucial. Must gives Trump media boost Ya exprooting
free speech that's stupid. Musk gives Trump internationale business boost
via Tesla Okay. Musk reigns in Trump on wars. Elon
(19:45):
Musk wouldn't stop a war if it saved some of
his children. Must gives Trump economic boost for American prosperity.
Two business geniuses vote Trump. It's unbelievable. You can talk
about killing people and that turns out not to be
your dumbest tweet of the week, Doctor Newry, trying to
(20:05):
help tap down Trump's reputation as an anti Semite and
Musks as a pro apartheid druggie. What's next trashing the
World Series? Oh no, no, no, that's my department the runner
up wor Sir, New York Magazine. I mean this is timing,
This is all time great timing. Today it is devoted
(20:28):
most of its issue that came out yesterday to a
huge feature interviewing a bunch of people you never heard of,
but not one progressive media critic. And the summary of this,
can the media survive? Fifty seven of the most powerful
people in media on its future? Big tech, feckless owners,
cord cutters, restive staff, smaller audiences, and the return of print.
(20:52):
By the way, New York Magazine thinks, Gail King is
one of the fifty seven most powerful people in media,
So they publish this joke with all these powerful people
that no one knows because the media is about who
can get the biggest salary before the whole thing goes
under and hours after they published this, they fired Olivia Newsy.
(21:13):
Last month, the magazine enlisted the law firm Davis Wright
Tremaine to review Olivia Newsy's work during the twenty twenty
four campaign. They reached the same conclusion as the magazine's
initial internal review of her published work, finding no inaccuracies
nor evidence of bias. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the magazine and Newsy
(21:33):
agreed that the best course forward is to part ways.
Newsy is a uniquely talented writer, and we have been
proud to publish her work over her nearly eight years
as our Washington correspondent. We wish her the best. No inaccuracies,
no evidence of bias, no pants. Whatever you want to
(21:54):
say about Olivia, and whatever you do want to say,
get in line behind me. I helped negotiate her new
job with New York Magazine her story and the fact
that her personal relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Junior went
on for a year during a presidential campaign without her
(22:14):
employers at New York Magazine knowing about it or if
they did, doing anything about it, and then her ex fiance,
Ryan Liz's response to that, which may have been blackmail
or may have been something that went on for at
least half of that time without his employers at Politico
knowing about it. This actually answers the question. Know our
(22:37):
current form of media, news media in particular, cannot survive
because it is run by idiots, idiots who do not
understand that it could survive if it did one thing,
if it rehired all the copy editors and producers it
has laid off, fire reporters, fire anchors in particular, fire writers,
(23:01):
cancel shows, cut back from five primetime news hours to three.
You know, MSNBC made more profit off of a smaller
investment when we had two shows on at night, only
two shows, and we kept rerunning them than they do now,
and I mean a lot more. Re hire your mistake finders,
(23:23):
so you'd find mistakes like like Olivia, which brings us
to the winner the worst one of the Hall of
Famers of the Worst Person segment. Rich Lowry of the
National Review Online, I offer you his detailed, heavily promoted
online analysis of the WNBA Basketball Championship series. You ready,
(23:45):
I'm going to read this in full? Have you got
forty seconds? As I've mentioned before, I've acquired an interest
in the WNBA after climbing aboard the Caitlin Clark bandwagon.
So I did something I never would have done before
and watched some of the WNBA finals last night, and man,
it was bad. It was a very close to stay
of Game five won by the Liberty. But the scoring
(24:07):
is about what you'd expect to see from a first
round game in the ACC tournament, with the number eleven
and fourteen seeds futilely battling it out. That's that's it.
Let me check on the back here? Is there more?
Is that? All? Lowry? Oury? Okay? Now you can like
the WNBA or hate the WNBA, and let me just
(24:30):
say it correctly once WNBA. But that's the whole feast.
They pay this man to do this. That's his entire analysis.
It was bad. Gee, thanks Rich, Thanks for your insight.
It was bad. You got anything else on this? No,
it was bad. Plus anytime Rich Lowry writes about women,
(24:53):
this requires one to go back and reread the worst
political column ever written Rich Lowry, October three, two thousand
and eight, after the Vice presidentidential debate, also writing for
the National Review. Because what in sixteen years you think
he's going to get a real job after writing crap
like this quote. A very wise TV executive once told
(25:17):
me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen.
Hits one of the keys to the success of Sayah
Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen, comes through the
screen and grabs you by the throat. Sarah. Palin too
projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not
the only male in America who when Palin dropped her
(25:39):
first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch
and said, Hey, I think she just winked at me.
And her smile by the end, when she clearly knew
she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was
almost mesmerizing. It sent a little starbushs through the screen
and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is
(26:02):
a quality that can't be learned. It's either some thing
you have her you don't, and men, she's got it.
I mean, the masturbatory quality of that from Rich Lowry
is one thing. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that,
the masturbatory quality. I don't think I've ever mentioned that
more than one or two thousand times. But in focusing
(26:22):
on the Bobby Kennedy Junior Mark Robinson quality to the story.
We lose sight of the utter lack of political insight
and foresight that is hiding right there in plain sight.
His comp for Sarah Palin was Bill O'Reilly. It is
presumed the very wise TV executive he quotes is Roger Ales,
who's now broadcasting live from Hell. And the point of
(26:46):
the piece is how much better Palin did that her
opponent in the two thousand and eight vice presidential debate?
What was his name again? Oh yeah, Joe Biden. Whatever
happened at Joe Biden? I mean, besides him saving democracy
at least once rich maybe if the WNBA players stared
into my living room and sent little starbursts through the
(27:06):
screen ricocheting into my pants lowry two days why by.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Sending this is sports Center Wait, check that not anymore.
(27:41):
This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Ulberman and from the sports Ball Central Center newsdesk tonight, dateline,
Los Angeles and New York. We are on the eve
of the World Series. Are on the eve of the
(28:08):
eve of the eve of the World Series. Because if
nothing else, one hundred and fifty four seasons of professional
baseball has proved that the more time you give the
players off during the Championships in October and November, and however,
the hell late they hope to play this, the better
the games are. I'm being facetious. Hitters and particularly bullpen
(28:29):
pitchers get stale fast, so fast you wouldn't believe it,
especially in the postseason, especially in October on the East Coast.
By the time they play game one Friday night here,
the New York Yankees will have been off for five
days and the Los Angeles Dodgers off for four. The
Dodgers and the Yankees used to face each other all
(28:50):
the time in the World Series, six times in fact,
in the ten years ending in nineteen fifty six, eleven
times over forty years, almost two more times in that
forty year span, but this is the first one since
nineteen eighty one, when the Yankees blew a lead of
two games to none, just as the Dodgers had blown
a two games to none lead in nineteen seventy eight.
(29:10):
Nineteen eighty one was the year Yankee owner George Steinbrenner
ordered his public relations director IRV k Is, a friend
of mine, to read a public apology for how the
Yankees had done that year, and IRV read it and
then got out of New York as fast as he
could after that was also when the Yankees benched Reggie
Jackson in the middle of the World Series, and when
Steinbrenner showed up at Dodger Stadium, one hand bandaged and
(29:32):
the other cut up with a fat lip, claiming that
two Dodger fans had accosted him in a hotel elevator
and he'd had to clock both of them, and almost
nobody believed him forty three years later, and there's no
evidence that it didn't happen that way. All the cynics
me included, who believe the somebody's Husboden theory or the
(29:54):
George punched a wall theory or the George had a
fight with his players theory have never been supported by
any evidence whatsoever. The George punched a wall theory also
could never explain the fat lip. Then again, the two
alleged Dodger fans never came forward either, and there were
lots of outlets willing to pay them to unless George
(30:16):
didn't just fight them, but he killed them anyway. Lots
of amazing things have happened in Yankee Dodger World Series.
Don Larson's perfect game for the Yankees in nineteen fifty six.
The Mickey Owen dropped third strike in nineteen forty one,
which should probably now be reclassified as the Hugh Casey
(30:36):
spitball broke so sharply nobody could stop it missed third
strike in nineteen forty one. There were Reggie Jackson's three
homers in Game six in nineteen seventy seven, and Sandy
Kofax's fifteen strikeouts in Game one in nineteen sixty three.
But here are my favorite stats that you can actually
use and pressure friends with them. The first is from
nineteen fifty five. Today we rightly bellyate that starting pitching
(31:00):
is crap, and the whole premise of baseball, the stout
hearted whirler stopping good hitting, especially in the World Series,
that is as forgotten and as lost as alchemy. In
the nineteen fifty five World Series, however, the first one
the Dodgers ever won, after five straight losses to the Yankees,
there were seven games, and the starting pitching was so
(31:23):
bad on both teams that the Yankees and the Dodgers
in those seven games used eleven different starting pitchers between them.
The Dodgers in a seven game World Series used six
different starting pitchers. They did not call them bullpen games then,
but that's what they were. Moreover six times in that
(31:45):
World Series the starting pitcher did not record an out
in the fifth inning, the second stat you can use this.
The famous Yankees and Dodgers are actually two of the
most disastrously underperforming franchises in sports. If you consider the
year two thousand as the last year of the twentieth
cente the Yankees have won won World Series in this century.
(32:10):
Even if you don't, they've won one World Series since
two thousand. The Dodgers have won one World Series in
a full season since nineteen sixty five. Yeah, they won
in nineteen eighty one when the season was only one
hundred and ten games long because of the player strike.
They won in nineteen eighty eight, which was the legit year.
Then they didn't win again until twenty twenty, the COVID year.
They're all championships, but those two are championships with asterisks.
(32:35):
Then again, all baseball championships have asterisks now because they've
so screwed up the point, which was that the long
regular season and the quick playoffs were designed to establish
which team was best that year. You played, and you played,
and you played from spring through summer into fall, and
you beat everybody in your league, and then you face
(32:57):
the team that had played and beaten everybody in their league,
and the result was a series that was always novel
and fresh and exciting, and faced pitchers against hitters they'd
never seen before. The number is somewhat conjectural, but it
is believed that about sixty million people watched Game seven
of the nineteen eighty six World Series on television. If
(33:19):
sixty million people watch the entirety of this World Series
on television, if that's the total audience for seven games,
they will hold two parades afterwards, one for the winning
team and one for all the TV and advertising executives.
And by the way, if they get sixty million total
(33:40):
audience on TV, the ad executives and the TV executives
will get drunker than the winning players do. I don't
know what's going to happen in this World Series. I
loved working in Los Angeles. I loved going to Dodger Stadium.
I loved working in New York. I grew up in
the Yankee Stadia and I covered Dodger Yankees World Series
(34:02):
when I was eighteen and nineteen years old, and I
own Reggie Jackson's third home run ball, and I own
two baseballs pitched in Don Larson's Perfect Game by Don Larson.
But baseball has gradually pissed away my love of it.
The new rules are stupid. This obsession with the forty
seventy club or the one point six two hundred and
(34:24):
twenty nine b club, it's ridiculous. The game has been
dumbed down. The regular season is virtually as meaningless as basketball,
and this utterly tedious season goes on forever, and then
the teams that do best in it, they don't do
very well in the postseason. We're just amazed that the
(34:48):
two best teams on paper are actually in the World Series.
And how did they get there? They beat the wild
card teams. The athletes have never been better in baseball,
never been better, and their ability to actually play baseball,
to do what to do and when to do it
other than to swing or to throw, that has never
(35:08):
been worse. I asked a friend of mine, who covers
a major League team and has done so for nearly
all of his life, how many, I said, there's like
two or three guys on each team that actually could
play baseball without written instructions, And he said, you're exaggerating.
I went, no, I think it's only two or three.
He went, that's not what I meant. I think it's
(35:29):
only one or two per team. I did not go
to a game this year, and after forty years as
a Yankee season ticket holder, I long ago vowed to
never again pay my way into that ballpark until a
paternity test is produced proving that hal Steinbrenner is actually
the son of my friend George Steinbrenner. I mean, I
(35:51):
might go if somebody invites me and pays for the
ticket and covers the five dollars and eighty cent round
trip on the subway. I'd have gone if the Mets
had beaten the Dodgers and the Mets we're in it,
or if that Steinbrenner paternity test had come back. I've
(36:26):
done all the damage I can do here. Thank you
for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Follow me for the
podcast promo videos too on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram,
and facetick. Once again, there is a Monday Countdown. Please
send this podcast to somebody who doesn't know that they
need to listen, but should. Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel,
(36:49):
the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most
of our music. Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration and keyboards.
Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It
was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nance Faust.
The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two,
written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of the ESPN Inc.
(37:12):
Don't forget to listen to the Baseball World Series on
ESPN Radio, where the broadcast is likely to be better
than the game. Other music arranged and performed by the
group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was by coincidence,
ESPN's Tony Korneiser. Everything else was pretty much my fault.
Let's countdown for today, two weeks until the twenty twenty
(37:32):
four presidential election. I think I have that right, and
the three and eighty six day since convicted felon dissociative
fugue j Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Use the election, use the
metal health system, use presidential immunity to keep him from
doing it again while we still have a chance. The
(37:56):
next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says, the news requires
till the next one on Keith Olderman good Morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good Luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
(38:23):
a production 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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