TRUMP'S INSANITY OVERTAKES HIM IN NEW HAMPSHIRE SPEECH - 10.24.23

SEASON 2 EPISODE 59: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The cheese slid COMPLETELY off Trump’s cracker yesterday in Derry New Hampshire. The first time I ever posited in public that his brain doesn’t work right was in a piece and video I did for Vanity Fair in 2016 called Could Trump Pass A Sanity Test and I do NOT know what the next step DOWN is mentally or psychologically or intellectually from “no he could NOT pass a sanity test” but Trump has now reached it: one speech, five statements that in a previous century would have been examined as signs of possible tertiary syphilis. At Derry, New Hampshire he a) showed he believed he was the first person to ever realize the letters U and S could spell "us" AND "U.S;" b) revealed he didn't know why FDR "sat" while he spoke nor what the thing he sat in was called; c) confused Turkey's Erdogan and Hungary's Orban; d) claimed he was Nelson Mandela; and e) told his voters not to bother to vote.

Trump is crazy. Those who opposed him shied away from this in 2016 and 2020. It needs to be mentioned hourly, because it's not only true and an existential danger - it's also perfect politics - the ideal answer to the slanders about Biden's age and acuity. 

Also: Judge Michael Luttig is back with another Constitutional answer to a Trump lie. If you don't know about the Presidential Vesting Clause in Article 2, it's why Trump does NOT have "absolute immunity" for trying to overturn an election while president. Luttig and 23 other former Republican officeholders filed a brief with the court saying this was a threat to the integrity of all future elections.

Trump continues to dare a judge to jail him for violating his various gag orders; he's caught in a bald-faced lie about whether or not Sidney Powell ever worked for him; the essence of the Jack Smith case against him is proved by Kenneth Chesebro taking a plea deal; and is the Republican Civil War over the Speaker of the House (now extended to Trump pretending he's not trying to sabotage Tom Emmer) enough to send five Republicans to form their own third party and get one of their group elected by the Democrats as the new Speaker? Is the GOP about to re-enact what destroyed the Whig Party in 1852?

B-Block (24:04) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Have you ever heard of the poll that indicated a third of all Trump supporters favor building a wall along the Atlantic Ocean to keep Muslims out? (32:27) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Tom Cruise's agent discovers what "genocide" actually means. A Stanford neurobiologist concludes there is no free will. A Jim Jordan colleague says the naysayers got all those death threats because they deserved them. And why, yes that WAS a picture of Hitler on Michigan State's football stadium scoreboard. Why do you ask?

C-Block (38:30) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The anniversary was Sunday, and the story continues to unfold 23 years later. The night in the 2000 World Series when Mike Piazza's bat shattered and Roger Clemens picked up the barrel and threw it near (or at, if you were a Mets fan) Piazza. And I thought Clemens was throwing it at me. And then Piazza announced he was suing me. And then it turned out he'd threatened others. It's an amazing saga within a saga.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
cheese slid completely off Trump's cracker yesterday in Derry, New Hampshire.

(00:28):
The first time I ever posited in private that his
brain does not work right was in nineteen eighty three.
The first time I ever posited in public that his
brain doesn't work right was in a piece and video
I did for Vanity Fair in twenty sixteen, called could
Trump pass a sanity test? And I do not know
what the next step down is mentally or psychologically or

(00:49):
intellectually From no, he could not pass a sanity test,
but Trump has now reached it. One speech, four statements
that in a previous century would have been examined as
signs of possible tertiary syphilis. And while a new front
has been opened in the constitutional case against Trump, permit
me to introduce you to my friend the vesting clause

(01:12):
of Article two, Section one in a moment while that's happening,
we need to make Trump's accelerating mental instability and clear
deterioration as big an issue as his corruption and his authoritarianism, because,
as shown in these separate insane remarks in New Hampshire,

(01:33):
this guy is out of his effing mind.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Come for us.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
You know how you spell us?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Right? You spell us US?

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of
that being?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I just picked that up a couple of days. I'm
reading and I said US, and I said, you know,
you think about it? US equals US? Isn't Now if
we say something genius, they'll never said.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Tune in tomorrow. And Trump becomes the first man ever
to discover there's no I in team or in FDR.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
They said that was one of the greatest speeches since FDR.
You know, FDR was a great speaker. Right here was
a great speaker. He sat. He sat because of a situe.
But he was an elegant, beautiful, eloquent, elegant and eloquent.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
So he couldn't remember why Franklin D. Roosevelt sat and
he clearly couldn't remember what that thing was he sat in.
But at least he got his initials right. And the
madness of King Trump is not limited to stuff in
this country.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Victor orbon did anyone ever hear of him? He is
probably like one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world.
And he he's the leader of right he's the leader
of Turkey fronts on both Russia.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Victor Orbon rules Hungary, receptiep Erdiwan rules Turkey unless Trump
meant Keith Urban a reminder, this is all in the
same speech.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I don't mind being Nelson Mandela because I'm doing it
for a reason. I'm doing it for a reason.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
It is amazing to state allowed that a man who
has been, however, he achieved that power president of the
United States and his fascist party's nominee for the office.
A second and probably a third time to state that
that man has delusions of grandeur. But if Donald Trump
thinks he is Nelson Mandela, he's got delusions of grandeur,

(03:42):
unless he plans to spend like Mandela, twenty seven years
in prison. On lastly, Trump also told his voters to
not bother to vote.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
You gotta get out there. You gotta watch those voters.
You don't have to vote. Don't worry about voting. The voting.
We got plenty of votes.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
There is no greater defense available against the various charges
that Joe Biden is too old or too reserved to
serve a second term than to go on the offense
on this issue. Trump's mental incapacity has been documented since childhood,
when neighbors saw him throwing rocks at an infant in

(04:22):
a carriage at a neighbor's house has been documented since
his classmates in the military reform school they sent him
to saw him try to push another student out a
second story window. Has been documented since New York media
used to get calls from Trump identifying himself as Trump's
spokesman John Miller or Trump Vice president John Barron. Only

(04:43):
it was Trump, and he didn't even bother to try
to change his voice, and he was already so crazy
that he thought nobody would notice. I said it in
twenty sixteen, and I said it in twenty twenty, and
I'm saying it again after the meltdown in Darry yesterday
by our Nelson Mandela about orbon of tur who just

(05:05):
discovered there are twenty six letters He's crazy. We have
to put political correctness aside and call him crazy in
public every day. For every reference to Biden's age, we
must have ten references to Trump's insanity. In the word

(05:29):
cloud of people's impressions of him crazy, insane, mentally, ill, psychotic, deranged.
These all have to literally loom large because it's not
just politically useful, it also unfortunately happens to be true.

(05:51):
Trump is crazy, and it continues to risk the survival
of this nation and for that matter, the survival of
everybody on this planet. And oh, by the way, after that,
could Trump's I have a sanity test piece? Spoiler alert, No, no,
he couldn't. I was on a PBS show with the

(06:11):
veteran Republican operative Ed Rollins, who was consulting Trump's campaign
at the time. As we finished and we each packed
up our stuff and left the studio, Ed turned to
me and he said he'd read the piece, and he said,
by the way, you're absolutely right. He's crazy. He's really crazy.

(06:37):
He may also be the first political figure in our
nation's history to be personally unconstitutional. You know about the
still embryonic bids to disqualified Trump under Section three, the
rebellion Clause in the fourteenth Amendment. Now there is another
legal maneuver involving the Constitution designed to get Judge Tanya
Chutkin and others later to make certain that nobody goes

(07:01):
along with this monarchist madness that Trump cannot be prosecuted
for trying to overturn the election and overthrow the democracy
because he had quote absolute immunity because he happened to
be president while he committed these crimes. Trump is using
this imaginary concept to demand that the entirety of the
Washington prosecution be dismissed. Now it's not likely to be,

(07:25):
but at some point in one of the prosecutions, one
of the appeals this year or next, or if it
continues into twenty twenty five, then it will come up again.
And Judge Michael Luddig wants to make sure you remember
that when it does, you need to hit Trump over
the head with the executive vesting clause in the Constitution.

(07:50):
It is so simple an argument that you would likely
miss it even if you studied the Constitution. I've only
studied it since nineteen sixty nine, and I've basically driven
right past this clause for fifty four years now. Quote
the executive power shall be vested in a president of
the United States of America. He shall hold his office

(08:12):
during the term of four years. This is so ingrained
in this country's history, in its machinery. It's like suddenly
noticing that there are twenty four hours in a day,
or that the letters US can spell the word US
and be the acronym for the United States. Wait, that's
not a good example anyway. The point of Luddig and

(08:32):
the other twenty three former Republican office holders, including former
Governor Whitman of New Jersey and former Congressman Comstock and
Reagan Council Wendell Wilkie, the second who signed the Amicus
Currie I submitted to Judge Chutkin, is that we have
taken for granted one of the great compromises in our
nation's history. The second sentence of the clause, they write,

(08:56):
requires a first term president who loses reelection to leave
office at the end of his term. This was an
important selling point during ratification. The Constitutional Convention initially adopted
provisions of a draft constitution that would elect a president
for a single seven year term and make each president

(09:17):
ineligible for reelection. The Convention later switched course and framed
a constitution that enabled a president to seek reelection, but
the executive vesting clause limited every presidential term to four years.
As they then quote the Virginia Delegate to the Constitutional Convention,
Edmund Randolph, the president quote may not hold his office

(09:40):
without being reelected. He cannot hold it over four years
unless he be re elected, anymore than if he were
prohibited from running. Trump not only trying to tamper with
that fundamental premise of the vesting clause. You lose, you leave,
and a second fundamental premise of it. The next president

(10:02):
is vested, and he starts a January twentieth. But if
any court were to grant this or any other president
absolute immunity from prosecution, as Ludig and the others right,
that court would be then granting any sitting president in
the future the right to try to steal an election
he's lost, without fear of going to jail, without fear

(10:23):
of merely being stopped by the laws he is there
to uphold. Quoting again, the impact of absolute immunity on
the executive vesting clause is the issue in this case
that threatens the greatest danger to public interests outside this case,
namely the danger to the sanctity of future presidential elections

(10:45):
in our divided nation. In the last eight reelection campaigns,
the incumbent lost four times nineteen seventy six, nineteen eighty,
nineteen ninety two, and twenty twenty and one competitive races
twice two thousand and four and twenty twelve. Granting absolute
immunity in this case would incentivize he even knowing and

(11:05):
corrupt illegal conduct by a first term president to usurp
another term, and thus would imperil the executive vesting clause unquote.
In short, this prosecution is about far more than just
Trump and just preserving elections this time, it is about
preserving elections in this country for all time. Judge Luddig

(11:30):
and his fellow conservatives are warning not just Tanya Chutkin,
who does not need this warning, but all the judges
that to listen to this argument is to subvert the Constitution.
It is essentially to incite rebellion against the Constitution. And
speaking of that, the Fourteenth Amendment test case in Colorado,

(11:53):
mocked by Trump, mocked by his MAGA cult, mocked even
by many liberals and most of the media. In the
media's case, because it includes the number fourteen, which is
higher than most of the media can count, it lives.
The Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace has not only ruled
against Trump's bid to dismiss it, but she's taken his

(12:13):
three separate motions and rubbed them in his face. No,
it is not clear that the fourteenth Amendment does not
give the Colorado Secretary of State the right to block
Trump from the ballot in her state. No, Colorado law
does not give political parties rather than the state, the
final say on who is on the ballot and who
is not. And no, it is not just the federal government.

(12:35):
The state does too have the right to disqualify a
candidate who is quote constitutionally prohibited from assuming office. And
just to really pound this into Trump's groin, the then
appeals court judge whose opinion she quotes on that last
point is Neil Gorsich. So, mister Trump, anything else you'd

(13:00):
like to be wrong about today? Thank you, Nancy Faust.

(13:25):
Update from the Atlanta trial, or as we call it now,
let's make a plea deal. Kenny the Cheese Kenneth Chessbro
followed Sydney Powell to the altar with Fannie Willis and
the stark reality that no matter what his lawyer says
about how his guilty plea implicated only himself, Chesbro has
in fact garrotted Donald Trump. He has admitted confessed pleaded

(13:47):
guilty to count fifteen by saying, under oath and on
tape that the fake electors were fake and their quote
purpose was to quote disrupt and delay the joint session
of Congress of January sixth, twenty twenty one, which is
pretty much the entirety of Jack Smith. This entire election
subversion case reduced to as few words as possible. Lock

(14:10):
them up. Also, Trump has been caught in a slam
dunk lie about the Kraken weirdo. He now claims online
miss Powell was not my attorney and never was, a
sentence which by itself may be further evidence of his
recent mental decline. Miss Powell was not my attorney and
never was. If the video of Rudy Giuliani introducing her

(14:32):
as one of Trump's attorneys were not sufficient nor direct enough.
On November fourteenth, twenty twenty, Trump tweeted, quote Rudy Giuliani,
Joseph de Jenneva, Victoria Tensing, Sidney Powell, and Jenna ellis
a truly great team, added to our other wonderful lawyers
and representatives. If you've missed this. Trump's attitude meantimes towards

(14:56):
the two gag orders rather resemble somebody who thinks he
can walk across hot coals without knowing the one weird
trick to survive. Judge Chutkin has tabled the gag order
in the Washington case while Trump tries to get another
court to overturn it. Trump may still have managed to
violate it because the order forbids him from public comments
about the prosecutor, and he of course called him deranged

(15:18):
again on Sunday, but in connection with the Florida documents case.
While denying he gave away secrets about our nuclear submarines
to the Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt, whom Trump dismissed with
as Freudian a line as he has ever composed. Trump
called Pratt quote a red haired weirdo. He was also

(15:39):
fined by Judge Ngeron for violating the New York gag
order by leaving up an image of the doxing of
Engeron's court clerk. It was only a fine because Ngeron
more or less had to buy the lawyer's claim that
it was not taken down. It was only up there
by accident, this time the first time, and Trump naturally
responded to this by then posting a video clip of

(16:01):
anger On with somebody else's note that quote in two thousand,
five fifteen, the judge from the Trump case gave a
lecture to some college students. It's scary to think the
amount of power this lunatic currently has unquote, span the
gag order. Judge anger On, mark my words on this.
It is going to happen. It is going to happen

(16:23):
sooner than we're prepared for. Judge anger On or Judge Chutkin,
or even Judge Cannon, who has a limited gag order
in the Florida case too. One of them is going
to at minimum ordered Trump into court and face to
face threatened to jail him unless he immediately grovels. And
I don't know what happens when he refuses to grovel.

(16:49):
One more thing, never try to outguess. Margo goes the
line from the movie classic All about Eve, the latest newest.
This may have already changed by the time you hear this.
Likely Republican nominee for a Speaker of the House is
Tom Emmer, whom I mentioned here weeks ago as the
likeliest one to take over if they really did pull
at Julius Caesar on McCarthy. Emmer has a problem, though

(17:11):
there are nine candidates for this job, which means the
Republicans may be electing their twelfth choice, and only two
of the nine did not try to help Trump overthrow
democracy by voting to not certify the twenty twenty election.
Emmer is one of the two. Trump said something yesterday
about how he and Emmer had always worked well together,

(17:32):
and Emmer immediately retweeted video of it, and in the
process he kissed Trump's ample ass, and Trump's surrogates immediately
turned around and began to circulate a two hundred and
sixteen page book of oppo research against Tom Emmer. Never
try to outguess, Margo. It is not true that all

(17:54):
eighty six Republicans who voted by secret ballot last week
to ditch Jim Jordan as nominee number two did not
support him, or did not support Trump, or feel like
they're losing their minds as well as theirs by participating
in this ongoing conspiracy to turn the nation into an
authoritarian state like the one ruled by Urban Meyer in Turkey.

(18:16):
But I keep wondering if there are enough in that
Republican caucus who really have had enough to alter history.
Two hundred and seventeen votes are needed to elect the
next speaker. No Republicans going to get that right now,
five moderate Republicans or just five exhausted Republicans leaving their

(18:41):
party not to join the Democrats, but to form a
third party and establish an ad hoc temporary coalition with
the Democrats. Five Republicans could basically choose one of their
own to be the next speaker. It is not anything
more than the longest of long shots. But there are
easily five out of those eighty six who sank Jim Jordan,

(19:03):
who would do it if they thought they could get
reelected anyway. Hell, there are ten of those. There may
be twenty, there may be fifty. And if and when
they start thinking that way and acting upon it, the
GOP will have become the party it replaced in the
eighteen fifties. As late as eighteen fifty two, the President

(19:24):
of the United States, Millard Fillmore, was a member of
and in fact the leader of, the Whig Party. By
eighteen fifty six, Fillmore would finish third in the presidential election,
and he got eight electoral votes. By eighteen sixty it
was a four man presidential race, and not one of

(19:45):
them identified as a member of the Whig Party. This
is how things change, personal desperation, some actual patriotism, and
their growing awareness that no matter what the American political
landscape looks like right now, if you are a Republican,
the fact of Donald Trump's increased madness and decreasing connection

(20:06):
to reality and ever inflating chances of disqualification and conviction
and prison. With all that being true, you members of
the Republican Party have shackled yourself to a corpse. Also

(20:28):
of interest here, so you've heard about the desire among
Trump supporters to build a wall to keep out immigrants,
a wall along the Atlantic, Yes, a wall on the
Atlantic Ocean. There's a novel explanation from a congressman for
those death threats against the representatives who did not vote
for Jim Jordan. That is, they deserve the death threats.

(20:51):
And if you thought you had free will, no doubt
in fact thinking you have free will, that's not even
your choice. You were destined to think that, says a
Stanford neurobiologist. Science. That's next. This is countdown.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
This is countdown with Keith Alboman.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Postscripts to the news. Still ahead on countdown worst persons
in the world, and you have no free will for
something different? Today a Trumpian flashback of sorts. Let me
try this, See how you like this, and maybe I
will work it in from time to time. I just
read this piece again and I realized what a perfect
harbinger of the stupidity of the Confederacy of Dunces that

(21:48):
was ahead for us. This was my GQ commentary from
the sixth of September two thy sixteen. The title was
The Atlantic Wall, and I present it virtually unchanged. If
you watch the speeches, if you read the tweets, if
you survived the debate, you probably saw something obvious and disqualifying,

(22:11):
like when Sniffy Trump went after Rosy O'Donnell, or he
said we can't defend Japan, or he gave his string
of answers in which he did not deny his tax
returns would show that he didn't pay anything, and then
he said that made him smart, and then he said
that if he had paid them, they would have just
been squandered. And as the post debate polls now come
out in force, you are probably saying, what, how, how

(22:34):
is the margin not bigger. It's because some people saw
in that debate, in those speeches, in that hatred and stupidity,
their ideal president. Why how huh? The answer is in
something that was not addressed in that debate Monday, the
Trump wall. Ah, not that wall, the other wall. There

(23:00):
is another wall, and it may be the most undercovered
slice of madness in it is ceaseless fifteen months of
electoral id P p P Public policy polling is one
of the few players in the kafka esque farce to
have maintained some sense of humor. It will ask who
you are voting for, but it will also ask do
you have a higher opinion of Donald Trump or of

(23:22):
middle seats on airplanes? Middle seats win by the way,
forty five to forty two. And in one poll it
asked question twelve, and question twelve reads, would you support
or oppose building a wall along the Atlantic Ocean to

(23:43):
keep Muslims from entering the country from the Middle East? No, No,
you did not just hallucinate that, But yes, we should
look at that one again. Question number twelve, would you
support or oppose building along the Atlantic Ocean to keep
Muslims from entering the country from the Middle East. As

(24:06):
you know, there is only one correct answer to that question,
and that answer is are you out of your goddamned mind.
But are you out of your goddamned mind? Was not
one of the choices for the answer. It was yes, no,
We're not sure. And this is how those participants identifying
themselves as Trump supporters came out on this vital question
of the other Trump wall. Thirty one percent said yes

(24:31):
they were in favor of an Atlantic wall to keep
out the Muslims. Fifty two percent said they were not.
Seventeen percent said not sure. A wall to keep Muslims
from entering this country via the Atlantic? How how are they?

(24:58):
I can barely ask the question, how are they supposedly
breaching our present Atlantic fortifications roboving in from Syria? Are
they swimming from the isis infected region of Mullenbeck in
Antwerp straight to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina? Even assuming some
spark of humanity and intelligence among these thirty one percent

(25:19):
of Trump supporters getting from so called Islamic state to
Cuba somehow and then coming up from Cuba on a
nineteen fifty one Chevy pickup truck repurposed into an ocean
going vessel. Is that how they're going to get here?
The more you think about this question, and the nearly
one in three Trump supporters who don't know enough about geography,

(25:39):
or not enough about construction, or not enough about how
deep the water in the ocean might be, were not
enough about you know, life, the less loll worthy it
gets and the more it tanks on a shape resembling
the entirety of Donald Trump's campaign. Start with a threat
that exists only in theory. Since nine to eleven, no
act of terrorism has been conducted in this country by

(26:01):
people who are here illegally. Add to that a non
existent parent nnoid fever. The terrorists are streaming into this
country from every corner, multiply all of it by fear
and an unthinking desire for mindless revenge, and a demagogue
happy to exploit it so he can take over this country.
And you get question twelve. Do you support an Atlantic
wall to keep out the Muslims? Yes, thirty one percent.

(26:24):
Let me be clear, Donald Trump has never actually proposed
building a wall along the Atlantic, which would have to
be two thousand and sixty nine miles long or ten
times that long. If you wanted to be really safe,
and you wanted to block off all the rivers and
lakes and the other bodies of water that connect to

(26:46):
the Atlantic. He is not proposed destroying every beach and
every harbor, and every marina and every dock and every
pier and every bit of shipping and every business and
every city dependent on tourism and beach goers. He didn't
say it. The people who want to vote for him
said it. Wall off Miami, all of Florida, Georgia, the

(27:06):
Carolina is, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Vermont. In May two than sixty nine miles.
They don't like immigrants, they don't like anybody who's not white.
They don't like facts, and they don't like things they
don't understand, and they don't like Hillary Clinton. And that's
why he's still in the race. He is, indeed their

(27:27):
ideal president. What we do about their proud, defiant stupidity
short of finding these thirty one percent to want an
Atlantic wall to keep out surfboarding Muslims in burkinis finding
the thirty one percent and forcing them back to the
second grade to start all over again. What to do

(27:49):
other than that, I don't know. But between now and
November eight do not count them or him out. Trump
and his idiot supporters do not know the meaning of
the word beaten. Well, actually, they don't know the meaning
of a lot of words, and therein lies the problem.

(28:11):
The Atlantic Wall GQ, September sixth, twenty sixteen. I wish
it wasn't quite as prophetic as it turned out to be.

(28:46):
Still ahead on countdown. The World Series starts Friday. In
the old days, they used to make sure the World
Series always skipped Fridays because that was the lowest rated
night for TV. Now, of course it doesn't matter. After
they beat the Phillies five to one yesterday to tie
the NL Championship Series, we could still have the Arizona
Diamondbacks in the world, in which case the TV audience

(29:06):
might not average ten million a night. And as I
like to mention every once in a while, in nineteen
eighty the average was like forty three million a night
in a country it was only two thirds as large
as this one. Anyway, this means I should tell you
the Roger Clemens Mike Piazza broken bat story from the
two thousand World Series twenty three years ago this past Sunday,
and I should do it before the baseball season is
for all intents and purposes over first time for the

(29:31):
daily roundup of the miss Grants Morons Undonning Kruger Effect
specimens who constitute today's worst persons of the Wroom. The
Bronze Maha Dakiel, Tom Cruise's agent, demoted by her agency CAA.
She was head of Motion Pictures there co head after
she reposted an Instagram story about the Middle East War

(29:52):
with the notation quote you're currently learning who supports genocide? Unquote.
Dakiel then posted a fulsome apology, fulsome to the point
of unbelievable. I made a mistake with a repost in
my Instagram story which you used hurtful language. I'm sorry
for the pain I have caused. Choice of words is important, etc.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Etc. Etc.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yes, she didn't know what genocide means. Oh, that's what
it means. I don't know. It was like gen X
or gen z jen o side. Here's a question your
Cruise or your Reese Witherspoon or one of our other clients,
and you want to deal with this being asked of
you for the rest of your career. The runners up

(30:36):
It's a tie. Robert Sepolski. He is a Stanford neurobiologist.
And know he did not say something stupid about the
war or swerve out of his lane. Apparently he's a
great guy. All he said was that after forty years
of studying human behavior from that almost chromosome level, he's
got bad news for you. There is no free will.
If you drive a car into a crowd of protesters,

(30:57):
it's the same as having a heart attack, losing control
of the car and driving into the protesters just the same.
Or in the example that he used, if you go
into his office and pick up a pen on his desk,
it's actually just the inevitable result of an endless series
of centuries of what amount to biological algorithms that predisposed

(31:17):
you to do that. Thus, there are no morals, there
are no ethics, no God, and well, look on the
bright side. At least this explains Rudy Giuliani, and maybe
it explains the co runner up, Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.
According to punch Bowl News, at the last Jim Jordan
meeting with the holdouts who ultimately sank Jordan's bid to

(31:38):
become speaker, Congressman Davidson explained that it was not Jordan
or his team's fault that those representatives were getting death threats,
quoting the report. They are getting the death threats, he said,
because they voted against Jordan. But our winner is the
in stadium experience team for Michigan State University. No, these

(32:02):
people are not responsible for the team's two and five
record this year, which suddenly looks like a highlight. But
somebody did decide, and the school then decided to suspend
that somebody to fill those down times before the game
began with content that was just lifted from the YouTube product,
the quiz Channel, which they put on the scoreboard at

(32:22):
the stadium. A series of historical trivia questions, all of
which seem fine if you're online and you're not posting
them on the scoreboard at a stadium that seats seventy
five thousand people in the middle of an Israel Hamas war,
So that when the trivia question what country was Adolph
Hitler born in? Pops up and with it comes a

(32:42):
giant picture of Hitler on the football scoreboard, thousands of
people don't gasp and assume maybe they're having some sort
of trumpy and mental episode. Michigan State is very sorry
for the use of Hitler's picture, and they also won't
steal the quiz Channel material again to put on their scoreboard,
So sadly you will not see any of these questions

(33:05):
when they host Nebraska on November fourth. What was vladbam
Palor's favorite cocktail? Who were Stalin's backup singers on his
famous cover of Midnight in Moscow? Generalissimo Francisco Franco auditioned
for which classic TV role? And Satan was born on

(33:26):
the same day as this mighty morphin power ranger? Can
you name him? Michigan State University Football Stadium? Guys. The
hashtag for a story like this is fire everybody two days,
worst persons And it started on the night of October

(34:03):
twenty second, two thousand and it ended well, I'll let
you know if and when it ever ends. I was
enjoying the second night of one of my childhood dreams
come true. I was the host not just of the
telecast of the world series, but it was an all
New York City series, a Mets versus Yankee series, a
Subway series. I'd literally dreamt of it since nineteen sixty seven.

(34:27):
The manager of the Yankees had been the first person
I ever interviewed on TV fifteen years earlier. I had
worked with him in TV. He was a friend of mine.
I had just covered the Mets through their playoff run
and knew all of their players. My face had been
on an advertisement in dead center field in the Mets
Stadium for the entirety of the year before, and the

(34:48):
players all knew me my name. Where we were that night,
Yankee Stadium was not only where I saw my first
baseball game, but was about seven eighths of a mile
from the hospital in which I had been born, and
my first home was four subway stops away. The night
before this event, as I hosted the start of the
first game of this Keith of palooza, I was supposed

(35:11):
to introduce the public address announcer of Yankee Stadium, Bob Sheppard,
whose voice I had heard nearly every day since I
was eight years old, so he could then introduce the
players and this epic world series would begin. And it
dawned on me in the seconds before I was supposed
to do this that I literally had the power to
stop the two thousand World Series from ever happening if

(35:33):
I just kept talking and never actually said, here is
Bob shephard, well, I could delay it briefly until they
cut my mic off and then fired me on the spot. Anyway,
this was Game two, and now that our pregame show
was over, and I had waved to my mother, who
had seen her first game at Yankee Stadium just ooh
sixty six years previously, and she was seated in the

(35:54):
family seats that were just nine rows up from our
on field set. I had crawled into the position I
would assume for the entire game as the dugout reporter.
I was hunched over on a stool squeezed between the
far end of the Yankee dugout and our Fox Sports
first base camera. A thin chicken wire fence separated me
from the dugout himself. In fact, it was a formality.

(36:16):
I was more or less in the dugout players, coaches,
and that night, as I settled in, my friend, the
Yankee manager all came over to say hello, Roger Clemens
of the Yankees, who I had also known since we
were both rookies in Boston Sports in nineteen eighty four.
He lasted, I didn't. Roger Clemens had struck out the
first two Mets hitters. Clemens was a strange man about

(36:38):
whom I had heard a strange tale of teammates in
a college summer baseball league who were all wearing their
wallets in their uniform pants back pockets during a game
because one of them explained to a friend of mine,
we have this crazy kid Clemens from Texas on this team,
and we don't trust him. In Boston, I had found
him a little nervous, little standoffish, but doing his best

(37:02):
to be professional. But by now there were rumors swirling
around Roger Clemens about amphetamines and performance enhancing drugs, and
you knew not to talk to him before or after
a game unless you had to, and if you had to,
you chose your words very carefully, then made sure that
whatever you did, you had to start with something mundane,
like the score of the game, and if you could

(37:24):
let him bring up anything controversial or complex, he would
then probably do it. So now, as this game continued,
after two batters had struck out, Lee Mazzilli, the former
Mets star now Yankees coach, another friend of mine was
on the other side of a little fence, and as
Mets superstar Mike Piazza stepped in as the third batter

(37:44):
of the game, Mozilly leaned in and said, conspiratorily, let's
see if Roger flips him again. In Midsummer two thousand,
Roger Clemens had beamed Mike Piazza with a fastball. There
was a hospital visit involved. Nobody was convinced it had
not been intentional, or that Clemens would not do it again,
even though it was the World Series. Mazilly and I
leaned for. Piazza was a deeply complicated guy too. During

(38:08):
the playoffs, he had walked up to me and asked
me if it was true I was from New York,
and then he quizzed me about the relative merits of
the suburbs, and then he wanted to know if I
had really taken up residence in his favorite southern California hotel.
And we talked for fifteen minutes about that. The next
night I saw him, smiled, said Helow, and he looked
at me like I had just sworn a vendetta against
his family. For a long time I thought it was me,

(38:31):
until about ten years later, the Great Vin Scully said
that Piazza was with the Dodgers, and when they were
both together there in Los Angeles, Vin had had the
identical experience with Piazza. Best friends on the team bus
one day, and then no indication Piazza remembered even meeting
him the next I mean that was Vin Scully. Clemens,
as it turned out, did not throw a baseball at Piazza,

(38:53):
but instead pitched him inside in on his hands, and
Piazza tried to stop a swing that was half self defense,
but instead the odd angle and the force of the
pitch shattered. Piazza's bat ball veered to the right, describing
a circle into foul territory. The head of the bat
shot out towards Clemens on the mound. A second piece
flew briefly into the infield. Piazza was left holding just

(39:17):
the handle. And it looked as foolish as that sounds,
but lost in this descriptions the fact that all happened
at once, and even from our sign angle in the
Yankee dugout, it looked to mozillion me as if Piazza's
bat had simply exploded, like it was a trick device
of some sort. I saw Clemens reach for the baseball.
I thought it was the baseball right in front of him,

(39:38):
and then just as quickly, He and I at the
same moment, realized it was not the baseball. It was
the barrel of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just
a little darker than a baseball, but could in the
heat of an instant following a bat explosion, it could
be mistaken for a ball. So far, so good. But
right then Clemens, realizing it was part of a bat

(39:59):
and not a ball, promptly through that part of the
bat at me. Jesus Mas, I said to Mizilly, why
did Clemens throw that bat barrel at me? The Yankee
coach looked incredulously at me. He didn't throw it you.
He threw it at me. That's what it looked like.
We were lined up perfectly. Roger Clemens had thrown the
barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say, one hundred and twenty

(40:22):
feet instead of just six or seven feet, he would
have hit either me or Lee Mozilly. In the Yankee
dugout as it was, since nobody knew exactly what was happening,
Piazza had started to run down to first base in
case the ball was fair. He didn't know where the
ball was either. For that initial split second, you really

(40:42):
couldn't tell which flying object was the ball, and also
whether the ball was fair or foul. So Roger Clemens's
throw certainly looked like it was aimed at Piazza as
Piazza went down the first baseline, and as Piazza took umbrage,
And there was another split second of confusion when it
looked like Piazza might charge out to the mound to

(41:03):
try to sock Clemens. This and for the Midsummer beating.
I said to Missilly, wait, did he throw that bat
at Piazza? Miszilly just shook his head. I don't think so.
Hun Hell knows. He's been here two years. I haven't
figured out anything he's done so far. As the umpires
then got involved, Clemens repeatedly tapped his own chest, and

(41:24):
not in a bragging way, but in a kind of
what looked like that's on me way. Two bat boys
collected the three main pieces of the bat and a
bunch of smaller shards, some of them smaller than a toothpick.
The Fox play by play man threw it to me
in the dugout well, I said, I can tell you
the Yankee dugout doesn't know what happened or why Joe
Missilly laughed quietly and then hit me in the arm.

(41:47):
While I was on the air, I postulated that Clemens
was looking for a ball hit back to him, instead
found the piece of the bat, and then discarded that
piece of the bat so he could keep looking for
the ball that he discarded, it kind of where Piazza
was running might have been delivered, might have been a coincidence.
I do remember suggesting that if Clemens had really aimed
the bat at Piazza, that from that distance, with the

(42:10):
strength and accuracy of a major league pitcher, he clearly
would have hit him with it. Piazza then promptly grounded
out to end the inning, and as Clemens came back
towards the Yankee dugout where Mozilly and I were, he
again stopped to talk to the umpire, who was Charlie Reliford.
Over the noise of fifty six thousand fans at Yankee Stadium,
I couldn't hear a damn thing, but it sure looked

(42:30):
like Clemens was again saying that was on me. I
asked mizillly if he could find out if that's what
Clemens was doing, and half an inning later, Missilly reported
that Clemens indeed thought for a second it was the ball,
and that he threw it, and that it was on him,
and that it was not intentional and it was not
directed at Piazza. Now I did something kind of stupid.
I suggested to my bosses that I should go ask

(42:53):
the Commissioner of Baseball, who in a World Series game
had the power to eject any player for any reason,
although that power had not actually been used since nineteen
thirty four. What he thought of all this? The producer
said yes, And I thought me and my big mouth.
I now had to crawl out of that little space
between camera and dugout, and I mean literally crawl hands

(43:15):
and knees to exit back into the seats via where
the groundskeepers kept all the extra dirt. I knew where
in the stands the commissioner was sitting. I went there.
I got to him, I asked him. He assured me
there was no discipline coming for Clemens, and they'd look
at the tape of the game again that night or
in the morning, but he really didn't think Clemens had

(43:35):
tried to hit Piazza with the bat. Well, they would
look at the tape, and they decided both that Clemens
did not try to hit Piazza with the bat and
that he should be fined fifty thousand dollars for I
don't know, not trying to hit him with the bat.
So I made it back to the dugout, reversing my
crawl like I was recreating the movie The Great Escape.

(43:56):
As it turned out, Piazza's little squib shot that caused
all the trouble with the exploding bat was about the
hardest thing they hit off Clemens all night. Over eight innings,
he struck out nine Mets batters, he walked none, he
gave up only two hits, and he only hit one batter.
And then, incredibly, after Clemens left the game, the Yankees
almost blew a six to nothing lead. In the ninth inning,

(44:20):
a Met outfielder named Jay Payton hit a three run
homer off future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the
Mets had a chance to tie the game or go
ahead off Rivera in the top of the ninth And
then he got out of it, and the final score
was six to five Yankees. And with the game over
now it was Keith interviews Clemens' time. I went to
the pre arranged spot at the other end of the

(44:42):
Yankee dugout, where another friend of mine, the Yankees pr director,
had guaranteed me he would go and get Clemens and
they would emerge after Clemens left the clubhouse to do
what was a contractually obligated interview with Fox and me. Apparently,
Roger Clemens started making his way towards me the moment
the Yankees finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment,

(45:05):
security closed the only runway from the Yankee Dugout to
the clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as
an exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader. And while
Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every

(45:26):
one of its stations in the country, even on the
West Coast, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver kept showing
replays again and again and promising my interview with Roger Clemens,
Rudy Giuliani took his goddamn time leaving the field. His
idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I
half expected him to eat it instead. He stuffed it
in his jacket pockets. Giuliani now waited for his entire entourage,

(45:51):
one of his wives, some of his I guess they
were friends, assorted political riff raff, and as my producer
screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani waited until
they were all together on the field, and finally he
marched them down into the dugout and up through the runway.
And after all this delay, Clemens came out and finally

(46:12):
I could ask him about throwing the bat shard at
or near piazza. And at that moment I remembered what
I had learned about Clemens in Boston. If you started
an interview with something controversial, he might very well walk away. If,
on the other hand, you did the boring game outcome question,
he would answer anything you asked, and he might even
bring up anything controversial himself. But you had to do

(46:34):
the stupid game stuff first, So which was harder work?
Roger I asked eight innings of two hit ball or
watching the Mets nearly tie it in the ninth. His
answer was not bad, but he did not bring up
the bats. So I asked another question about what he
thought of his performance in that game. Well, that did it.
He started talking about having to overcome his emotions in

(46:56):
the first inning, and now I could say, well, since
you brought up the emotions the bat throwing incident, did
you throw that piece of broken bat at Piazza? There
is a freeze frame from that interview in which Roger
clemens eyes are bugged wide open. Well, Clemens basically confirmed
what the guys in the dugout had told me. He

(47:16):
had told them. You can believe him or not, but
he thought the thing he grabbed was the ball, and
when it wasn't, he threw it away just in case
the ball was somewhere else near him and he had
to have a free hand with which to pick it up.
He explained the chest taps. He was indeed saying to
the umpire Umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his
apologies to the umps for throwing the bat. He said

(47:37):
he didn't even know where Piazza was at the point
he threw the bat. It was as straight and nonpartisan
and frankly as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile,
everybody else in that stadium, everybody else in that city,
everybody else in the Tri State area was convinced of
one of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to

(47:58):
impale Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat
or the man that's where crybabies who could not tell
that Clemens obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza
with his own bat. There was no middle ground. I
found this out specifically the next day when the TV
sports columnist of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who

(48:19):
was a friend of mine, called to interview me about
the interview. Why didn't you ask him about the bat first?
Nobody cared about how he pitched? He threw a bat
at Piazza. I said, you're a Met fan, and I
explained the theory of not making Clemens end an interview
before he said what you needed to know. I went
through the whole thing I just recited here. It was
amazing to see those few days how every sports reporter

(48:41):
and columnist in New York self identified as either a
Met fan or ex Met fan, or a Yankee fan
or x Yankee fan. And you can still see it today,
as this story from twenty two years ago is recollected
by others, they wrote what they felt as kids Clemens
was the victim, or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazza

(49:05):
like he was a dracula and they had the wooden
stake to go through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently
from Joe Tory, the Yankee manager, another one of my friends,
that they all hid something from us that night, the
thing about emotions. After the incident in the first inning,
Roger Clemens went back to the Yankee clubhouse and started

(49:26):
to cry. This might have had something to do with
embarrassment or grief. But since he had noted that he
had had to check his emotions, I always thought, well,
he might have been a little overamped for that game,
naturally or otherwise. All right, So before I present anything
else out of chronological order, let me go back to

(49:47):
the moment. I thanked Roger Clemens for the interview and
threw it back to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in
the Fox booth, because this is when the real trouble started.
They were pretty much done for the night, but I
had another two hours to go in a live postgame
show on Fox's cable Sports network. Had about four minutes
until that show started, and it suddenly occurred to me

(50:07):
that although this was not the most important event in
the history of the World Series, the bat would become
part of the iconography of baseball. I had been at
Yankee Stadium often enough over the years to know the
two kids who ran the visiting clubhouse, and right then
they were still packing up the Mets bats and equipment
and the Mets dugout. So I ran over and asked

(50:28):
the senior of them what happened to the pieces of
the piazza bat well. A guy explained that Bobby Valentine,
the Mets manager, had asked that one of the pieces
go to a friend of his in the stands, and he,
the clubhouse attendant, had handed it to the guy. A
second piece he believed was kept by the Yankees. He
wasn't sure about that. The third piece, the handle was

(50:50):
where was it? Where is it? He asked the other attendant.
It's here in the garbage, the kids said. I did
a double take the garbage, Yeah, the kid said, under
the dugout bench, and there it was, stuffed in amid
all the empty bags of sunflower seeds and the crushed
gatorade cuffs. I said, what happens to it now gets
thrown out. They clean out the dugouts first. So I said, look,

(51:12):
can I borrow it? This would make a great prop
for our postgame show? And the attendant says sure, and
he pulls it out of the pile and hands it
to him. He just about seven inches of a baseball
bat and all there is is Piazza's uniform number thirty
one written in magic marker on the bottom. Listen. I said,
I won't be able to bring this back to you
for like two hours. We're on for two hours. Will

(51:33):
you still be in the clubhouse? And he said, are
you kidding? We have to be here at eight. He
and I'll be out of here in ten minutes. And
I said, you want me to bring it back to
you for Game three? And he says, garbage. You're going
to bring back garbage, throw it out, keep it whatever,
what do I care? So I use the bat fragment
as a prop in the show repeatedly, and I stuck

(51:55):
it in my shoulder bag and I thought, I'm not
a scrounger, but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia
and I'd like to keep it, so either I'll auction
it off for chair and bid against myself or something,
or I'll make a donation to a baseball charity and
I'll keep it. And that was it. And two days later,
as the World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shaye Stadium,

(52:15):
I got a phone call from one of the PR
guys at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And
I said, no, not yet, And he says, Piazza told
the guy from Newsday that you stole his back and
he wants it back. And I said, what if I
hadn't asked about it, it would be on a garbage scale
right now, being towed out to be dumped in the
Atlantic Ocean. And he says maybe, but Piazza told this

(52:37):
John Hayman, he's going to sue you to get it back.
So now I go to the ballpark with extra excitement
on my plate. I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell
me he's going to sue me. So I go out
onto the field. I'm wondering how long it's going to
be before I run into Piazza. And like two minutes
after I step on the field, I turn around and
he's walking towards me. He looks at me and he says, hey,
Keith wild One the other night, huh, say, listen, when

(53:00):
you lived at Shutters, did you ever eat at Ivy
at the Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat.
We're talking about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah,
but did you ever eat at Shae Jay's. And a
big smile from Piazza, Oh, man, I love Shae Jay's.
I love Jay. Give me your number this winner. When
I'm home, let's go eat at Shae Jay's. And I said,

(53:20):
I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs.
Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand
dabs at a restaurant. And then he says, hey, sorry,
I gotta go ahead, have a good show. That was it.
He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see
each other on the field, he starts the conversation. No
mention of suing me, not one word. Next day in

(53:43):
the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's going to
sue me for stealing his bat. Next night, Game four
of the World Series, We're just about to go on
the air with the pregame show, and now Piazza comes
over again coming in from the outfield to the dugout
and he says, hey, this must be really cool to
do what you guys are doing. Have a great show,
and by now the only thing I can think of.
He does not know I'm the same. Keith Olderman keeps

(54:05):
threatening to sue. So the World Series ends and the
Yankees beat the Mets, and if you look for it,
there's this photo of the traditional postgame awarding of the
World Series Trophy and the Most Valuable Player award, and
it's Commissioner Bud Selig and Derek Jeter, the Yankees and me,
And just before it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner
of the Yankees. He's crying, leans in and I give

(54:27):
him a hug and reassure him. And he asked me
if my mother went to the game, and I said,
you know, my mother, she'd never come to Shay Stadium.
She hates it more than you do. And he says, I.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Love her more than ever before. Now.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
So the series ends, and it's not been that greatest series,
but it's been exciting, and it was the dream from
my childhood. And the Yankees have won, and my friends
are happy, and I've not heard another word about this lawsuit,
nothing from Mike Piazza. And I told the Fox people, well,
if I'm not going to hear anything more from them,
it's easy. I'm going to keep the bat, and I'm
going to donate twenty five thousand dollars to this charity,

(55:03):
the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex ball players in
financial need, because A I'm not a scrounger. B it's
a great cause. C that's actually much more than the
bat handle would be worth on the open market. And
D the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team is bat
bat and that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat, you get it.

(55:25):
And then nothing for a month, whereupon Fox gets another letter,
now from Piazza's agent fellow named Manzan, and he threatens
to sue again, and that's the end of it. Never
heard from him again. So now it's the next year,
two thousand and one, and I'm back in New York
working for CNN doing the news, and I go to
a Mets game and I see Piazza and I give
him a big smile and I offer my hand and

(55:47):
I say, steal ally of those sand dabs from SHAYJ.
And he just stares at me and walks right past me.
And I see a cop I know who works next
to the Mets dugout, and the cop says, Mike has
been asking him about me. Is that Keith Olderman the
one who stole my bat? So now I'm not just
keeping the bat. I want to sue Mike Piazza for

(56:09):
being a pain in the ass. And then nine to
eleven happens, and ball players are doing charity things, and
sportscasters and newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well,
this is the time when the baseball season resumes. I
throw the bat handle in my bag and I go
out to a Mets game and I go up to
Piazza's locker before the game and I pull the bat

(56:30):
chart out and I say, take this, Mike, auction it
off for charity. Let's do some good with this. Or
if it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll
auction it off. We can leave my name out of it,
whatever you want, however you want to do it. And
he looks at me like I've just insulted his mother
and says, no, it's too complicated, and he turns away
and I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete

(56:53):
I have ever met. And just before the season ends,
I go to another Mets game. Now, this time it's
one of his teammates who takes me aside and says,
you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his
bat from the Clemens game last year. He says, he
still wants to sue you. Didn't you try to give
him the bat back in the clubhouse to auction off.
Didn't I see that? And I say, yeah, I did,

(57:15):
and he refused to take it. And the guy laughs
and he says, great player, excellent catcher. I love him.
Strangest player I have ever met. Comes two thousand and two,
nothing happens. See Piazza at several Mets games. Nothing happens.
Two thousand and three, nothing happens. Now. I can't pin
the year down on this. It's one of the Red
Sox Yankees playoff series, either two thousand and three or

(57:37):
two thousand and four. And I'm leaving the field as
they're clearing the media off just before the game starts,
and I'm going out through the Red Sox dugout literally
at the same spot where the kid handed me Piazza's
bat handle three or four years earlier, where the trouble
all began. And I see the new owner of the
Red Sox team approaching from the other end of the
dugout Keith John Henry, Nice to meet you. Have you

(57:59):
got a minute? And I said, well, yeah, they're kicking
the media off the field, and he laughs and he
says I can take care of that, and he yells
at the plane clothes cop and he says he's with me,
and the cop nods and John Henry, the owner of
the Red Sox, and I sit down on the Red
Sox bench before the start of a Red Sox Yankees
playoff game, and there are no other reporters out there,
and I think, Okay, what did I say about the

(58:21):
Red Sox? What is he pissed off about? Instead? John
Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza? And
I laugh and I say, sure, what about him? And
he says, you have part of his bat from the
World Series with Clemens right, And I say yeah, and
he says, tell me the whole story. So I do

(58:43):
what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's what
I was told. Thank you, huh. I thought it was me.
So that other piece of the bat that was handed
to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game, that
friend is a great friend of mine. And after nine
to eleven he said, wouldn't it be great to get
Mike Piazza to sign this and then we can auction
it off for the victims' families or the cops or
some other charity. And he gives me the bat, and

(59:06):
I call the Mets and they approach Mike and they
call me and they say, Mike loves the idea, and
I should come to one of the spring training games
and he'll sign it. So the next March, I go
to one of the Mets spring training games and I
go up to him in the clubhouse and I introduce
myself and he looks at me like I'm from Mars,
and I say, well, I brought the bat, and he says,
what bat? And I explained that we had arranged to
have him sign the bat from the World Series for

(59:27):
a nine to eleven charity and he erupts at me,
I'm not signing that bat sure for charity? Do you
think I was born yesterday? And now I say something
to John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, like, welcome
to the club. Did he threaten to sue you too?
And he laughs and says yes. That's the next part
of the story. So while we're trying to straighten that out,

(59:48):
his agent calls me and asks if I will give
them the bat to auction off for charity. And I
say sure, And I go to another Mets game and
I go to the clubhouse and I have the bat again.
Now Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because
of pending litigation, but if I I want him to,
he'll sign it for me. All I have to do
is come back a couple of weeks later. So this

(01:00:11):
is what I wanted to ask Keith. Is he the
strangest ballplayer you've ever met? Or is it just me?
There's one more part to this. Flash forward to twenty fourteen.
I still have the Piazza batthandle the one I unsuccessfully
tried to give back to Piazza. The middle portion, the

(01:00:31):
one John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza,
has been sold with the proceeds going to charity. So
where is the third piece, the barrel of the bat?
The part that Clemens threw at Piazza if you're a
Met fan, or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza
if you're not a Met fan, And the answer finally
arrives in a sports memorabilia auction catalog that year, while

(01:00:53):
one of the visiting bat boys was handing the middle
part of the bat to a friend of Bobby Valentine
and John Henry's in the stands, the barrel, which landed
near the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the Yankee
who put it in the pile of Yankee broken bats.
And as it turned out right at that point, the
Yankee strengthen conditioning coach Jeff Mangold, who was on the bench, said,

(01:01:15):
wait a minute, that's the pile of broken bats they're
going to throw out. They shouldn't throw it out. It's history.
And he grabs that part of the Piazza bat and
puts it up in his home office. And now it's
fourteen years later and he wants to auction it off
for charity. So he auctions it off, and I think, well, hell,
it should be alongside the other piece of the bat.
My other piece of the bat, the handle so I

(01:01:36):
win the auction. There it is on my wall, complete
with a baseball card showing Roger Clemens about to throw
the barrel. Reasons left to your imagination two thirds of
the famous bat. I'll sell it someday, I'm sure, but
I'll always have the memories, my memories and John Henry's memories.

(01:01:57):
And if you're wondering, no, Unlike John Henry and I,
that Yankee strength coach, Jeff Mangold never tried to give
it back to Piazza, or get it signed by Piazza
or auctioned off for charity with Piazza, which means that,
on top of everything else, Jeff Mangold is smarter than
John Henry and I put together. I've done all the

(01:02:28):
damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown
has come to you from the Vin Scully Studios at
the Old Women Broadcasting Empire in New York. Countdown musical
directors Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel arranged, produced and
performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums, and it
was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music including other Beethoven

(01:02:51):
tunes arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed Sports Music
courtesy of ESPN, Inc. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis.
It's called the Old Wrioman theme from ESPN two. Our
satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the
best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today is my
friend Larry David, and everything else was pretty much my fault.

(01:03:12):
So that's countdown for this the oney twenty second day
since Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected
government of the United States. Convict him now, well, we
still can. The next schedule countdown is tomorrow. Bolton says,
the news warrants till then. I'm Keith Oldman. Good morning,
good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith

(01:03:42):
Oldman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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