WE IN L.A. MEDIA LET O.J. SIMPSON GET AWAY WITH IT - 4.12.24

SERIES 2 EPISODE 157: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: In the SportsCenter computer I read something that made my blood run cold. It was one line in a preliminary script for the 6:30 PM SportsCenter for Monday, June 14, 1994. O.J. Simpson’s wife and a man with her had been murdered. The script noted “Simpson is NOT a suspect.” What made my blood run cold was not the news of the murders. It was that phrase. It might as well have been “of COURSE Simpson is not a suspect.”

The problem was, I knew Simpson was a suspect because I had not a doubt in my mind that Simpson had butchered them because I knew what all of us who worked – or had worked – in L.A. media knew – that the O.J. Simpson known to the public, to TV audiences, movie audiences, sports audiences, was an utter fabrication. I knew he had hit his wife. I knew the authorities in Los Angeles had done nothing about it. I knew the sportscasters in Los Angeles – including me – had done nothing about it, though I wondered then and have known since that there was almost nothing WE could have done about it, legally.

I called police source in L.A. and he was emphatic:: “whatever you do, DON’T say he’s a suspect. We’re terrified he’s going to run. This guy has make-for-the-border written all over him. Or off himself maybe. But yeah, maybe…” and he had had to stop himself from laughing… “maybe you want to drop that part about NOT a suspect. Jesus. Not a suspect? HE’S OUR ONLY SUSPECT."

I then had to explain it to executives - representative of the America of 1994 - who were still saying aloud "Poor O.J." There is no comparison to Simpson's fall in American history. And the system of the time was designed to protect him, the way the system of today protects similar scumbags.

ALSO: The Johnson-Trump conference today was Johnson's idea and Trump is not in favor of getting rid of the Speaker. And RFK Jr gets rid of the New York staffer who admitted the campaign is about getting Trump, not Kennedy, elected. But it turns out he's got at least one more saying essentially the same thing.

B-Block (26:30) IN SPORTS: It's amazing that Shohei Ohtani could have so relied on his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara that basically nobody else could talk to Ohtani, and Mizuhara could exploit that reality to secretly steal millions from him. But the FIGURES involved are twice as amazing: $16,000,000 embezzled? 19,000 bets on sporting events in three years? Gambling wins and losses totaling $325,000,000? Also America's hottest new team is the Indiana Fever, and no, there aren't more baseball pitchers being injured this year than the last ten years.

C-Block (41:05) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: A first-time story, which reads as if it was ripped from today's headlines. In his profile of his boss, discoverer, and the founder of The New Yorker Harold Ross, Thurber told of Ross's assisting, who took advantage of his boss's inattentiveness to money to embezzle the equivalent of one and a half million from him and bet most of it on sporting events. There are so many similarities it sounds as if Ohtani's interpreter used the story as an instruction manual: "The Secret Life Of Harold Winney."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. On
the afternoon of Monday, June thirteenth, nineteen ninety four, I

(00:27):
was seated at my desk at ESPN in our SportsCenter computer.
I read something that made my blood run cold. It
was one line in the preliminary script for the six
thirty PM Sports Center, which I did not appear on.
OJ Simpson's wife and a man who had been with
her had been murdered overnight our time. It had happened

(00:49):
since I had last anchored Sports Center the previous night,
and the script for the Monday night show noted, OJ
Simpson is not a suspect. The word not was in
capital letters. Made my blood run cold was not the
news of the murders. It was that phrase. That phrase

(01:10):
might as well have been written, of course, OJ Simpson
is not a suspect. The problem was I knew Simpson
was a suspect because I had not a doubt in
my mind that Simpson had butchered his wife and the man,
Ron Goldman. Because I knew what all of us who
worked or had worked in Los Angeles media knew that

(01:32):
the OJ Simpson known to the public of nineteen ninety four,
to TV audiences of nineteen ninety four, to movie audiences
of nineteen ninety four, to sports audiences of nineteen ninety four,
he was an utter fabrication. He might as well have
been performance art. I knew he had hit his wife repeatedly.

(01:56):
I knew the authorities in Los Angeles had done virtually
nothing about it. I knew the sportscasters in Los Angeles,
including me, we had done nothing about it. Though I
wondered then and have come to accept since that there
was almost nothing we could have done about it, not legally,
but because of all that, when I read OJ Simpson

(02:17):
is not a suspect, I went cold, because the lie
was going to continue. The cover up of who Oj
Simpson really was was going to continue, because he was
going to get away with it. Wasn't he and ESPN's
role in that was not intentional any more than NBC's

(02:37):
role had been, nor that of the producers of The
Naked Gun, nor that of those of us who had
been in Los Angeles media. And it didn't matter whether
it was intentional or not, because your goddamn Wright Simpson
was a suspect. Of course, he was a suspect. He
was the murderer. Over the nausea, and with some concern

(02:59):
for the reputation of ESPN in the days and weeks
to come, I made a few phone calls on my
own initiative to ex media colleagues and a police source
in LA and my police source had been emphatic, whatever
you do, don't say he's a suspect. If you say that,
I'll come there and I'll kill you. We are terrified

(03:23):
he is going to run. This guy has make for
the Border written all over him, or or off himself. Maybe,
but yeah, maybe, And he had had to stop himself
from laughing at this point. Maybe you want to drop
that part about not a suspect. Jesus Christ, not a suspect.

(03:45):
He's our only suspect. I can still feel what it
felt like to put the phone back in the cradle,
and I remember getting up from my desk to go
slowly walk over to talk to the news editors, to
go tell people, some of whom were still saying out loud,
poor OJ. To tell them that all they thought they

(04:08):
knew about OJ Simpson was a lie, and to tell
them that I was one of the hundreds of people
who had inadvertently helped to protect that lie who had
to that point helped him get away with it, and
to tell them that they had better edit that script
because I had just been told not a suspect. He's

(04:29):
our only suspect. I convinced them. Sports Center just dropped
the line. It did not report that he was not
a suspect. But to be fair, the news editors and
some of the on air people and a couple of
the executives spent that week until he made a run
for it, convinced that I was nuts and that when

(04:53):
they found whoever had done this awful thing to OJ's
wife and of course to OJ, ESPN was going to
look ridiculous. And then he made the run for it.
And even after that, there were people at NBC when
I first worked there in nineteen ninety seven who had
come finally to accept the fact that he had done it,
but who could never quite shape the belief that maybe

(05:16):
maybe there was some other explanation that hadn't come to
light yet, because that wasn't the Oh Jay they knew,
and that was the catch. Oh J. Simpson was a
better actor than anybody will ever realize. This creature was
as popular and as well known in three different fields

(05:39):
in this country simultaneously as almost anybody else who is
in only one of those fields. And then he murdered
two people brutally, hands on, face to face, and got
away with it, and then somehow managed to do something
in some contexts even worse. I don't like to joke

(06:04):
about death, even the death of OJ goddamned Simpson. But
the something worse was summarized in a joke by the
Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur after Simpson's death yesterday. Right now,
Bruce Arthur tweeted, cancer is writing a book called If

(06:25):
I Did It. Even at the time, I don't think
the audacity, the indescribable gall for a man to get
away with murder and then try to write a book,
nominally a novel, in which he speculated about how he
had committed the murder he'd just been acquitted of, how

(06:45):
he had killed his wife and Ron Goldman, how he
would have done it if he had killed her. He
really wrote it, or a ghostwriter wrote it for him
and with him. He really tried to work both the angles.
Commit the crime, get acquitted, write a book, make some money.
It's one of the most deeply morally bankrupt things I

(07:08):
have ever heard of anybody doing, short of serial killing.
Since the news of OJ Simpson's death, I've been thinking
a lot about him and who he really was, and
what we knew about him in the years I worked
in local news in Los Angeles from nineteen eighty five
till the very end of nineteen ninety one. And the
immutable fact that if you did not know the public

(07:30):
OJ Simpson, who killed his ex wife and Ronald Goldman
in nineteen ninety one, I can never explain, I can
never convey, I can never describe just how popular he was.
Maybe I can just give you a glimpse. In the
sad and in many quarters still startled commemorations of the

(07:54):
various anniversaries of the White Bronco car Chase, the beginning
of the OJ Simpson most people today think of the
birth of the Monster seemed to be only passing reference
to one of the most amazing transformations in American history,
let alone American sports history American entertainment history. On June seventeenth,

(08:16):
nineteen ninety four, when the Los Angeles Police Department, including
my friend whose premonitions that Simpson would bolt proved all
too accurate when the LAPD finally that day admitted that
OJ Simpson was a suspect in the murder of his
ex wife and Ronald Goldman. And then they said, oh,
he's going to be turning himself in, and then came

(08:37):
back and said, well, no, he has not shown up,
and he is in fact now a fugitive from justice.
And then his attorney implied that OJ Simpson had not
turned himself in and had fled so he could go
kill himself. And then the car chase played out in
front of ninety five million TV witnesses, and all this
happened in one day. One of the most popular people

(09:01):
in American history instantly became came its greatest living villain.
There is no hypothetical comparison in the America of today,
with the Internet, with the paparazzi, with the maxed out
cynicism about sports and TV and celebrity. There is nobody
who was as teflon as the OJ Simpson of pre

(09:25):
June nineteen ninety four. I mean not even Trump. Trump
had fans, but nobody ever liked Trump, and Trump was
never for a second one of the top one hundred
thousand most popular people in the country, let alone top ten,
like OJ Simpson was maybe top five. There is a

(09:48):
touch of the Simpson story in the story of Trump,
that Freudian slip in the Los Angeles Times, Oh bit
yesterday wasn't really that funny, was it? Writing Trump had
gotten out of prison when it was supposed to read
Simpson had gotten out of prison. Too close to home,
as they say, maybe, maybe, maybe, And I apologize to

(10:12):
her in advance for even dragging her name into this
in this craziest of hypotheticals. Maybe it would be as
if Taylor Swift became a murder suspect today and fled
and the police chase was being shown live on every
television channel out of nowhere, seemingly. But that absurd hypothetical

(10:35):
is not even good enough. Simpson was not just a
star entertainer, not just a star athlete, Virtually uncriticized, instantly
recognizable nationwide. He had become one of the most prominent
sportscasters and one of the most prominent actors, and one
of the most prominent advertising spokesman. O J. Simpson the

(10:58):
football player was one thing. O J. Simpson was also
O J. Simpson the rental car pitch Man, go Oh go.
OJ Simpson was also O J. Simpson from NBC Sports.
O J. Simpson was also O J. Simpson as nord
Bergen the Naked Gun movies. O J. Simpson was just OJ,
so popular, so ubiquitous that he was known by two letters.

(11:24):
And O J. Simpson was about getting away with it
because he was also O. J. Simpson, the wife batterer.
But he lived in the era, at the end of
the era where the public persona was not only all
that people knew about him, it was all that people
wanted to know about him. In nineteen ninety four, we

(11:48):
thought we were living in the middle of the tabloid era.
In fact, we were just nine years removed from actor
Rock Hudson shocking untold Americans when he died of AIDS
because for thirty years he had been the heart throb
of millions of women, a staggering percentage of boom on
the day he died, had no earthly clue that he

(12:09):
had been gay. I loathe the tabloid era and lament
what it has done to American sports, to American entertainment,
to America, But there is one thing to be said
for today's America where has been ex Fox Newsy with
an unlistened to podcast could be rate the cover art

(12:29):
on the new Beyonce album and within an hour there's
a story on it in the New York Post. And
OJ Simpson in twenty twenty four would not have been
able to hide his true self for a month. Whatever
the full stories are, whatever miscarriages of justice there may
be in either direction. You know about Kanye West and

(12:52):
Johnny Depp and Sean Diddy Combs, and you would have
known about OJ Simpson. Early on New Year's morning, January first,
nineteen eighty nine, police went to the infamous home on
North Rockingham in Brentwood and arrested OJ Simpson on spousal
battery charges. He had punched and kicked his wife. She

(13:13):
said he had screamed, I'll kill you. He had slapped
her so hard that his hand print was still visible
on her neck when police arrived and took him away
and took her to the hospital. And OJ Simpson's reaction
on New Year's Day. Officers on the scene quoted him
in their official reporters saying, the police have been out
here eight times before, and now you're going to arrest me.

(13:36):
For this. This is a family matter. Why do you
want to make a big deal out of it when
we can handle it today? That mindless, murderous statement would
have been videotaped or leaked or in some way it
would have made its way around the world fast enough

(13:56):
that it would have been on Twitter x within minutes.
But then in nineteen eighty nine in Los Angeles. In
Los Angeles media, we didn't know about the assault until
months later when OJ Simpson pleaded out the charges. We
certainly didn't know about the nine police trips to what
would become the murder scene on North Rockingham, but we

(14:21):
did know who OJ Simpson was. We had heard the
stories hidden behind the big smile, that he hit women,
that police had been to his house, that while married,
whenever he spoke to a group of students, he would
bring his creepy friend Al Cowlings with him, and he'd
have Cowlings approach the girls that he OJ was interested

(14:41):
in to provide himself deniability. One of my producers said
he'd seen Simpson and Cowlings do that at a lecture
at USC. Another friend said he'd been producing an ESPN
show with Simpson at a charity golf tournament somewhere, and
during the commercial breaks, Simpson stood up and asked the
producer how long the break was. Ian Cowings went on

(15:05):
to the golf course to go look for women during
the two minutes and thirty seconds we knew, and between
the laws and customs that still protected the man in
domestic cases ninety five percent of the way, and the
laws and customs of a one industry town like Los

(15:27):
Angeles that still protected the celebrity ninety five percent of
the way, we could say nothing about his character in
a way we still can't. I mean, read the obituaries.
Cleared of murder charges, found not guilty, murder trial was

(15:47):
a sensation, even the onion joke about the coffin not fitting.
So Ojay's not really dead. We still can't say it.
He's dead now, And it is times like these that
I hope that there really is a hell. But for
all the existence, we can confirm, all the punishments, we

(16:08):
can comprehend. The bastard is still getting away with it,
isn't he. As I sat down to record this, oj
Simpson was beginning to sync in the sports headlines, at
least below that of the show. Hey Otani related gambling story,
which I will present shortly in full, but the headline

(16:30):
of which is his interpreter allegedly stole enough money and
confessed to stealing enough money from Otani that his total
of winning and losing bets on sporting events over three
years was three hundred and twenty five million dollars. Simpson,
not a victim, and Otani definitely a victim, had the

(16:53):
field to themselves. News Wise, because this is the stage
of American governance, thanks to the Republican Party, it has
introduced six bills into the House of Representatives for debate
and deliberation next week. HR sixty one to ninety two,
The Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act HR seventy six

(17:13):
seventy three, The Liberty and Laundry Act HR seventy six
forty five, The Clothes Dryers Reliability Act HR seventy six
thirty seven, the Refrigerator Freedom Act HR seventy six twenty six,
the Affordable Air Conditioning Act, and HR seventy seven hundred,
the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, Your Tax Dollars in Action.

(17:42):
What I truly do not understand here is how the
vital components contained in the Liberty and Laundry Act and
the Affordable Air Conditioning Act are not already covered by
the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act. If the Republicans
in the House under the leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson

(18:05):
actually pass any of this stuff in the face of
climate disaster, I just have this mental picture of some
future set of Republican leaders being swept away when a
title wave and a hurricane hit Washington, DC simultaneously, and
them screaming forgive us and we repent, like Zod and
the other insurrectionists do just before they're sucked up into

(18:29):
the phantom zone mirror prison device in the first Superman movie.
And yes, I had to google all the names and terms.
But don't worry, Republicans, none of that will happen with
climate disaster for another eighteen months at least. Turns out,
the King Zod of the Republicans is meeting with my

(18:50):
refrigerator Freedom at Johnson today for a joint news conference
at Mary Lago about election integrity. At Johnson's suggestion, as
one would suggest co hosting a bullies or great news
conferencens to your school bully, it's easy to propose such
a thing, since all you and Trump have to do
is decide which lies to stick to the idea that

(19:13):
Johnson is being made to kiss the ring here seems
to be something of an exaggeration. Politico and a couple
of other news orgs quoted a lot of Trump people
yesterday are saying they have no interest in seeing another
new Speaker of the House. They don't want the distraction.
It would be a distraction from Trump holding center stage
twenty four to seven until the election and twirling that
big arrow sign he has with look at me written

(19:37):
on it. Also, it turns out that when Trump insisted
Republicans kill the new FISA Act because he thinks it
was used against him, he didn't know that was a
different part of FAISA legislation, because why would he know
that his brain does not function like a human's among
humans and human adults in politics. The President late yesterday

(19:59):
did have the DOJ finalize the regulation change at the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that redefines twenty three
thousand vendors in this country who sell guns not in
gun stores but at gun shows as gun dealers, effectively
closing the gun show loophole. That has allowed tens of
thousands of guns a year to be sold without licenses,

(20:22):
or background checks or much of anything. The NRA will
challenge in court, which is a neat trick considering it
supposedly had filed for bankruptcy. Speaking of bankrupt there's Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. He has finally gotten around to firing his
New York campaign director, the one who said the quiet
part out loud about how getting Trump elected, not him elected,

(20:45):
was her number one priority, among other things. The campaign
says that when this Rita Palmer identified herself as his
New York campaign director, she wasn't. She was just a
staffer still still with the New York campaign. Per the
Investigative Reporter, Jacqueline's suite is Jillian, co host of an

(21:05):
upcoming Kennedy fundraiser on Long Island this month, who seemed
to also reveal that the whole point of the Kennedy
campaign is, as the rest of us already know, to
get Trump elected. There hasn't been a path to victory
for Republicans in New York States since Reagan in eighty
and eighty four. She tweeted Monday of this week. RFK
Junior is coming for New York States twenty eight electoral votes,

(21:29):
and the moron misspelled Reagan. Also, after months of this
stuff that would make his father or any of his
uncles hit Bob Junior in the head with a baseball backed,
it has finally dawned on me that Robert F. Kennedy
Junior looks exactly as if he is a character being
played by an aged by makeup Fred Armison, formerly of

(21:55):
Saturday Night Live. Also of interest here the Otani story
isn't was a kind of genius until he got caught.
But he not only stole millions from the baseball Star,
but he turned the process that allowed him to do
that into a kind of secret machine that enabled him

(22:17):
to average one seventeen thousand dollars or so bet on
one sporting event every hour for three years, just to
prove there's nothing new under the sun. On this all
new edition of the podcast, this week's Thurber story about
how from nineteen thirty five to nineteen forty one, the

(22:37):
founder of the New Yorker magazine had a million and
a half stolen from him by his assistant because his
assistant needed all the money so he could spend all
the money gambling on sporting events. That's next. This is Countdown.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith Ulberman.

(23:20):
Still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown Fridays
with Thurber and a story he wrote in the nineteen
forties that seems literally ripped from today's headlines because it's
about a trusted assistant and employee of a famous rich
person embezzling money, a lot of money, the equivalent of
a million and a half dollars, and the celebrity never

(23:40):
knew about it until it was too late. Because in
sports dateline someplace where I can't believe I'm actually reading
these numbers, even though I'm reading these numbers for like
the seventeenth time, California. Okay, So my money managers demand
that I give them receipts for like everything more than

(24:02):
five hundred dollars, And once they asked for one for
a receipt for something I bought on eBay for two
hundred and twenty bucks. And somehow the folks who handle
Shohei Otani were unable to find out that his interpreter
had stolen sixteen million dollars from him. If they, Misuhara

(24:24):
somehow sneaked an entire structure, passed Otani, passed, Otani's agents,
passed Otani's bankers, passed Otani's tax experts in two different countries.
All of it apparently predicated on the idea that none
of them spoke Japanese and none of them were permitted

(24:47):
to talk to Otani himself. They had to go through
the interpreter, who convinced the bank that he was Otani,
who convinced the agents that Otani did not want them
to have access to nor knowledge of this one bank account,
who convinced the bookie that Otani was knowingly covering the

(25:09):
translator's debts. Less than a month ago, March twentieth, if
A Misihara texted the bookie about the first media attention
to his crimes. Have you seen the reports, he asked
the book He wrote back, Obviously it didn't steal from him.
I understand it's a cover job. I totally get it.
Misihara replied, Technically I did steal from him. It's all

(25:30):
over for me. Lots of people have stolen lots of
money by abusing the trust of friends, spouses, relatives, employees, employers,
any combination you can think of. As I mentioned, this
week's Thurber story coming up is the Secret Life of
Harold Winnie. And he was the assistant to the founder

(25:52):
of the New Yorker magazine, Harold Ross, who hated financial details,
and so he had this Winny guy handled them for him.
And before he knew what happened when he had stolen
seventy thousand dollars in nineteen forty money about one and
a half million dollars today from Harold Ross. But that
was a million and a half. This was sixteen million
dollars in three years. And the sixteen million stolen is

(26:16):
figuratively speaking, the smallest number in the bunch, and that's
what is staggering about the show. Heo Tani story. For
three years, Ife Mizuhara placed approximately twenty five bets on
sporting events per day, for a total of nineteen thousand bets.
The money he won added to the money he lost,

(26:37):
totaled three hundred and twenty five million dollars, and he
lost forty million dollars more than he won. He won
one hundred and forty two million dollars gambling on sports
in three years. He lost one hundred and eighty three million.
That does not mean he bet three hundred and twenty
five million. Most gambling addicts are just taking their winnings

(26:58):
and rolling them over into new bets. Still, this meant
that those twenty five sports bets a day had an
effective value of seventeen thousand dollars each. Miserhara could go
to jail for thirty years. He is apparently cooperating and
trying to make a plea deal. Otani is the victim

(27:18):
of the crime here, and for if I did infer
that there was something wrong here and imply that to you,
I apologize to Otani. But he's also the victim of
some really really lax financial self protection. They say he
has cooperated fully two better late than never on this,

(27:39):
giving his devices over so that people can find out
what really happened, and if you needed a laugh line
to help you put your jaw back on.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Three hundred and twenty five million dollars wagered effectively. Authorities
say Misihara also managed to spend three hundred and twenty
five thousand dollars on sports memorabilia, most of it on eBay.
They say they found one thousand baseball cards in his car. Wow,

(28:14):
I'm not casting any stones on That's part of it.
The Indiana Fever, it was announced yesterday, will play forty
games in the twenty twenty four season. Thirty five of
those forty games will be televised or streamed nationally, some
on ESPN, CBSABC Prime Video. Who the hell are the

(28:36):
Indiana Fever. The Indiana Fever are or is the worst
team in the WNBA. Let me say that correctly, WNBA.
The thirteen games they won last year were as many
as the franchise had won in a single season since
twenty sixteen. In four of the last seven seasons, they

(28:57):
have won either five or six games for the whole year.
So why would all butt five of their games be
nationally broadcast next year? Because the Indiana Fever hold or
holds the number one pick in the w NBA draft
next Monday, and the number one pick in the WNBA

(29:18):
draft next Monday is going to be Caitlin Clark from Iowa.
Her team did not win the women's collegiate basketball Championship
last weekend, but she is still the centerpiece in a
new era of women's sports in this country. The men's
college basketball Championship game Monday night drew a television audience
of fourteen million, eight hundred and twenty thousand viewers. It

(29:39):
was shown on the TBSTNT, and True TV networks. The
Women's College Basketball Championship game Sunday afternoon drew eighteen million,
eight hundred and seventy thousand viewers on ABC and ESPN.
That would be four million, fifty thousand more than the

(30:00):
men got. Obviously, it is a gender first, an extraordinary miles.
I am confident, however, in my credentials in this area
to point out one caveat my credentials. First, on Martin
Luther King Day in nineteen ninety five January sixteenth, we
were sitting in the conference room at ESPN. The conference

(30:21):
room we only had the one debating what to lead
with on that night's eleven PM Sports Center. The NBA
schedule was pretty much mismatches. Looking back on it now,
you'll see the LA Lakers were playing the LA Clippers
that day. That could have been good. Nah, The Lakers
were twenty one and eleven, the Clippers were five and thirty.

(30:41):
The NHL games were met. The non game sports news
was not that interesting. So I pointed up at a
monitor of what was being shown on our network that
holiday afternoon. Our network, we only had the one, and
I said, why not lead with that? Lead with that
game between the number one college basketball team in the country,

(31:02):
since they're sixteen and oh and on beaten and they're
playing the number two college basketball team in the country,
since they're twelve and oh and it is on our
air and the number two team is winning, It's going
to be an upset, a signal moment in the sport.
And somebody at the table said, lead with women's basketball,

(31:23):
and I said, I don't care who's playing. It's undefeated,
top two teams facing each other and number two is winning.
We led Sports Center with that game that night, Yukon
beating Tennessee on the way to Yukon's undefeated national championship season.
We did not change the history of women's college basketball.

(31:43):
I did not change their history, but making them the
lead on Sports Center that night polished the credentials just
a little bit. So my caveat comes from that point
of view, that pro women's basketball point of view that
is now twenty nine years old, that the two ratings

(32:03):
from TV broadcast of the championship games are close is
a phenomenal achievement. Finally it's happened. But the women's game
was on a broadcast network, ABC and the men's was
only on cable. And the women's game was on Sunday
afternoon when kids could watch, and the men's game was
at nine to twenty Eastern time at night when they couldn't.

(32:24):
But I guess the ultimate point here isn't whether or
not the comparison between the ratings of the men's and
women's Championships games is fair or has to be caveat
the point is we now have to find caveats and
reasons and excuses to make the men's second place TV

(32:46):
ratings look a little bit better when we compare them
to the women's. Congratulations women, Thank you Nancy Faust, dateline

(33:17):
an MRI machine near you. If you are wondering if
it's just your imagination or if more baseball pitchers than
ever before are getting injured and having career threatening surgery
early in the twenty twenty four Major League Baseball season, No, actually,
it is your imagination. While the percentage of big name

(33:38):
pitchers who faced Tommy John surgery on the elbow may
be way up. Spencer Strider of the Braves at Your
Reperez of Miami, Josiah Gray of Washington, Travis Sauchik of
the White Website. The Score says the numbers don't lie.
Through the first one hundred days of the year, there
have been nine major league pitchers who are getting or
gotten Tommy John surgery. That's a lot. It's a lot

(34:01):
more than last year's total of two in the first
one hundred count under days of twenty twenty three, but
in the preceding ten years there had been nine or
more Tommy John surgeries in three different years. Nine is
a lot, but it's not the most. It's tied for second.

(34:22):
More importantly, the total number in all of professional baseball
this year is sixteen surgeries. By this date in twenty eighteen,
there had been forty of these surgeries. By this date
in twenty twenty one, there had been forty seven of them.
The number is actually way down overall throughout baseball. But
as to why these surgeries are happening, the Players Association
has recently posited it might be because of the pitch clock.

(34:45):
There's no evidence that's the cause. The explanation is, in
fact what it always has been facing fastballs measuring between
ninety and ninety three miles an hour. Big League hitters
batted two seventy five last year facing fastballs measured at
ninety six miles an hour, or faster they hit two
thirty last year. Pitchers are throwing harder, more often, and

(35:09):
doing it younger, and the human arm is not built
for what they're trying to do. One thing is definitely
not true. Some old time pitchers will still insist today's
pitchers are being babied. In fact, they are not throwing enough.
I once had this conversation with the Hall of Famer
Tom sever of the New York Mets, who pointed out

(35:31):
that only once in his first twelve seasons did he
not pitch at least two hundred and fifty innings in
each season, and he lasted until he was forty one
before he had a significant injury. And my answer to
him was, how did it all turn out for Gary Gentry,
referring to his Met teammate whose pitching career essentially ended
when he was twenty six, Gary Gentry, who probably needed

(35:53):
Tommy John surgery. Sorry, there isn't Tommy John surgery yet.
Then I added, and how did it turn out for
Less roar and Dennis Musgraves, Brent Strom, Dick Russteck, Al Schmels,
Jerry Hinsley, Bill Denhey, Rob Gardner, Tommy Moore, every other
met pitcher who got injured who I can't name off
the top of my head. Pitchers used to get just

(36:17):
as injured or nearly so as they do now. You
just didn't hear about it because the surgery to resuscitate
their careers did not exist yet. And also, cruelly, they
were paid so little in those days that it was
easier for teams to just drop them when they got hurt,

(36:39):
rather than spend the money to try to repair them.
Fridays with Thurber now and from his book The Years
with Ross, which is a now criticized recollection of the
founding of the New Yorker magazine by its original creator,

(37:01):
Harold Ross, with the help of James Thurber at every
turn for the first forty years of the magazine's history.
As I said, it has been criticized in many respects
as being a little tough on mister Ross. On the
other hand, I have yet to read any criticism of
the story that Thurber tells, except perhaps that maybe he

(37:23):
should have been a little bit more blunt about what
he's talking about here, But it was written in the
late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties. One part of
this subject was not discussed in public, and certainly not
in print. But the rest of it will sound probably
fairly familiar to you, even though you've never heard about
the man or the man. He did this too. But

(37:48):
what he did was timeless. Only the names and the
cities and the actual amounts vary from century to century.
From the Years with Ross The Secret Life of Harold
Winnie by James Thurber. Harold Winnie, who seemed to me

(38:10):
and still does, as unreal as the look and sound
of his name, was Harold Ross's private secretary from nineteen
thirty five until the middle of August nineteen forty one.
In his years with Ross, the pallid, silent young man
steadily swindled the editor out of a total of seventy

(38:31):
one thousand dollars. Readers note that is the equivalent in
twenty twenty four terms of one point five million dollars.
His multiple forgeries, his raids and inroads upon Ross's bank account,
expense account, salary, and securities belong in Saint Clair Mcelway's

(38:54):
of crime and rascality. Somewhere between the magnificently complicated defalcations
of the Wiley will Be and the fantastic dollar bill
counterfeiting of Old eight eight zero banker's, tax men and
accountants still shake their heads in wonder and disbelief over
the case history of Harold Winnie, which has become a

(39:15):
part of the folklore and curiosa of American capitalism. Nobody
at the New Yorker offices knew or cared very much
about Harold Winnie, who had been born about nineteen ten
in or near Albany, New York, the only child of
a man who died when his son was very young,
and of a mother who fortunately did not live long

(39:36):
enough to know about her son's crimes. I remember Winnie
mainly for his cold, small voice, his pale, nimble fingers,
and his way of moving about the corridors and offices
like a shadow. I do not believe that Harold Ross
ever looked at the man closely enough to have been
able to describe him accurately. He was what Ross once

(40:00):
irritably described as a worm. That is, an unimportant cog
in the New Yorker wheel a non creative person. As
a secretary, Winnie was competent and quiet. He took dictation
speedily and transcribed his notes the same way. I would
be sitting in my office and suddenly his voice would

(40:22):
surprise me, for I never heard him enter the room.
Mister Ross would like your opinion on this, he would say,
and hand me a typewritten query about something or other.
This was in the days when I could still see
to read. He would stand there, absolutely motionless, without a word,
and wait for me to tell him what I thought,

(40:43):
or to type my reply on a piece of paper.
Then he would silently vanish. He was a master of
the art of protective immobility. I remember that he was
neat to the point of being immaculate. But the clothes
he wore were as unobtrusive as his manner. When investigators

(41:04):
examined his apartment, they found, among other things, one hundred
and three suits of clothes, which he had bought with
the money stolen from Ross. They also found in a
private correspondence file a long exchange of letters with a
real estate firm in Tahiti. Winnie had planned a little

(41:25):
vaguely to flee when he had piled up enough of
his employer's money, but the embezzler never does get enough,
and when in the summer of nineteen forty one his
crimes were discovered, the war was on and he could
not obtain a passport. Discovery, in the end was inevitable.

(41:47):
The miracle is that it didn't come some years sooner.
If Winnie drank or smoked, it was usually in moderation,
and there was only one subject in the world that
could light up his cold eyes at his impassive face.
That was horse racing. He was a horse player, completely

(42:09):
addicted to it, and a steady loser. Nobody will ever
know how much he lost in gambling on the horses,
or what exactly became of the seventy one thousand dollars
he stole. Copies of his private letters to men friends
revealed that he spent his money lavishly upon some of them,
buying one an expensive sports car, outfitting another with complete

(42:31):
skiing equipment, and giving them money for their vacations and holidays.
Investigators were baffled at every turn in trying to trace
what happened to Ross's money. There was, however, a record
of a big champagne party when he gave in a
suite at the Astor Hotel. On the night in November
nineteen forty when Roosevelt was elected president for the third time.

(42:53):
I walked past the aster several times that night with friends.
Ross told me gloomily, and I guess I was hit
on the head by my own champagne. Corks stewed toward
the room just outside his own office, where Winnie had
had his desk and typewriter. He sat out there and
fed me cake. Ross moaned when he was by a

(43:18):
familiar caprice of nature, incapable of emotional interest in females.
And this was as apparent to all of us except
Ross as the simple fact that Mary Pickford is a woman.
To Ross, however, who never scrutinized his secretary or gave
him any real thought, he was nothing more than a
chair in his office or the ashtray on his desk.

(43:40):
Did you know he was that kind of a man,
Ross asked me and the rest of us, and we
all just stared at him and said, yes, didn't you.
Ross would brush this aside and say I don't It
explains the whole business. That kind of guy always wants
to ruin the normal man. Ross was by no means,

(44:03):
of course, financially ruined by Winnie, for he still had
plenty of money of his own after the loss of
the seventy one thousand dollars. During the almost seven years
that Winnie robbed Ross, day after day, the editor was
at the peak of his work and his worries in
every field. In nineteen thirty five, the year Winnie came
to work for him, Ross's daughter was born, and the

(44:25):
magazine was developing rapidly in every way. In the midst
of all this, Ross recognized the necessity of quote delegating
unquote some of his duties in some of his worries,
he made the mistake of delegating to Harold Winnie complete control,
without any safeguard whatever, of his bank accounts and securities.

(44:48):
He had two separate accounts in one bank. The bank
tellers and vice presidents became familiar with the quiet, well behaved,
efficient young man who was Ross's private secretary and whom
the editor had made it clear he reposed every trust. Thus,
when Winnie showed up at a teller's cage where the

(45:09):
check made out to cash, signed with the unmistakable signature
of H. W Ross. The check was not subjected to
more than casual scrutiny, even if it had been. Winnie's
forgery of Ross's name was so perfect that after the
Secretary's death, the few canceled checks that could be found
baffled not only handwriting experts but even Ross himself, who

(45:31):
could not swear whether a given signature was his own
or Winny's. Winnie's own initials were HW, and all he
had to imitate were the six letters of H. W. Ross.
He became an expert at it. As the years went on,

(45:52):
he grew bolder and bolder, and in one week, the
record shows, cashed three separate checks for a total of
six thousand dollars. At that period, Ross's main financial interest
was in his friend Dave Chasin's restaurant in Hollywood. About
the time that Harold Winnie began robbing Ross, the restaurant
began to make money. Ross had originally lent Chasing three

(46:12):
thousand dollars, a generous personal loan of the kind for
which he was well known to his intimates. Sums of
money like that did not bother Ross when it came
to helping out one of the men to whom he
was most devoted. Later he began investing in the restaurant
that his profits increased, but he could never quite accommodate
himself to the idea that he deserved the profits, which

(46:35):
amounted finally to more than two hundred thousand dollars. God
damn it. I never intended to make a lot of
money out of Dave's place, he once told a lawyer,
hard for me to think he owes me anything except
on the basis of personal loans. The difference between a
loan and an investment had to be explained to him patiently.

(46:55):
I know, I know all that, he would say, putting
on his well known expression of worry and wonder when
he began cautiously by forging six checks in nineteen thirty
five for a total of about fourteen hundred dollars. The
next year he forged seven checks for a total of
nineteen hundred dollars. In nineteen thirty seven, there were nine

(47:18):
checks and the amount was twenty nine hundred dollars. And
in nineteen thirty eight, the year before he threw caution
to the winds, he forged seven checks for twenty seven
hundred and thirty dollars. During all this time, he was
careful to fill out check book stubs and reconcile them
precisely with Ross's monthly bank statements. He had soon discovered,

(47:39):
but probably couldn't believe it that Ross did not want
to be bothered by studying his check books or monthly statements,
so Winnie summarized them as he explained it to Ross.
It would simply lay a typed sheet of paper on
Ross's desk when he was asked about the state of
his account. If Ross spotted some familiar amount, such as

(48:03):
one hundred and thirteen dollars in thirteen cents and said,
I thought that check went through last month, Winnie would
simply tell him quietly that he was wrong. The cake
became easier and easier to feed to Ross, and when
he finally abandoned entirely the unnecessary work of justification, he
would simply tear a check out of a check book,
fill it out for whatever amount he wanted, signed Ross's name,

(48:26):
and cash it at the bank. When he really began
to splurge with Ross's money and visit the bank several
times a week, he would hand in the check and
wink slyly at the teller as if to say, the
old boys at it again. I don't know how many
persons outside the New Yorker and Ross's circle of friends
knew how often Ross gambled and how often he lost,

(48:49):
but it was scarcely a state secret. Dozens of checks
for gambling losses averaging around five hundred dollars, were duplicated
by Winnie before he sent them with Ross's genuine signature
on them to the lucky winners. During nineteen thirty nine
and nineteen forty and up until the end of July
nineteen forty one, Winnie forged one hundred and sixty checks

(49:11):
for a total of about sixty two thousand dollars. By
the end of July nineteen forty one, he had withdrawn
all of his employer's salary through December, and along with
it several thousand dollars of Ross's expense account money. Winnie
was a well implemented student of his employer. He was, however,

(49:36):
at all times, skating on ice that grew thinner and thinner,
and he must have known that sooner or later it
would break under him. It may be that he hoped
to restore the money he had taken if he could
only win a large amount on the horses, or make
some quick and profitable investment, but nobody knows about that,
or if anybody does, nothing has ever been revealed. Winnie's friends,

(49:59):
or such of them as were found and talked to,
claimed they knew nothing about his secret life. This may
well have been true. He was as tight mouthed as
he was thin lipped. The withdrawal in advance of Ross's
salary and expense account money had to be accomplished through
the New Yorker's own business department, and in spite of

(50:21):
the tension between the editor and that department, it remained
something of a miracle that nothing was said to Ross
about this thing until the middle of August nineteen forty one.
One man in the business department, who has been there
for more than thirty years, told me what I already knew,
that if the business department ever mentioned money to Ross,

(50:42):
he yelled them down, or said they were crazy, or
announced that he didn't want to talk about it and
hung up the phone. There were years during which he
would refuse to discuss anything at all with his partner,
El Fleischmann, and such communications as passed between them were
carried on circuitously. Winnie was also a close student of

(51:02):
this situation. In nineteen thirty eight, Ross and his second
wife spent several months in France and England, and before
he left, he put his securities in Winnie's hands, giving
him power of attorney over them. In order to replenish
this or that account. In a crisis, the secretary would
sell some of Ross's securities. Ross both played into Winnie's

(51:26):
hands and made things a bit difficult for him by
carrying loose checks in his pocket and making them out
to this person or that, or to this firm or that,
sometimes remembering to tell Winnie about them the next day,
but often forgetting it. In this way, Winnie could never
be sure what situation would confront him at the end
of any given month. During the last year of Winnie's peculations,

(51:51):
he caused Ross to be overdrawn multiple times at the bank.
When this situation occurred, Winnie would either transfer some funds
from the account in Jane Grant's name, his wife, Ross's wife,
to Ross's own account, or cover up by selling some
more of Ross's securities. The mad intelligent Ross, as Janet

(52:11):
Flanner once called him, had simply forgotten to cancel when
he's power of attorney after the editor got back from France.
Ross expected to get loyalty from those around him the
way he expected to get his mail. But he didn't
get that always either. All communications from the bank, and
several letters from a firm of tax experts suggesting that
they supervised Ross's financial interests were simply torn up and

(52:35):
thrown away by Ross's secretary. When it comes to money,
bank accounts, and everything else fiscal or financial, I am
not one to throw stones, but a pot as black
as the kettle. I once had a checking account in
a famous old Fifth Avenue bank through the recommendation of

(52:56):
Ralph Ingersoll. But after I had been overdrawn three times,
I was invited to talk it over with a vice
president of the bank. He was shocked, almost beyond words
when he discovered that I did not fill out my
checkbook stubbs. Then how do you know how much money
you have in the bank, he asked me, and I

(53:18):
told him I estimated. He turned a little white and
his hand trembled. You estimated, he croaked. That bank was
glad to get rid of me. I have always had
the good sense to let my wife handle my finances,

(53:39):
but Ross would have just goggled it anyone who suggested
that he put such a responsibility upon his own spouse.
It was not only his strangeness about Doe, but his
erratic judgments of men that put such a powerful temptation
in the way of Harold Winnie. One of those around
him in the early years, a man he both liked
and trusted, and rightly so, was Ralph Palladino. When he

(54:02):
was young and single, Ralph took a course in public
accounting at a night school, and Ross attended his graduation exercises. Ralph,
it seemed to us in those days, kept track of
everything for Ross. He was an expert on order organization,
doe records, and everything else that Ross worried about. Then
Ralph was married and after a while had children and

(54:23):
needed an increase of salary, and Ross would not okay this.
I still get mad at him when I think about it,
and I once bawled him out for it. After Ralph
quit and took a better paying job. I haven't got
time for little people, Ross snarled, and I told him
that was a hell of a thing to say. He
later apologized for it, murmured something about all the physical

(54:45):
troubles that he had at the time, a jaw infection,
his ulcers, and the spreading of the metatarsal bones of
one foot. Ralph Palladino, by the way, is now head
of the makeup department at Newsweek last year. A man
who works over there told me he is our one
most indispensable man. Harold Ross had a lot of things

(55:07):
to think about in nineteen forty one, including his approaching
third marriage, three of my five I operations, the war
and all that did to him, and one hundred other concerns.
He himself had withdrawn some of his salary and expense
account that year, and this gave Winnie the idea of
withdrawing the rest of it. Such transactions as this had

(55:29):
to be okayed by the miracle Man. During most of
this period, it was Ick Schumann, the miracle Man being
Thurber's term for Ross's term for editor in chief of
the magazine. One day after Winnie had withdrawn Ross's salary
and expense money for October, November and December, Raoul Fleischmann
sent for Schumann and said, did you know that Ross's

(55:51):
hard up. They discussed the matter and Ick said he
would look into it for a while Ross simply did
not believe or even listen to what Schumann had to
tell him about his withdrawn salary. Then he sent for Winnie.
That doomed young man knew that he had come to
the end of the line. But he didn't turn white,

(56:11):
or begins shaking, or break down and confess. He simply
double talked Ross into deeper and deeper confusion until the
editor said, Ah, the hell with it, I'll stop in
at the bank tomorrow and find out all about it myself.
That sentence was Harold Winnie's death sentence. After work, he
went home to his expensive and tidally furnished apartment in Brooklyn,

(56:34):
turned on the gas in the kitchen, and took his
own life. When the body of Harold Winnie was discovered
the next day in his Brooklyn apartment, Ross was greatly upset,
and when the first batch of his manifold forgeries came
to light, he expressed pity for him and even compassion.
According to Schumann and Jin King Kaid, Ross's great gum shoe.

(56:58):
King Kaid had been assigned to find out as much
as he could about what Winnie had done to Ross,
and when the stag during total of the quiet young
man's thefts became clear. Ross no longer said at as
he had been saying, the poor little guy. What mainly
bothered Ross, however, was not the amount of his losses,
but the feeling that his friends at the twenty one Club,

(57:20):
as Schumann put it, would never get over kidding him
about it all. So the actual total of the forgeries
was not given out to the papers. They were told
that it was somewhere between seventeen thousand and twenty thousand dollars.
That's what Ross told me too. I think that he
was wrong about this. Any American could be taken for

(57:41):
seventeen thousand or twenty thousand dollars, but it takes a
really great eccentric to be robbed of seventy one thousand
dollars right under his own busy nose. I am told
that Ross could not be reimbursed by the bank for
his losses because he had made this legally impossible by

(58:01):
the way he ignored his monthly statements, and by having
given power of attorney to Winnie, which he never withdrew.
It seems that Ross did get five thousand dollars of
Harold Winnie's insurance money. What I remember mainly about the
wreckage of that tragic August was a strange threat Ross made.
He was going to get even with the bank, he said,

(58:24):
by hiring Steve Hannigan. Just what he expected that late
famous public relations man, sometimes known as the Discoverer of
Florida to do. I have no way of knowing. Ross
soon realized, of course, that publicity was precisely what he
did not want. Among those to whom Ross occasionally lost

(58:49):
money at backgammon, where Jin Rummy was a well known
New York publisher, and whenever he won from two hundred
dollars to five hundred dollars from Ross, Winnie would duplicate
the check, so that Ross really always lost twice as
much as he believed he had. Losing anything to a
publisher was to h w Ross something that there could

(59:11):
be nothing more deplorable than He fought publishers on behalf
of writers all his life and wrote literally hundreds of
letters bawling them out. One of these, to Marshal Best,
runs to two thousand words. In a letter to Ross,
the publisher had accused him of obscurantism, and Ross ended

(59:33):
his reply, we let's have oceans of obscurantism. Ross and
The New Yorker never took any subsidiary rights at all
from writers and artists, but were satisfied with first serial rights.
When Ross found out that publishers often got a percentage
of their author's sales of movie or theater rights, he

(59:54):
banged away at them with his trustee typewriter, and you
could hear it all the way down the hall. He
also fought them for better royalties for writers and for
a more equitable arrangement on anthoughogies. He once got a
letter from Christopher LeFarge, then president of the Author's League,
thanking him on behalf of the authors of the country
for what he had been doing and was still doing.

(01:00:18):
I don't know how to end this count of the short,
unhappy life of Harold Winnie, but I guess I'll just
put down what two different admirers of Ross, who did
not know the Winny story said in the same voice
after I had told them the tale. What a wonderful
man said one of them, what a crazy guy said

(01:00:43):
the other. The Secret Life of Harold Winnie sounds vaguely familiar.

(01:01:03):
Gambling on horror, gambling on sports. Assistant translator twentieth century,
twenty first century. If there's a twenty second century, they'll
be a translator or an assistant doing the same thing
to somebody else. I've done all the damage I can
do here for yet another week. Thank you for listening. Countdown.

(01:01:26):
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil arranged, produced,
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on guitars,
bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards
produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the
Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc.

(01:01:50):
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust,
the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today, fitting
with the sports themes, my friend Kenny Maine. Everything else
pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the
two hundred and eighth day until the twenty twenty four
presidential election and the one ninety third day since dementia.

(01:02:11):
Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government
of the United States. Use the Fourteenth Amendment and the
not regularly given elector objection option, use the Insurrection Act,
use the justice system, use the mental health system to
stop him from doing it again while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday. Bulletins as the news

(01:02:34):
warrants till then, I'm Keith Ulriman, Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Oulreman is

(01:02:55):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.