Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's
Speaker 1: latest official idiot press secretary has called Adolf Hitler quote
Speaker 1: Adolph Hilter, and I don't know if this should get
Speaker 1: her fired for being a historical idiot or if it
Speaker 1: will get her fired for insulting Trump's role model. It
Speaker 1: happened on CNN as the spokesperson Caroline Levitt began a
Speaker 1: day in which elderly first offender Trump and his henchman
Speaker 1: kicked open not one but two emergency exits to let
Speaker 1: him back out of Thursday's debate and blameing President Biden
Speaker 1: for it. Whether he actually chickens out or not, I'm
Speaker 1: sure even Trump does not know his brain, after all,
Speaker 1: is broken. Also, by the way, there's a small chance
Speaker 1: Jack's is trying to get Trump indicted in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: I'll get to that. Adolf Hilter first. Yesterday morning, the
Speaker 1: dumbest of the idiot Trump spokespeople in an almost incomprehensible
Speaker 1: descent from the stupidity of Sean Spicer, who now appears
Speaker 1: to have been the Einstein of the group. Caroline Levitt,
Speaker 1: the one who thinks the word is dammoning, went on
Speaker 1: CNN and decided to try to fill the buster. Here
Speaker 1: the host Casey Hunt with attacks on debate moderators Jake
Speaker 1: Tapper and Dana Bash. Hunt threatened to cut the interview off.
Speaker 1: Hunt called Levitt, who claims to be twenty five, ma'am,
Speaker 1: She mammed her and then lost in the cross talk.
Speaker 1: Listen carefully to Levitt. Trump's spokesperson claims that quote, it
Speaker 1: takes someone five minutes to google Jake Tapper Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to see that Jake Tapper has consistently compared Trump to
Speaker 1: Adolf Hilter. What do you expect from Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, it's so it takes someone five
Speaker 2: minutes to google Jake Tapper Donald Trump to see that
Speaker 2: Jake Tapper hes ma'am.
Speaker 1: Can christ is off for his interview? If colleidelf Hilter
Speaker 1: sweet Jesus on Hockey skates, Trump's press secretary called him
Speaker 1: Hilter christ is off for his interview. If colleidelf Hilter
Speaker 1: like in the old Monty Python sketch. Back to the point,
Speaker 1: Caroline damning Hilter. Levitt martyred herself on every right wing
Speaker 1: outlet throughout the day yesterday when She went on Steve
Speaker 1: Bannon's right wing outlet, the I'll be in jail next
Speaker 1: Week outlet. Bannon said either CNN must apologize to her
Speaker 1: and MAGA, or Trump should bail out of the debate.
Speaker 2: Cassie Hunt O June apology, CNN O Jun apology today,
Speaker 2: and if we don't get that apology to Caroline Levitt
Speaker 2: and to the Trump campaign to MAGA today, President Trump
Speaker 2: should cancel this.
Speaker 1: Bannon also said the debate should be canceled because Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is not going to be the Democratic nominee. He
Speaker 1: also called CNN's Casey Hunt Cassie there, so put that
Speaker 1: on the list right below Caroline Levitt calling Hitler Hilter. Well,
Speaker 1: one thousand spaces below Caroline Levitt calling Hitler Hilter. But
Speaker 1: you get the point. So that's the number one in
Speaker 1: the event of full ad fear of losing a debate
Speaker 1: Raking Glass in the emergency for Trump some rage against CNN,
Speaker 1: which means he can cancel, which means he can say
Speaker 1: he's canceled because CNN is sowing the tank for Biden
Speaker 1: that had insulted his press secretary and wouldn't let her
Speaker 1: talk about Adolph Hilter. Hours later, three forty two Eastern
Speaker 1: Trump produced his second full lad emergency escape quote drug
Speaker 1: test for Biden. I would come also immediately agree to one.
Speaker 1: An oldie, but a goodie. Honestly, if you hired a
Speaker 1: spokesperson who went on national television and thinks the name
Speaker 1: is Hilter and said this, you needed the drug test
Speaker 1: back then, Sparky, there has been a second news leak
Speaker 1: about Trump's marri Lago espionage scandal, and I'm beginning to wonder,
Speaker 1: and it is a long shot if this is not
Speaker 1: some kind of laying of groundwork for a new prosecution
Speaker 1: of Trump on the document's charges, on the espionage charges,
Speaker 1: on the stealing secrets charges, but a new prosecution in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Yesterday's leak did not resonate among American news media,
Speaker 1: which can generally only barely handle one thing at a time,
Speaker 1: like the debate. The story itself about Trump making a
Speaker 1: special trip to Florida to make sure nobody had touched
Speaker 1: the documents he stole from the White House. That may
Speaker 1: not be much more than another one of those threads
Speaker 1: that you pull on and maybe the thread just comes
Speaker 1: off in your hand, or maybe it unravels the entirety
Speaker 1: of Trump's size sixty two suit. I don't even think
Speaker 1: the prosecutors know exactly what they have here. But the
Speaker 1: point is, in three business days there have now been
Speaker 1: two leaks about the prosecution of Trump for violations of
Speaker 1: the Espionage Act, and history teaches us that this almost
Speaker 1: invariably means somebody inside is trying to make something happen
Speaker 1: and somehow make this case come alive again. The first,
Speaker 1: of course, was the leak that a year ago, a
Speaker 1: senior judge in Florida had gently tried to get Trump's concierge,
Speaker 1: Judge Eileen Cannon, to recuse herself from this case, and
Speaker 1: when that did work, the senior federal judge, Warren Cannon
Speaker 1: there would be held to pay if she stayed, and
Speaker 1: that a year later, all the judges in the state
Speaker 1: are still talking to each other about it, enough that
Speaker 1: the New York Times got wind of the thing. The
Speaker 1: new leak is that nearly two years ago, early July,
Speaker 1: Trump stunned his own people by suddenly leaving New Jersey
Speaker 1: for a crash trip to Florida in the middle of
Speaker 1: the summer, and that his aid and chief marri A. Lago.
Speaker 1: Igor Walt Nauda flooded the phones of staff down there
Speaker 1: with texts about how Trump quote wants minimal people around
Speaker 1: Mary Lago and keep it discreet and in case none
Speaker 1: of that got the message across now to peppered the
Speaker 1: messages with zippered mouthed emojis and shushing emojis. Apart from
Speaker 1: the geography, Trump can't stand being in Florida in midsummer.
Speaker 1: He never just goes there. Two years ago, his residence
Speaker 1: at Mari Lago was being remodeled. Staffers did not think
Speaker 1: there was any location at Mari Lago in which Trump
Speaker 1: would be willing to stay. Yet, leaving an Alaska fascist
Speaker 1: rally on July ninth, twenty twenty two, Trump directed he'd
Speaker 1: be flown not back to New Jersey, but to Florida.
Speaker 1: He stayed there, according to this report, on the down low,
Speaker 1: for three days. Why did he go to literally check
Speaker 1: all the boxes? ABC News, quoting sources familiar with the matter,
Speaker 1: broke the story and says staffers say they were told
Speaker 1: Trump wanted to make sure the boxes full of White
Speaker 1: House documents, most of which were stolen and classified, were
Speaker 1: still there. Remember this was in the middle of the
Speaker 1: negotiations between Trump and the Government Records Office about trying
Speaker 1: to get him to voluntarily return what he quote took
Speaker 1: unquote before they had to go and search for it
Speaker 1: and take it back involuntarily. It's important to consider the
Speaker 1: timeline and where this new information fits. In January seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty two, Trump returned fifteen boxes of documents. One hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety seven of the documents had classification markings. May eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, a grand jury hits Trump with a
Speaker 1: subpoena for more material. It is convinced he is still concealing.
Speaker 1: June one, twenty twenty two, Trump tells his attorney, Evan
Speaker 1: Corkoran that all the remaining documents at marri Lago are
Speaker 1: in a basement storage room. Also on June first, literally
Speaker 1: minutes later, while Corkoran went to the basement and went
Speaker 1: into the storage room to look for the documents, Trump
Speaker 1: has the locks on a closet in his residence. Changed.
Speaker 1: June three, twenty twenty two, the Feds come to pick
Speaker 1: up the documents they're voluntarily giving back, and another Trump attorney,
Speaker 1: Christina Bob, signs a document indicating that's it. That's all
Speaker 1: we have also. June three to twenty twenty two, a
Speaker 1: twenty year veteran Trump employee named Brian Butler says Walt
Speaker 1: Nauda had him load a bunch of big white banker's
Speaker 1: boxes that had been in mariy Lago and put them
Speaker 1: on a Trump private jet headed for Trump's home at
Speaker 1: the Bedminster Crapshack golf course and Cemetery in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Butler later reveals that when he saw photos of boxes
Speaker 1: photos included in the indictment of Trump, he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know those boxes. I move those boxes. June twenty two,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, the surveillance video at mary Laga is subpoened,
Speaker 1: and now the new information comes. In July tenth, eleventh,
Speaker 1: and twelfth, twenty twenty two, Trump suddenly and almost secretly
Speaker 1: goes to mari Lago to make sure his boxes are okay,
Speaker 1: and as the tag to this. August eight, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the FBI executes its search warrant of mari Lago and
Speaker 1: it finds eleven thousand, two hundred and eighty two more
Speaker 1: government documents and photographs that Trump has stolen. One hundred
Speaker 1: and three of them have classification markings. Eighteen of them
Speaker 1: our top secret. So wait, after Trump claimed he'd given
Speaker 1: everything back to the Feds, he ships a bunch of
Speaker 1: boxes from mary Lago to New Jersey. Five weeks after that,
Speaker 1: we now know for some reason, he goes back to
Speaker 1: marri Lago from Alaska one of the hottest times of
Speaker 1: the year, to check on the boxes that are still
Speaker 1: at mary Lago that apparently only he knows still are
Speaker 1: at Marrilago. Presumably he goes back there to check on
Speaker 1: what's still in the boxes at mary Lago. More obstruction
Speaker 1: of justice or could there be a geographical surprise in here.
Speaker 1: It's obvious now that no matter what the standard operating
Speaker 1: procedure at the Department of Justice might have been about
Speaker 1: how Custom dictated to Jack Smith that he had to
Speaker 1: indict Trump in Florida because the crime was not stealing
Speaker 1: the secret documents, it was refusing to give back the
Speaker 1: stolen secret documents. That Florida could result in either the
Speaker 1: actual random assignment of the case to a compromise corrupt
Speaker 1: judge appointed by Trump, or the corrupting of the randomization
Speaker 1: process to make sure the case was assigned to her
Speaker 1: and that they should have indicted Trump instead, or also
Speaker 1: not in Florida, but in Washington and or New Jersey.
Speaker 1: This newly discovered secret kind of crazy trip by Trump,
Speaker 1: after he's hidden thousands of classified documents from his own attorney,
Speaker 1: after he has shipped countless other boxes full of something
Speaker 1: to the golf course in Jersey. This crazy secret newly
Speaker 1: revealed by Trump back to Florida trip in July to
Speaker 1: check on his boxes. This really really smells. Could be
Speaker 1: it smells of Trump's ever surprising insanity and paranoia, or
Speaker 1: it could be its smells of an opportunity for Jack
Speaker 1: Smith to break the Eileen Canon gridlock by indicting Trump
Speaker 1: in a new case that ties the private plane shipment
Speaker 1: from mary Lago and Trump's July tenth secret trip to
Speaker 1: Mari Lago and indicts him as a result in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: That's if Biden is reelected and the cases continue, Because
Speaker 1: if the cases continue after January twentieth of next year,
Speaker 1: there's still the small matter of Aileen Cannons slow walking
Speaker 1: them in Florida. And even if it is not all that,
Speaker 1: even if those boxes he flew to Florida to check
Speaker 1: on were just full of I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it's something good. Condolence cards from when Ivanna died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. Condolence cards from you know what's her name,
Speaker 1: Zex's wife person her death. Between this story and last
Speaker 1: week's leak about the warning to Eileen Canon of judge
Speaker 1: not lest you be judged, somebody, somebody is clearly trying
Speaker 1: to awake the Trump espionage trial from its coma. I
Speaker 1: would say, to get it to come out of its
Speaker 1: grave at the Bedminster golf Course, but that probably would
Speaker 1: be in bad taste, like that ever stopped me before.
Speaker 1: Briefly back to the debate, but the usually on the
Speaker 1: losing side. Political consultant Liz Mayer is selling debate bingo
Speaker 1: cards a pack of thirty for five dollars, which I
Speaker 1: guess would be a business strategy and a business model
Speaker 1: if she hadn't just tweeted one of the bingo cards
Speaker 1: out where you could screenshot it and print it at
Speaker 1: home for free. There are twenty five squares, and most
Speaker 1: of the events on the squares are pretty mundane or hackneyed,
Speaker 1: where they say more about the writer than the debaters.
Speaker 1: Biden mentions, Trump indictments, no kidding, Trump says, black voters
Speaker 1: empathize with his allege criminality. Why alleged he's convicted on
Speaker 1: thirty four counts plus at the company fraud case in
Speaker 1: three e Gene Carrol cases. Ah is Mayor's nominally a Republican,
Speaker 1: but there are a couple of laughs on this. The
Speaker 1: center square on the bingo card is Millennia shows up.
Speaker 1: There's also anyone talks about sharks and question about Missus
Speaker 1: Alito's flags and best of all, your dark horse big
Speaker 1: money payoff quote Trump farts un quote one of the
Speaker 1: twenty five squares ought to say. Debate actually happens, and
Speaker 1: one way or another, there is debate counterprogramming. Robert F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior's running mate, Nikelle Nicole Many Nichols Nicole self
Speaker 1: funding a hand has confirmed their campaign will be holding
Speaker 1: its own debate at approximately nine o'clock Eastern Thursday night
Speaker 1: and promises a few surprises. Kennedy is staging his own
Speaker 1: debate with only one candidate himself present. Oh oh, I
Speaker 1: get it. Robert F. Kennedy Junior is going to debate
Speaker 1: against reality. A reminder that I'll be live on YouTube
Speaker 1: for analysis. In a special live video edition of the
Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Alderman podcast Thursday night. Sounds like about
Speaker 1: ten thirty pm Eastern or or Trump won't show up
Speaker 1: and blame Biden, and maybe we can talk about that live.
Speaker 1: We really haven't discussed the backup plan. We will not
Speaker 1: be talking about Adolph Hilter. Also of interest here, By
Speaker 1: the way, Trump would never make that mistake, would he?
Speaker 1: Also of interest here on an all new edition of Countdown.
Speaker 1: It was the greatest joke I ever did at Trump's expense.
Speaker 1: It's thirty four or thirty five years old, and until
Speaker 1: this past weekend I had forgotten it. So at one
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum, I apologize for making you wait
Speaker 1: so long to hear it. And on the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, I apologize because I'm about to reuse
Speaker 1: material from early in the Bush presidency. The first Bush
Speaker 1: that's next. This is Countdown. This his Countdown with Keith Oberman.
Speaker 1: Oberman stell ahead of us on this all new edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown. There's a reason that I chose, of all
Speaker 1: of them, Larry David's impression of the Yankee Stadium announcing
Speaker 1: all time great Bob Sheppard as the intro for this segment.
Speaker 1: June seventeenth, two thousand, so I missed the anniversary by
Speaker 1: a week for some reason. I have not told you
Speaker 1: this story previously. The people involved in today's new edition
Speaker 1: of Things I promised not to tell former New York
Speaker 1: Yankees second Baseman Chuck Knoblock, my mother and Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: stand by. But first, there are still more new idiots
Speaker 1: to talk about. The daily roundup of the miss Grants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two day's
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world world the brons me. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it took me so long to remember
Speaker 1: this or to bring it back. I think it was
Speaker 1: my first on air joke and insult about Trump, probably
Speaker 1: my best, and it's either thirty four or thirty five
Speaker 1: years old, with the irony that even then, in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine or nineteen ninety, Trump could not have gotten
Speaker 1: up on a bicycle if they'd used a forklift and
Speaker 1: two winches. For those two years, Trump sponsored an attempt
Speaker 1: to make an American version of the Tour de France's
Speaker 1: bicycle race work. It was called the Tour de Trump.
Speaker 1: I showed highlights of the race on Channel two in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, either in eighty nine or ninety and I
Speaker 1: said the race is called the Tour de Trump because
Speaker 1: it's ten laps around Donald Trump's ego. The runner up worser.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty good. I was just a kid
Speaker 1: of thirty at the time. The runner up worser the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom's Conservative Party, which is not only expected to
Speaker 1: get blown out of office on July fourth in a landslide,
Speaker 1: but which is the only known major party in any
Speaker 1: Western representative government to also have an apparent gambling problem.
Speaker 1: Two of its candidates in the July fourth election and
Speaker 1: one of the close aids to the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak,
Speaker 1: have been investigated for placing bets on which date Sunak
Speaker 1: would choose on which to hold the snap election. One
Speaker 1: of the candidates, Lauras Sanders, the Member of Parliament for Bristol,
Speaker 1: is married to Sunak's campaign chief, and she put a
Speaker 1: bet down, a legal bet down, on when they were
Speaker 1: actually going to have the election. Hubby was the campaign
Speaker 1: chief to the Prime Minister who would select it, so
Speaker 1: the campaign chief and the close aid might have known
Speaker 1: when Sunak was going to call the election. Campaign chief
Speaker 1: Tony Lee has also taken a leave of absence after
Speaker 1: it turned out a police officer was also arrested for gambling.
Speaker 1: When it was revealed that cop was on Sunak's bodyguard detail,
Speaker 1: he put a bet down on what date it was
Speaker 1: going to be, And there was another candidate for office
Speaker 1: who did the same thing. I mean, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to lose and get your party thrown out of office
Speaker 1: after fourteen years, but for people around you to try
Speaker 1: to cash in a few hundred bob by betting on
Speaker 1: which day you're going to lose and get thrown out
Speaker 1: of office. Also to reprise an old Monty Python joke
Speaker 1: with Sanders being investigated for gambling, the Conservatives won't hold Bristols.
Speaker 1: Google it, it's worth your time, and two Monty Python
Speaker 1: throwbacks in one episode of the show, mister Hilter, he
Speaker 1: won't hold Bristols either, but our winner the worst. Remember
Speaker 1: Dylan Byers, the puck news media guy through whom executives
Speaker 1: everywhere get the coverage they would be happy to pay for.
Speaker 1: I mentioned last Friday that a year ago he had
Speaker 1: gratuitously trashed Howard Fineman's work as quote garbage, and then
Speaker 1: after Howard died Buyers called him a giant and said
Speaker 1: his funeral was a hero's farewell. Buyers may have topped
Speaker 1: himself in this continuing Washington Post scandal over the corrupt
Speaker 1: new British publisher and editor. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: editor turns out, he's not leaving Blighty to go to
Speaker 1: DC after all. Buyers wrote of this stuff at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post quote inside the Post coup. Earlier this month,
Speaker 1: journalists on the Foreign desk discussed a plan to dig
Speaker 1: for unflattering information on their new publisher. Buyers has gotten
Speaker 1: fried NonStop for having written that, and with total justification.
Speaker 1: Post reporters have been, you know, reporting on a scandal
Speaker 1: with the added degree of difficulty that the story is
Speaker 1: in their own building and their bosses have tried to
Speaker 1: bury that scandal and that story in this idiot, Buyers
Speaker 1: can't stop fellating management long enough to think, even for
Speaker 1: just a moment, that they deserve applause for their journalism
Speaker 1: and courage and the meetings they've had to share, the
Speaker 1: tips they have and how they're going to cover this story.
Speaker 1: He calls that quote a plan to dig for unflattering information. Heh, boy,
Speaker 1: that's called journalism. As my friend of half a century,
Speaker 1: Will Bunch wrote, just wait until Dylan learns about the
Speaker 1: Washington Post reporters who discussed a plan to dig for
Speaker 1: unflattering information on Richard Nixon. Dylan, I'd also like to
Speaker 1: point out that if any investigative reporters feel the need
Speaker 1: to dig for unflattering information on him, all they have
Speaker 1: to do is read his articles Buyers two days Worse,
Speaker 1: Parson and I told this story over the weekend to somebody,
Speaker 1: and it occurred to me for the first time on
Speaker 1: this all new edition of Countdown that I had never
Speaker 1: told this story on this podcast nearly two year years
Speaker 1: of it, and I have not told what may be
Speaker 1: the most famous story about me in sports anyway, to
Speaker 1: the number one story on the Countdown at a story
Speaker 1: that begins a little bit in the past nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: I was not there for that part of it. But
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, my mother, who was five years old,
Speaker 1: was sent over to her uncle's house or apartment for
Speaker 1: the day. My grandparents needed the day off from her
Speaker 1: for some reason, and I'm not sure what it was,
Speaker 1: but her uncle, Willie, my great uncle Willie, took her
Speaker 1: to Yankee Stadium along with a kid that he knew
Speaker 1: who he used to push to Yankee Stadium because the
Speaker 1: young man was in a wheelchair, and often before the
Speaker 1: games in nineteen thirty four, the last season that the
Speaker 1: legendary Babe Ruth played for the New York Yankees, Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth would see this kid in a wheelchair and consistent
Speaker 1: with the times, would come over and rub his back
Speaker 1: for good luck, which seems to us to be very crass,
Speaker 1: and also, if you're just looking at it from a
Speaker 1: superstition point of view, how in the world would that
Speaker 1: be good luck in any event. So one day, for
Speaker 1: the first time, when she was five years old and
Speaker 1: just turned five years old, her birthday was in June,
Speaker 1: she goes with her uncle Willie and the boy in
Speaker 1: the wheelchair to Yankee Stadium. They don't have the money
Speaker 1: to go to the games. It's the middle of the depression,
Speaker 1: but they live in the Bronx. They're a few blocks
Speaker 1: away from the stadium, and they go to say hi
Speaker 1: to the players on the way in, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth says hello to them and asks my mother,
Speaker 1: at the age of five, what her name is now.
Speaker 1: Her name was Marie, but because her mother's name was
Speaker 1: also Marie. The family often referred to her as Babe.
Speaker 1: I heard my grandmother referred to my mother as babe
Speaker 1: when my mother was forty five years old. It was
Speaker 1: rather extraordinary. In any events, she says, my name is Babe, Babe,
Speaker 1: and Babe Ruth was so delighted by this that she
Speaker 1: went back inside and got her a brand new baseball,
Speaker 1: which he gave to my mother. The first day she
Speaker 1: went to Yankee Stadium, she met Babe Ruth. She talked
Speaker 1: to Babe Ruth, and Babe Ruth gave her a baseball.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, in the ensuing sixty six years that
Speaker 1: my mother was a Yankee fan, nothing of interest ever
Speaker 1: happened to her at Yankee Stadium. She would eventually see
Speaker 1: the Yankees win a couple of World Series, and eventually
Speaker 1: she saw her own son reporting from the field after
Speaker 1: the World Series games on the World Series broadcast. But
Speaker 1: nothing like getting a baseball from Babe Ruth on your
Speaker 1: first day as a fan and meeting Babe Ruth occurred
Speaker 1: to her. There was a brawl once between Red Sox
Speaker 1: and Yankees fans. I recall when I was ten or
Speaker 1: eleven years old, beer was thrown, and she may have
Speaker 1: gotten a few drops of beer on the shoulder of
Speaker 1: her dress. I seem to recall that happening. That was it.
Speaker 1: Nothing else of interest, Certainly, nothing difficult or untoward happened
Speaker 1: to my mother at Yankee Stadium until the middle of
Speaker 1: June in the year two thousand. The Yankees on that
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon had a second baseman named Chuck Knoblock, who
Speaker 1: had been a great star for them in an extraordinary
Speaker 1: addition to their team and set off the process by
Speaker 1: which they won three consecutive World Series and four in
Speaker 1: a span of five years, and almost five in a
Speaker 1: span of six years. In any event, Knoblock unfortunately had
Speaker 1: an issue throwing the ball to first base. Many second basemen,
Speaker 1: many baseball players have developed this. It's somewhat consistent with
Speaker 1: the idea of the yips in golf, where you can't
Speaker 1: sink the putt even though it's two feet away. For
Speaker 1: baseball players, it turns out to generally be an expression
Speaker 1: of emotional distress. Your mind is sabotaging the most fundamental
Speaker 1: thing in the game. It's stopping you from throwing the ball,
Speaker 1: and the easier the play is, the more familiar you
Speaker 1: are with it, the more difficult it suddenly becomes. It
Speaker 1: happened at Chuck naw Block. It happened to another second
Speaker 1: baseman named Steve Sachs, and they've all turned out. And
Speaker 1: there was a pitcher minor league pitcher who became a
Speaker 1: writer named Pat Jordan, and they all turned out. And
Speaker 1: another one named Rick ang Keel, a pitcher for the
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Cardinals, all of whom suddenly lost the ability
Speaker 1: to throw the ball in the easiest way possible, in
Speaker 1: the way in which they had the most control, couldn't
Speaker 1: throw the ball over the baseman's head, over the catcher's
Speaker 1: head into the stands. Well, that's where we joined Chuck
Speaker 1: naw Block. As it later turned out, Chuck naw Block's father,
Speaker 1: who had seen every one of his games from little league,
Speaker 1: who had gone to all his high school games, who
Speaker 1: had traveled the country when Chuck naw Block played in
Speaker 1: the minor leagues, who'd gone to all the road games
Speaker 1: of the Minnesota Twins and the Yankees. Chuck naw Block's
Speaker 1: father had Alzheimer's disease and was in the final stages
Speaker 1: of it, and sometime early in the two thousand season
Speaker 1: lost the ability to recognize the Yankee second basement Chuck
Speaker 1: now Block. Well. That accelerated a problem that would later
Speaker 1: or shortly thereafter make Chuck now Block an x second Basement.
Speaker 1: And on this day in June of two thousand, I
Speaker 1: was completing the second year of a two year, not
Speaker 1: particularly happy stint as the host of Fox Baseball Game
Speaker 1: of the Week on the Fox Television network. I was
Speaker 1: based in Los Angeles, and every Saturday, I spent the
Speaker 1: whole day from six o'clock in the morning till six
Speaker 1: o'clock at night in a studio in Los Angeles that
Speaker 1: was kept down about thirty six degrees. Not my choice.
Speaker 1: I had to wear a winter coat. Sometimes, when we
Speaker 1: weren't on the air, we would do a pregame show, which,
Speaker 1: because of the timing difference, started at ten am, and
Speaker 1: they liked to rehearse their pregame shows madness. All the
Speaker 1: good lines had been used and made stupid and not
Speaker 1: funny by the time we got on the air. They
Speaker 1: would rehearse this show two times, three times. An awful experience.
Speaker 1: In my co was one of the worst persons in
Speaker 1: the world, a man named Steve Lyons who made me
Speaker 1: look like somebody who never complained once in his life.
Speaker 1: That's the only good aspect of working with Steve Lyons.
Speaker 1: He complained an average of three times a minute. All right,
Speaker 1: So Lyons and I are there doing the game of
Speaker 1: the week, and that day the broadcast was from Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and it was a four pm Eastern start one
Speaker 1: pm Pacific time, So the game and the show started
Speaker 1: a little bit late, and we get there, started the
Speaker 1: Dodgers and whoever. It was at Dodgers Stadium with Joe
Speaker 1: Buck and Tim McCarver as the announcers and me in
Speaker 1: the studio, and Lyons goes away and he won't be
Speaker 1: back to the postgame show, so everybody's happier. Somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle of the game, I'm watching the bank of
Speaker 1: televisions that's showing all the other games in progress, and
Speaker 1: the Chicago White Sox are playing at Yankee Stadium in
Speaker 1: New York. This is the remodeled Yankee Stadium that operated
Speaker 1: between the year's nineteen seventy six and two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: I essentially grew up in Yankee Stadi, the original original
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium, and then this modified, reconstructed one that reopened
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, and I knew not only every
Speaker 1: nook and cranny of the ballpark, but I knew every
Speaker 1: camera angle, And we had had since nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: my family Yankee season tickets, which I had been paying
Speaker 1: for since about nineteen ninety two, even though I did
Speaker 1: not live in New York. They were for my mother,
Speaker 1: who went forty fifty times a year. So by this point,
Speaker 1: my mother has been to since that first game when
Speaker 1: she was greeted by Babe Ruth at the front door
Speaker 1: of Yankee Stadium. Here, welcome to your future. Here's a
Speaker 1: baseball for me, Babe Ruth. She has been to at
Speaker 1: least a thousand games. She went to more games in
Speaker 1: her life than I have, actually literally true. And she
Speaker 1: is seated in the seats, in our seats, which have
Speaker 1: been the same one box forty seven E since the
Speaker 1: stadium reopened in nineteen seventy six, and this is the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, so she is in essence, celebrating her
Speaker 1: twenty fifth anniversary in those seats. The Chicago White Sox
Speaker 1: are playing the New York Yankees. They would rout the
Speaker 1: Yankees that day, and the Yankees were in the middle
Speaker 1: of a funk in the middle of the season, do not,
Speaker 1: in small part to Chuck nw Block's sudden inability to
Speaker 1: throw the ball successfully from second base to first base.
Speaker 1: He would throw it past the first basement, over the
Speaker 1: first basement, he would drop the ball as he threw it,
Speaker 1: it would fly out of his hand. And of course
Speaker 1: later it proved this was a psychological protest from deep
Speaker 1: within his mind against playing baseball anymore. It was too
Speaker 1: painful because his father was so sick, and his father
Speaker 1: was so intimately connected to the game. So now Greg
Speaker 1: Norton of the Chicago White Sox hits a fairly tough
Speaker 1: play towards Chuck naw Block, grounds the ball to the
Speaker 1: right of the mound. Chuck naw Block has to charge in,
Speaker 1: pick the ball up bare handed, and while slightly off balance,
Speaker 1: throw it backwards towards the Yankee first basement. Tino Martinez,
Speaker 1: not an impossible play, and not an impossible play for
Speaker 1: a good second basement, as Chuck naw Block had been.
Speaker 1: But under the circumstance, nance is a disaster in the making,
Speaker 1: which we then saw unfold. Chuck Nablock throws the ball,
Speaker 1: it leaves his hand, not straight, but an angle to
Speaker 1: the right of about I don't know, fifty sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: The ball shoots out of his hand and goes nowhere
Speaker 1: near first base. It goes into the stands behind first base,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it goes to box forty seven E,
Speaker 1: where my mother is seated with my high school friend
Speaker 1: and his two kids. And my mother is sitting where
Speaker 1: the incoming throw has just been launched. I am seeing
Speaker 1: this unfold on a monitor, one of like nine with
Speaker 1: different games going on. But I know Yankee Stadium, and
Speaker 1: as I said, the camera angles intimately, so I know
Speaker 1: immediately where the ball based on where it left now
Speaker 1: Block's hand, where it has likely gone, and I say
Speaker 1: that may have hit my mother. They then cut to
Speaker 1: a shot of a woman being attended to and I
Speaker 1: say that hit my mother and everybody in the room
Speaker 1: because they assume I'm joking, Because what are the odds
Speaker 1: that while I am in the studio hosting the game
Speaker 1: of the week and doing the highlights of the games
Speaker 1: in progress. You know, when they say, now let's go
Speaker 1: back to the studio for a Fox game break, I'm
Speaker 1: the guy doing the game breaks. That was my job
Speaker 1: for two years, and sure enough, I say, that's my mother,
Speaker 1: and everybody laughs, and then they cut to a tight
Speaker 1: shot of a woman holding her head with a little
Speaker 1: blood and her glasses have been broken, and she looks
Speaker 1: kind of dazed and confused and they are leading her away,
Speaker 1: and I went, that's mom. And now I call her
Speaker 1: on my cell phone and you see her while she
Speaker 1: is on camera on the local broadcast of the Yankee
Speaker 1: White Sox game. You see her answering the phone. That's
Speaker 1: when they stopped laughing in the studio. That's when they
Speaker 1: realized it was really my mother. So I talked to
Speaker 1: her and she said, I'm okay, it broke my glasses.
Speaker 1: They think maybe I should go home. And Georgia and
Speaker 1: George's kids they want to go home after that, and
Speaker 1: I said, did you get the ball showing where my
Speaker 1: level of concern? No, I'm sorry. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: for Christ's sake, mom, So she's fine, And otherwise I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have asked that question. Probably anyway, now we're predicting
Speaker 1: this sort of situation, what do we do with it?
Speaker 1: And is it going to be a controversy? And I said,
Speaker 1: we have to put the highlight on and I have
Speaker 1: to mention that it's my mother. It's not like we're
Speaker 1: not going to show. If it with some other woman,
Speaker 1: we'd show it, wouldn't we It would be the biggest
Speaker 1: story in baseball today. We have to do it, and
Speaker 1: I just happen to know who it is. So we
Speaker 1: throw to or we are thrown to buy. Joe Buck
Speaker 1: and Tim McCarver t I'm for a Fox game break.
Speaker 1: Here's Keaith Olderman in the studio, White Sox and Yankees.
Speaker 1: Joe and Chuck now blocks throwing problem is now getting
Speaker 1: personally picks up the Greg Norton bounder from the White
Speaker 1: Sox Yankees in the Bronx and throws it into the
Speaker 1: stands where right on the edit it hits my mother.
Speaker 1: Mom's okay, I called her. She's a gamer. She'll be
Speaker 1: back tomorrow. She just got her lens is broken. Joe,
Speaker 1: Tim back to you. Silence from Dodger Stadium. In the broadcast,
Speaker 1: you just hear like birds in the background from Dodger Stadium.
Speaker 1: For the first time in their lives. Joe Buck and
Speaker 1: Tim McCarver have between them nothing to say. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to say, says Joe Buck is Keith kidding?
Speaker 1: Is that one of Keith jokes? Says Tim, who was
Speaker 1: an old friend of mine, Keith, are you still there?
Speaker 1: I'm still here, Timmy, Are you kidding? Why would I
Speaker 1: kid about something like that? Was that really your mother?
Speaker 1: What are the odds against that? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: she's been going to game since nineteen thirty four, that
Speaker 1: first game she ever went to, Babe Ruth gave her
Speaker 1: a baseball. Nothing bad has happened in the ensuing years,
Speaker 1: So I'd say the odds were probably about six to
Speaker 1: five in favor. And he goes, I guess you're right.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that was Keith's mother that got hit
Speaker 1: by the throw by Chuck no Block. Well, give us
Speaker 1: an update later on how she is. We'll do, Tim. So,
Speaker 1: now the story is out. It's my mother who got
Speaker 1: hit by the balloon seventeenth eighteenth, one of the two days,
Speaker 1: the Saturday of that weekend two thousand. Only the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that could happen to my mother. But again, truly,
Speaker 1: the odds were not that impossible. The ball is thrown
Speaker 1: behind first base. Here's a woman who's gone to an
Speaker 1: average of forty to fifty games a year in that
Speaker 1: stadium for twenty five years. The odds are pretty good
Speaker 1: it's going to hit her. And if you're getting meta
Speaker 1: and like, what are the universal odds, what are the
Speaker 1: metaphysical odds that she gets hit? As I said, nothing
Speaker 1: of interest has happened to her since nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: she's due in any event. Just to add to this,
Speaker 1: two of my best friends in the world worked for
Speaker 1: the Yankees. One was the manager, Joe Tory. The other
Speaker 1: was the head of publicity, Rick Sarone. Not the catcher,
Speaker 1: Rick Serone, but the head of publicity, Rick Serone. So
Speaker 1: I call Rick Sarone in the office at Yankee Stadium
Speaker 1: in the press box, because I figure he's already figured
Speaker 1: this out and I want to give him a heads
Speaker 1: up that I had no choice but to mention that
Speaker 1: it was my mother, since it was my broadcast. I
Speaker 1: call him up. I said, did you see the now
Speaker 1: block throw? Now? I heard about it. I've been here
Speaker 1: in the back. I didn't see who it hit. I said,
Speaker 1: do you have any idea who it was? He said no,
Speaker 1: Why would I have any idea who it was? I said,
Speaker 1: why would I be calling you? I don't know, Keith?
Speaker 1: Why would you be calling me. I said, how many
Speaker 1: times have you sat behind first base with me and
Speaker 1: somebody else? And he goes, wait a minute, what are
Speaker 1: you saying? I said, how many times did you and
Speaker 1: I go as teenage friends in the seventies and sat
Speaker 1: behind first bait? And he goes, oh god, no, I said, yep.
Speaker 1: He said that hit your mother. I said yep, And
Speaker 1: he said, First off, he said, did you get the ball?
Speaker 1: And I went, no, she didn't. Oh for crying out loud,
Speaker 1: Well what you didn't say anything about it, did you?
Speaker 1: I went, of course, I said something they showed her
Speaker 1: on your broadcast. And he goes, oh god no. I said,
Speaker 1: what other choice did I have? He goes, no, you're right,
Speaker 1: You're right, all right. I better get out there. We're
Speaker 1: going to start getting phone calls about this, if we
Speaker 1: haven't already. Thanks for the heads up, so now. The
Speaker 1: next day, the newspapers of New York front and back
Speaker 1: page of the New York Post, the New York Daily News,
Speaker 1: and the Long Island Paper News Day front and back
Speaker 1: page some reference to my mother. Photographs in the Daily
Speaker 1: News of her being led away. Chuck Nablock hits sportscaster's mother,
Speaker 1: and the day after that they're still telling the story,
Speaker 1: and there are wire stories, and it is everywhere, And
Speaker 1: of course we mentioned it maybe once or twice an
Speaker 1: hour on Fox Sports and on cable and on broadcast.
Speaker 1: So now Mom is a celebrity. And I must confess
Speaker 1: to you. Mom really liked being a celebrity. Mom was
Speaker 1: appreciative of my success in my career. But Mom had
Speaker 1: wanted to be a ballerina. Apparently. She told me that
Speaker 1: I don't really buy it, but that was her story.
Speaker 1: And she was a little jealous, resentful, just in a
Speaker 1: manageable way most of the time. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to bore you with my developmental problems. Emotionally, Mom was
Speaker 1: a little jealous of not being in the spotlight, and
Speaker 1: she gloried in this, among other things. Mom wound up
Speaker 1: being interviewed on the pregame show for the next Saturday's
Speaker 1: Game of the Week, and for various reasons, we could
Speaker 1: not do a live remote interview with her. So we
Speaker 1: sat down and I recorded the questions in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and on the phone asked her the questions while she
Speaker 1: was in our ancestral home in the suburbs of New York. City,
Speaker 1: and Mom didn't really have any good answers, So I said,
Speaker 1: why don't you just repeat the answers that I give you.
Speaker 1: I'll give you good snarky answers, real quick ones that
Speaker 1: we can do this and you can make fun of me. Okay.
Speaker 1: She had a little trouble delivering the lines, and we
Speaker 1: actually did several takes. So if anybody wants to call
Speaker 1: the FCC and say that interview was not what it
Speaker 1: seemed in two thousand, go right ahead. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're going to do to us about it, but gorite. Aha.
Speaker 1: There were some elements of fakery to this, like I
Speaker 1: wrote her answers for her, but there was one answer
Speaker 1: to one of my six or seven questions that she
Speaker 1: gave completely authentically and we did not need a second take.
Speaker 1: And this may tell you the nature of the complicated
Speaker 1: relationship between me and my mother and baseball and Chuck Knoblock.
Speaker 1: I said, are you surprised that everybody's so interested in this?
Speaker 1: And I wrote for her as an answer, No, but
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they keep mentioning you. She had no trouble
Speaker 1: giving that line whatsoever. She really bought into that answer.
Speaker 1: You could see from the tape when I eventually saw
Speaker 1: the tape that she was smiling during that one. So
Speaker 1: in any event, Mom becomes a celebrity for several months.
Speaker 1: This is June of two thousand. Come October, when the
Speaker 1: Yankees and Mets played in the World Series and she
Speaker 1: was in the stands number one. My employers had given
Speaker 1: her a Fox Sports cap to where and they repeatedly
Speaker 1: showed her during the games of the World Series at
Speaker 1: Yankee Stadium. So Mom became a celebrity and became very
Speaker 1: well known for getting hit in the head with Chuck
Speaker 1: Knoblock's throw. Joe Tory, who I mentioned, was an old
Speaker 1: friend of mine, the first person I ever interviewed in television,
Speaker 1: and a colleague in local sports in television in LA
Speaker 1: when I worked there in the eighties and nineties. Joe
Speaker 1: Tory called me up right afterwards and asked how she was,
Speaker 1: and I said, she's fine. How's your second basement? He
Speaker 1: acts like he got hit in the head with a
Speaker 1: throw too. He's very worried. You think he did it deliberately,
Speaker 1: And I said, Joe, you have to tell him that
Speaker 1: I'm confident he did not do it deliberately. If he
Speaker 1: was aiming at my mother, he would have missed. Joe
Speaker 1: Tory laughs, And later he tells me he told Noblock that,
Speaker 1: and it was no Block's first laugh of the year.
Speaker 1: All right, So moving ahead on this story, it continued
Speaker 1: for many years, for at least ten years, Once or
Speaker 1: twice a month, somebody in baseball would say, was it
Speaker 1: your mother who got got hit by Chuck Knoblock's throw? Memorably,
Speaker 1: in the year two thousand and five, the year that
Speaker 1: the Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, the big left hander
Speaker 1: of the mostly of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Seattle
Speaker 1: Mariners in the Montreal Expos. He pitched one season for
Speaker 1: the Yankees, and the Yankees got blown out in the
Speaker 1: playoffs that year. And before the last game of the season,
Speaker 1: and this is one of my favorite moments in the
Speaker 1: history of baseball. Before that last game, I walk out
Speaker 1: into the Yankee dugout and there is al Lighter who
Speaker 1: was a friend of mine then and now he is
Speaker 1: telling the story of my mother and Chuck Knoblock to
Speaker 1: two other Yankee pitchers, Scott Proctor and Randy Johnson. And
Speaker 1: I walk in and he goes and then Alderman's mother
Speaker 1: gets hit in the head and he says on he's
Speaker 1: doing the highlights on TV on the game of the week,
Speaker 1: and he said, and I walk out, and he goes,
Speaker 1: did you hear that I was telling the story about you?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, only the last couple of steps.
Speaker 1: This is a coincidence. Finish the story yourself. So now
Speaker 1: I got the three of them, and they're all in hysterics.
Speaker 1: Yankees lose that last game of the playoffs. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was one hundred and fifty to nothing.
Speaker 1: And I go into the clubhouse after the game to
Speaker 1: say goodbye for the off season to the few players
Speaker 1: that I knew on the team, including Al Lighter, and
Speaker 1: to Randy Johnson and Randy Johnson in his own deep
Speaker 1: voiced way, thank good to see you have a good winter.
Speaker 1: And he leaves with his little carrying case with his
Speaker 1: little wheels on it and looks like a toy. He's
Speaker 1: six foot ten and he has a roller case designed
Speaker 1: for maybe his daughter. It looks like a toy. And
Speaker 1: he leaves, and about five minutes later, I see the
Speaker 1: door to the Yankee clubhouse open up, and in walk
Speaker 1: Randy Johnson, and he comes over to me and he said,
Speaker 1: I forgot to say something. I was already out to
Speaker 1: my car, and I thought I better come back in
Speaker 1: and say goodbye to Keith and tell him, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a really bad week this last week, as
Speaker 1: we've been losing and the season ended, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say that telling that story about your mother
Speaker 1: really was the highlight of the whole thing and made
Speaker 1: me smile for the only time this month. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Have a great winter. So that's my mother and Randy Johnson,
Speaker 1: five years after she got hit in the head with
Speaker 1: a throw by Chuck Knoblock the second basement of the Yankees,
Speaker 1: one of the more remarkable moments in the history of
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball, at least as it pertains to the
Speaker 1: Olderman family, and a kind of bookend. Mom stopped going
Speaker 1: to the games about two thousand and five. She physically
Speaker 1: could not do it, but she had a good run
Speaker 1: as a Yankee fan of about seventy seasons that essentially
Speaker 1: bookended by getting hit in the head with a throw
Speaker 1: that made her famous within baseball circles and began with
Speaker 1: her being handed to baseball at her first game ever
Speaker 1: by Babe Ruth, who was charmed by the fact that
Speaker 1: my mother's nickname was Babe punchline to this to me,
Speaker 1: is one of the most avid collectors of sports memorabilia
Speaker 1: and particularly game used baseballs. I didn't get either of
Speaker 1: those baseballs from my mom. I've done all the damage
Speaker 1: I can do here without hitting somebody in the head
Speaker 1: with a baseball. Thank you for listening. Countdown. Musical directors
Speaker 1: Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel arranged, produced, and performed
Speaker 1: most of our music. Mister Ray was on the guitars,
Speaker 1: bass and drums, and mister Shanelle handle orchestration and keyboards
Speaker 1: produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including some of the
Speaker 1: Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No
Speaker 1: Horns Allowed Sports music is the Old Woman theme from
Speaker 1: ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.
Speaker 1: And that reminds me the story is ongoing with my
Speaker 1: mother and the baseball. In twenty and eighteen, I did
Speaker 1: play by play of the New York Yankees New York
Speaker 1: Mets game at Yankee Stadium, and needless to say, we
Speaker 1: showed the highlight of my mother getting hit in the
Speaker 1: head with the baseball thrown by Chuck Nablock, to the
Speaker 1: delight of my fellow announcers Tim Kirkchin and Eddie Perez,
Speaker 1: who could not stop laughing about it for about an
Speaker 1: inning and a half. Mom is eternally part of baseball history.
Speaker 1: This would please her greatly a little bit more if
Speaker 1: my name were not connected to it. Our satirical and
Speaker 1: musical comments are by Nancy Fauss. The best baseball stadium
Speaker 1: organists ever was her. Chicago White Sox were there, although
Speaker 1: she was not. Our announcer was my friend Larry David.
Speaker 1: Everything else was pretty much my fault, Larry David, who's
Speaker 1: mentioned the Yankees once and again and with whom I've
Speaker 1: also conversed about my mother getting hit in the head
Speaker 1: with a throw from Chuck Knoblock. Let's countdown for this
Speaker 1: to one hundred and thirty fourth day until the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four presidential election, and vice presidential candidate Chuck Knoblock
Speaker 1: has just now and sixty eighth day since convicted felon
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's first attempted coup against the Democrat radically elected
Speaker 1: government of the United States use the July eleventh sentencing hearing,
Speaker 1: use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if it happens,
Speaker 1: to stop him from doing it again while we still can.
Speaker 1: A reminder will be live again on YouTube after the
Speaker 1: debate Thursday night. Join me and send your link to
Speaker 1: this podcast to somebody who does not already listen. Remember
Speaker 1: it is free. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins
Speaker 1: is the news warrants till the next one. I'm Keith Oldreman.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, avoid getting hit in the baseball,
Speaker 1: and good luck to call adelf Filter Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Oldreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio, your Apple, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.