Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Which
Speaker 1: of these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? Remember
Speaker 1: when he said he'd be a dictator, but only on
Speaker 1: day one? It's day one. The best joke of the year.
Speaker 1: The great thing about moving Trump's inauguration to the rotunda,
Speaker 1: writes Biden Harris advanced man Doug Landry, is that all
Speaker 1: of his supporters already know how to get there. Can't
Speaker 1: top that capitulation. Nation CBS is discussing settling the most
Speaker 1: nonsensical lawsuit Trump has ever filed, because the settlement would
Speaker 1: actually be a wonderfully legal bribe. And Ramaswami, or as
Speaker 1: we called him, the schwam gone. Hey, what do you know?
Speaker 1: The Department of from an efficiency actually has cut some waste.
Speaker 1: Like you, I would have preferred to have skipped Trump
Speaker 1: altogether today. I would rather eulogize Yuke, my late friend
Speaker 1: Bob Buker, and I will at length at the end
Speaker 1: of this edition. Instead, as you are hearing this, it
Speaker 1: may have already happened. And thus I am speaking to
Speaker 1: you from the distant past, the good old days. Unless
Speaker 1: to take that Doug Landry joke to its natural step
Speaker 1: trump ists storm the Capitol again and coup again. He
Speaker 1: had to go inside because somebody told Trump about the
Speaker 1: thirty one days William Henry, it's just cold, Harrison. It
Speaker 1: says something that Trump would rather be viewed to somebody
Speaker 1: who cannot handle temperatures higher than Obama and a crowd
Speaker 1: of two million did in two thousand and nine. Then
Speaker 1: face the reality that nobody was going to show up
Speaker 1: for his goddamned speech. I mean, hotel rooms in downtown
Speaker 1: DC were already easily available thirty percent unbooked, compared to
Speaker 1: five percent for Trump eight years ago and two percent
Speaker 1: for Obama fifteen years ago. And that was before Grandpa
Speaker 1: Shardy found an excuse to downsize further. So you're saying
Speaker 1: your parade is going to be inside the hockey rink.
Speaker 1: It's just you driving around in circles in front of
Speaker 1: a small crowd. What a perfect metaphor, Thank you, moron. Well,
Speaker 1: what do we know about the coronation speech? The baseline is,
Speaker 1: of course, whatever he says, he's lying. The point of
Speaker 1: this speech, as we later figured out, was the point
Speaker 1: of the twenty seventeen speech, was to lie about how
Speaker 1: bad thing were in the country to pretend that a
Speaker 1: country moving along about b B plus grade was actually
Speaker 1: an f and falling, and then later after his nut
Speaker 1: job policies sent us plummeting down to CNUS or D plus,
Speaker 1: he could point at empirical data and claim the nation
Speaker 1: has grown to D plus, not descending from B plus.
Speaker 1: Trump told ABC on Saturday that the speech would be
Speaker 1: about unity, strength, and fairness. Unity obviously means everybody has
Speaker 1: to do what he says. Strength would be what he
Speaker 1: calls bullying and manipulation, and of course fairness is nobody's
Speaker 1: fair to him. He'll be seeming to talk to his base,
Speaker 1: is actually talking to himself. He'll be boastful and crazy
Speaker 1: because he has no shame and no awareness and is
Speaker 1: not actually a living human being. He will be almost
Speaker 1: dissociated because all that crap on the camp where he
Speaker 1: got crazier and crazier every week that hasn't stopped. If
Speaker 1: you look carefully, his eyes are no longer going in
Speaker 1: the same direction. He'll be increasingly belligerent because he thinks
Speaker 1: he got a landslide. He thinks he's in charge now,
Speaker 1: and somewhere in his going to say soul, he believes
Speaker 1: he will be in charge forever. He will claim afterwards
Speaker 1: it would have been the biggest crowd at any inauguration,
Speaker 1: That's why he moved it inside. He can't be disproved
Speaker 1: now when he claims that, And of course they will
Speaker 1: lie about the size of the TV audience by saying
Speaker 1: but streaming he got eight hundred and seventy five billion
Speaker 1: views on Twitter. As Most importantly, though, the Democratic response,
Speaker 1: which will be nothing as usual. We are inert trying
Speaker 1: to fight the last war, trying to gain power in
Speaker 1: the party rather than to unify and gain enough power
Speaker 1: to push back against Trump enough that every Republican move
Speaker 1: costs that him at minimum personal pain and shame. We
Speaker 1: can't prevent any of this, but we can leave a
Speaker 1: lot of black and blue marks. That has to be
Speaker 1: the goal, and we're not even doing that. No Democrat
Speaker 1: will say everything Trump just said today is a lie.
Speaker 1: None will say he lowered the bar to make himself
Speaker 1: look better when he fails. None will say he's a
Speaker 1: convicted felon. No Democrat is putting everything on the line.
Speaker 1: No Democrat will have the presence of mind to ignore
Speaker 1: protocol and offer a rebuttal, even though we have not
Speaker 1: yet had an inauguration rebuttal speech. Who the hell says
Speaker 1: we can't somebody get up on a box somewhere and
Speaker 1: tell the truth. Even Fetterman, our senator, with the acuity
Speaker 1: of a toy with googly eyes stuck on it, has
Speaker 1: been towing the line of tradition and quizzlinging. Most ominously,
Speaker 1: the mayor of New York will become our first full
Speaker 1: fledged VH democrat. I mean he's nominally a democrat. I
Speaker 1: guess he will trade the lives of immigrants and refugees
Speaker 1: here in exchange for a pardon. That's the scenario that
Speaker 1: is shaping up. Eric Adams needs to be removed immediately
Speaker 1: by any means that are even vaguely legal. He is
Speaker 1: a danger to the community in which I live. Sorry
Speaker 1: for focusing on that part. I will again quote Jean Renoir,
Speaker 1: the French filmmaker, and his masterpiece Rules of the Game.
Speaker 1: Rules of the Game, coming out in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: accurately forecast that the French were so self absorbed and
Speaker 1: corrupt that when the Nazis came, they would offer almost
Speaker 1: no resistance. Renoir, as the hero's buddy octav says something
Speaker 1: about the corruption and lack of morals, and lack of
Speaker 1: courage and just playing, lack of effort to stand up
Speaker 1: for what's right. He says that everybody has a self
Speaker 1: interest that's far more important to them than courage or
Speaker 1: self sacrifice or bravery or just taking a goddamn chance.
Speaker 1: And it is a quote that has come to symbolize
Speaker 1: the France that folded like a card table in one
Speaker 1: month to Hitler's onslaught and the VSH France full of
Speaker 1: more collaborators than the Germans believed possible. Octav says, you see,
Speaker 1: in this world, there is one awful thing, and that
Speaker 1: is that everyone has his reasons. Everybody in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party has his reasons. Everybody in the media, certainly those
Speaker 1: who own and run the media, has his reasons. And
Speaker 1: there's way more from the pathetic, useless, waste of oxygen
Speaker 1: billionaires who are so scared that they won't be able
Speaker 1: to make more money this year than they did last year,
Speaker 1: at which point I guess they have to face the
Speaker 1: realization that they have no long vives, no point in
Speaker 1: existing other than greed and no souls. Or, to put
Speaker 1: it more succinctly, Lauren's next implants ain't paying for themselves,
Speaker 1: are they? Jeff much more ahead on media capitulation by
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, the time, CNN, but new one on
Speaker 1: the list CBS. But first, I am I find surprisingly
Speaker 1: hopeful because these guys are fantastically incompetent. The trumpest restoration,
Speaker 1: they managed to overshadow this by spending the weekend having
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson erase the Republican chair of the House Intelligence
Speaker 1: Committee because he offended Trump, and then having Congresswoman Anna
Speaker 1: Paulina Lunatic file a motion to erase Mike Johnson because
Speaker 1: he won't let her vote from home the weekend before
Speaker 1: the restoration, and Johnson all but admitted he's not going
Speaker 1: to pardon all the January sixth psychopaths. And all that
Speaker 1: overshadowing the inauguration was after they leaked the big shock
Speaker 1: they had planned for this week. It's hard to remember
Speaker 1: so far back, but as of sunset on Friday, Trump
Speaker 1: had a secret plan to conduct surprise deportation raids in
Speaker 1: Chicago starting tomorrow, maybe even today. By eight thirty Friday night,
Speaker 1: that great oozing eraser headhaired Jesse Waters had announced the
Speaker 1: rais on Fox and it was in the Wall Street
Speaker 1: goddamned journal. Before midnight, police officials in Chicago had already
Speaker 1: gone on the record saying they would provide no immigration
Speaker 1: data to ICE and no help. And by Saturday morning
Speaker 1: it was obvious that delirious Trumpists couldn't keep their great
Speaker 1: big bazoos shut long enough to maintain the surprise that
Speaker 1: is necessary for a surprise deportation raid. That's why they
Speaker 1: call it a surprise. Do not misunderstand me. I am
Speaker 1: delighted they screwed it up, but I'm surprised they didn't
Speaker 1: wind up publishing the names of all the intended migrant targets.
Speaker 1: The leak was so total that yesterday the organizer of
Speaker 1: Trump's Final Solution, Tom Hoeman emphasis on the hoe, was admitting,
Speaker 1: they'll probably cancel these raids because, well, you can answer
Speaker 1: that the leaks were either terribly stupid screw up or
Speaker 1: they were deliberate, and this gives them an excuse to
Speaker 1: not run these impossibly expensive and inefficient roundups that will
Speaker 1: please the Trump rabble but infuriate every Trump friendly business
Speaker 1: in America and restart inflation. I'm still betting on boastful
Speaker 1: stupidity rather than a way to undo your big mistaken
Speaker 1: plans because, of course Trump always chooses idiots. Secretary of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security Christy confirmed my nomination, or I'll shoot this
Speaker 1: dog gnome FBI director Cash keep your eye on the prize.
Speaker 1: I'll try anyway. Patel entrepreneur is Vivek Ramaswami and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk in charge of government efficiency just Musk entrepreneur Ramaswami
Speaker 1: is already out because he's running for governor of Ohio.
Speaker 1: He's no longer at the Government Efficiency Department. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know he's gonna need more than one lesson about maga racism.
Speaker 1: And he's gonna get more than one lesson about maga
Speaker 1: racism this Friday. By the way, on that one word,
Speaker 1: the Merriam Webster dictionary social media feeds reminded us that
Speaker 1: in French, the language from which it originates, entrepreneur originally
Speaker 1: meant funeral director. These guys are skilled in that, only
Speaker 1: skilled in purging each other and enforcing political dogma and
Speaker 1: selling lies to morons. I mean they managed to get
Speaker 1: rid of Ramaswami the day before he was supposed to start.
Speaker 1: They have repeatedly proven themselves utterly incapable of actually governing,
Speaker 1: utterly so has the Republican Party, especially when it's in
Speaker 1: the White House. It is a dirty little secret the
Speaker 1: far right would prefer you to forget. But as the
Speaker 1: Republicans have gotten more and more fascist, exactly one of
Speaker 1: them has been re elected president in the last forty years.
Speaker 1: That was George W. Bush. And he wouldn't have if
Speaker 1: Ohio had gone to carry And there were enough questions
Speaker 1: in Ohio about fake terror alert during the counting that
Speaker 1: should have been cleared up, but never were. These guys
Speaker 1: aren't actually good at anything. They weren't good at making
Speaker 1: America great again for four years, or he wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to run on that, would he. They weren't good
Speaker 1: at anything. When COVID hit and it and the economic
Speaker 1: fallout destroyed Trump's campaign in twenty twenty, I mean, goddamn it.
Speaker 1: Trump couldn't even pull off a coup correctly. The other
Speaker 1: thing that happens at noon is the start of the
Speaker 1: MAGA race to succeed Trump. The lesson he will have
Speaker 1: taught them all is to ignore all the rules, erase
Speaker 1: all the loyalties, break all the laws, and kill anybody
Speaker 1: who gets in the way, especially if they're MAGA and
Speaker 1: trying to stop them from running MAGA, and there will
Speaker 1: be what a hundred of them who think he will
Speaker 1: not be still around to choose the next cult leader
Speaker 1: one way or the other, and so their targets will
Speaker 1: be for the next four years each other. The uniformity
Speaker 1: of the cult rank, very rank and file will also
Speaker 1: break starting at noon, as Elon Musk and Ramaswami found out,
Speaker 1: the real fervent psychotics hate immigrants, all immigrants, all minorities,
Speaker 1: all accents, but their own, anybody brown. The idea of
Speaker 1: Trump pushing for this tool. Ramaswami with this troll doll
Speaker 1: haircut to replace bants in the Senate from Ohio shows
Speaker 1: also that Trump has lost touch and maybe lost control
Speaker 1: of his most rabid morons. Steve Bannon wants Musk deported
Speaker 1: for Christ's sake. Trump doesn't know this. He may wake
Speaker 1: up to a day very soon where he is viewed
Speaker 1: as not far enough to the right for them, in
Speaker 1: which case he's cooked. I mean, if somebody he could
Speaker 1: seize control of this fascist authoritarian movement before Trump is
Speaker 1: supposed to leave office, why would they wait. The historical
Speaker 1: figure Trump might most closely resemble is actually Henry the
Speaker 1: eighth without the skills or the intelligent daughter. The fictional
Speaker 1: character he might most closely resemble is probably Milo Minderbinder
Speaker 1: from Catch twenty two. In Joe Heller's Indescribable novel, Milo
Speaker 1: Minderbinder rises from a supply sergeant to basically the owner
Speaker 1: of Europe. He keeps trading food and stealing parachutes and
Speaker 1: investing in black markets, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: he's made a deal with the Germans for the Americans
Speaker 1: to bomb their own air base in Italy, and he
Speaker 1: has his own army, and the military police suddenly don't
Speaker 1: have the insignia MP on their uniforms anymore. It's been
Speaker 1: replaced by the insignia with the letters MM for Milominderbinder.
Speaker 1: Milominder Binder, if he didn't figure this out, is the
Speaker 1: metaphor for America, which came out of the Second World
Speaker 1: War in large part owning half of Europe. Heller never
Speaker 1: really explains how the character of mielominder Binder does this
Speaker 1: in the plot in the novel in that universe, but
Speaker 1: it is presumed that Milo has only accomplished it by
Speaker 1: using the efficiency and rigidity of the military structure and
Speaker 1: This is my only real fear with Trump and this
Speaker 1: clown car administration of his, At least today, it's my
Speaker 1: only real fear. He he wants to use the military
Speaker 1: to shoot civilian protesters. That's bad enough, but the real
Speaker 1: problem becomes if you see him use the military for
Speaker 1: support in areas that not even remotely connected to weapons
Speaker 1: or the maintenance of order. I mean, this is for bollock, obviously,
Speaker 1: but if he somehow gets the military involved in enforcing
Speaker 1: tariffs or banning TikTok or not banning TikTok, or rebanning TikTok,
Speaker 1: or revoking the two term limit, if the military is
Speaker 1: somehow involved in that, then you can start to really worry.
Speaker 1: Before we leave the inauguration of the ineligible moron elect
Speaker 1: Milo Minderbinder Trump. Let me add an ironic twist to
Speaker 1: this in the movie version of Catch twenty two, which
Speaker 1: is still underappreciated. It's really a classic. Many assessments contemporary
Speaker 1: ones when the movie came out was that it was
Speaker 1: a failure. Milo Minderbinder is played by in over the
Speaker 1: top brilliance that we could have never known at the
Speaker 1: time was the pinnacle of his career and maybe his life.
Speaker 1: Milo Minderbinder is performed by John Voight. John Voight, the
Speaker 1: guy who now does not know where he is, who
Speaker 1: Trump suddenly designated as one of his three special envoys
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, the others being Sylvester Stallone and mel Gibson.
Speaker 1: And of course Gibson probably blew the whole thing by
Speaker 1: immediately saying he read about it on Twitter x nobody
Speaker 1: called him. Stallone and Gibson of course cannot act their
Speaker 1: ways out of a paper bag and never could. But
Speaker 1: Voight once could have when he was Milo Minderbinder. Beware
Speaker 1: Milo Minderbinder. The real threat right now is when Milo
Speaker 1: Minderbinder takes over state run media like CBS and CNN.
Speaker 1: In the Washington Post and the New York Times, you
Speaker 1: thought I meant TikTok and Trump's latest stunt saving TikTok
Speaker 1: from the awful illegal ban that he introduced, provided they
Speaker 1: sell fifty percent of it to the US government, because
Speaker 1: we should privatize the post office. But we need to
Speaker 1: have an official government social media propaganda outlet as an aside.
Speaker 1: What happened to government efficiency? Trump already has an official
Speaker 1: government social media propaganda outlet. It's called twitter x. And also,
Speaker 1: where have I seen this before? I won't burn your
Speaker 1: business down if you sell me fifty percent of us.
Speaker 1: Where have I seen this? Oh? That's right? Organized crime? Now.
Speaker 1: When I said the real threat is when Milo minder
Speaker 1: Binder takes over state run media, I did not mean TikTok.
Speaker 1: I met CBS and CNN and The Post and the Times,
Speaker 1: but especially CBS. It is hard to believe that the
Speaker 1: owners of CBS paramount could out Weasele Warner Bro those
Speaker 1: Discovery or Zuckerberg or Bezos or anybody else. But they have.
Speaker 1: Somebody at CBS News screwed up the editing of that
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris interview in the summer, and they attached in
Speaker 1: two different formats, two different answers to one of their
Speaker 1: questions to her. Journalistically sloppy, indefensible, probably the result of
Speaker 1: insufficient staffing by cheap bosses. But Trump sued under a
Speaker 1: Texas law that was designed to protect people against fraudulent
Speaker 1: TV ads, you know, for ads like Trump University. He
Speaker 1: is claiming the editing mistake was legally fraud. He is
Speaker 1: suing for fraud. It's a nuisance lawsuit, of course, But
Speaker 1: your nuisance lawsuit is the corporate half of fascist America's
Speaker 1: golden opportunity. Paramount and CBS have, according to The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, discussed settling this nonsense case bribing Trump with
Speaker 1: settlement money the way ABC and Disney bribed Trump by
Speaker 1: settling the nuisance lawsuit against George Stephanopolis a clean, legal,
Speaker 1: disguised way to bribe a sitting president, especially since his
Speaker 1: new FCC chairman, of whom Goebbels would be proud, has
Speaker 1: already threatened Paramount's planned merger with sky Dance. The impact
Speaker 1: is obvious. I have friends at CBS News. I will
Speaker 1: protect them by leaving their names out of it, but
Speaker 1: they know damn well like my friends at ABC News
Speaker 1: already know that their corporate bosses not only will not
Speaker 1: lift a finger to defend journalism, any journalism, even their own,
Speaker 1: but will now take this chance to piss all over
Speaker 1: their newspeople to disguise a bribe as some kind of
Speaker 1: legal apology. What's worse, of course, is that every time
Speaker 1: a news outlet does not fight back against this misuse
Speaker 1: of that Texas fraud law or some or bullshit laws,
Speaker 1: it becomes more legitimate in the eyes of the courts.
Speaker 1: Iowa has a similar law. Under it, Trump is suing
Speaker 1: the Des Moines Register polster because her pre election poll
Speaker 1: did not show him ahead enough. Trump is this close
Speaker 1: to suing some weatherman forgetting the forecast wrong, and CBS
Speaker 1: is on Trump's side. Other vshy capitulation is less shocking,
Speaker 1: but no less sleazy. CNN, which, under that balloon with
Speaker 1: glasses David Zaslav, dismembered itself to please the fascists, lost
Speaker 1: virtually all of its audience and perverted a halfway decent
Speaker 1: nighttime hour and made it instead a platform for the hateful.
Speaker 1: Scott Jennings found something left to destroy there in time
Speaker 1: for Trump's coronation. Hey, we found something good here in
Speaker 1: the back. Kill it with fire. The bonehead Thompson they
Speaker 1: brought into save CNN from the last bonehead they brought
Speaker 1: into Save CNN reportedly phoned Jim Acosta last week and
Speaker 1: told him his ratings were so good, often better than
Speaker 1: CNN Primetime, admittedly a low bar, but still an impressive accomplishment,
Speaker 1: that he was going to get a promotion instead. Acosta,
Speaker 1: of one hour at ten in the morning, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get two hours starting at midnight. Isn't that great more airtime?
Speaker 1: And technically it's still in the morning. CNN's midnight ratings
Speaker 1: are slightly better than those of this podcast. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at those numbers now and you wonder, is
Speaker 1: it worth turning on all the lights in the studio?
Speaker 1: Does it cost less to broadcast CNN in black and white?
Speaker 1: These are what the ratings make you think. I've had
Speaker 1: shows with ratings like that. That was what MSNBC was
Speaker 1: like about two thousand and four. Well, obviously everybody in
Speaker 1: the world knows that this is an attempt to get Acosta,
Speaker 1: who has treated Trump honestly and fearlessly and journalistically for years,
Speaker 1: to quit. I assume their next offer to him will
Speaker 1: be you don't want two hours at midnight, Well, how
Speaker 1: about this as a second choice, how about three hours
Speaker 1: at midnight. They did this once. CBS did it once
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles to a sportscaster they did not like
Speaker 1: who was under contract, and they made him come in
Speaker 1: and write the four o'clock news am to get him
Speaker 1: to quit, because it didn't say in his contract that
Speaker 1: they couldn't make them come in and write the news
Speaker 1: at four am. As noted by Oliver Darcy, who broke
Speaker 1: this story about Acosta CNN. The day after this CNN
Speaker 1: loser tried to get a cost It to quit with
Speaker 1: a phony promotion. A Costas signed off his show, The
Speaker 1: One That's Still on at ten am by noting one
Speaker 1: line from President Biden's farewell address. Costa said, Biden quote warned,
Speaker 1: the free press is crumbling in this country. I would
Speaker 1: add that's only if we, the people let that happen.
Speaker 1: I admire both Biden and a Costa, but they are mistaken.
Speaker 1: We have already let it happen. The Washington Post is dead.
Speaker 1: The New York Times is doing its best to follow
Speaker 1: the Post off the Lemming memorial cliff two headlines just
Speaker 1: from yesterday Washington memo, Defiance is Out, Deference is in.
Speaker 1: Trump returns to a different Washington as Donald J. Flatchlent Grandpa,
Speaker 1: prepares to take the oath of office for a second time.
Speaker 1: Much of the world seems to be bowing down to him,
Speaker 1: and demoralized opponents are rethinking the future. This might be
Speaker 1: read as a desperate please from somewhere inside the Times
Speaker 1: headline department, get me out of here. And because the
Speaker 1: headlines are now apparently being written in that department by
Speaker 1: Times pitch bots Satiris Doug J. Balloon not his real name,
Speaker 1: from a top Ezra Klein's column, as if Ezra Kline
Speaker 1: needed any help being the dog in the hat in
Speaker 1: the burning room quote opinion, Ezra Kleine Trump barely won
Speaker 1: the election. Why doesn't it feel that way? Because Ezra,
Speaker 1: the Times is run by cowards. Not to be fair,
Speaker 1: they are not as big cowards as Jeff Bezos and
Speaker 1: his jackasses. The Post version of the same story, Trump
Speaker 1: has already conquered DC even before taking office. His triumphant
Speaker 1: returned power stands in stark contrast to his divisive entry
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven and departure in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I mean, honest to God, why not just replace the
Speaker 1: Washington Post masthead Jeff with a shot of Laurence Sanchez
Speaker 1: smooching a picture of Trump. Well, they can't do that
Speaker 1: because they already have done something far worse to the postmasthead.
Speaker 1: They are keeping what is now obvious says just another
Speaker 1: marketing slogan, democracy dies in darkness. The last two words
Speaker 1: were so what they cut them off? I guess, But
Speaker 1: they are adding a new mission statement that reeks of
Speaker 1: a forty six person committee and several dozen focus groups.
Speaker 1: That mission statement for the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for
Speaker 1: all of America. This is inside edition. Oh no, it's
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, Riveting Storytelling for all of America. I
Speaker 1: am told that that one out over the runner up.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler. More correctly,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pay a lot for this dictatorship. Bon chance, everybody,
Speaker 1: also of interest here in memory of Bob Buker, who
Speaker 1: helped give me the confidence to actually join him on
Speaker 1: the World Series telecasts. But first, the worst, and I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say this and let you figure it out.
Speaker 1: And it's real. It's actually a new marketing slogan for
Speaker 1: a new product. It's a real marketing slogan. And it's quote,
Speaker 1: it's soup you can suck on. That's next. This is countdown.
Speaker 1: This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman still ahead on countdown.
Speaker 1: The second worst thing probably about getting old, not very old,
Speaker 1: just old old, regular old, is having to watch nearly
Speaker 1: all those older than you who accepted you in what
Speaker 1: was their field and then became theirs and yours watched
Speaker 1: them pass on, especially when they are widely beloved standard
Speaker 1: setters in those fields, like the late Bob Buker. Bob
Speaker 1: Buker in Memoriam. Next first, there are still more new
Speaker 1: idiots to talk about, the daily roundup of the miss Grants,
Speaker 1: morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. Lebron's worse Rand Paul. Rand
Speaker 1: Paul became a senator. People pointed at him and said,
Speaker 1: this guy is a senator. Now there's a whole crowd
Speaker 1: of Rand Paul's in the Senate and especially in the House,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't look quite as stupid. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while, though, Rand is here to remind you he's
Speaker 1: unbelievably stupid.
Speaker 2: Since Senator Johnson brought up California fires, I have to
Speaker 2: interject here. We talked about burn policies. You know, these
Speaker 2: are local policies, how we try to not have so
Speaker 2: much brush and things like that. They're also next to
Speaker 2: the largest body of water in the world, the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 2: So I see these homes all burning on the beach
Speaker 2: in Malibu, and I'm like, Wow, if they just had
Speaker 2: a generator in a hose, you start sucking the water
Speaker 2: out of the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1: But you could do more than that.
Speaker 2: You could pump it and put it in cisterns up
Speaker 2: in the hills a mile or two in. You know
Speaker 2: it doesn't rain very much there. But why don't they
Speaker 2: take the ocean water, put it in cisterns and have
Speaker 2: a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up?
Speaker 2: But it's like once again bad local government.
Speaker 1: All you need is a generator and a hose, and
Speaker 1: you start sucking the water out of the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1: You have any idea how long the hose would have
Speaker 1: to be? More on Also, salt water in a hose
Speaker 1: through a pump, the thing will last three days. Why
Speaker 1: don't they take the ocean water and put it in cisterns,
Speaker 1: have a bunch of water ready when a wildfire shows up? Well,
Speaker 1: things burn in fires, like cisterns or hair pieces. This
Speaker 1: idiot is not just an idiotic senator. He's still a doctor,
Speaker 1: runner up worser the General Mills Company. This is still
Speaker 1: I'm seeing this. I double and triple checked it to
Speaker 1: make sure it was not satire. It's not satire. This
Speaker 1: is still on their website. General Mills is introducing a
Speaker 1: new product the headline soup you Can Suck On, Introducing
Speaker 1: Progresso Soup Drops, the ultimate cold and flu season comfort
Speaker 1: It's Progresso chicken noodle soup like you never expected, a convenient,
Speaker 1: on the go soup experience available this National Soup Month.
Speaker 1: Enjoy soup like never before. Progresso your go to for
Speaker 1: comforting Premium soups is innovating beyond expectations this cold and
Speaker 1: flu season with the launch of the first ever limited
Speaker 1: edition soup drops. What's a soup drop? Well, it's soup
Speaker 1: you can suck on. Please do your own suck on
Speaker 1: joke here, I am above that prey. What this is,
Speaker 1: of course, is like a piece of like a cough drop, cold,
Speaker 1: presumably sticky, clammy hard, but mostly cold. Except it's chicken
Speaker 1: noodle flavored. So it's like it's like congealed chicken noodle
Speaker 1: soup stuff. You just let's sit there in the bowl
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. Not at General Mills. That's
Speaker 1: a half full attitude towards your bowl of soup. We
Speaker 1: can sell this. So what if it's not hot like
Speaker 1: soup or tasty like soup, or even somehow viscerally pleasing
Speaker 1: like soup, which, by the way, you can suck on.
Speaker 1: You can suck on soup. No, no, it has none
Speaker 1: of those properties except it's it's it's soup, you can
Speaker 1: suck on. Speaking of suck the winter worst Trump, I'll
Speaker 1: just quote from Politico, shall I? The incoming Trump White
Speaker 1: House is planning on changing the colors of White House
Speaker 1: badges for employees when it comes back Monday, that would
Speaker 1: be today, to make them platinum and gold instead of
Speaker 1: the traditional blue and green. To people familiar with the
Speaker 1: change told our colleague Daniel Lippman, platinum badges will be
Speaker 1: used to denote West Wing access. Gold badges will get
Speaker 1: you access to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the
Speaker 1: new Executive Office Building. So like everything else in the world,
Speaker 1: Trump is obsessed with gold badges and platinum badges. Now
Speaker 1: White House staff and other members of the dictatorship will
Speaker 1: look like the check in people at a holiday inn
Speaker 1: in Keyahcook, Iowa. It dawned on me while I lived
Speaker 1: in a Trump building surrounded by the cheap, sprayed on
Speaker 1: looking dull gold color. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: tin or I don't know what it was. I never
Speaker 1: figured out what the metal was. Might have been hardened
Speaker 1: aluminum foil. But Trump is obsessed by it. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I lived in the Trump building that had
Speaker 1: the least amount of it. I literally said to Katie
Speaker 1: Churr as we bought that part apartment that if it
Speaker 1: had one percent more gold, I would never have moved
Speaker 1: in there. It just looks like crap. But it dawned
Speaker 1: on me then that Trump has no idea gold to
Speaker 1: him means good. The words are spelled similarly. His hair
Speaker 1: is now that same crap gold color. And then I
Speaker 1: began to think, does he not know that the gold
Speaker 1: you see in the walls of his buildings and on
Speaker 1: his head and everywhere else, that that's not actual actual gold.
Speaker 1: Do you think Trump has ever realized that gold paint
Speaker 1: and gold plastic and gold bronzer and gold badges are
Speaker 1: not made of actual gold. I don't think so. And
Speaker 1: while we're here at Trump, I am pleased to announce
Speaker 1: that Peggy Shwinn he has posted, will be our next
Speaker 1: United States Deputy Secretary of Education. Peggy as a strong
Speaker 1: record of delivering results for children and families, has served
Speaker 1: as Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education. At the
Speaker 1: Texas Education Agency, Peggy was also the assistant set. Her
Speaker 1: name is Penny. She's not Peggy Shwin, She's Penny Shwin.
Speaker 1: I assume this will be resolved the new Trump way
Speaker 1: by having Penny change her name to Peggy, because Grandpa
Speaker 1: Shardy is never wrong. General Lissimo blocking his own TikTok
Speaker 1: ben and calling it a win and then calling it
Speaker 1: Peggy Trump two days worst Parson and the world. The
Speaker 1: name is Penny, your damn And lastly, as I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I would rather spend my day talking
Speaker 1: to you about my late friend Bob Buker, who died
Speaker 1: Thursday at the age of ninety. At the age of ninety,
Speaker 1: people knew he was ninety, and still people were surprised
Speaker 1: he was ninety, and they were surprised that he left us,
Speaker 1: because he always seemed about thirty five. And to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: he was a friend of everybody in baseball and most
Speaker 1: people in entertainment, and certainly was beloved by his listeners
Speaker 1: and viewers in Milwaukee, where he did the Milwaukee Brewers
Speaker 1: games from almost the day they started being the Milwaukee Brewers.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with Bob Uker's work, it is
Speaker 1: perhaps summarized by one story. For generations former baseball players
Speaker 1: and other athletes had made marks as broadcasters by being
Speaker 1: self deprecating Dizzy Dean, whose vocabulary was so bad and
Speaker 1: whose grammar was so random that there was once a
Speaker 1: petition signed by the school teachers of America to get
Speaker 1: him to stop doing the broadcasts of New York Yankees
Speaker 1: and other games on radio in the forties and fifties.
Speaker 1: Dizzy Dean was self deprecating, but it was so ham
Speaker 1: handed that it wasn't that funny. My late friend Joe
Speaker 1: Garagiola sort of perfected it. He was much more light
Speaker 1: and much more entertaining, and his jokes about his playing
Speaker 1: career were much more funny. But even he did not
Speaker 1: have the Bob Yucher secret. Not everything Bob Yuker did
Speaker 1: was spontaneous, but everything knew he did was spontaneous. His
Speaker 1: jokes were truly creative genius. He made them up as
Speaker 1: he went along, and he almost always hit it out
Speaker 1: of the park, and they were delivered deadpan. He had
Speaker 1: a natural understanding of comedic rhythm that nine out of
Speaker 1: ten comedians never get close to the perfect example. One
Speaker 1: of his oldest jokes about when his hometown team, the
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Brewers, signed him out of high school in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. They came to my house and my dad
Speaker 1: said how much? And they said twenty thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: my father said, we don't have that kind of money.
Speaker 1: No laugh, no knowing grin, no acknowledgment that the audience
Speaker 1: figured it out, perfect comedic delivery. He was a good actor.
Speaker 1: He was a good baseball announcer and very insightful, and
Speaker 1: even at the age of eighty nine and ninety, was
Speaker 1: still better than most of the other radio announcers out there.
Speaker 1: But what he was a genius at was humor. Like that,
Speaker 1: humor at his expense, based in reality, with an unexpected ending,
Speaker 1: a reversal that left you going left as the story
Speaker 1: went right, and always got him laughs. He would repeat
Speaker 1: the ones that got of the most laughs. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a moron, he didn't throw things away that worked, But
Speaker 1: his key to success was all of that. Humor was
Speaker 1: part of him. He'd been that way as a player. Famously,
Speaker 1: he posed for the nineteen sixty five I believe Saint
Speaker 1: Louis Cardinals team picture, sitting next to the great Cardinals
Speaker 1: picture Bob Gibson in a day when there was still
Speaker 1: considerable segregation in this country, and there was certain political
Speaker 1: campaigning done on the idea that we've done enough for
Speaker 1: these people already. That was basically the Republican campaign in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. And in the front row of the
Speaker 1: Cardinals team picture, Bob Gibson, an African American, Bob Buker,
Speaker 1: not an African American, seated next to each other, held
Speaker 1: hands as they took the photo. They got several snaps
Speaker 1: in before somebody on the team in the picture burst
Speaker 1: out laughing. It would have gone through nobody, nobody involved
Speaker 1: in the photography noticed it, and then they said, Okay, Uker,
Speaker 1: you get in the back row. He was that kind
Speaker 1: of guy. I had known Bob since the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: because even though I was first when I met him
Speaker 1: in college and a college broadcaster. I was sitting next
Speaker 1: to him on the bench one day before a Milwaukee
Speaker 1: Brewers New York Yankees game and he said, Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: Bob Yker, and I said, I gathered that I'm Keith,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to hear about my story, who I was,
Speaker 1: why I was in radio, but I had a camera
Speaker 1: with me. And then as I moved up the chain,
Speaker 1: and he was a superstar in comedy, in acting, in baseball,
Speaker 1: he followed my career. Hey, you know, I remember I
Speaker 1: met you. You were just this college punk kid, and
Speaker 1: I said, this kid's got something here. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. I said, you didn't tell me that.
Speaker 1: He said, I don't need the competition. Big laugh, slap
Speaker 1: on the back, Alibastia pal every time. And I'd love
Speaker 1: to say, well, we had a special relationship, nothing of
Speaker 1: the kind. Thousands of people have a story about Bob
Speaker 1: Ucker encouraging them one way or the other, a great
Speaker 1: positive forcing life. And this doesn't even touch on the
Speaker 1: quality of the light beer commercials. It doesn't touch on
Speaker 1: the major league role of the typical baseball announcer. There
Speaker 1: are more people that I know who knew nothing about
Speaker 1: baseball could not believe, having seen that movie Major League,
Speaker 1: that Bob Bucker was an actual Major League baseball announcer
Speaker 1: and a prominent one. They thought he was just a
Speaker 1: great actor doing a bit like Hank Azaria later who
Speaker 1: did a series about an unintentionally funny baseball announcer. They
Speaker 1: thought Bob Bucker was an actor. No, No, he was
Speaker 1: just doing an exaggerated and again self deprecating, dead pan
Speaker 1: version of himself. I really got to know Bob in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. I was assigned after I joined MSNBC
Speaker 1: and NBC Sports, the first big thing I did after
Speaker 1: launching my cable news program in October of nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Like a week later, I hit the road. I was
Speaker 1: the new guy on the NBC Sports World Series team,
Speaker 1: fulfilling the childhood dream. Bob Costas was the play by
Speaker 1: play man, Joe Morgan and Bob Yucker were the color announcers,
Speaker 1: and Hannah Storm and I did the pregame show and
Speaker 1: I was in the dugouts during the World Series game.
Speaker 1: A lot of childhood dreams fulfilled all at once. And
Speaker 1: with that, of course, even though I was thirty eight
Speaker 1: years old, there was a little nervousness. I had established
Speaker 1: myself at ESPN was just trying something new in news,
Speaker 1: and here I was stepping back for the first time
Speaker 1: in several months since I left Sports Center into sports
Speaker 1: and not certain of what I was doing. I wasn't
Speaker 1: that good a reporter. I'd be fine on the pregame show,
Speaker 1: in the postgame show, but who knew what I was
Speaker 1: going to say during the game. Sitting in the dugouter
Speaker 1: next to it where I didn't belong anyway, I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure I belonged in the whole operation. And the first
Speaker 1: meeting on the road in Miami for the Florida Marlins
Speaker 1: Cleveland Indians World Series as they were known at the time,
Speaker 1: I come down for the breakfast before the first meeting,
Speaker 1: and there in line ahead of me at the buffet,
Speaker 1: Bob Buker, Hey, pal, congratulations man. I saw that first
Speaker 1: news show the other day. That was great. He says, Cee. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm just worried about one thing, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm worried about a lot of things. He goes, it'd
Speaker 1: be fine. I said, what's bothering you? Youuke? He said,
Speaker 1: I'm now just the second funniest guy on our World
Speaker 1: Series crew. And of course, if you're in there with
Speaker 1: Bob Buker, you better be dead paned back. You better
Speaker 1: give it back to him. I know there's a joke
Speaker 1: coming in here somewhere, or at least I thought there was.
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, I'll play who's now the funniest guy
Speaker 1: on our World Series crew? And then I mentioned a
Speaker 1: name of somebody we all hated, so it was like, so,
Speaker 1: who's first? Blankety blank? He roared say that on the air,
Speaker 1: I dare you? Then after I laughed and he laughed,
Speaker 1: and he tapped me on the chest. You pal imagine
Speaker 1: that for your first World Series game. That's why he
Speaker 1: was a great catcher who didn't hit and was not
Speaker 1: considered that great a fielder, and lasted six seasons in
Speaker 1: the major leagues and was traded back to the team
Speaker 1: that he started with because they missed him, and then
Speaker 1: hired as a coach and that didn't work out. A story,
Speaker 1: I'll tell him a little bit. He was a great
Speaker 1: asset to any organization he was with. That's what it
Speaker 1: was about. Like before his first World Series game, like
Speaker 1: my first World Series game, I got tapped on the
Speaker 1: chest Bob Bob Yuker telling me he thought I was
Speaker 1: funnier than he was before his first World Series game.
Speaker 1: He went out to the warning track in the outfield
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis and grabbed the tuba from the band
Speaker 1: that was playing on the warning track before Game one
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixty four World Series and began to
Speaker 1: play the tuba. There are photos of him, you can
Speaker 1: find them on Google. Uker tuba and there he is,
Speaker 1: I think, with Roger Craig, a pitcher with that team,
Speaker 1: holding in his laughter as usual. It's like, where's Uker.
Speaker 1: He's supposed to warm up Gibson, and of course the
Speaker 1: answer was he's naturally, he's out in center field playing
Speaker 1: the tuba. I shared a photo on social media after
Speaker 1: Bob died, after the Brewers announced he had passed away.
Speaker 1: It's from twenty twelve. It's at City Field in New York,
Speaker 1: in the press box before Brewers Mets game, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take any chances. I took the subway
Speaker 1: out on a desperately humid day even for New York
Speaker 1: in the middle of summer, and my polo shirt is
Speaker 1: like it looked like it was a pattern. It's half
Speaker 1: subway sweat was a light green, I think, and then
Speaker 1: over here it's a dark green and it's just me
Speaker 1: sweating on my way, out standing all the way on
Speaker 1: the seven train, and we pose for a photo because
Speaker 1: I said, Bob, I know you like forty years and
Speaker 1: I don't have a photo with you. Let's take care
Speaker 1: of that right now, pal. And he's in a nice
Speaker 1: shirt and tie. He's ready to go. And I think
Speaker 1: he was only on the radio. And he's still in
Speaker 1: a nice shirt and tie, and he says, as we're
Speaker 1: about to take the photo, he gives a quick glance
Speaker 1: over to my sweaty shirt and a big sweat stain.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's the size of a football, my
Speaker 1: sweat stain, he says. Just before they take the photo,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, you didn't have to get all
Speaker 1: nervous just for me. Keith standard yuke stuff. Occasionally you
Speaker 1: were the point of the joke. Mostly he put himself
Speaker 1: in a position of seeming dim or not understanding or
Speaker 1: as in the story with his father willing to sign
Speaker 1: with the Milwaukee Braves in nineteen fifty seven and pay
Speaker 1: them twenty thousand dollars for the privilege. Sean Casey, the
Speaker 1: former Major League Baseball player and now an MLB network
Speaker 1: host and a podcaster himself, told a story over the
Speaker 1: weekend that was worth mentioning, although I encourage you to
Speaker 1: find it on social media because his version of it
Speaker 1: has been edited to show what he's talking about. But
Speaker 1: when Casey came to bat to borrow an old poem,
Speaker 1: Casey at the bat would as a timing device to
Speaker 1: get him in sync with his swing and everything else,
Speaker 1: and he was a damn good hitter. Sean Casey used
Speaker 1: to raise his back foot his left foot in the
Speaker 1: batter's box three times, three separate times. He basically flexed
Speaker 1: at the knee, just as a quirk, as a timing
Speaker 1: device to keep him and ready for the pitch. All
Speaker 1: the hitters have something. His was a series of leg
Speaker 1: lifts in the middle of a bat, and he always
Speaker 1: did three of them. And as Casey told the story,
Speaker 1: his Cincinnati Reds went into Milwaukee one day and he
Speaker 1: stood in at the plate and lifted the leg and
Speaker 1: the entire Milwaukee crowd shouted one, and he didn't know
Speaker 1: whether that was for him or what? Are they all
Speaker 1: ordering a beer at the same time. He does it
Speaker 1: again two, the whole crowd thirty forty thousand people, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't know what's going on, And then he does
Speaker 1: the third one, and they all of course shout surprisingly
Speaker 1: enough free. He later put it all together and found
Speaker 1: out because Bob Yucker came down after the game and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: case how'd you like a crowd chatting along with you.
Speaker 1: Yuker had set it up, and this is the Yuker
Speaker 1: practical joke. It's one thing to get, say, a bunch
Speaker 1: of players to chant when another player raises his leg
Speaker 1: and count them down. He got the whole crowd. He've
Speaker 1: been telling the audience of his broadcasts for days that
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati Reds were coming to town and Sean Casey
Speaker 1: did this thing with his leg before each at bat,
Speaker 1: and they should help him by doing this practical joke
Speaker 1: on Sean Casey, who was a great guy, and we
Speaker 1: should have him here on the browers. He'd fit in
Speaker 1: right well here and count off his leg lifts. And
Speaker 1: they did it for the entire series. That was a
Speaker 1: Euker practical joke. He had thirty thousand assistants. One thing
Speaker 1: that I asked Bob Bucker about was this startling stat
Speaker 1: I mentioned the nineteen sixty five Saint Louis Cardinals and
Speaker 1: the hand holding photo, which was of course retaken, although
Speaker 1: you can find the original. They did print it out
Speaker 1: and Bob kept it and every time he went on
Speaker 1: the Tonight show he showed it. The nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: Saint Louis Cardinals had thirty five players on their roster
Speaker 1: all year. I mean, nowadays baseball teams approach one hundred
Speaker 1: different players on a roster. Certainly fifty sixty five had
Speaker 1: thirty five different Saint Louis Cardinals at one point or
Speaker 1: the other. The starting catcher was Tim McCarver, who went
Speaker 1: on to a career in baseball broadcasting as a baseball
Speaker 1: broadcaster with a sense of humor and was probably more
Speaker 1: prominent within baseball broadcasting circles than Bob Bucker ever was,
Speaker 1: although Bob Bucker was also an actor and a commercial
Speaker 1: pitch man. But so that's Tim McCarver and Bob Buker
Speaker 1: were the Cardinals catchers. The first baseman was Bill White,
Speaker 1: who for twenty five years was a play by play
Speaker 1: announcer for the New York Yankees, and he was an
Speaker 1: ABC Game of the Week announcer. The second baseman was
Speaker 1: Julian Jabber, And Yuke told me once as I was
Speaker 1: going through this list with him that Jabber he thought
Speaker 1: had done Winter League broadcasts back in his native Dominican Republic,
Speaker 1: if we weren't sure about that, And I've never been
Speaker 1: able to nail it down. But let's say he's right.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't he be. That's four broadcasters on this one
Speaker 1: team out of thirty five players. Oh wait, there's more.
Speaker 1: The shortstop Dick Groat was for forty years. Here's the
Speaker 1: color man on the basketball broadcast on radio for the
Speaker 1: University of Pittsburgh. The outfield the starting outfield of the
Speaker 1: sixty five Cardinals was Kurt Flood, who, apart from his
Speaker 1: role in baseball free agency and the Change in the Game,
Speaker 1: later did Oakland A's games on the radio. He was
Speaker 1: flanked by Lou Brock, the left fielder future White Sox
Speaker 1: and Game of the Week announcer, and in right field
Speaker 1: by Mike Shannon, who would become the Cardinals announcer for
Speaker 1: forty seasons. Among the pitchers were Bob Gibson, the handholding
Speaker 1: friend of Bob Bucker, future host of the Cardinals radio
Speaker 1: pregame show and an occasional announcer on Games of the
Speaker 1: Week as well. Nelson Briles was a rookie on that team.
Speaker 1: He was to become an announcer on Pirates broadcast and
Speaker 1: Mariners broadcast and the original Baseball Cable broadcast on the
Speaker 1: USA Network, and another pitcher on that team was named
Speaker 1: Bob Perky, who, when he retired the next year, became
Speaker 1: a local sportscaster on the local news in Pittsburgh. And
Speaker 1: on the bench was an outfielder first baseman named Tito
Speaker 1: Francona who had a six year old kid named Terry
Speaker 1: who used to hang out at the ballpark in Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: and eventually he spent a year as the color man
Speaker 1: on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. So that's thirty five players,
Speaker 1: eleven of whom became announcers, including Bob Buker, who would
Speaker 1: be in the Announcer Hall of Fame, and Tim McCarver
Speaker 1: who would be in the Announcer Hall of Fame, and
Speaker 1: Mike Shannon who would probably be in the announcer Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame, and Bill White who would be in the
Speaker 1: announcer Hall of Fame and should be in the Baseball
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame anyway, thirty five players, eleven of whom
Speaker 1: became from full time professional announcers at least briefly, and
Speaker 1: the twelfth whose son became an announcer. I asked Bob
Speaker 1: Buker what those bus rides were like with the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five Saint Louis Cardinals. So bad I demanded a
Speaker 1: trade pal. They sure showed me. They traded me to Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Bob Ucker's career began, and not a lot of people
Speaker 1: know this. To quote Michael Kine, not a lot of
Speaker 1: people notice. Bob Uker's career as an announcer actually happened
Speaker 1: kind of by accident. He certainly had no intention of
Speaker 1: becoming a baseball announcer. At the end of his active
Speaker 1: career with the Atlanta Braves in nineteen sixty seven, they
Speaker 1: released him but said, we have a deal for you
Speaker 1: next year. Come to spring training as a free agent
Speaker 1: without a contract as a player, and either you make
Speaker 1: the team because we need somebody to catch our knuckleball
Speaker 1: pitcher Phil Nikro, or we'll make you a coach. You
Speaker 1: can be the bullpen catcher and we'll have you do
Speaker 1: in addition to the coaching, you can be one of
Speaker 1: our community speakers. The teams don't do this much anymore,
Speaker 1: but each team in the sixties and seventies used to
Speaker 1: try to promote the franchise because the average attendance at
Speaker 1: a Major League Baseball game in nineteen sixty eight was
Speaker 1: probably about thirteen thousand people. They used to have speakers bureaus,
Speaker 1: and each team had between two and ten guys who
Speaker 1: went around to whatever kind of assembly requested somebody from
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Braves. If you had two hundred people in
Speaker 1: a room and wanted somebody from the Braves, they'd send
Speaker 1: Bob Yucker. That was the plan. Then in the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight, there was some kind of and
Speaker 1: obviously you don't go and ask the man about this,
Speaker 1: but there was some kind of altercation at a bar
Speaker 1: in spring training in Florida, West Palm Beach, I presume,
Speaker 1: which is where the Braves trained. Then, in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Bob Yucker, for whom they took the promotional photograph of
Speaker 1: him in the Atlanta Braves brand new nineteen sixty eight uniforms,
Speaker 1: as a coach because he was past his prime as
Speaker 1: a playing career. He would interject here and say, I
Speaker 1: never had a prime as a playing career. He was
Speaker 1: going to be a coach, And they took the picture,
Speaker 1: and then something happened at a bar and they said,
Speaker 1: we can't put you in uniform anymore, so we're going
Speaker 1: to punish you you can only do the speaking engagements.
Speaker 1: And one of our announcers also does a lot of
Speaker 1: college football and other assignments during the season and likes
Speaker 1: to take time off. So we'll give you like ten
Speaker 1: games to be an announcer for us. And he did
Speaker 1: some fill in work in Atlanta, and then somebody in
Speaker 1: Milwaukee said come home and do the same for us,
Speaker 1: And he was a fill in for the Brewers and
Speaker 1: a coach sometimes instructor for them, And in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one and seventy two he gradually moved into the booth
Speaker 1: and the rest is history through last season when he
Speaker 1: worked while ill, and he probably would have continued to
Speaker 1: work with them in some capacity next year. So his career,
Speaker 1: all this, all this was spontaneous, as he was after
Speaker 1: he got fired from the job. He actually wanted bullpen
Speaker 1: coach another former Brewers catcher, and he was particularly coached
Speaker 1: close to all catchers in his playing career and afterwards
Speaker 1: was named Jonathan Lucroix. And Jonathan Lucroix shared on social
Speaker 1: media a text exchange which I think sums Bob Youuger
Speaker 1: up and emphasizes the point I made before self deprecation
Speaker 1: comedic timing and dead pan humor. There were no arrows,
Speaker 1: no knowing smiles given to tell you to telegraph that
Speaker 1: here comes the punchline. I mean, I like to think
Speaker 1: of myself as a fairly spontaneous guy, and my reputation
Speaker 1: at SportsCenter was doing pretty good ad libbed highlights with
Speaker 1: jokes in them. But most of them were jokes I
Speaker 1: tried out at least once before we got on the air.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was spontaneous, completely spontaneous, but usually it was
Speaker 1: spontaneous and then repeated. I give myself credit for that.
Speaker 1: Bob was just spontaneous. The really good stuff. As I
Speaker 1: said before, he would reuse later, but almost all of
Speaker 1: it follows this exact text chain Jonathan Lucroix was good
Speaker 1: enough to share on social media. It was after a
Speaker 1: harrowing collision at the plate in twenty nineteen, one of
Speaker 1: the last times that a base runner came into home
Speaker 1: plate and basically blew the catcher up, as we used
Speaker 1: to say, they had to cart Jonathan lucroy off the field,
Speaker 1: and that night Bob Buker texted LUCROI hope you're doing okay, Luke,
Speaker 1: get better soon. No punctuation of course, Hey, Yuke, concussion
Speaker 1: and broken nose, I just got way better looking. Kind
Speaker 1: of a standard line, but pretty good for a baseball player,
Speaker 1: Lucroy wrote back. Uker responds, sorry to hear that, Luke.
Speaker 1: That was a hell of a wreck. Nothing you could do.
Speaker 1: Hope you're getting better. Hello to Sarah and the kids.
Speaker 1: I had a similar incident, but it was from my
Speaker 1: own team. Again, there's no exclamation point, there's no winky emoji,
Speaker 1: and he's using other emojis throughout this. Bob had that
Speaker 1: kind of sense of humor. You didn't have to sweat
Speaker 1: get all nervous just for me, pal. Thanks for checking in,
Speaker 1: you writes, and I hope you'll get better quick. Always
Speaker 1: great to hear from you. Would rather have it as
Speaker 1: a normal check in, but thanks and get well, Bob Buker,
Speaker 1: guy who cared. Kind of took the edge off that,
Speaker 1: let you know you mattered to him, supported you when
Speaker 1: you needed support through in a free joke, spontaneous at
Speaker 1: least the first time he said it. The world lost
Speaker 1: a creative genius in terms of humor, in terms of
Speaker 1: self deprecation, in terms of timing, in terms of effortlessness,
Speaker 1: and everybody lost a good friend, Bob Buker rest in peace.
Speaker 1: And I'll add one more thing. No, he was not
Speaker 1: the second funniest guy in the nineteen ninety seven World
Speaker 1: Series NBC broadcast team. He was, as always the first.
Speaker 1: I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Good luck today. Brian Ray and John
Speaker 1: Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and
Speaker 1: performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.
Speaker 1: Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical
Speaker 1: comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.
Speaker 1: Sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written
Speaker 1: by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music
Speaker 1: arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My
Speaker 1: announcer today was my friend Larry David doing his impression
Speaker 1: of the PA announcer at Yankee Stadium, Bob Shephard, in
Speaker 1: honor of Bob Uker. Everything else was as my fault.
Speaker 1: That's countdown for today, Doomsday the Reducks, but just sixty
Speaker 1: two days until the scheduled end of his lame duck
Speaker 1: and lame brained and totally constitutionally ineligible term, probably and
Speaker 1: he's already screwed it up. Oh it's cold. The next
Speaker 1: scheduled countdown is Thursday. As always, bulletins is the news
Speaker 1: warrants till next time. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Howtown with Keith Olderman is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.