Speaker 1: Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. The
Speaker 1: President is wrong, Paul Begala is wrong, the polls are right,
Speaker 1: and Trump's convictions continue to eat away at his Republican
Speaker 1: support and the Democrats need to emphasize his criminality at
Speaker 1: every turn. Now it is Morning Consults weekly tracking poll,
Speaker 1: and ignore the swing from Trump plus one last week
Speaker 1: to Biden plus one this week. This is their analysis
Speaker 1: of their poll quote New York trial hurt Trump's image.
Speaker 1: This is the sixth successive week in which Biden's net
Speaker 1: favorability rating has bettered Trump's, a trend that began as
Speaker 1: legal proceedings in New York ramped up. The latest data
Speaker 1: shows Trump's worst net favorability rating since last January. That
Speaker 1: is the point Biden's net favorability is minus nine. Trump's
Speaker 1: is now minus twelve. He is further underwater in the
Speaker 1: land of the Bland. The one digit disapproval guy is king.
Speaker 1: The day before the Morning Consult poll was the CBS
Speaker 1: you gov poll, and Trump was ahead fifty to forty nine,
Speaker 1: but Biden is ahead in battleground states fifty to forty nine.
Speaker 1: To their eternal discredit, Ugov and CBS gives you none
Speaker 1: of the raw data in the battleground states, nor anything
Speaker 1: on a state by state basis, only saying we oversampled
Speaker 1: in them in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. That's like looking outside your window and saying
Speaker 1: there's some weather out there. CBS also completely and more
Speaker 1: importantly misses the point when it asks which issues are
Speaker 1: major factors in your vote, and it gets eighty one
Speaker 1: percent saying yes, the economy is a major factor in
Speaker 1: my vote. Seventy five percent say yes, inflation is, seventy
Speaker 1: four percent say the state of democracy is fifty six
Speaker 1: percent say yes, the US Mexico border is a major
Speaker 1: factor in my vote. And then CBS concludes only twenty
Speaker 1: eight percent said the Trump conviction would be a major
Speaker 1: factor in their vote. Seventeen percent said it would be
Speaker 1: a minor factor, right twenty eight percent, So fifty six
Speaker 1: percent say the border, immigration, deportation, the Trump racism card.
Speaker 1: Fifty six percent say that is a major factor in
Speaker 1: their vote, something Trump has been selling NonStop for nine years,
Speaker 1: but half that many say his conviction, which is still
Speaker 1: just twelve days old, is also a major factor. In
Speaker 1: twelve days, Trump's conviction in the hush money election interference
Speaker 1: trial has become half as important as immigration and the border.
Speaker 1: And that is being dismissed in the write up as
Speaker 1: being a minor factor. It is in fact, astonishingly large,
Speaker 1: astonishingly fast, and that's not even considering the minor voters.
Speaker 1: Twenty eight percent say it's a major factor, seventeen percent
Speaker 1: say it's a minor factor. Nearly half of voters say
Speaker 1: his convictions are a factor in their vote. CBS also
Speaker 1: noted in passing that the conviction seem to be improving
Speaker 1: Biden's position with Democrats. Of course it is. It is
Speaker 1: animating them. That's the other point. We see the same
Speaker 1: thing in a different you gov poll for Yahoo News,
Speaker 1: which has Biden up forty six to forty four. And
Speaker 1: by the way, that's his first lead in that poll
Speaker 1: since October. And again, more importantly, let me quote the
Speaker 1: write up, Trump's conviction in the hush money case may
Speaker 1: have even made aid some otherwise skeptical Democrats and independence
Speaker 1: more inclined to believe that Trump is guilty of other crimes.
Speaker 1: The number of Americans who now think Trump quote conspired
Speaker 1: to overturn the results of a presidential election, for instance,
Speaker 1: has grown from forty five percent to fifty percent since January,
Speaker 1: which includes a seventy nine percent to eighty eight percent
Speaker 1: uptick among Democrats plus a forty five percent to fifty
Speaker 1: percent uptick among independents. And belief that Trump is guilty
Speaker 1: of taking highly classified documents from the White House and
Speaker 1: obstructing efforts to retrieve them has increased from forty eight
Speaker 1: percent to fifty two percent over the same period, with
Speaker 1: similar gains among Democrats and independents. Hallelujah. The point is
Speaker 1: being made for us that Yahoo poll also shows voters
Speaker 1: want to know how those trials will turn out before
Speaker 1: the election, and although this will not happen, if Trump
Speaker 1: were to be convicted of another serious crime before the election,
Speaker 1: Biden's lead would widen to forty six to forty And that,
Speaker 1: of course, is why his concierge, Judge Eileen Cannon, and
Speaker 1: the Political Supreme Court have worked so hard to prevent
Speaker 1: any other verdicts before the election. And Yahoo also asked,
Speaker 1: and this is more important, and I give them all
Speaker 1: the credit in the world. Which is more important to you?
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's age or Donald Trump's conviction, the result the
Speaker 1: Trump conviction is more important to forty three percent, the
Speaker 1: Biden age is more important to thirty eight percent. And
Speaker 1: nobody knows how to read the polls. And so with
Speaker 1: the most encouraging polling numbers for Biden and more importantly
Speaker 1: against Trump, showing an awareness of Trump's criminality, the most
Speaker 1: encouraging polling numbers this year, and hard and fast polling
Speaker 1: evidence that the convictions are hurting Trump well for polling
Speaker 1: meaning the mud is slightly clearer than the usual mud.
Speaker 1: What is the Biden campaign doing with these the most
Speaker 1: encouraging polling numbers this year? Off camera, the President is
Speaker 1: telling people at fundraisers that Trump is a convicted felon
Speaker 1: and that having a convicted felon seeking the presidency is disturbing,
Speaker 1: And on camera, in an interview with ABC News, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it. What do you think the American people
Speaker 1: should make of this? How important do you think this
Speaker 1: conviction should be in this race for president? That's for
Speaker 1: the public to decide.
Speaker 2: But one thing for certain is stop undermining the rule
Speaker 2: of law.
Speaker 1: No wrong answer, no, mister president ah ah. That's for
Speaker 1: the public. To decide. This is not an American idol vote,
Speaker 1: This isn't coke versus pepsi. This isn't the time to
Speaker 1: stay above the fray. This is democracy or dictatorship. This
Speaker 1: is life or death. And most people voting don't know that.
Speaker 1: And you are the president of the United States, and
Speaker 1: you have to make the case to them. You don't
Speaker 1: have to sink to Trump's brain damaged rhetorical level. That's
Speaker 1: for me to do, but to say that's for the
Speaker 1: public to decide, Help them decide. Tell them the truth,
Speaker 1: because mister president, when you hesitate like that, all the
Speaker 1: other Democrats think they are supposed to hesitate. Paul freaking
Speaker 1: Begala goes on CNN and says, quote, the Democrats have
Speaker 1: to make this about your life, not Donald Trump's. I
Speaker 1: mean it's always you know, I was politically raised by
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, and he would always say, you know, elections
Speaker 1: are about the voters lives, not ours, and Democrats need
Speaker 1: to take this to that message of we're here for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not very interested in mister Trump's personal problems. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in the lives and families of the American people. Bullshit, bullshit.
Speaker 1: Paul Bagala Trump's personal problems, like his you know, dictatorship problem,
Speaker 1: and his if I lose this election, I'll die in
Speaker 1: prison problem, and his I'm a convicted felon problem, These
Speaker 1: are all also about the voter's lives. Trump is willing
Speaker 1: to end all of the voter's lives just to save
Speaker 1: his own. You want to debate how much economics, how
Speaker 1: much immigration, and how much dictatorship in the mix here, fine,
Speaker 1: but don't tell me you're not interested, mister in mister
Speaker 1: Trump's personal problems, or I will have to mention that
Speaker 1: your last consulting job was on Hillary Clinton's two thousand campaign,
Speaker 1: and we know how that turned out. And you and
Speaker 1: the others are still thinking twenty twenty four is just
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six with a little added pizazz, a little
Speaker 1: free song of you know, America is going out of
Speaker 1: business sale. The suicidal madness of the Paul begalas even
Speaker 1: the Biden reluctance to just harshly focus on Trump's convictions,
Speaker 1: is also at its core and inability to realize that
Speaker 1: not only can you base a campaign on more than
Speaker 1: one theme, more than one slogan, more than one pitch,
Speaker 1: but that in these days of epically low attention spans.
Speaker 1: You have to Nobody is saying the whole anti Trump
Speaker 1: campaign should be about his crimes. You need to have
Speaker 1: as many ads about his attempts to overthrow democracy, but
Speaker 1: you also need just as many and just as bold
Speaker 1: ads about meat and potatoes issues. I wouldn't be so
Speaker 1: upset about this if the Biden advertising We're a little stronger.
Speaker 1: Trump keeps promising to defund all schools that have vaccine mandates. Well,
Speaker 1: this should be an advertising no brainer. I cooked this up.
Speaker 1: It took me about forty five seconds. Convicted fellow, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump wants to keep your children from getting vaccines. All vaccines,
Speaker 1: he says. I will not give one penny to any
Speaker 1: school that has a vaccine mandates. No vaccines, says Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: No measles vaccine, no tetanus vaccine, no polio vaccine. Just
Speaker 1: sixty years ago, six thousand American children died from polio
Speaker 1: because there was no vaccine. Convicted fellon, Donald Trump wants
Speaker 1: to keep your children from getting the polio vaccine. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump wants to kill your children. Okay, how hard was that?
Speaker 1: Just slap? I'm Joe Biden, and I approved this message
Speaker 1: on the end, and you have a campaign ad, and
Speaker 1: and you have the lead story in the news cycle
Speaker 1: that day, simple, memorable and by the way true. What
Speaker 1: are you thing's gonna happen if Trump is reelected and
Speaker 1: there are no vaccines? Once again, I wrote that in
Speaker 1: forty five seconds. Imagine what a pro could do. Don't
Speaker 1: tell me it's too tough. We need that Willy Horton
Speaker 1: commercial attitude, only with facts and reality. Or if you
Speaker 1: don't want to do the Trump wants to kill your
Speaker 1: kids ad, how about a quick pocketbook style commercial convicted felon.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump wants to deport millions of people. Maybe you
Speaker 1: like this idea, maybe you hate it, but either way,
Speaker 1: he's going to make you pay for it. Who does
Speaker 1: the tough jobs in this country? Who harvests the crops,
Speaker 1: who cooks at the restaurants, who delivers things to your home?
Speaker 1: What happens when Trump has deported all the people who
Speaker 1: do all the tough jobs. Companies will have to spend
Speaker 1: twice as much to get people to do those jobs.
Speaker 1: Guess who will pay for that? You will guess what
Speaker 1: happens then? Inflation? Donald Trump wants more inflation. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can make one of these for every topic you
Speaker 1: could think of, from the price of gas to the
Speaker 1: impact of Trump's stance on climate change on the cost
Speaker 1: of orange juice. In fact, you could make ten new
Speaker 1: ones a day. I could make ten new ones a day.
Speaker 1: This isn't as hard as the Paul Begalas of this
Speaker 1: World wants you to think. And you can go really topical.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean really topical. I ask you only
Speaker 1: for this one one visualization for me. Visualize lots of
Speaker 1: shots of the Appeal to Heaven flag and the upside
Speaker 1: down American flags, and lots of shots of guys in robes.
Speaker 1: Convicted felon Donald Trump loves Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito,
Speaker 1: you know, the flag guy. And sam Alito has told
Speaker 1: an investigative reporter that he agrees with her that America's
Speaker 1: future is a choice. Tolerant moderates like you must lose,
Speaker 1: lose everything so that sam Alito and convicted felon Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and other religious fanatics can win.
Speaker 3: One side or the other. One side or the other
Speaker 3: is right away.
Speaker 1: That's what Trump and Alito want. They want to win,
Speaker 1: and they want you to lose everything. Vote Democratic. We
Speaker 1: will get sam Alito off the Supreme Court, or we
Speaker 1: will expand the Supreme Court. Because this country is for
Speaker 1: all the people. This isn't Iran, this is America. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine how much fun that one will be putting on
Speaker 1: the tag. I'm Joe Biden and I approved this message
Speaker 1: because this isn't Iran. If that clip of Alito there
Speaker 1: surprised you read the Rolling Stone piece about my friend,
Speaker 1: the investigative journalist Lauren Windsor and Sam Alito, and once
Speaker 1: again we survive thanks to the stupidity of the people
Speaker 1: who would kill us. This is the second time Lauren
Speaker 1: has gotten sam Alito to disqualify himself on tape. She
Speaker 1: did it last year too. She just massages the egos
Speaker 1: of these self indulgent psychos long enough and the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, they're going all Illuminati on her.
Speaker 3: It's easy to blame to blame the media, but I
Speaker 3: do blame really because they do nothing like con sizes
Speaker 3: and so they have really road in trust in.
Speaker 1: Years. I don't know, I really don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: ordinary people, ordinary.
Speaker 3: Is and where I work for Americans. So this is
Speaker 3: in general, need to work on us to try to
Speaker 3: heal this polarization, because it's very dangerous.
Speaker 4: The polar.
Speaker 1: I think it is a matter of like winning.
Speaker 3: I think they're probably right one side or the other.
Speaker 3: One side or the other is going to win.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean there can be.
Speaker 3: I mean a way of working, a way of living
Speaker 3: together peacefully. But it's difficult, you know, because there are
Speaker 3: differences and fundamental things that really can't.
Speaker 4: Be coming out.
Speaker 3: He can't be off us, so it's not.
Speaker 1: Like you're going to what the difference. Unbelievably, in the
Speaker 1: Alito family, Justice Alito had the best night while talking
Speaker 1: to Lauren Windsor, Oh boy.
Speaker 5: Why do you think they're coming after you?
Speaker 1: I mean, like the whole I appeal to.
Speaker 5: Have headed flags of bullshit right.
Speaker 6: But that's you know. The other thing is that I'm
Speaker 6: not easy to believe that he should control me.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's loco to help.
Speaker 1: He never kench as well. Wait, there's more. What's the
Speaker 1: Italian proverb about? Revenge is a dish which people of
Speaker 1: taste prefer to eat cold with a lot of apparatefs.
Speaker 1: My heritage is a dream.
Speaker 6: You come after me to I do away.
Speaker 7: It doesn't have to email that though, the way, Davringo,
Speaker 7: you know what I want I want a sacred Heart
Speaker 7: of Jesus' flag because I have to look across the
Speaker 7: lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month xadly
Speaker 7: and he's like, oh, please, don't put up a flag.
Speaker 6: I said, I won't do it because I'm deferring to you.
Speaker 6: But when you were free of this nonsense, I'm putting
Speaker 6: it up. And I'm going to send them a message.
Speaker 3: Every day, maybe every week.
Speaker 1: I'll be changing the flags. There'll be all kinds.
Speaker 6: I made a flag in my head. This is how
Speaker 6: I satisfy myself. I made a flag. It's white and
Speaker 6: it's yellow and orange flames around it, and in the
Speaker 6: middle is the word vigonia. Virgonia in Italian means shame,
Speaker 6: virgonia v e rg o g na vergon shame, shame.
Speaker 1: Shame on you. I would say, as many have, hearing
Speaker 1: the whole tape of her too quick recordings of Alido,
Speaker 1: that he must resign, except that the theocrats in this
Speaker 1: country are hearing those Lauren windsor tapes and rejoicing and
Speaker 1: sacrificing goat or whatever it is they do, because Alito
Speaker 1: is their guy. And we have now certainly entered into
Speaker 1: what we can safely called the post resignation era of
Speaker 1: American political history, in which nobody will go voluntarily, no
Speaker 1: matter the shame, no matter the crime, no matter the corruption,
Speaker 1: no matter the number of times they don't recognize that
Speaker 1: it's Lauren Windsor batting her eyes at them. Trump had
Speaker 1: his first meeting with his probation officer yesterday Inhale. For
Speaker 1: a second, think about the reality that a presidential candidate
Speaker 1: having a with his probation officer ya zoom has happened,
Speaker 1: and it was not only not covered live on all
Speaker 1: news networks in the world, especially considering they really had
Speaker 1: nothing else to talk about, but I didn't even lead
Speaker 1: this podcast with it. A meeting with a probation officer
Speaker 1: who's going to report to the judge with recommendations or
Speaker 1: at least assessments that will affect whether or not the
Speaker 1: judge sends him to the Big House at the sentencing
Speaker 1: on July eleventh. By the way, Trump just learned what
Speaker 1: I found out like fifteen years ago. Why you do
Speaker 1: not rely on Jonathan Turley as a legal expert or
Speaker 1: as anything else. Jonathan Turley went on Fox and says
Speaker 1: Judge Mayor Shawn kn't send Trump to prison because Trump
Speaker 1: is an elderly first time offender. He called him elderly,
Speaker 1: elderly convicted fellon Donald Trump. And look, I'm holding up
Speaker 1: these papers by Jonathan Turley. I don't know that Trump
Speaker 1: will be quoting any more. Turley articles elderly first time
Speaker 1: offender Donald Trump. Ah, yeah, maybe put it in a
Speaker 1: B section, Mac, but yeah, a lead nowh Hello, we
Speaker 1: got the hotter Biden. Jerry went home without giving us
Speaker 1: a verdict. Oh the pat Sayjack retirement. At the risk
Speaker 1: of devoting the entire podcast to naval gazing and philosophy,
Speaker 1: it can never be over emphasized. Part of Trump's success
Speaker 1: is this firehouse fire hose effect. There's so much going
Speaker 1: on that something that happened Sunday is already forgotten, like
Speaker 1: uh well, like Trump glitching again. In fact, he he
Speaker 1: escalated from ordinary glitching to the record scratch glitch, where
Speaker 1: you immediately repeat what you just said and neither times
Speaker 1: can you finish the word oh man.
Speaker 2: And no, I'll tell you what. These are sick people.
Speaker 2: And I hope the military. I hope the military revolts
Speaker 2: at the voting booth and just says we're not gonna
Speaker 2: take it.
Speaker 1: Military Milt also forgotten from Sunday, Trump out and out
Speaker 1: lying about disrespecting the military. Re let me finish that
Speaker 1: for you, military re Trump out and out lying about
Speaker 1: having disrespected the military. Here he is denying it, followed
Speaker 1: by doing it on videotape in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Think of it from a practical standpoint. I'm standing there
Speaker 2: with generals and military people in a cemetery, and I
Speaker 2: look at them, I say, these people are suckers and losers. Now,
Speaker 2: think of it unless you're a psycho or a crazy
Speaker 2: person or a very stupid person who would say that anyway,
Speaker 2: but who would say it to military people with military
Speaker 2: because as president of the United States, I would say
Speaker 2: if I made that statement, if I have generals here,
Speaker 2: if I haven't, I would imagine that most of them
Speaker 2: would end up in a major fistfight with the president. Okay,
Speaker 2: And you know what I would have said, It was okay.
Speaker 2: In that one instance, they made up a story. They
Speaker 2: just out of thin air, just like a lot of
Speaker 2: the fake stories are made up by these people because
Speaker 2: they're among the most dishonest people in the country, the
Speaker 2: fake news. They're dishonest people, but Frank, Frank, let.
Speaker 3: Me get to it.
Speaker 1: He hit me hero. He's not a war hero, war hero.
Speaker 2: He's a war high and a half years.
Speaker 1: He's a war hero because he was captured.
Speaker 2: I like people that weren't captured.
Speaker 4: Okay, I hate to tell you.
Speaker 1: She was a warrior. Yeah. He'd never say something bad
Speaker 1: about the military, except something bad about John McCain, and
Speaker 1: except about what General Kelly said. He said, which he
Speaker 1: then lied about. I wonder if that came up in
Speaker 1: the remote meeting with his freaking probation officer, or maybe
Speaker 1: maybe the freaking probation officer said, hey, is Jonathan Turley Wright?
Speaker 1: Are you an elderly first time offender? Elderly first time offender. God,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a song in that. I'm working
Speaker 1: on it. Also, even though the once great Washington Post
Speaker 1: is a wounded being lying there on the Veldt, which,
Speaker 1: if you know Washingt is take the metro, go to
Speaker 1: the National's Park station. It's out near there. Even though
Speaker 1: that's true, I am obligated to take a shot at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post because at this point it looks increasingly
Speaker 1: like Jeff Bezos adopted the phrase democracy dies in darkness
Speaker 1: as nothing more than a clever marketing slogan. And he
Speaker 1: don't give a damn about democracy dying in darkness, and
Speaker 1: he never did. The new Washington Post marketing slogan may
Speaker 1: very well be well. Democracy's dead already, so at least
Speaker 1: fascism makes me richer. The Post has profiled Russ's vote,
Speaker 1: the ironically named Trump cultist who is behind Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and theocratizing America and maybe you know, having
Speaker 1: the army shoot anti Trump civilians. Russ's vote could wind
Speaker 1: up as Trump's hmmler or gerring, or more likely his
Speaker 1: Albert spear. He's nuts, He's amoral, he is completely unburdened
Speaker 1: by conscience. He waives the flag of religion and then
Speaker 1: tries to put it through your thorax. If he wasn't bald,
Speaker 1: Trump might have considered vote for vice president. I mean
Speaker 1: vote Trump, vote perfect slogan. The Post headline in its
Speaker 1: profile about this man who is a danger to everything
Speaker 1: America has ever stood for quote Trump loyalist pushes post
Speaker 1: constitutional vision for second term post constitutional. In other words,
Speaker 1: we've cut to the chase, here have we, Washington Post,
Speaker 1: And we have already let Trump terminate the constitution. So
Speaker 1: we're post constitutional and we're already moving into shaping the dictatorship.
Speaker 1: And instead of a headline like this man wants to
Speaker 1: end your freedom and make you a slave, the Post
Speaker 1: goes with Trump loyalist pushes post constitutional vision for a
Speaker 1: second term, which makes me think of an article somewhere
Speaker 1: about your body decomposing after your death and the headline
Speaker 1: Trump loyalist pushes postlife weight loss plan. Why has American
Speaker 1: journalism descended to the next of Dante's circles of hell
Speaker 1: so quickly? You know about the British sleeves journalist the
Speaker 1: Washington Post brought in Trump loyalist pushes post American vision
Speaker 1: for America. But do you know about the British editor
Speaker 1: in chief of the Wall Street Journal the one who
Speaker 1: must have greenlighted that hit piece last week on the
Speaker 1: President's age, the one that only quoted Republicans and deliberately
Speaker 1: edited out all comments from Democrats. Daniel Lippman of Politico
Speaker 1: has a story about her. Her name is Emma Tucker,
Speaker 1: and the story sounds like it was written by mel
Speaker 1: Brooks that he cut it out of the producers. Mister
Speaker 1: Lippmann writes that at the Wall Street Journal party before
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three White House Correspondent's Dinner, Ms Tucker,
Speaker 1: in conversation with a journal staffer and an unidentified second person, said,
Speaker 1: and I'm quoting Politico here, that she hadn't realized that
Speaker 1: there were two Houses of Congress. Oh my god, she
Speaker 1: hadn't realized that there were two houses of Congress. Emma
Speaker 1: Tucker's response to this was, quote, this is garbage. Well,
Speaker 1: that's one description of it. I'd prefer to go with
Speaker 1: mel Brooks and the producers, like I mentioned the scene
Speaker 1: where he has the dilettant. Broadway producer Roger Debris played
Speaker 1: by Christopher Hewitt, read the script and say I never
Speaker 1: knew that the third Reich meant Germany. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just drenched with historical goodies like that. Wait, there's a
Speaker 1: North Dakota also of interest here. You think all that's bad?
Speaker 1: Which member of Congress? And by the way, there are
Speaker 1: two houses of Congress. Now have you heard, thanks Obama?
Speaker 1: Which member of Congress has indicated at a Trump rally
Speaker 1: that they believe that electric cars run on gas? I mean,
Speaker 1: you'd have to be pretty stupid to think that, So
Speaker 1: you have only like two hundred and seventy five choices.
Speaker 1: But I have faith in you. I think you can
Speaker 1: figure out who said this. That's next. This is an
Speaker 1: all new edition of Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith
Speaker 1: Olberman still ahead of us on this all new edition
Speaker 1: of Countdown. I am breaking format. One of those things
Speaker 1: has happened in sports that makes my hair catch fire,
Speaker 1: then turn white, then fall out, then grow back, then
Speaker 1: turn black, then turn white again. And I want to
Speaker 1: comment on it at length, and you may or may
Speaker 1: not be interested in that, so I'm going to put
Speaker 1: it last. So no things I promised not to tell today. Instead,
Speaker 1: I will give you my response to a survey of
Speaker 1: active baseball players by the website The Athletic, in which
Speaker 1: the active players absolutely trashed the old timers, and by
Speaker 1: old timers, they meet anybody who played before twenty ten.
Speaker 1: And apart from proving that nobody thinks as highly of
Speaker 1: today's baseball players as to today's baseball players, somebody grabbed
Speaker 1: what is for me personally the third rail. Somebody said,
Speaker 1: in talking about batters versus pitchers, you think Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: ever saw a slider because they were too arrogant to
Speaker 1: google it first, and find out that the slider was
Speaker 1: in use in baseball when Babe Ruth was nine years old.
Speaker 1: And that invokes the story of the active pitcher who
Speaker 1: a few years ago claimed he would strike out Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth every time he faced him. And by the way,
Speaker 1: his earned run average at this moment is five point
Speaker 1: seventy nine. Coming up. But first, as ever, there are
Speaker 1: still more new idiots to talk about who are not
Speaker 1: in baseball. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons
Speaker 1: and dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's non baseball
Speaker 1: worst persons in the world. And yes, if they ball cares,
Speaker 1: and I know it doesn't. Baseball's losing me the bronze worse.
Speaker 1: Governor Kathy Hokel, alleged Democrat of New York. Hokel has
Speaker 1: abruptly and it sure looks like she's done it illegally
Speaker 1: frozen the introduction of congestion pricing in New York City
Speaker 1: at the end of the month. This is where they
Speaker 1: charge you for going downtown. It's worked in cities around
Speaker 1: the world. It's increased traffic flow, increase the use of
Speaker 1: mass transit, decreased pollution, and she stopped it just her
Speaker 1: after it passed. She's being sued, she may be primaried.
Speaker 1: There may be a push forming to remove her. Happily,
Speaker 1: for her opponents, Kathy Hokel is just not bright. She
Speaker 1: claimed yesterday that no, she's not attending a fundraiser for
Speaker 1: her today in New York City. The fundraiser, which donors
Speaker 1: are being asked to fork over five to ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a piece, is being days after she came down
Speaker 1: in favor of cars and traffic and pollution and sucked
Speaker 1: a billion dollars worth of funding out of mass transit
Speaker 1: in New York City. This fundraiser for her is being
Speaker 1: held at the Center for Automotive Education and Training in
Speaker 1: Queens and it's being staged by Well this is a coincidence,
Speaker 1: the Greater New York Automobile Association, a group of car fanciers,
Speaker 1: people who like to make models.
Speaker 8: No, it's a group of car dealers. Governor Hokal, get
Speaker 8: the f out of my city.
Speaker 1: The runner up worse, sir. Every once in a while,
Speaker 1: there's a moment or two when it seems as if
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor, insurrectionist human trash Barney rubble Green might not
Speaker 1: be as stupid as she looks. And then she reminds you, oh,
Speaker 1: yes she is.
Speaker 4: And you think gas prices are high, Now just wait
Speaker 4: until you're forced to drive an electric veha.
Speaker 1: Exactly see what sells there? What makes that is the
Speaker 1: exactly where she congratulates herself on her brilliance. Also, ma'am,
Speaker 1: you have a deviated septum. If you'll get it repaired,
Speaker 1: I'll pay for the operation. Enacling Marjorie Taylor Green thinks
Speaker 1: electric vehicles run on gasoline. Now she may be confused.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a day ending in why she may
Speaker 1: be confused. She might be thinking of hybrids. And I
Speaker 1: suppose if you walked her through it very carefully and slowly,
Speaker 1: over the course of several weeks or months, Green would
Speaker 1: finally realize that the point of electric vehicles, why they
Speaker 1: call them electric vehicles, is that they don't run on gasoline,
Speaker 1: and they certainly would not drive up demand for or
Speaker 1: the of gasoline. But after like three minutes of trying
Speaker 1: to process reality the eyes of Marjorie Taylor are you
Speaker 1: sure you haven't had multiple concussions? Green just glaze over
Speaker 1: and she gets that hit in the face with a snowshovel. Look.
Speaker 1: I mean this one is up there with the time
Speaker 1: she demanded a national divorce because in her new country,
Speaker 1: let's call it Moronica, you could force students to recite
Speaker 1: the Pledge of Allegiance every day. The Pledge of Allegiance
Speaker 1: in a divorced country, the Pledge of allegiance that includes
Speaker 1: the line one nation indivisible. I guess division would be
Speaker 1: illegal in her new country. She doesn't know what indivisible means.
Speaker 1: The debate over what makes Marge so stupid is endless
Speaker 1: and pointless. Just last week, she explained something on Twitter
Speaker 1: by using a phrase that she must have heard a
Speaker 1: not stupid person say once therein lies ojie. She thinks
Speaker 1: it's there and law she spelled it thch e R
Speaker 1: space new word e n l i E s. She
Speaker 1: thinks there's a word and lies like that guy used
Speaker 1: to run China Joe and lies. Oh my god, they're
Speaker 1: and lies for all intensive purposes Marjorie. Previously, Midge has
Speaker 1: warned us that Bill Gates intends to force us to
Speaker 1: eat artificial meat grown in a quote peach tree dish.
Speaker 1: It's two years now since her video in which she
Speaker 1: insisted that Joe Biden would soon be unleashing his secret
Speaker 1: police against America. You know, the gospacho. Maybe it's brain damage.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an IQ matching Tom Brady's uniform number or
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth's uniform number. Maybe it's opioids. Maybe it's steroids.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hemorrhoids. Maybe it's inbreeding. But I am going
Speaker 1: to play this part of this clip again and then
Speaker 1: offer you a really low odds explanation that truly would
Speaker 1: tie it all neatly together.
Speaker 4: You think gas prices are high, now just wait until
Speaker 4: you're forced to drive an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: So here's my theory. What is my theory? It's my theory.
Speaker 1: My theory was born last month after scientists at Cambridge
Speaker 1: University completed a ten year project to take some unearthed
Speaker 1: bones from a Neanderthal woman who had died seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago and was found in the Shanadar Cave
Speaker 1: in Kurdistan in Iraq, and using computer modeling and precise
Speaker 1: calculations at a little art they reconstructed her face. They
Speaker 1: call her shannizar Z and she's a dead ringer for
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean a little on the facial coloring,
Speaker 1: but with the amount of makeup marg wares, it's pretty close.
Speaker 1: Same bulging bones under the eyebrows, the high cheek bones,
Speaker 1: the prominent nose. Only the hair color is really different,
Speaker 1: and we know how it got different. So here's my theory.
Speaker 1: When they found shannas dar's Z Neanderthal woman from seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand years ago, they did not find her alone.
Speaker 1: There were two of them, and one was dead shannazar Z,
Speaker 1: and the other one was just frozen in suspended animation.
Speaker 1: And they brought her back to life and they named
Speaker 1: her Shanadar MTG, and the Republicans promptly ran her for Congress.
Speaker 1: And here we are with a leading GOP elected representative
Speaker 1: insisting that electric cars run on gasoline. But our winner
Speaker 1: the worst of worsts Politico Playbook. Politico Playbook is well
Speaker 1: known as the home of typos and log rolling for
Speaker 1: the editor's girlfriend and editors who are only there because
Speaker 1: they've been fired by everybody else, and printing interminable lists
Speaker 1: of anonymous political reporters who mistakenly think they are celebrities
Speaker 1: because they were attending parties they don't know are slightly
Speaker 1: less important than the meetings of the Kowanas Club in
Speaker 1: Rapid City. But even for them, even for a political playbook,
Speaker 1: this is a dilly. It's about North Dakota Governor Doug
Speaker 1: the mono Brow Bergham. And how as I have suggested
Speaker 1: here for months, Bergham is actually the clubhouse leader to
Speaker 1: be Trump's running mate, because when Trump picked Mike Pence,
Speaker 1: he thinks he was right and Mike Pence just failed.
Speaker 1: He needs a better Mike Pence. And that's got Doug
Speaker 1: Bergham written all over it. Anyway, here's the typo about
Speaker 1: Bergham and Trump quote. As for looks, which are clearly
Speaker 1: important to the former president, Trump has also told people
Speaker 1: that Bergham looks the part and has gushed over his
Speaker 1: thick head of head.
Speaker 8: Thick head of head, Doug Bergham has a thick head
Speaker 8: of head. That's typo Politico playbook.
Speaker 1: At least I think it's a typo.
Speaker 8: Two days, worst persons.
Speaker 5: And no word.
Speaker 1: They kind of it happens. Holy crap, When I didn't like.
Speaker 5: This is Sports Center? Wait check that not anymore. This
Speaker 5: is Countdown with Keith Ulberman.
Speaker 1: And as I said, I'm screwing with the format today
Speaker 1: because something really pissed me off from sports and I'm
Speaker 1: going to need a little time to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and you may or may not care. So our number
Speaker 1: one story on the Countdown is Sportscenters Central Tonight. Do
Speaker 1: you think Babe Ruth ever saw a slider question mark? Annually,
Speaker 1: the now New York Times owned website The Athletic does
Speaker 1: a survey of Major League Baseball players in which they
Speaker 1: make the mistake of asking today's baseball players opinions and
Speaker 1: questions and insights about the game today and about the
Speaker 1: game in the past. And one thing has been certain
Speaker 1: for the last well I've been a baseball fan since
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, so since nineteen sixty seven, is that
Speaker 1: today's baseball players know almost nothing about the past. And
Speaker 1: I mean the twenty twenty four baseball players know nothing
Speaker 1: about nineteen ninety four, as the nineteen ninety four players
Speaker 1: knew nothing about nineteen seventy four, and as I presume
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty four players knew nothing about eighteen eight.
Speaker 1: They just think they live in a vacuum every generation.
Speaker 1: I had a conversation not long ago with a baseball
Speaker 1: play by play man, and I asked him. Actually, I
Speaker 1: posited to him that it seemed to me that there
Speaker 1: were only two or three guys, maybe four, on every
Speaker 1: team that could actually play baseball, That the rest of
Speaker 1: them were hitters or pitchers who really didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to do strategically at a given moment,
Speaker 1: whether they should swing on a certain count or not,
Speaker 1: what base they should throw to, where they should go
Speaker 1: to in a rundown play, that they didn't know the
Speaker 1: essence of baseball as it used to be taught. And
Speaker 1: he went, there's not that many. It's probably one or two.
Speaker 1: In any event, The Athletic asked baseball players many different
Speaker 1: topics and asked them one thing in particular, what about
Speaker 1: the criticisms of today's game by recent former Major leaguers. Hell,
Speaker 1: you should read this article just to see how highly
Speaker 1: today's players think of themselves and how nobody appreciates them,
Speaker 1: and how they don't get the credit for playing in
Speaker 1: the most difficult game that has ever been called baseball,
Speaker 1: That nobody ever looks out for what they need, that
Speaker 1: they don't get what they deserve. Despite the seven hundred
Speaker 1: million dollar contract that show hey Otani got and the
Speaker 1: freedom to play basically anywhere they want to from one
Speaker 1: year to the next end coaching staffs that are now
Speaker 1: who twenty twenty five guys per team trying to help you,
Speaker 1: and all the video in the world and computers and
Speaker 1: all the rest of that. But it all boils down
Speaker 1: to that one quote I started with, essentially the comments
Speaker 1: from about seventy five players or so who were willing
Speaker 1: to criticize baseball as it used to be. And they're
Speaker 1: not talking about nineteen sixty seven. They're talking about twenty
Speaker 1: ten baseball players. These seventy five or so all had
Speaker 1: the basic same argument. No player from the past could
Speaker 1: exist in today's game, or almost no player from the past.
Speaker 1: And this is one thing that has changed appreciably. Players
Speaker 1: in the past used to think of themselves as the
Speaker 1: culmination of a series of evolutions, that the game had
Speaker 1: gotten greater, and therefore they had gotten greater, and their
Speaker 1: physicality had gotten greater, et cetera, et cetera. It's not
Speaker 1: like that. Reading this article, it's all about how today's
Speaker 1: baseball players would if they put together an all star
Speaker 1: team against yesterday's great players, they'd come to bat once
Speaker 1: and they would never ever end the game. Because today's
Speaker 1: baseball players would never make it out because they're perfect.
Speaker 1: This is what they have been taught. And we can
Speaker 1: talk about what this means in terms of society and
Speaker 1: entitlement and reading your own newspaper clippings and all the
Speaker 1: rest of that, but I'll spare that. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that the article will make you in raged. And unfortunately
Speaker 1: it's not just baseball, every sport except probably the National
Speaker 1: Hockey League. The players pretty much think that the guys
Speaker 1: before them were idiots who just happened to stumble around
Speaker 1: and set all these records and win all these championships.
Speaker 1: But there was one quote in there about how difficult
Speaker 1: it is to face pitching today, and the quote was,
Speaker 1: do you think Babe Ruth ever saw a slider? And
Speaker 1: the answer is, you goddamn righty saw slider. The slider
Speaker 1: was put into use by the great Philadelphia Athletics Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame pitcher Charles Bender, native American from Minnesota, who
Speaker 1: debuted I believe in the year nineteen hundred and three.
Speaker 1: It was later perfected in the twenties by another pitcher
Speaker 1: named George Blaholder. But the slider that pitch with that
Speaker 1: motion was well known in Major League baseball long before
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth came to the major leagues in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: And any time that you hear somebody invoked Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: and dismiss him, well, he only played against white pitching. Well,
Speaker 1: he also only played against like one hundred different pitchers. Nominally,
Speaker 1: he was facing one of the two hundred best baseball
Speaker 1: pitchers of all time. And yes, maybe that number was limited,
Speaker 1: and half of what should have been the two hundred
Speaker 1: best baseball pitchers of his time were segregated out of
Speaker 1: the game. So let's say he should have faced one
Speaker 1: of the top four hundred pitchers every day when he
Speaker 1: played in Major League baseball. Well, today, that's like a
Speaker 1: thousand pitchers are active. At any one point. Any hitter
Speaker 1: goes to the plate facing one of the thousand, let's
Speaker 1: be conservative, just the healthy ones, maybe the best six
Speaker 1: hundred active pitchers in the game, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: four hundred or the two hundred or the one hundred
Speaker 1: that Babe Ruth faced. But I'm getting very very far
Speaker 1: into the weeds and the woods here. This is much
Speaker 1: simpler than I'm making it out to be. Every time
Speaker 1: somebody invokes Babe Ruth, as happened yesterday in the Athletic
Speaker 1: back to December of twenty eighteen, when Adam Ottavino, who
Speaker 1: is a relief pitcher who has experienced moderate success in
Speaker 1: the major leagues for many years and is now with
Speaker 1: the team that is the home of moderate success, the
Speaker 1: New York Mets. Adam Ottavino told a podcast that if
Speaker 1: he faced Babe Ruth, he would strike him out. Every time.
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth would not make contact against him, he would
Speaker 1: strike him out every time. This, I think, still to
Speaker 1: this day, summarizes the attitude of the modern player about
Speaker 1: the past in baseball, and it's also moronic. Adam Otavino
Speaker 1: is a smart guy, well respected among his teammates, pleasant
Speaker 1: with the media, and could not be more wrong about
Speaker 1: this because he has not considered anything other than what
Speaker 1: he knows of baseball, and he has projected himself back
Speaker 1: into its history and said, look how much bigger and
Speaker 1: stronger I am. Therefore, I would strike him out every
Speaker 1: time I throw pitches he's never seen before. I cannot stop,
Speaker 1: and since December of twenty eighteen, I have not stopped
Speaker 1: thinking about this hypothetical theoretical transcendent somewhere in outer space
Speaker 1: without time, matchup between Adam Adavino and Babe Ruth or
Speaker 1: whoever it was the anonymous player who was quoted in
Speaker 1: The Athletic Yesterday saying, do you think Babe Ruth ever
Speaker 1: saw a slider? Yeah? Probably once every game. Obviously the
Speaker 1: matchup could never happen. Babe Ruth died in nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: He retired from baseball in nineteen thirty five. He was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen ninety four, meaning if he came back
Speaker 1: somehow from the dead and played today, he'd be one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty years old. I don't think he could
Speaker 1: get around on Adam Ottavito's slider. I don't think he
Speaker 1: could get around on my slider. But let's make this
Speaker 1: increasingly fair. The point of what Adam Adavino said was,
Speaker 1: I suppose at Otdavino's prime and at Babe Ruth's prime,
Speaker 1: out of Vino thinks he would strike him out every time.
Speaker 1: So in theory, you'd have to have this matchup somewhere.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just pluck these two guys out of their
Speaker 1: existences and put them in a timeless white space in
Speaker 1: which the best Adam out of Vino, with all of
Speaker 1: his advantages, would face the best Babe Ruth with only
Speaker 1: the advantages of his lifetime. Of course, that would happen
Speaker 1: the way he thinks it would. He would strike him
Speaker 1: out every time, at least the first few times until
Speaker 1: Ruth tried to adjust to him. But it wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: that way. Even in the wildest theory of time travel
Speaker 1: in space, you got to travel to some time. So
Speaker 1: where do you play it? Is it a home or
Speaker 1: a road game? For Adam out of Vino? Is it
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven? Is it Babe Ruth's prime? Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: as he was a little portly but surprisingly nimble, big belly,
Speaker 1: big shoulders, unbelievably fast, hands as fast as Henry Aaron
Speaker 1: according to those who saw them, both as fast as
Speaker 1: any player today, and tiny little legs, unexpected speed and grace,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, in nineteen twenty seven, Babe Ruth hit
Speaker 1: sixty home runs, and no other team in the American
Speaker 1: League hit more than fifty six home runs. No other
Speaker 1: complete team came close to his individual performance in home
Speaker 1: runs for the equivalent impact, how many more home runs
Speaker 1: he hit than everybody else last year? There would have
Speaker 1: had to have been in twenty twenty three, a major
Speaker 1: league baseball player who hit himself two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five home runs. That's how better than everybody else, Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth was in nineteen twenty seven. But also, what about
Speaker 1: the ballparks you're playing in nineteen twenty seven? Where did
Speaker 1: he hit these? Down the left field line at Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: and Ruth was a left hand hitter, was two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty one feet down the right field line. It
Speaker 1: was two hundred and ninety five feet, tiny distances even
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, in center field it was
Speaker 1: four hundred and ninety feet to the bleachers in center field.
Speaker 1: Any major league hitter who came into a ballpark in
Speaker 1: which centerfield was four hundred and ninety feet away, they
Speaker 1: would leave. They would go on strike. Center fields now
Speaker 1: are not four hundred and ninety feet but closer to
Speaker 1: four hundred and nine feet, And we're not even going
Speaker 1: to talk about the power alleys and everything else. The
Speaker 1: ballparks of nineteen twenty seven were gigantic, except if you
Speaker 1: pulled the ball right to the foul pole. Because Yankee
Speaker 1: Stadium two hundred and ninety five feet right down the
Speaker 1: line there for Babe Ruth's home runs, then jutted out
Speaker 1: to about three twenty almost immediately, and then gradually out
Speaker 1: to four hundred and ninety feet in right center field
Speaker 1: and center field. The other thing about hitting in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, you did not get a new, fresh, clean,
Speaker 1: easy to see baseball every pitch. Sometimes a game could
Speaker 1: be played with less than twenty baseballs in And yes
Speaker 1: it's true, as autom Altavino pointed out, Babe Ruth did
Speaker 1: not see any of today's exotic pitchers and their exotic
Speaker 1: movements and the pitches that they threw. No, he just
Speaker 1: saw spit balls, shine balls, emery balls, balls that had
Speaker 1: gouges taken out of them by ballplayers, rings, balls that
Speaker 1: had been in use for several innings and were lopsided,
Speaker 1: balls that were not stitched properly to begin with and
Speaker 1: came apart when you hit them. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I always think about that modern players don't think about
Speaker 1: is Babe Ruth saw each pitcher live, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Today's batters can study every pitch the opposing pitcher, every
Speaker 1: opposing pitcher has ever thrown, ever thrown as recently as
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties and nineties. Tony Gwinn, my late friend
Speaker 1: of the San Diego Padres, used to go looked at
Speaker 1: funny by his teammates because he was studying videotape of
Speaker 1: the pictures. What good does that do? How does that
Speaker 1: help you guess what? They didn't have videotape of all
Speaker 1: the other pictures in nineteen twenty seven. They didn't have
Speaker 1: still pictures of most of the pictures in action in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven. You couldn't tell what another picture threw.
Speaker 1: You had a reputation, You had your own memory. Maybe
Speaker 1: like many players did, you wrote down what you saw
Speaker 1: as it happened, so you'd have a fresh memory the
Speaker 1: next time you saw the guy in Saint Louis in August,
Speaker 1: when it was ninety five degrees and you were playing
Speaker 1: at one thirty in the afternoon. Baby Ruth had no gym.
Speaker 1: Bab Ruth did not work out. Nobody really had understood
Speaker 1: the relationship between staying in shape and hitting home runs,
Speaker 1: or hitting or pitching or anything else. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you're playing this game in nineteen twenty seven, it
Speaker 1: would seem that almost all the advantages the gigantic ballparks,
Speaker 1: no video, no gym. That would favor Adam out of Vino,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure it would for the first couple of
Speaker 1: it bats. But here's something else. If you transported any
Speaker 1: major league ball player of twenty twenty four back to
Speaker 1: the year nineteen twenty seven, he would feel like Robinson Crusoe,
Speaker 1: washed up on the desert island. He has no assistance
Speaker 1: of any kind. A major league baseball team consisted of
Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty four or twenty five players, the manager, and,
Speaker 1: if you were lucky, two coaches, both of whom were
Speaker 1: there basically to go drinking with the manager after the game.
Speaker 1: I researched this when I was a kid. The first
Speaker 1: book I ever published, in nineteen seventy four, when I
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old, was about the major league coaches.
Speaker 1: It was a list of major league coaches, and it
Speaker 1: was the greatest shock of my life to that point.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty seven, there were sixteen teams, and the
Speaker 1: sixteen teams had twenty eight coaches among them. Five of
Speaker 1: these guys were either former pitchers or catchers. There were
Speaker 1: five pitching coaches. So Adam Ottavino, if you go back
Speaker 1: to Facebook bab in nineteen twenty seven. You are on
Speaker 1: your own. You don't have video of him either. Also,
Speaker 1: there are no night games. Now to some pitchers, night
Speaker 1: games and day games make no difference whatsoever. But the
Speaker 1: point is there are no night games. And most importantly
Speaker 1: for somebody like Ottavino, who was a very good pitcher,
Speaker 1: there are no good relief pitchers. Maybe there's one or two.
Speaker 1: Furpo Marberry of the Washington Senators would come in and
Speaker 1: work in relief almost exclusively, but there really weren't relief pitchers.
Speaker 1: If you were a good pitcher, you had to start,
Speaker 1: and you had to start every fourth day. So Adam
Speaker 1: Ottavino is not pitching an inning or two in which
Speaker 1: he would face Babe Ruth once or twice, maybe over
Speaker 1: the course of one game, and might face him again
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, so that when he faced him
Speaker 1: seven times in one season, yes, maybe he would strike
Speaker 1: him out seven times. There was a picture named hub
Speaker 1: Prewitt who managed to strike out Babe Ruth repeatedly and
Speaker 1: got almost nobody else out. That was his whole reputation,
Speaker 1: the man who got Ruth out. But Ottavino would not
Speaker 1: have the luxury of only facing Ruth seven times, he'd
Speaker 1: have to face him four times in a game, because
Speaker 1: not only would they make him into a starting pitcher,
Speaker 1: but the likelihood of him being relieved at any point
Speaker 1: during the game is almost zero. You go out there
Speaker 1: and throw your two hundred pitches at him, and then
Speaker 1: we'll see you in four days again. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you'll see the Yankees again in no more than a
Speaker 1: month's time, because there are only seven other teams in
Speaker 1: the league, and you play each other in a balanced schedule,
Speaker 1: none of this interleague crap. So that's nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: What if you brought Babe Ruth. Do you think Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth ever saw a slider? Yeah, he probably saw. He
Speaker 1: saw a slider and all those spitball pitches and the
Speaker 1: other things. And by the way, he wasn't wearing a
Speaker 1: batting helmet for any of this, nor any armor on
Speaker 1: his arms, nor any protection of any kind. So let's
Speaker 1: bring it to twenty twenty four, and Adam Ottavino is
Speaker 1: as he is, and Babe Ruth is the stranger arriving
Speaker 1: in a new world. Well, the first thing that Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth finds out is sho hey Otani signed a contract
Speaker 1: last winter for seven hundred million dollars for ten years.
Speaker 1: And even when the calculations are shown to Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: as to what that means in nineteen twenty seven dollars,
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth is going to say, Holy spit, and he's
Speaker 1: going to go right to the gym and start working
Speaker 1: out in the hopes of playing until he's forty five
Speaker 1: years old, rather than retiring forcibly at the age of
Speaker 1: about forty. That's the first thing he's going to see.
Speaker 1: He might actually begin to take care of himself. And
Speaker 1: if he doesn't think of that himself, he has six
Speaker 1: hitting coaches and twelve assistant hitting coaches and all the
Speaker 1: videotape he could ever want to look at at Adam
Speaker 1: out of you know, And if he can't really perceive
Speaker 1: what videotape is, there's of course a videotape coach to
Speaker 1: show it to him. And then he goes to the
Speaker 1: ballpark and says, where's the rest of it? Tiny ballparks,
Speaker 1: centerfield to Yankee Stadium is not four hundred and ninety feet.
Speaker 1: Center field in some ballparks is pushing three ninety nine,
Speaker 1: not quite four hundred feet. Babe Ruth averaged at the
Speaker 1: peak ten year stretch of his career ten triples a
Speaker 1: year in smaller ballparks, just slightly smaller ballparks. By nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven standards, he would have hit seventy home runs
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, not sixty. Now, suddenly center field,
Speaker 1: to which players regularly hit home runs, is available to him.
Speaker 1: The only home runs hit to center field before about
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty were inside the park home runs. Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: could now take an adam out of eno pitch, a
Speaker 1: slider or something else and put it over the freaking
Speaker 1: center field fence in any ballpark in the major leagues.
Speaker 1: Remember what I mentioned earlier that the equivalent of what
Speaker 1: Ruth did compared to the rest of the league in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven would require somebody to hit two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five home runs this year. He might do
Speaker 1: it also in terms of longevity. In addition to all
Speaker 1: of the athletic facilities available to him to get in
Speaker 1: shape and stay in shape, there are trainers, multiple trainers.
Speaker 1: There are workout rooms. There are doctors. There are team doctors.
Speaker 1: They didn't have team doctors in nineteen twenty seven. They
Speaker 1: didn't have padded fences in nineteen twenty seven. They didn't
Speaker 1: have the designated hitter in nineteen twenty seven, where Ruth,
Speaker 1: if he was tired or hungover or had spent the
Speaker 1: last three days without sleeping because he was chasing girls,
Speaker 1: could be the designated hitter and not have to worry
Speaker 1: about playing the outfield or though if he played the
Speaker 1: outfield he had those fences had padding on them today
Speaker 1: and they did not in nineteen twenty seven, So if
Speaker 1: he ran into the outfield fences he did on many occasions,
Speaker 1: there are pictures of him laid out cold on the
Speaker 1: ground with all his teammates standing around waiting for him
Speaker 1: to come to That would never happen. And as I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, again, what are you facing today as the
Speaker 1: average hitter going to the plate in the average Major
Speaker 1: League game against random pitcher number five hundred and thirty two.
Speaker 1: Because baseball is nearly twice as big as it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, there are automatically going to be
Speaker 1: twice as many pitchers, plus their longevity and their ability
Speaker 1: to get through a season is half of what it
Speaker 1: was at best compared to nineteen twenty seven. There are
Speaker 1: literally at any point in the game, six hundred or
Speaker 1: so active pitchers rotating around from team to team sometimes
Speaker 1: and from the majors to the minor leagues. So you
Speaker 1: are facing any one of six hundred different pitchers, whereas
Speaker 1: Babe Ruth went through his career facing really just the
Speaker 1: American League pitchers, maybe just one of the best one
Speaker 1: hundred pitchers in the world, and now one of the
Speaker 1: best six hundred pitchers in the world. The average pitcher
Speaker 1: he's going to face today is not as good as
Speaker 1: the average pitcher he would have faced in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 1: So here's the gist of it. I think, having watched
Speaker 1: this game and the other games all this time, and
Speaker 1: having remembering flashing back to a conversation I had on
Speaker 1: ESPN two in October nineteen ninety three with my co
Speaker 1: host Susie Calber about Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe, and
Speaker 1: she looking at me and going, well, of course, Wayne
Speaker 1: Gretzky's better. He's of today. All of today's athletes are
Speaker 1: better than they were in nineteen fifty three, and now
Speaker 1: Wayne Gretzky is dismissed because he's not as big as
Speaker 1: the ones who play in twenty twenty four. Every generation
Speaker 1: does this, Well, they're much better today. I don't know
Speaker 1: that that's true. You'd really have to have Babe Ruth
Speaker 1: face Adam Outavino to see whether or not Adam Oudavino
Speaker 1: would strike him out or Babe Ruth would hit a
Speaker 1: home run seven hundred and eighty five feet off Adam Outavino.
Speaker 1: That is the point of playing the game. That is
Speaker 1: the one thing that does not change, and the idea
Speaker 1: that today's players dismiss their predecessors. It occurs to me
Speaker 1: in the Baseball documentary by Ken Burns, there is a
Speaker 1: player quoted about how they don't play it as good
Speaker 1: as they used to in his day. His quotes are
Speaker 1: from about eighteen seventy, and he's talking about baseball in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five. The gist of this is that, as
Speaker 1: in any generation, some sort of theoretical, magical conflict between
Speaker 1: Adam Adavino and Babe Ruth on a field somewhere in
Speaker 1: the sky would depend on who was better prepared, who
Speaker 1: had better access to training, better access to information, better
Speaker 1: access to nutrition, better access to coaching, better access to
Speaker 1: video of the opponent. Those are ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: the improvements from one generation to the next and whatever
Speaker 1: is next in baseball or any other sport, when in
Speaker 1: twenty years from now people look back and go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he was hitting off people like Adam Otnovino, and
Speaker 1: you know, Pete Alonzo was considered a great player. Show Hey,
Speaker 1: Otani was the only two way player. Remember those dead
Speaker 1: days in baseball in twenty twenty four. That's the one
Speaker 1: guarantee going forward, somebody else, sitting in some other podcast
Speaker 1: will have these exact same complaints about Adam Ottavino the
Speaker 1: seventh or whoever the player was who was quoted in
Speaker 1: the Athletic as saying, do you think Babe Ruth ever
Speaker 1: saw a slider? And someday somebody will say the equivalent
Speaker 1: of this in some future search engine world. Did you
Speaker 1: think about googling that before you asked that question? And
Speaker 1: another thing about the goddamned eighteen ninety World Series and
Speaker 1: how that and I got it next time, I've done
Speaker 1: all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneil arranged,
Speaker 1: produced and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was
Speaker 1: on the guitars, bass and drums. Mister Shanelle handled orchestration
Speaker 1: and keyboards. Was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
Speaker 1: some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by the
Speaker 1: group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Old
Speaker 1: Woman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis
Speaker 1: courtesy of ESPN Inc. Our satirical and pithy musical comments
Speaker 1: and the organ accompany meant for the commercials in the
Speaker 1: A Block by Nancy Fauss, the best baseball stadium organist ever,
Speaker 1: and I work on a song for Jonathan Turley. Our
Speaker 1: announcer was my friend Larry David, and everything else was
Speaker 1: pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this. The
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty eighth day until the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four presidential election, the two hundred and fifty third day
Speaker 1: since convicted felon Don Trump's first attempted coup against the
Speaker 1: democratically elected government of the United States. Use the July
Speaker 1: eleventh sentencing hearing for an elderly first time offender, Use
Speaker 1: 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: The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins is the news
Speaker 1: warrants till then. I'm Keith Ulruman. Good morning, good afternoon,
Speaker 1: good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is
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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.