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No Risk, All Reward.
Kamala Harris doing an interview on Fox with Brett Bhair Tomorrow Night, pushes all the fascist buttons, all at once, all on Trump, and she especially pushes the one button that proves that. Would you like me to give the direct quote? Yeah, please excuse my language, this is a direct quote. But Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald Trump as a pussy ass bitch. Harris goes on FNC, Trump is
again a pab Thank you, MVP. Can you imagine Trump sitting down to be interviewed by Maddow or, for God's sakes, even Andrea Mitchell or the Midas Network guys or me. This is perfect. First of all, it will enrage Trump, not just now, not just tomorrow, but for the rest of the campaign, every moment. He cannot stop it. He cannot stop his own insanity, He cannot hope to contain it.
There is an excellent chance it will literally push him fully over the edge and he will start dropping n words or speaking in a language of his own invention. I mean entirely of his own invention, not the thirty to thirty five percent unintelligible gibberish he speaks now. Trump only found out about this in late afternoon yesterday, and he promptly lost it. He attacked Fox as weak and soft, He called Brettbear fair and balanced, and meant it as
an insult. On top of which Trump had already been raging about Fox, letting liberals on its network think of it. He wrote, I spend an hour with the wonderful Maria Bardawomo to a beautiful job. And then a followed up all day long by one sided negative Democrats, including Ian Sam's, who virtually owns the network. Quote, you don't know who Ian SAMs is? Do you? Well? You know who he
is now. He's senior advisor to the Harris campaign and often the spokesperson, and he enrages Trump on top on top of which Trump had in the wee hours of Monday morning, at one twelve am on Columbus Day, he had attacked the Vice president for not doing interviews and not doing them well. I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on cognitive stamina and agility.
Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her even sixty minutes and CBS in order to protect Lion Kamalay illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally bonkers, with another answer that had nothing to do with a question. Also, she is slow and lethargic and answering even the easiest of questions. I know, I know. Every Trump accusation is a confession, slow and lethargic. You say, Sonny, and the
tell is always the same. It's usually everybody knows. But the secondary tell when he needs something a little darker and more mysterious and certainly more formal, is have led many to believe. Her actions have led many to believable there it is. Trump is so messing his pants that
no diaper can save him. Now and now there is a chance that even the Washington Post in New York Times political reporters will skip whatever DC cocktail party they were going to on Wednesday nights in hopes of getting into Politico's spotted column and start asking the Trump mouthpieces and the Republicans why if she can go on Fox, he can't go on MSNBC or the Washington Post Live or to a New York Times cocktail party with Joe and ag. This also, I think, finally puts a stake
through the she's not doing interviews Gnard. It's getting to be almost annoying. She's doing too many interviews. In any event, it transforms that entire issue into a journalistic bidding war. No, there has been no sit down with the Post or the New York Times editorial board or live with one of the Sunday shows. But she's going on Fox. One presumes editor con and publisher Salzburger of the Times are just now being resuscitated after an attack of the vapors.
The approach to Vice President Harris now has to change from bullying her, which is what the media has been doing since the moment she became the nominee, to making the best offer and pleading. Whatever that is to the Harris campaign is almost irrelevant. She just accepted an interview on fixed news. How demanding could she possibly be? Ironically, there is a glimmer of sanity in the Trump response to this news. He writes that the vice president quote
has wisely chosen Brent Baher. He's right, I'm not going to say that again. I know this man, like all of them, Brett Baar does not do his pretend newscast every night just for the money, not even just for
the renown. He has a political agenda and the discovery in Fox's disastrous seven hundred and eighty seven million dollar dominion case, in which, for reasons of ratings and fascist waring, Brett Bhaar insisted that after Fox called Arizona for Biden, he demanded in a never denied email that it be rescinded. It's hurting us. The sooner we pull it, even if it gives us a major egg and put it back in Trump's column, the better we are, in my opinion.
In other words, Bear wasn't just a contaminated ex journalist on election night. He was a conspiracy theorist who just knew Trump couldn't have lost Arizona and that Fox needed to put the state back in Trump's column, even though it had never been in Trump's column, no matter how many egg it produced. But as I say, I know
this man. We have had conversations. He thinks he's Walter Cronkite offered a broadcast Network nightly newscast, if there still are any I didn't watch last night, he would leave Fox, so fast that his three piece suit would still be standing there on the Fox set in DC while he was getting into a cab naked. He thinks he's Walter Cronkite. He thinks he was viewed as Walter Cronkite, and then this email came out and now fewer people think he's
Walter Cronkite. And interviewing the Democratic presidential candidate twenty days before the election will make more people think he's Walter Cronkite. No, by the way, the person Brett Bear most wants to think, Brett Behar is Walter Cronkite, is Brett bar He's not going to softball her, and he may QAnon her. But here's the other thing. He has spent twenty five years at Fox and fifteen years anchoring what the Foxes think is the evening news, and he wants to be seen
as more presidential than Kamala Harris. He's Walter Cronkite, after all. He wants to be seen as fair, even if he doesn't know how to be fair. Plus twenty five years at Fox like being locked in a cave, Robinson Crusoe got home faster. How many times in twenty five years do you think Brett Bear has interviewed anybody, let alone a presidential candidate from the other party, who did not defer to him or at least to his network or pulled punches. I mean, it's one thing to juggle chainsaws.
Live TV every night for years is juggling chainsaws. It's quite another thing to juggle chainsaws while they are on fire and somebody is trying to prevent you from catching them. And if you're wondering if Bear might trip up Harris, worry more about Harris tripping up Bear, Madam Vice President. If I may ask him some questions, what's he going
to do? Stop the interview? Ask him where Fox is about covering the guys who joined Lara Trump's boat parade while flying Trump flags and Nazi flags with swastikas on them. Ask him where Fox is covering Trump's obvious mental decline, whether he's had a stroke or he has a tumor. Ask him where Fox is about Trump saying the military should be deployed against his enemies, and that the military should be deployed at the election three weeks from now.
Ask him where Fox is covering Trump's promise to invoke the law that would let him imprison or expel all Hispanics in this country based only on their race, or imprison and expel all African Americans, or imprison and expel all German Irish Americans named Bear. Come on, have a little fun on behalf of the rest of us. Literally poke the bear. There's something else in play here too, in fascist world that Harris agreed to go on. Fox just does not compute spontaneous combustion, the theory of human
spontaneous combustion. I'm betting by tomorrow we hear three hundred and seventy eight incidents of it nationwide, All of them Maga, the Jesse Waters and the gut Gregfelds of this world cannot process this. They have to sell Fox, no Fox, and they have no careers. I mean all the food carts around Fox headquarters on Sixth Avenue, all those who are already taken. There's nothing for Gutfeld or Waters to do.
But can they promote this interview? Can they mock her without mocking Brett behar and the fabric of the network. Can they insult her without hurting the ratings? These idiots believe in dictatorship and in Trump, but not if it's going to cost them their car service. Trust me. MSNBC is full of these people too. They have to be on TV. It has yet to be recognized officially, but it is still an addiction. And as to their audience,
another win for Kamala Harris. They either know the vice president is smart and quick.
Or they believe the world.
Has been fixed to make her look smart and quick. Fixed. All of it's fixed, including the weather being controlled, but only by the Democrats. The conspiracy theories were in full blossom yesterday, long before Trump so belatedly responded to the news. They'll give her the questions, she'll write the questions. There won't be any questions. It's a body double. No, it's a double of a body double. And Brett Bher that's not Brett bhar that's also a body double. It's a
double body double. The likeliest outcome, of course, is that the fact of the interview will continue to exceed anything said in the interview. She went on Fox. Wow is fine. That still makes it a win win win win win win win win win win win win, And every minute leading up to it, and every minute for days and maybe weeks after it. We'll send us all back to February eighth, twenty twenty three, a date which will live
in infamy if you're Trump. That was the day Congressman Maxwell Frost blew up the Jamie Comer Twitter censors Conservatives hearing starring Matt Freakin' Tayebi by making the unfortunate. Former Twitter Content Moderation team member Anika Collier Nabaroli confirm that within minutes of it being posted, Trump's White House demanded the Twitter take down a Chrissy Teagan tweet, which Chrissy Tagan tweet was that again, Chrissy Teagan referred to Donald
Trump as a pussy, as bitch, wiss, as glitch. Trump also might be having some ground game problems. Hugo Lowell from The Guardian reports the campaign sidekick app, which is apparently what Trump ground game people are using, forces canvassers who have slow Internet to use quote offline walk books, which have no geo tracking feature. As a result, the Trump campaign and America Pack have little way to know whether canvassers are actually knocking on doors or cheating. Huh.
Right wingers trying to get away with not doing work and claiming they did. That's unpossible and a slightly bigger problem if you missed it. George Conway has now posted the link to sign up to be admitted to Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden here in Fun City, a
week from next Sunday. It would be a shame if all twenty thousand reservations were filled up by people who were then mysteriously and unanimously unavoidably detained and couldn't go, and they had five hundred people in the garden, when five hundred people in the garden looks like the raisins
in rice pudding at a cheap diner. More importantly, The New York Times notes there is a reason Trump is going to be in the James Dolan German American Buned nineteen thirty nine Nazi Hitler Rally Memorial Garden a weekend two days before the election, when New York is not in play. No matter how often he says it, New York is not in play. Nuremberg Stock turns out not to just be for you, unwashed civilians. There is a Trump fundraiser within the Madison Square Nazi Garden rally, like
special seats and potential access to his sharpness himself. And I mean, if you have to spend the day in a non competitive state two Sundays before the election fundraising, guess what you're losing plus these price points, Holy guacamole. Five thousand dollars for the President's Club experience so called because you get clubbed by the ex president, thirty five
thousand dollars for the MAGA twenty four experience. You can talk economic anxieties with twenty three other magas and you can all tell each other that they are the fault of the brown people. Fifty thousand dollars or raising seventy thousand dollars for the Club forty seven experience. And this is what I almost feel sorry about for the ones who buy it. Sad to say, that's just a picture with the forty seventh President at her inauguration. One hundred
thousand dollars per ticket, or twice that raised. Two hundred thousand dollars for Team America First Experience, Team America World Police ef Ye free humping Marionettes for the kids, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or twice that raised for Team Trump twenty twenty four experience. And remember Team Trump
twenty twenty experience was the one Mike Pence bought. And lastly, nine hundred and twenty four thousand, six hundred dollars for the Ultramaga Experience, which lets you stand so close to Trump that you can actually see how badly the furor has put his makeup on. Also of interest here, so maybe you know the names of the National Football League teams in Pennsylvania, and maybe you don't. Maybe you know the Pittsburgh Steelers play in Pittsburgh and the Philadelphia Eagles
play in Philadelphia. See how this works. But if you're the Republican nominee for the Senate in Pennsylvania, shouldn't you check? Shouldn't you be able to keep those two teams straight? Shouldn't you be able to tell which is which? Shouldn't you make sure there's never any doubt that you can tell which team is which. Photos show the Eagles. Your text goes here and it's about the Steelers. Oops, that's next on this big show. I'm sorry, flashback, that's next. This is countdown.
There's his countdown with Keith old Woman's.
Telling ahead of us on this editionive countdown. While there is still a chance that there will be another Subway Series, another World Series of baseball between the New York Mets and the New York Yankees, even though America collectively yawned at the last one twenty four years ago when the
World Series was still a thing. While there's still a chance, I'm going to tell the story now of my role at the perimeters of the most famous event of that last Subway Series, the night Roger Clemens of the Yankees through the razors sharp end of Mike Piazza's broken bat at Piazza in an attempt to kill him. That's if you're a Mets fan, or he did no such thing and simply mistook that piece of shattered bat for a
baseball and was getting it out of the way. If you're a Yankee fan, or if like me, you were in the dugout and Clemens actually more or less through the bats straight at you, and then Piazza threatened to sue you over the bat. That's just the beginning coming up, the details in more things I promised not to tell. First, there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning kruegriff X specimens who constitute two days. Worst persons persons in
the world. It's my impression of the PA announcer at Yankee Stadium. Get get out of the way, way the bronze. The British NHS, the National Health Service. There are bad ideas that can be explained, and bad ideas that can be finessed, and bad ideas that can be taken back
to the drawing board and tried again. And then there are the bad ideas that are so bad that you have to stop them immediately, call a gigant antic news conference, publicly shame and fire everybody connected to them, and then stage a ceremonial bonfire in which you destroy all the evidence that your bad idea ever happened. This is one of the latter ones. King's College Hospital in Lambeth in London has given a contract to rent patience wheelchairs.
You heard me.
They are renting wheelchairs to patients at the hospital. If you come in in an ambulance you can use one of the hospital's wheelchairs, that's okay. But if you stagger in on your own, like after getting stabbed or shot or run over or I don't know too much. Sardonic British humor caused you to collapse or your neighbors drag you in and leave you there and you can't walk.
They will not put you in a wheelchair. You get pointed to what looks like a bike rack from say City Bike in New York, or Bay Wheels in San Francisco, or the luggage cart rental outfits at airports only for wheelchairs. You have to have a credit card to unlock a wheelchair or guess what you're crawling first four hours if your wheelchair are free, but they do have your credit
card number, after which it's two pounds per hour. Since after a fourteen year run of fascist rule in England, waiting times at the NHS at King's College are up to twelve hours. You are probably paying thirty two pounds for a wheelchair, or you're hijacking a gurnee or something, or buying one used on the street for thirty pounds. The company involved in this wheel share, if you're looking for them, it's wh e E l Share and the hospital and the NHS have come up with the perfect
solution to the understandably bad publicity here. Wheelshare is letting it be known that it will soon be adding value to its pay or crawl service. It will soon be covering its rent to chairs with corporate advertisements and logos available at popular prices. As I said, fire everybody in public, refund every charge and burn all of it.
Thrown her up.
Worser Hockey's Ottawa Senators who let down an entire nation yesterday, Well, they only have partial responsibility for this. It's a doc strike in Nova Scotia, That's part of it. But Ottawa who told you to have your things shipped in from some foreign country rather than have them made in Canada. Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving because well, because our Thanksgiving is Canadian fourth of July or something. I don't know. I
can't I can't keep it straight. And the Senators who had the lone matinee on the national holiday had promised their fans who went to their game a natural and lovely celebration of the true meaning of Thanksgiving. A gravy boat. A gravy boat that looks like the Ottawa senators Zamboni ice cleaning machine. You got the picture in your mind, like a Zamboni machine, A little Zamboni machine, only with a little, tiny handle, a little circular thing you could
hold with your fingers and it's full of gravy. How Canadian. But the Senators missed the goddamned boat. Apparently this is a thing. It turns out NHL teams have been giving out gravy boats that look like Zamboni ice cleaning machines since at least twenty eighteen, when Chicago did it. There are also ones from Nashville, from Detroit, Anaheim, La Washington. But apparently this was going to be the first ever
Canadian Zamboni gravy boat. Ten thousand Ottawa senators gravy boats are still in Halifax, sitting on the dock of the bay watching the promotional opportunities roll away. And this promotional opportunity ran aground, as it were, due to labor troubles. And that's labor with a U call me ishmael. My boat sank. The gravy boats didn't get there the end. The Senators say, if they arrive in time, they'll give them out for Christmas. But of course anything that soon
would be gravy. Fans at yesterday's game got instead of the gravy boat a voucher for a coke and some popcorn, which bluntly.
Is not the same goddamn thing.
I mean, how am I supposed to use a coke and some popcorn to pour my gravy on top after I put the biscuit in the basket? But the winner worst also kind of SPORTSI ish Dave McCormick, the Connecticut guy who is somehow the republic candidate for the Senate in Pennsylvania, probably because their last candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania was doctor Oz, who lost over the issue of the crud Ye Tay vegetable plate and lost to the guy from the Twilight Zone episode Who's here to Serve Man.
Like every candidate ever, McCormick has made a pitch for sports fans in his state, well the state he's running in, it's not his state, and it did not go well. Let me preface this in case you don't know, the state of Pennsylvania has two National Football League teams, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Philadelphia Eagles play in Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh Steelers play right in Pittsburgh. And
that's all you really need to know. I mean, maybe it's important that the Pittsburgh Steelers used to be the Pittsburgh Football Pirates. But not really. This is what David McCormick posted. Four photos of him at a time tailgate, you know, the real purpose of football, to go out and get drunk before the game in the parking lot. And it's McCormick with a bunch of people in Eagles green T shirts and Eagles dark green uniforms, and there're men and their women, and there's him waving in him
wearing a Maga cat. Well, I met Maga cap. But it could be he's wearing a Maga cat. These guys would wear dead cats on their heads, wouldn't they. Anyway, Pictures of him with Eagles fans, smiling and being an Eagles fan, and he's wearing an Eagles fleece of some sort, and it says fun tailgate in Philly today football emoji excited to watch the Steelers throttle the Raiders. Well that's the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steelers play in Pittsburgh. I just
told you this. You said you understood McCormick. Now, this is as stupid as it sounds, but perhaps not for the reasons that first come to mind. It is possible that this latest idiot fascist McCormick thinks he was at a Philadelphia Steelers game. It's possible, I don't know. He later finessed this to suggest he was going to go tailgate with the Eagles fans and then go watch the Steelers on TV in their game at Las Vegas. The
timing of his tweet actually supports this. He tweeted those photos and the reference to the wrong team at four thirty six pm Eastern. The Eagles had played at one pm in Philadelphia and the Steelers were playing in Nevada
at four pm Eastern time. But the point is, even if you aren't such a carpetbagger who isn't actually from Pennsylvania that you think that the Pittsburgh team is the same as the Philadelphia team and it's all sports ball, why would you be so stupid as to post a bunch of pictures with Eagles fans and not mention the Eagles but only the Steelers. I mean, among other things, Eagles fans hate Steelers fans. Even if you're not a moron,
you'll look like a moron. Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate from Connecticut David by the way, for next time. The Steelers and Eagles merged during World War two and they spent the nineteen forty three season as the Steegles. So whatever you do, don't call either one of the teams the Steegles. And there used to be NFL teams in the Frankfort section of Philly, and there was another one in Pottstown, PA. And the bankrupt nineteen fifty two Dallas Texans eventually moved
their base of operations to Hershey, Pennsylvania. So don't mention any of them. Please. How about this. How about when you're unfamiliar with the state as you are with Pennsylvania, next time you run in the damn state in which you actually live. McCormick two days worse, Parson, And it started on the night of October twenty second, two thousand and it ended well, I'll let you know if and when it ever ends. I was enjoying the second night
of one of my childhood dreams come true. I was the host, not just of the telecast of the world series, but it was an all New York City series, a Mets versus Yankee series, a Subway series. I'd literally dreamt of it since nineteen sixty seven. The manager of the Yankees had been the first person I ever interviewed on TV fifteen years earlier. I had worked with him in TV. He was a friend of mine. I had just covered the Mets through their playoff run and knew all of
their players. My face had been on an advertisement in dead center field in the Mets Stadium for the entirety of the year before, and the players.
All knew me my name.
Where we were that night, Yankee Stadium was not only where I saw my first baseball game, but was about seven eighths of a mile from the the hospital in which I had been born, and my first home was
four subway stops away. The night before this event, as I hosted the start of the first game of this Keith of palooza, I was supposed to introduce the public a dress anouncer of Yankee Stadium, Bob Sheppard, whose voice I had heard nearly every day since I was eight years old, so he could then introduce the players and
this epic world series would begin. And it dawned on me in the seconds before I was supposed to do this that I literally had the power to stop the two thousand World Series from ever happening if I just kept talking and never actually said here is Bob Shephard, Well, I could delay it briefly until they cut my mic
off and then fired me on the spot. Anyway, this was Game two, and now that our pregame show was over, and I had waved to my mother, who had seen her first game at Yankee Stadium just ooh sixty six years previously, and she was seated in the family seats that were just nine rows up from our on field set. I had crawled into the position I would assume for
the entire game as the dugout reporter. I was hunched over on a stool squeezed between the far end of the Yankee dugout and our Fox Sports first base camera. A thin chicken wire fence separated me from the dugout himself. In fact, it was a formality. I was more or less in the dugout players, coaches, and that night, as I settled in, my friend, the Yankee manager all came over to say hello, Roger Clemens of the Yankees, who I had also known since we were both rookies in
Boston Sports in nineteen eighty four. He lasted, I didn't. Roger Clemens had struck out the first two Mets hitters, Clemens was a strange man about whom I had heard a strange tale of teammates in a college summer baseball league who were all wearing their wallets in their uniform pants back pockets during a game, because one of them explained to a friend of mine, we have this crazy kid Clemens from Texas on this team, and we don't trust him. In I had found him a little nervous,
little standoffish, but doing his best to be professional. But by now there were rumors swirling around Roger Clemens about amphetamines and performance enhancing drugs, and you knew not to talk to him before or after a game unless you had to, and if you had to, you chose your words very carefully, then made sure that whatever you did, you had to start with something mundane, like the score of the game, and if you could let him bring
up anything controversial or complex, he would then probably do it. So now, as this game continued, after two batters had struck out, Lee Mazilli, the former Mets star now Yankees coach, another friend of mine was on the other side of a little fence, and as Mets superstar Mike Piazza stepped in as the third batter of the game, Mozilly leaned in and said, conspiratorily, let's see if Roger flips him again. In Midsummer two thousand, Roger Clemens had beamed Mike Piazza
with a fastball. There was a hospital visit involved. Nobody was convinced it had not been intentional, or that Clemens would not do it again, even though it was the World Series. Mozilli and I leaned forward. Piazza was a deeply complicated guy too. During the playoffs, he had walked up to me and asked me if it was true I was from New York, and then he quizzed me about the relative merits of the suburbs, and then he wanted to know if I had really taken up residence
in his favorite southern California hotel. And we talked for fifteen minutes about that. The next night I saw him, smiled, said hello, and he looked at me like I had just sworn a vendetta against his family. For a long time I thought it was me, until about ten years later, the great Vin Scully said that Piazza was with the Dodgers, and when they were both together there in Los Angeles,
Vin had had the identical experience with Piazza. Best friends on the team bus one day, and then no indication Piazza remembered even meeting him the next I mean that was Ben Scully. Clemens, as it turned out, did not throw a baseball at Piazza, but instead pitched him inside in on his hands, and Piazza tried to stop a swing that was half self defense, but instead the odd angle and the force of the pitch shattered Piazza's bat. The ball veered to the right, describing a circle into
foul territory. The head of the bat shot out towards Clemens on the mound. A second piece flew briefly into the infield. Piazza was left holding just the handle. And it looked as foolish as that sounds, but lost in this descriptions the fact that that all happened at once, and even from our sign angle in the Yankee dugout, it looked a mozillion me as if Piazza's bat had simply exploded, like it was a trick device of some sort.
I saw Clemens reach for the baseball. I thought it was the baseball right in front of him, and then just as quickly, He and I at the same moment, realized it was not the baseball. It was the barrel of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just a little darker than a baseball, but could in the heat of an instant following a bat explosion, it could be mistaken for a ball. So far, so good. But right then Clemens, realizing it was part of a bat and not a ball,
promptly threw that part of the bat at me. Jesus Mas, I said to Mizilly, why did Clemens throw that bat barrel at me? The Yankee coach looked incredulously at me. He didn't throw it you. He throw it at me. That's what it looked like. We were lined up perfectly. If Roger Clemens had thrown the barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say, one hundred and twenty feet instead of just six or seven feet, he would have hit either me or Lee Mozilly.
In the Yankee dugout. As it was, since nobody knew exactly what was happening, Piazza had started to run down to first base in case the ball was fair. He didn't know where the ball was either. For that initial split second, you really couldn't tell which flying object was the ball, and also whether the ball was fair or foul.
So Roger Clemens's throw certainly looked like it was aimed at Piazza as Piazza went down the first baseline, and Piazza took umbrage, And there was another split second of confusion when it looked like Piazza might charge out to the mound to try to sock Clemens for this and for the Midsummer beating. I said to Missilly, wait, did he throw that bat at Piazza? Misilly just shook his head. I don't think so. Hun Hell knows he's been here two years. I haven't figured out anything he's done so far.
As the umpires then got involved, Clemens repeatedly tapped his own chest, and not in a bragging way, but in a kind of what looked like that's on me way. Two bat boys collected the three main pieces of the bat and a bunch of smaller shards, some of them smaller than a toothpick. The Fox play by play man threw it to me in the dugout well. I said, I can tell you the Yankee dugout doesn't know what happened or why Joe. Missilly laughed quietly and then hit
me in the arm. While I was on the air, I postulated that Clemens was looking for a ball hit back to him, instead found the piece of the bat and then discarded that piece of the bats so we could keep looking for the ball that he discarded, it kind of where Piazza was running, might have been delivered,
might have been a coincidence. I do remember suggesting that if Clemens had really aimed the bat at Piazza, that from that distance, with the strength and accuracy of a major league pitcher, he clearly would have hit him with it. Piazza then promptly grounded out to end the inning, and as Clemens came back towards the Yankee dugout where Mozilli and I were, he again stopped to talk to the umpire,
who was Charlie Reliford. Over the noise of fifty six thousand fans at Yankee Stadium, I couldn't hear a damn thing, but it sure looked like Clemens was again saying that was on me. I asked missillly if he could find out if that's what Clemens was doing, and half an inning later, Missilly reported that Clemens indeed thought for a second it was the ball, and that he threw it and then it was on him, and that it was not intentional and it was not directed at Piazza. Now
I did something kind of stupid. I suggested to my bosses that I should go ask the commissioner Baseball, who in a World Series game had the power to eject any place for any reason, although that power had not actually been used since nineteen thirty four. What he thought
of all this? The producer said yes, And I thought me and my big mouth, I now had to crawl out of that little space between camera and dugout, and I mean literally crawl hands and knees to exit back into the seats via where the groundskeepers kept all the extra dirt. I knew where in the stands the commissioner was sitting. I went there. I got to him, I
asked him. He assured me there was no discipline coming for Clemens, and they'd look at the tape of the game again that night or in the morning, but he really didn't think Clemens had tried to hit Piazza with the bat. Well, they would look at the tape, and they decided both that Clemens did not try to hit Piazza with the bat, and that he should be fined fifty thousand dollars for I don't know, not trying to
hit him with the bat. So I made it back to the dugout, reversing my crawl like I was recreating the movie The Great Escape. As it turned out, Piazza's little squib shot that caused all the trouble with the exploding bat was about the hardest thing they hit off Clemens all night. Over eight innings, he struck out nine Mets batters, he walked none, he gave up only two hits, and he only hit one batter. And then, incredibly, after Clemens left the game, the Yankees almost blew a six
to nothing lead. In the ninth inning, a Met outfielder named Jay Payton hit a three run homer off future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the Mets had a chance to tie the game or go ahead off Rivera in the top of the ninth And then he got out of it, and the final score was six to five Yankees. And with the game over now it was
Keith interviews Clemens' time. I went to the pre arranged spot at the other end of the Yankee Dugout, where another friend of mine, the Yankees pr director, had guaranteed me he would go and get Clemens and they would emerge after Clemens left the clubhouse to do what was a contractually obligated interview with Fox and me. Aparently, Roger Clemens started making his way towards me the moment the
Yankees finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, security closed the only runway from the Yankee Dugout to the clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as an exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader. And while Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every one of its stations in the country, even on the West Coast, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver kept showing replays again and again and promising my interview with Roger Clemens, Rudy Giuliani took his goddamn time leaving the field. His idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I half expected him to eat it. Instead, he stuffed it
in his jacket pockets. Juliani now waited for his entire entourage, one of his wives, some of his I guess they were friends, assorted political riff raff, and as my producer screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani waited until they were all together on the field, and finally he marched them down into the dugout and up through the runway. And after all this delay, Clemens came out and finally I could ask him about throwing the bat shard at
or near piazza. And at that moment I remembered what I had learned about Clemens in Boston. If you started an interview with something controversial, he might very well walk away. If, on the other hand, you did the boring game outcome question, he would answer anything you asked, and he might even bring up anything controversial himself. But you had to do the stupid game stuff first, So which was harder work? Roger I asked eight innings of two hit ball or
watching the Mets nearly tie it in the ninth. His answer was not bad, but he did not bring up the bats. So I asked another question about what he thought of his performance in that game. Well, that did it. He started talking about having to overcome his emotions in the first inning, and I could say, well, since you brought up the emotions the bat throwing incident, did you throw that piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza. There is a freeze frame from that interview in which Roger
Clemens eyes are bugged wide open. Well, Glemmons basically confirmed what the guys in the dugout had told me. He had told them. You can believe him or not, but he thought the thing he grabbed was the ball, and when it wasn't, he threw it away just in case the ball was somewhere else near him and he had to have a free hand with which to pick it up. He explained the chest taps. He was indeed saying to the umpire Umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his
apologies to the umps for throwing the bat. He said he didn't even know where Piazza was at the point he threw the bat. It was as straight and nonpartisan and frankly as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile, everybody else in that stadium, everybody else in that city, everybody else in the Tri State area was convinced of
one of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to impale Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat, or the Mets were crybabies who could not tell that Clemens obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza with his own bat. There was no middle ground. I found this out specifically the next day when the TV sports columnist of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who was a friend of mine, called to interview me about the interview. Why didn't you ask him about the bat first? Nobody
cared about how he pitched? He threw a bat at Piazza. I said, you're a Met fan, and I explained the theory of not making Clemens end an interview before he said what you needed to know. I went through the whole thing I just recited here. It was amazing to see those few days how every sports reporter and columnist in New York self identified as either a Met fan or ex Met fan, or a Yankee fan or x
Yankee fan. And you can still see it today, as this story from twenty two years ago is recollected by others they wrote what they felt as kids Clemens was the victim, or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazza like he was a dracula, and they had the wooden steak to go through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently from Joe Torre, the Yankee manager, another one of my friends, that they all hid something from us that night, the
thing about emotions. After the incident in the first inning, Roger Clemens went back to the Yankee clubhouse and started to cry. This might have had something to do with embarrassment or grief, But since he had noted that he had had to check his emotions, I always thought, well, he might have been a little overamped for that game, naturally or otherwise. All right, So before I present anything else out of chronological order, let me go back to
the moment. I thanked Roger Clemens for the interview and threw it back to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the Fox booth. Because this is when the real trouble started. They were pretty much done for the night, but I had another two hours to go in a live postgame show on Fox's cable sports network. We had about four minutes until that show started and it suddenly occurred to me that although this was not the most important event in the history of the World Series, the bat would
become part of the iconography of baseball. I had been at Yankee Stadium often enough over the years to know the two kids who ran the visiting clubhouse, and right then they were still packing up the Mets bats and equipment and the Mets dugout. So I ran over and asked the senior of them what happened to the pieces of the piazza bat well. The guy explained that Bobby Valentine, the Mets manager, had asked that one of the pieces go to a friend of his in the stands, and he,
the clubhouse attendant, had handed it to the guy. A second piece he believed was kept by the Yankees. He wasn't sure about that. The third piece, the handle was where was it? Where is it? He asked the other attendant. It's here in the garbage, the kids said. I did a double take. Garbage, Yeah, the kid said, under the dugout bench, and there it was, stuffed in amid all the empty bags of sunflower seeds and the crushed gatorade cups. I said, what happens to it now gets thrown out.
They clean out the dugouts first. So I said, look, can I borrow it? This would make a great prop for our postgame show. And the attendant says sure, and he pulls it out of the pile and hands it to him, just about seven inches of a baseball bat, and all there is is Piazza's uniform number thirty one written in magic marker on the bottom. Listen. I said, I won't be able to bring this back to you for like two hours. We're on for two hours. Will you still be in the clubhouse? And he said, are
you kidding? We have to be here at eight He and I'll be out of here in ten minutes. And I said, you want me to bring it back to you for Game three? And he says, garbage. You're going to bring back garbage, throw it out, keep it whatever, what do I care? So I use the bat fragment as a prop in the show repeatedly, and I stuck it in my shoulder bag and I thought, I'm not a scround, but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia
and I'd like to keep it. So either I'll auction it off for charity and bid against myself or something, or I'll make a donation to a baseball charity and I'll keep it. And that was it. And two days later, as the World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shaye Stadium, I got a phone call from one of the PR guys at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And I said, no, not yet, And he says, Piazza told the guy from Newsday that you stole his back and
he wants it back. And I said, what if I hadn't asked about it, it would be on a garbage scale right now, being towed out to be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean. And he says maybe, but Piazza told this John Hayman, he's going to sue you to get it back. So now I go to the ballpark with extra excitement on my plate. I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell me he's going to sue me. So I go out onto the field. I'm wondering how long it's going to
be before I run into Piazza. And like two minutes after I step on the field, I turn around and he's walking towards me, and he looks at me and he says, hey, wild one the other night. Huh, say, listen, when you lived at Shutters, did you ever eat at Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat. We're talking about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah, but did you ever eat at Shae Jay's. And a big smile from Piazza. Oh, man, I love Shade Jay's.
I love Jay. Give me your number this winner. When I'm home, let's go eat at Shaye Jay's. And I said, I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs. Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand dabs at a restaurant. And then he says, hey, sorry, I gotta go ahead, have a good show. That was it. He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see each other on the field, he starts the conversation. No
mention of suing me, not one word. Next day in the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's going to sue me for stealing his bat. Next night, Game four of the World Series, We're just about to go on the air at the pregame show, and now Piazza comes over again, coming in from the outfield. To the dugout, and he says, Hey, this must be really cool to do what you got are doing. Have a great show, and by now the only thing I can think of. He does not know I'm the same Keith Olderman. He
keeps threatening to sue. So the World Series ends and the Yankees beat the Mets, and if you look for it, there's this photo of the traditional postgame awarding of the World Series Trophy and the Most Valuable Player award and its commissioner, Bud Selig and Derek Jeter, the Yankees and me, and just before it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yankees. He's crying, leans in and I give
him a hug and reassure him. And he asked me if my mother went to the game, and I said, you know my mother, she'd never come to Shay Stadium. She hates it more than you do. And he says, I love her more than ever before.
Now.
So the series ends, and it's not been that greatest series, but it's been exciting, and it was the dream from my childhood. And the Yankees have won and my friends are happy, and I've not heard another word about this lawsuit. Nothing for Mike Piazza. And I told the Fox people, well, if I'm not going to hear anything more from that,
it's easy. I'm going to keep the bat and I'm going to donate twenty five thousand dollars to this charity, the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex ball players in financial need, because A I'm not a scrounger. B it's a great cause. C that's actually much more than the bat handle would be worth on the open market. And D the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team is bat bat and that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat, you get it.
And then nothing for a month, whereupon Fox gets another letter, now from Piazza's agent fellow named Monzon, and he threatens to sue again, and that's the end of it. Never
heard from him again. So now it's the next year, two thousand and one, and I'm back in New York working for CNN doing the news, and I go to a Mets game and I see Piazza and I give him a big smile and I offer my hand and I say, still any of those sand dabs from shayj And he just stares at me and walks right past me, and I see a cop I know who works next to the Mets dugout, and the cop says, Mike has been asking him about me, Zach Keith Olderman, the one
who stole my bat. So now I'm not just keeping the bat. I want to sue Mike Piazza for being a pain in the ass. And then nine to eleven happens, and ball players are doing charity things, and sportscasters and newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well, this is the time when the baseball season resumes. I throw the bat handle in my bag and I go out to a Mets game and I go up to Piazza's locker before the game and I pull the bat chard out and I say, take this, Mike, auction it off
for charity. Let's do some good with this. Or if it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll auction it off. We can leave my name out of it, whatever you want, however you want to do it. And he looks at me like I've just insulted his mother and says, no, it's too complicated, and he turns away, and I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete I have ever met. And just before the season ends,
I go to another Mets game. Now, this time it's one of his teammates who takes me aside and says, you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his bat from the Clemens game last year. He says, he still wants to sue you. Didn't you try to give him the back back in the clubhouse to auction off. Didn't I see that? And I say, yeah I did, and he refused to take it, And the guy laughs and he says, great player, excellent catcher. I love him,
strangest player I have ever met. Comes two thousand and two, nothing happens. See Piazza at several Mets games. Nothing happens. Two thousand and three, nothing happens.
Now.
I can't pin the year down on this. It's one of the Red Sox Yankees playoff series, either two thousand and three or two thousand and four. And I'm leaving the field as they're clearing the media off just before the game starts, and I'm going out through the Red Sox dugout literally at the same spot where the kid handed me Piazza's bat handle. Three or four years earlier
where the trouble all began. And I see the new owner of the Red Sox team approaching from the other end of the dugout Keith John Henry, Nice to meet you.
Have you got a minute? And I said, well, yeah, they're kicking the media off the field, so and he laughs and he says I can take care of that, and he yells at the plane closes cop and he says he's with me, and the cop nods and John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox, and I sit down on the Red Sox bench before the start of a Red Sox Yankees playoff game, and there are no other reporters out there, and I think, Okay, what did I say about the Red Sox? What is he pissed off about? Instead?
John Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza? And I laugh and I say, sure, what about him? And he says, you have part of his bat from the World Series with Clemens right, And I say yeah, and he says, tell me the whole story. So I do what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's what I was told, Thank you, Huh. I thought it was me, so that other piece of the bat that was handed to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game.
That friend is a great friend of mine, and after nine elevee and he said, wouldn't it be great to get Mike Piazza to sign this and then we can auction it off for the victims' families or the cops or some other charity. And he gives me the bat, and I call the Mets and they approach Mike and they call me and they say, Mike loves the idea and I should come to one of the spring training
games and he'll sign it. So the next March, I go to one of the Mets spring training games and I go up to him in the clubhouse and I introduce myself and he looks at me like I'm from Mars, and I say, well, I brought the bat, and he says, what bat? And I explained that we had arranged to have him sign the bat from the World Series for a nine to eleven charity and he erupts at me, I'm not signing that bat sure for charity? You think
I was born yesterday? And now I say something to John Henry, owner of the Red SOX like, welcome to the club. Did he threaten to sue you too? And he laughs and says yes. That's the next part of the story. So while we're trying to straighten that out, his agent calls me and asks if I will give them the bat to auction off for charity. And I say sure, and I go to another Mets game and I go to the club and I have the bat again.
Now Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because of pending litigation, but if I want him to, he'll sign it for me. All I have to do is come back a couple of weeks later. So this is what I wanted to ask Keith. Is he the strangest ballplayer you've ever met? Or is it just me? There's one more part to this. Flash forward to twenty fourteen. I still have the Piazza batthandle the one I unsuccessfully
tried to give back to Piazza. The middle portion, the one John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza,
has been sold, with the proceeds going to charity. So where is the third piece, the barrel of the bat, the part that Clemens threw at Piazza if you're a Met fan, or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza if you're not a Met fan, And the answer finally arrives in a sports memorabilia auction catalog that year, while one of the visiting bat boys was handing the middle part of the bat to a friend of Hobby Valentine and John Henry's in the stands, the barrel, which landed
near the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the Yankee bat boy who put it in the pile of Yankee broken bats. And as it turned out right at that point, the Yankee strengthened conditioning coach Jeff Mangold, who was on the bench, said, wait a minute, that's the pile of broken bats they're going to throw out. They shouldn't throw it out. It's history. And he grabs that part of the Piazza bat and puts it up in his home office. And now it's fourteen years later and he wants to
auction it off for charity. So he auctions it off, and I think, well, hell, it should be alongside the other piece of the bat. My other piece of the bat, the handle, So I win the auction. There it is on my wall, complete with a baseball card showing Roger Clemens about to throw the barrel. Reasons left to your imagination. Two thirds of the famous bat. I'll sell it someday, I'm sure, but I'll always have the memories, my memories
and John Henry's memories. And if you're wondering, No, unlike John Henry and I, that Yankee strength coach, Jeff Mangold never tried to give it back to Piazza or get it signed by Piazza or auctioned off for charity with Piazza, which means that, on top of everything else, Jeff Mangold is smarter than John Henry and I put together. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. We're now back to five episodes a week,
posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Yeah, I still have the bat. Follow me for the podcast promo videos on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and face twit. Once again, there is a Monday countdown to write that down and please send this edition to the podcast to somebody who does not know that they need to listen, but they need to listen Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil. The musical directors have Countdown, arranged, produced,
and formed most of our music. Mister Chanelle was on orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitars, bass and drums. I'm not sure who did the typewriter. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are
by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two and it was written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc. I mean the composition is Curtesy of ESPN Inc. I don't think Mitch Warren Davis is courtesy of ESPN Inc. AnyWho other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Jonathan Banks. Everything else was pretty much my fault. So that's countdown
for today. Three weeks until the twenty twenty four presidential election and the seventy ninth day since convicted felon dementia J Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential community to keep him from doing it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news requires till then, I'm
Keith Olberman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.