February 21, 2024 • 36 mins
SERIES 2 EPISODE 127: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I have argued for NINE YEARS that it is essential for the media to actually CALL the crazy shit Trump says “crazy shit” all the time. I have argued for FIVE YEARS that Joe Biden should CALL the crazy shit Trump says “crazy shit.” And it’s like I’ve been talking to the wind.
And then, yesterday afternoon, from the White House lawn, CNN’s senior correspondent there quoted sources saying the President has directed his senior campaign staff to focus on Trump’s inflammatory comments, especially “THE CRAZY SHIT TRUMP SAYS IN PUBLIC.” No bleeping, no euphemisms, she said it – deliberately.
Suddenly I feel like I’m not alone!
This is the easiest way to beat Trump is to quote Trump and the easiest way to break through the numb-to-it-all white noise permitting Trump to survive as a public figure is to get angry about it, angry enough for… the CNN White House correspondent to say “the crazy shit that Trump says.” Live. From the White House lawn. At mid-day.
Today, “The crazy shit that Trump says.” Tomorrow… the F-word!
I want CNN to talk like that, I want Biden surrogates to talk like that, I want the presidentto go and talk like that. I want to hear the phrase “the crazy shit that Trump says” said by Joe Biden in the State of the Union, right after “Thank you Mr. Speaker.” I want it to have to be broadcast 100 times that night on 100 different channels and I want to see the right wing pundits stage phony strokes and umbrage at his locker room talk because he says it and I want it played again and again and again because IT’S… THE… TRUTH!
Meanwhile, in what should shock no one: The supposed FBI whistleblower in the Hunter Biden case – the man who is at the center of the James Comer/Jim Jordan/Chuck Grassley/Donald Trump smear job against him and the president? – the one they ARRESTED last week for lying TO the FBI? Alexander Smirnov? He has now told investigators Quote: “that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing” the fabrications about Hunter Biden.
Dramatic, yes. Two caveats: a) he WAS arrested for lying and b) that phrase “officials associated with Russian intelligence” now applies to about 90 percent of the Republican party.
B-Block (17:29) IN SPORTS: Congratulations, Nashville and Salt Lake City. You’re getting major league baseball expansion teams. Unfortunately you won’t be getting them any earlier than 2032, according to ESPN. And the actor who played one of the legendary figures in the legendary Paul Newman hockey film “Slap Shot” has died. I’ll say goodbye to Paul D’Amico, so fierce-looking as “Captain Hook” that they modeled the comic book character Wolverine after him. (22:52) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A Republican Florida state legislator has introduced a bill that experts believe will put Florida right-wing media out of business (thank God these people are that stupid); Senator Mike Lee’s petition to get them to actually have an impeachment trial of Secretary Mayorkas earns only thirteen signatures; and Elon Musk’s crapshack website bans and then suddenly unbans Alexei Navalny’s widow. Well, Elmo’s name does constitute half of the word “Muscovite,” doesn’t it?
C-Block (28:35) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Before Black History Month ends, let’s take the opportunity to tell the true story of the man who broke the color line in major league baseball. He was NOT Jackie Robinson. He was not even Fleet Walker. His name was William Edward White, he played in the National League in 1879, and for whether he couldn’t acknowledge his accomplishment or simply chose not to, he never did.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
have argued for nine years that it is essential for
(00:25):
the media in this country to call the crazy shit
Trump says crazy shit all the time. I have argued
for five years that Joe Biden should call the crazy
shit Trump says crazy shit. And it's like I've been
talking to the wind. And then yesterday afternoon, this is
(00:51):
CNN Senior White House correspondent MJ. Lee, And this is
actually off CNN's air, And this is something.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
We are told that the thrust of the President's direction
was to significantly ramp up the campaign's efforts to highlight
the crazy shit that Trump says in public.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I'm not alone. I feel like I'm no longer taking
crazy shit pills. Did we all of a sudden have
a breakthrough? Did somebody just throw a switch somewhere. I
want CNN to talk like that. I want Biden's surrogates
to talk like that. I want the President to go
and talk like that. I want to hear the phrase
(01:35):
the crazy shit that Trump says. I want to hear
it said by Joe Biden. I want to hear it
said in the State of the Union and I want
him to say it right after thank you, mister speaker.
I want to have it be broadcast one hundred times
that night on one hundred different channels. And I want
to see the right wing pundits stage phony Strokes and
(01:56):
Umbridge at his locker room talk because he says it,
and I want it played again and again and again
for the rest of the campaign, primarily because it's the truth.
And by the way, don't think that was some sort
of accident. She didn't goof up. This is MJ. Lee's
(02:17):
story for CNN's website, which went live about forty five
minutes before she said that on their air yesterday. Quote.
Biden personally directed his senior campaign aids in recent days
to focus more aggressively on Trump's inflammatory comments. According to
two sources familiar with the president's edict, the thrust of
(02:38):
Biden's direction, delivered to his senior most staff, was to
significantly ramp up the campaign's efforts to highlight the quote
crazy s asterisk asterisk t that Trump says in public.
According to those sources, unquote you bet your a asterisk
(03:00):
asterisk quite serious. The idea that the easiest way to
beat Trump is to quote Trump and make people hear it.
And the easiest way to make people hear it to
break through the numb to it all white noise permitting
Trump to survive this long as a public figure is
(03:22):
to get angry about it, to get angry enough for
the CNN White House corresponded to say, the crazy shit
that Trump says live from a White House lawn in
the middle of the day today, the crazy shit that
Trump says tomorrow, the F word. But it's more than
(03:46):
just shock value. This is the way Biden talks. It
clearly is the way Trump talks. And oh, by the way,
it is the way all of Washington talks. It is
the way all of America talks. And don't get me wrong,
Biden reaching the same conclusion about talking like that in public,
(04:07):
my conclusion, that's not him listening to me. Does it
listen to me? It's coincidental, it's being done because it's right.
And as a parenthetical as television news. As television has
receded into the background, I have also long argued that
the next mainstream newscast that actually would grow an audience
(04:31):
would be one which chose to freely use your more
popular Anglo Saxon expletives. Craig Ferguson got close a decade ago.
He used to say them to his live audience at
his CBS talk show and then bleep them for TV.
Maybe that would be a good interim step. I pitched
a show like this to several places seven eight years ago,
(04:52):
but bluntly, if MJ. Lee promised to accurately quote her
sources swearing like Steve Adores, I would watch her do
a newscast every day on CNN. Hell, if wolf Blitzer
does it, I'll watch for two hours every day. And
I haven't watched anything on CNN since I left there
in October two thousand and two. It makes me feel
(05:17):
like singing for joy.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Wait, oh, Nancy, someday you watching CNN. I will feel
aglow just thinking of.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You and the crazy shit Trump says.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Two night.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Dah, thank you, Nancy Faust. A minute or two ago,
I posited that this really might have had been a breakthrough,
or it was a watershed moment about Trump, and not
just because of CN fing n At almost the exact
(06:06):
moment that was happening on the White House lawn, Nicky
Haley went even roguer than previously.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Despite being a de facto incumbent. Donald Trump lost forty
nine percent of the vote in Iowa. In New Hampshire,
Trump lost forty six percent of the vote.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
We're talking about almost half of our voters. What does
it say about an incumbent who's losing nearly half of
his party? It spells disaster in November?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Man, do I hate it when I agree with Nicky
Haley or CNN or both of them on the same day.
I don't know what got into her. I still don't
trust her. I still don't think she's that bright. But
that gave me a bigger smile than when Jonathan Turley
left me with the permanent image while criticizing Judge Enngron's
(07:03):
fine against Trump quote he ordered everything short of throwing
Trump into a wood chipper. Well, John, we can always hope.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump
privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been
and will continue to be for our party. They're just
too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I'm not
afraid to say the hard truth out loud. I feel
(07:35):
no need to kiss the ring.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Again. Agreeing with CNN and Nikki Haley on the same day.
I begin to question myself, and then Trump does something
to end my questioning. His Neanderthalian spokesperson Stephen Chung replied
to Haley by writing, She's going to drop down to
(07:58):
kiss ass when she quits, like she always does. If
Nicki Haley goes to a campaign event today and comes
back with an F bomb against Trump, I'll donate the
MAX to her campaign. Holy cow, if you ever forget that,
we're not just fighting Trump on his insanity, dictatorship, fascism, racism, greed,
(08:21):
white supremacy, anti semitism, barbarism, irresponsibility, future of the planet.
That it's not just that, but we're also fighting something
far more existential. That he and his gang are thugs
and bullies and low lifes and sub human scumbags. That
we are fighting for human beings, however mediocre, We are
(08:44):
against humanoids. If we ever forget that, Trump makes sure
that worms like Stephen Chung remind us the former fighter
guy and remember, Stephen Chung, symptoms of CTE can appear
prior to mortality, and Trump also provides a daily reminder
(09:10):
that the other people on his side are even worse
than his spokesman are the supposed FBI whistleblower in the
Hunter Biden case, the man who is at the center
of the James Comer Jim Jordan, Chuck Grassley, Donald Trump
smear job against Hunter Biden and his father. The one
they arrested last week for lying to the FBI, Alexander Smirnoff.
(09:34):
His detention memo came out yesterday. It includes one line
of interest quote. During his custodial interview on February fourteenth,
Smirnoff admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved
in passing the story about business person one. Yeah, you
know who business Person one is, right? His first name
(09:55):
is Hunter. Now are a reminder this phrase officials associated
with Russian intelligence that now applies to basically two fifths
of the republic Party and anybody directly connected to Trump.
Plus they did just arrest this guy, Smirnoff for lieing
to the FBI. Still, he also reported who contacts with
(10:20):
a Russian official that Smirnoff claimed was the son of
a former high ranking Russian official, and he claimed he
was the head of an assassination unit. And he claimed
he was a Russian intel guy at Smirnoff also reported
contact with another guy he says as a Russian intel guy.
There was a lot of vague talk about kompromant and
phone calls involving US people that the Russian agencies have.
(10:42):
Mike Johnson. Again, that could be any Republican on the
House Oversight Committee, so don't read too much into it.
Yet read a lot into this though. The same authoritarian
Republicans behind Project twenty twenty five and making all the
federal employees pledge personal allegiance to Trump and invoking the
(11:03):
Insurrection Act on the day is second inauguration, and using
the military against peaceful protesters. They have a second set
of objectives, christo fascism. Politico got hold of a massive
documents from the Center for Renewing America this Psycho Russell
Votes company. They are filled with plans to restrict divorce,
(11:27):
to stop funding anything that enables single motherhood, to repeal
all LGBTQ rights, to force the FDA to revoke approval
of abortion drugs, to put Planned Parenthood out of business,
to end all school sex education, to allow Christians to
opt out of basically any law they can make up
(11:48):
a religious objection to and to allow into this country
only immigrants who have accepted the Bible. This is what
they want. This is the serious, crazy shit, says. And
if you think it's just stuff, he says, you may
(12:11):
have missed this from Alabama last Friday, where the Supreme
Court there ruled that embryos frozen for in vitro fertilization
are people which not only essentially destroys in vitro fertilization
in the state of Alabama, but if the embryos are destroyed,
(12:32):
the Supreme Court there is saying that somebody will be
liable to be prosecuted under an act called wrongful Death
of a minor. This is where we are going. This
is why what was said on CNN yesterday is so important.
This is where Trump and the Christo fascists are taking
(12:56):
us and taking us as hostages. On a happier note
of programming, announcement two weeks from now, approximately Thursday night,
March seventh, iHeart and I will be doing a countdown
(13:16):
with Keith Olderman live State of the Union podcast special
on YouTube. Right after Yeah the State of the Union,
President Biden talks, he stops, we go live on YouTube
on camera with the podcast tomorrow's podcast today around ten Eastern.
(13:37):
I think still working out the details, but me on
camera I'll shave and take viewer questions at the end
of it. Two. Not gonna kid you. The premise of
this is we want to try out live video capability
here for key nights during the rest of the campaign.
So we'll start ten pm Thursday night, March seventh, the
Countdown with Keith Olderman live State of the Union podcast
(14:01):
special on YouTube. A nice catchy name for it too,
and it will be viewable again later on YouTube, and
the regular podcast will appear in the regular places wherever
you podcast, but we'll change up a little bit. We'll
do it live. And also of interest, here time to
salute the man who broke the color barrier in Major
(14:23):
League Baseball, Jackie Robinson. No, not him, the tragedy of
William Edward White of the eighteen seventy nine Providence team.
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that, not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Ulberman in sports date line Nashville, Tennessee and dateline Salt
Lake City, Utah. Congratulations Nashville congratulations, Salt Talaka City, You're
getting Major League Baseball expansion franchises. There is a catch.
(15:26):
This will happen sometime around the year twenty thirty two.
That is the conclusion of my former ESPN colleague Jeff Passon,
pointing out that it has already passed a quarter century
since the last Baseball expansion clubs took the field back
in nineteen ninety eight, and once the game started to
expand in nineteen sixty one, after sixty years of stasis,
(15:47):
baseball had never gone more than sixteen years without selling
absolutely nothing of value for as much money as possible
and adding at least two more deadbeat franchises to the
bottom of the pile. It hasn't been much a topic
of conversation, one owner anonymously told Passing, even though the
expansion fee that the other owners would share would probably
(16:11):
be about four billion dollars per team. Well, why isn't
a topic of conversation Because baseball realizes, even if the
fans don't yet, that there is going to be a
huge economic shakeout after the failure of the company that
had most of the local TV rights to the current teams.
The money growth is going to stop at least temporarily.
(16:33):
Plus there is this unresolved mess about the Oakland maybe
Las Vegas, maybe Sacramento. Maybe they stay in Oakland A's anyway.
Jeff Passing at ESPN says Nashville and Salt Lake City
are now co favorites for expansion, and there is some
news in that. It had been thought for decades that
if the game ever expanded to the West coast, the
(16:55):
new franchise would go to Portland, Oregon, not the other one.
He says, Salt Lake has now leapfrogged Portland. Of course,
neither may wind up with that ex franchise, neither Portland
nor salt Lake. The last time the A's moved to Oakland,
in nineteen sixty eight, the only way Baseball avoided losing
its unique anti trust exemption was to immediately grant a
(17:19):
replacement expansion franchise to Kansas City, so the next Baseball
expansion could be to Oakland. Dateline East Brookfield, Massachusetts. One
of the countless great character actors and perhaps the greatest
of all sports comedy movies, has died. Paul Tomato played
(17:41):
Captain hook player coach Tim McCracken of The Bad guys
the Syracuse Bulldogs in the utterly politically incorrect hockey movie
slap Shot, starring Paul Newman. He passed away at home
on Monday after a long fight against the neurological disease.
To Motto also played a Green Beret in The Deer Hunter.
He was in Heaven's Gate and Suspect, and as he
(18:04):
liked to joke, quote, I'm probably the only actor that
ever beat up Paul Newman, almost beat up Robert de
Niro and held a knife to the throat of chaer.
Everyone who knew him said, Paul to Motto was as
nice a man as they ever made. Tell him about
a charity for kids, and he'd show up in his
Syracuse uniform from the movie, carrying another Syracuse uniform auctioned
(18:25):
off for charity. But he looked so wild, his big
eyes flaring, his hair flying outwards, that how he appeared
in slap Shot had served as the basis for the
comic book and film character Wolverine. Paul to Motto was
seventy five years old. So one last time, for those
(18:47):
of you who know your slap Shot still ahead of
(19:38):
us on this all new edition of Countdown, let's take
one show from this month to remember the man who
broke baseball's color line, William Edward White of the eighteen
seventy nine Providence Grays of the National League. No, it
wasn't Jackie Robinson. I'll explain this not so glorious history
in things I promised not to tell. First. Yes, the
(20:00):
daily round up of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Krueger
effect specimens who constitute today persons in the world. The
Bronze Worse alex Andreida, Florida State representative from Pensacola, Republican
sponsor of HB seven fifty seven, another right wing nut
job bill. This is a media accountability law that would
(20:23):
allow people to sue no news organizations and require judges
to presume that any anonymous source is lying and is
automatically guilty of malice. And it would require a quote
veracity hearing about any story anybody wanted to sue over.
You'd have to have a hearing where a judge would
decide if the story was true or false within sixty
(20:46):
days of the filing of the lawsuit. Cool says local
Florida talk show host Trey Radel. Signing this into law
will destroy conservative media in this state. He adds, while
certain Republicans may think they're going to be suing and
taking on the New York Times in the Washington Post,
here's the news. Liberal trial lawyers are going to have
(21:07):
a field day with center right media in the state
of Florida. This Riddell guy, he too is a conservative
radio host. This Republican state legislator is backing a gun
bill that is pointed at his own side. Good work, Sparky,
the runner up worser Senator Mike Lee of Utah, you
(21:29):
know him. There are more evil Republicans, There are more
vicious Republicans, but there probably are not dumber Republicans. Mike
Lee is honked off at reports and the widespread conclusion
in Washington that the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorcis
will never have a trial in the Senate because Senate
Republicans are way less dumb than House Republicans are now
(21:53):
except Mike. Mike Lee has written Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell to insist that the impeachment not be tabled and
that there be a trial, and there must be one.
There must be one, There must be one, and all
is Republic and colleagues are in favor of it. And
look at all the signatures on his letter, and there
are thirteen signatures. He only got thirteen other senators to
(22:14):
sign his letter, and there are eleven blank spots on
the letter helpathetic. Worse yet, on the letter the signatures
of Senator Blackburn, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Braun and Senator
Roger nine Marshall. They are clearly all in the same
handwriting Oops. But our winner Elawn Musk, while Putin is
(22:41):
now prosecuting Alexei Navalni's brother, and Putin has promoted the
head of the prison service who clearly helped to kill Navalny.
Twitter x got hold of the new account established I
think just Sunday or Monday by his widow, and right
after Julia Navalnaya reposted her video Saint Putin had killed
her husband, Twitter x under Musk suspended the account out
(23:05):
suspended Navalny's widow's account, of course it did. After an
international outcry. Somebody managed to talk Elmo down from his
shroom high or whatever he was on that he will
eventually ode on, and Twitter issued this statement, our platform's
(23:25):
defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged the account
as violating our rules. We unsuspended the account as soon
as we became aware of the error, and we'll be
updating the defense. Unquote Elon Musk's platform defense mechanism against
(23:46):
manipulation and spam is a guy named cat turd Elon,
I am owned by Vladimir Putin musk Ovite two days
worse person.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Finally to the number one story on the countdown, and
before we reached the end of Black History Month, I
wanted to salute the fact that in sports, Black History
Month begins and ends with the men who integrated Major
League Baseball, William Edward White and Fleet Walker. No, not
Jackie Robinson, William Edward White and Fleet Walker. This is
(24:39):
in no way to diminish in the least what Jackie
Robinson did. His success on the field and off, especially
in nineteen forty seven, not only reshaped American sports, It
reshaped America. If he had failed, if he had hit
one ninety seven that first year instead of what he
did hit two ninety seven, all of the mindless prejudices
(25:01):
and cliches of the segregated country we were would have
been reinforced integration would have been deferred or defeated. And
Lord only knows what kind of blighted society might already
exist here and not just threaten us. But Jackie Robinson
did not break the baseball color line. In the winter
(25:22):
of eighteen eighty three eighty four, the minor league team
in Toledo, Ohio, moved intact into the American Association, which
was then the other major league, the lesser rival to
the National League in baseball. Toledo's starting catcher was a
former Oberlin and University of Michigan star named Moses fleetwood Walker,
(25:45):
and he was an African American. On opening day of
the American Association season May first, eighteen eighty four, he
broke the color line. Toledo started its season on the
road on the road in Louisville, Kentucky. The baseball color line,
as we have understood it historically was broken nineteen years
(26:08):
and twenty one days after the Civil War effectively ended,
and it was broken in Kentucky. Indeed, the America and
the American Association of eighteen eighty four, in which Fleet
Walker and later in the season his brother well Day
Walker survived unimaginable Hatred and Abuse had eleven other teams
(26:30):
besides Toledo and Louisville in it. Among them in the
American Association, Richmond, the capital of the Confederate States of America,
also Baltimore, which nearly sided with the South in the
Civil War, and Washington, a collectively mixed message, and Cincinnati,
then an utterly Southern city, and Saint louis It is
amazing that the Walker brothers survived and thrived. Fleet Walker
(26:56):
batted two sixty eight, well above the league average for
that eighteen eighty four season, and even one of the
fiercest racists on the team, his own pitcher Tony Mullane,
said Walker was the best catcher he'd ever played with.
The Toledo team dropped out of the American Association that winter.
Walker continued to play in the Miners, working towards another
(27:17):
shot at the big leagues until eighteen eighty nine, And
that is when baseball unofficially brought down the color barrier
that Jackie Robinson would eventually break through. We celebrate Jackie
Robinson and we all but forget Fleet Walker. He's not
even in the Baseball Hall of Fame, nor is there
some kind of plaque somewhere saying he was Major League
(27:40):
Baseball's first African American player. Of course, in part, that's
because fleet Walker also wasn't actually Major League Baseball's first
African American player. The distinction, in fact belongs to a
man who never claimed it, who did everything possible it appears,
to hide and deny it. On the twentieth of June eighth,
(28:04):
eighteen seventy nine, Joe Start, the first basement of what
was then one of the National League's top teams, the
Providence Grays Providence, Rhode Island, broke his finger. There were
no twenty five man rosters or twenty six man rosters,
and no farm teams from which to call anybody up
in eighteen seventy nine. So the eighteen seventy nine Providence
Grays did what many clubs before nineteen twenty did when
(28:28):
they needed an extra player. They signed a kid off
the streets, or in this case, they signed a kid
off the campus of Brown University. And his name was
William Edward White. He was eighteen years old. We think
they called him Bill, but nobody's certain. And on June
twenty first, eighteen seventy nine, he stepped across the foul
(28:49):
lines at the Messer Street Grounds in Providence, and he
broke baseball's color barrier, and nobody really knew it for
one hundred and twenty five years. That's when irrefutable evidence
was unearthed that William White's father was the president of
a railroad in Georgia, and his mother was one of
(29:11):
the slaves he owned. She herself was of mixed heritage.
William White was evidently light skinned, Caucasian featured, and spent
his life in the old now unused and heartbreaking term passing.
His college thought he was white, his wife thought he
(29:31):
was white. His census takers thought he was white. When
he died in nineteen thirty seven, the death certificate listed
him as white. Deep down, he may have considered himself white,
and thus, since race is a non scientific concept, he
was white, whatever that means. Or he may have just
(29:53):
chosen to enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to avoid the hell
that was living in America for blacks of the nineteenth
century and for most of the twentieth and now sadly
much of the twenty first. We don't know his motives.
We don't know Also, if he only played that one
(30:13):
day in the National League because somebody suspected he was
of mixed heritage. It's just as easy to think that
he was a one day emergency replacement, and the Providence
Grays had three games until the next game after that,
and they rearranged their lineup, and they just dropped him,
as dozens of other teams did to dozens of other
one or two day Big leaguers literally for the next
(30:35):
forty years. We do know there is no evidence that
he ever proclaimed himself to be an African American, nor
that the team had any idea, nor that he ever
acknowledged his accomplishment. That fact that White clearly did not
self identify as black leads many to the interpretation that
White was not the first African American in baseball, because,
(30:58):
at least passively, he was insisting he was not black. Regardless,
there were at least three African Americans in the major
leagues before Jackie Robinson in nineteen forty seven, owhen there
was nearly a fourth. Charlie Grant, a top second baseman
from the early Negro leagues, whom John McGraw, the manager,
(31:20):
had at spring training with the nineteen hundred and won Baltimore,
Orioles McGraw said he was a Native American called Tuckahoma.
When people saw how well Tukahoma played, they knew he was,
in fact Charlie Grant. There was also nearly a fourth.
In nineteen oh five. The newspaper of The Boston Traveler
reported in mid season that the team that would become
(31:43):
the Braves was fed up with its lousy second baseman
and was about to sign the top collegiate player in
the country, Mattie Matthews of Harvard, a black man. It
did not happen. It was nineteen oh five. Matthews instead
signed with a minor league team in Vermont. There was
nearly another fourth. In nineteen sixteen, the Oakland Oaks of
(32:05):
the Pacific Coast League signed a top local amateur player
named Jimmy Claxton. They believed he was a Native American.
He was and also an African American, and he was
released five days later when they found that last part out. Ironically,
that was not before a local candy company rushed out
(32:25):
a baseball card of him. There is a Jimmy Claxton
nineteen sixteen baseball card. Jimmy Claxton William Clarence Mattie Matthews,
Charlie Grant, Fleet, Walker, Well Day Walker, William Edward White
buried by history even during Black History Month. And why well,
(32:50):
I think because we like our history, especially our social history,
to have struggles and pitfalls and even danger, provided it
has a happy ending. And can you have heard these
stories and say that Claxton or Matthews, or Grant or
the Walkers had any kind of happy ending? Or William White.
(33:11):
William White was born in eighteen sixty before the Civil War, Thus,
since his mother was a slave, and not by the
laws of the Confederacy, but by the laws in force
at the time in the United States of America. Thus,
by those laws, the man who actually became the first
African American in professional team sports in this country sixty
(33:34):
nine years before Jackie Robinson, was a man who was
born a slave and spent his life in a segregated
racist society passing as white, never acknowledging his place in history.
And exactly what is happy about that? I've done all
(34:07):
the damage I can do here? Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneale arranged, produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(34:30):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by my companionists
Company in company by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever, and I announce he today was my friend
Richard Lewis. Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's
(34:51):
countdown for this the two hundred and fifty ninth day
until the twenty twenty four US presidential election, the one
one hundred and fortieth day since dementia J Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the fourteenth Amendment, the Insurrection Act, the justice system,
the mental health system to stop him from doing it again,
(35:11):
and swear about it on CNN while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says, the news
warrants till then. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
The crazy shit that Trump says.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Someday you watch in CNN, I will feel a glow
just thinking you and the crazy shit Trump says to night,
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a
(35:59):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I
have argued for nine years that it is essential for
(00:25):
the media in this country to call the crazy shit
Trump says crazy shit all the time. I have argued
for five years that Joe Biden should call the crazy
shit Trump says crazy shit. And it's like I've been
talking to the wind. And then yesterday afternoon, this is
(00:51):
CNN Senior White House correspondent MJ. Lee, And this is
actually off CNN's air, And this is something.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
We are told that the thrust of the President's direction
was to significantly ramp up the campaign's efforts to highlight
the crazy shit that Trump says in public.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I'm not alone. I feel like I'm no longer taking
crazy shit pills. Did we all of a sudden have
a breakthrough? Did somebody just throw a switch somewhere. I
want CNN to talk like that. I want Biden's surrogates
to talk like that. I want the President to go
and talk like that. I want to hear the phrase
(01:35):
the crazy shit that Trump says. I want to hear
it said by Joe Biden. I want to hear it
said in the State of the Union and I want
him to say it right after thank you, mister speaker.
I want to have it be broadcast one hundred times
that night on one hundred different channels. And I want
to see the right wing pundits stage phony Strokes and
(01:56):
Umbridge at his locker room talk because he says it,
and I want it played again and again and again
for the rest of the campaign, primarily because it's the truth.
And by the way, don't think that was some sort
of accident. She didn't goof up. This is MJ. Lee's
(02:17):
story for CNN's website, which went live about forty five
minutes before she said that on their air yesterday. Quote.
Biden personally directed his senior campaign aids in recent days
to focus more aggressively on Trump's inflammatory comments. According to
two sources familiar with the president's edict, the thrust of
(02:38):
Biden's direction, delivered to his senior most staff, was to
significantly ramp up the campaign's efforts to highlight the quote
crazy s asterisk asterisk t that Trump says in public.
According to those sources, unquote you bet your a asterisk
(03:00):
asterisk quite serious. The idea that the easiest way to
beat Trump is to quote Trump and make people hear it.
And the easiest way to make people hear it to
break through the numb to it all white noise permitting
Trump to survive this long as a public figure is
(03:22):
to get angry about it, to get angry enough for
the CNN White House corresponded to say, the crazy shit
that Trump says live from a White House lawn in
the middle of the day today, the crazy shit that
Trump says tomorrow, the F word. But it's more than
(03:46):
just shock value. This is the way Biden talks. It
clearly is the way Trump talks. And oh, by the way,
it is the way all of Washington talks. It is
the way all of America talks. And don't get me wrong,
Biden reaching the same conclusion about talking like that in public,
(04:07):
my conclusion, that's not him listening to me. Does it
listen to me? It's coincidental, it's being done because it's right.
And as a parenthetical as television news. As television has
receded into the background, I have also long argued that
the next mainstream newscast that actually would grow an audience
(04:31):
would be one which chose to freely use your more
popular Anglo Saxon expletives. Craig Ferguson got close a decade ago.
He used to say them to his live audience at
his CBS talk show and then bleep them for TV.
Maybe that would be a good interim step. I pitched
a show like this to several places seven eight years ago,
(04:52):
but bluntly, if MJ. Lee promised to accurately quote her
sources swearing like Steve Adores, I would watch her do
a newscast every day on CNN. Hell, if wolf Blitzer
does it, I'll watch for two hours every day. And
I haven't watched anything on CNN since I left there
in October two thousand and two. It makes me feel
(05:17):
like singing for joy.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Wait, oh, Nancy, someday you watching CNN. I will feel
aglow just thinking of.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
You and the crazy shit Trump says.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
Two night.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Dah, thank you, Nancy Faust. A minute or two ago,
I posited that this really might have had been a breakthrough,
or it was a watershed moment about Trump, and not
just because of CN fing n At almost the exact
(06:06):
moment that was happening on the White House lawn, Nicky
Haley went even roguer than previously.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Despite being a de facto incumbent. Donald Trump lost forty
nine percent of the vote in Iowa. In New Hampshire,
Trump lost forty six percent of the vote.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
That's not good.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
We're talking about almost half of our voters. What does
it say about an incumbent who's losing nearly half of
his party? It spells disaster in November?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Man, do I hate it when I agree with Nicky
Haley or CNN or both of them on the same day.
I don't know what got into her. I still don't
trust her. I still don't think she's that bright. But
that gave me a bigger smile than when Jonathan Turley
left me with the permanent image while criticizing Judge Enngron's
(07:03):
fine against Trump quote he ordered everything short of throwing
Trump into a wood chipper. Well, John, we can always hope.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump
privately dread him. They know what a disaster he's been
and will continue to be for our party. They're just
too afraid to say it out loud. Well, I'm not
afraid to say the hard truth out loud. I feel
(07:35):
no need to kiss the ring.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Again. Agreeing with CNN and Nikki Haley on the same day.
I begin to question myself, and then Trump does something
to end my questioning. His Neanderthalian spokesperson Stephen Chung replied
to Haley by writing, She's going to drop down to
(07:58):
kiss ass when she quits, like she always does. If
Nicki Haley goes to a campaign event today and comes
back with an F bomb against Trump, I'll donate the
MAX to her campaign. Holy cow, if you ever forget that,
we're not just fighting Trump on his insanity, dictatorship, fascism, racism, greed,
(08:21):
white supremacy, anti semitism, barbarism, irresponsibility, future of the planet.
That it's not just that, but we're also fighting something
far more existential. That he and his gang are thugs
and bullies and low lifes and sub human scumbags. That
we are fighting for human beings, however mediocre, We are
(08:44):
against humanoids. If we ever forget that, Trump makes sure
that worms like Stephen Chung remind us the former fighter
guy and remember, Stephen Chung, symptoms of CTE can appear
prior to mortality, and Trump also provides a daily reminder
(09:10):
that the other people on his side are even worse
than his spokesman are the supposed FBI whistleblower in the
Hunter Biden case, the man who is at the center
of the James Comer Jim Jordan, Chuck Grassley, Donald Trump
smear job against Hunter Biden and his father. The one
they arrested last week for lying to the FBI, Alexander Smirnoff.
(09:34):
His detention memo came out yesterday. It includes one line
of interest quote. During his custodial interview on February fourteenth,
Smirnoff admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved
in passing the story about business person one. Yeah, you
know who business Person one is, right? His first name
(09:55):
is Hunter. Now are a reminder this phrase officials associated
with Russian intelligence that now applies to basically two fifths
of the republic Party and anybody directly connected to Trump.
Plus they did just arrest this guy, Smirnoff for lieing
to the FBI. Still, he also reported who contacts with
(10:20):
a Russian official that Smirnoff claimed was the son of
a former high ranking Russian official, and he claimed he
was the head of an assassination unit. And he claimed
he was a Russian intel guy at Smirnoff also reported
contact with another guy he says as a Russian intel guy.
There was a lot of vague talk about kompromant and
phone calls involving US people that the Russian agencies have.
(10:42):
Mike Johnson. Again, that could be any Republican on the
House Oversight Committee, so don't read too much into it.
Yet read a lot into this though. The same authoritarian
Republicans behind Project twenty twenty five and making all the
federal employees pledge personal allegiance to Trump and invoking the
(11:03):
Insurrection Act on the day is second inauguration, and using
the military against peaceful protesters. They have a second set
of objectives, christo fascism. Politico got hold of a massive
documents from the Center for Renewing America this Psycho Russell
Votes company. They are filled with plans to restrict divorce,
(11:27):
to stop funding anything that enables single motherhood, to repeal
all LGBTQ rights, to force the FDA to revoke approval
of abortion drugs, to put Planned Parenthood out of business,
to end all school sex education, to allow Christians to
opt out of basically any law they can make up
(11:48):
a religious objection to and to allow into this country
only immigrants who have accepted the Bible. This is what
they want. This is the serious, crazy shit, says. And
if you think it's just stuff, he says, you may
(12:11):
have missed this from Alabama last Friday, where the Supreme
Court there ruled that embryos frozen for in vitro fertilization
are people which not only essentially destroys in vitro fertilization
in the state of Alabama, but if the embryos are destroyed,
(12:32):
the Supreme Court there is saying that somebody will be
liable to be prosecuted under an act called wrongful Death
of a minor. This is where we are going. This
is why what was said on CNN yesterday is so important.
This is where Trump and the Christo fascists are taking
(12:56):
us and taking us as hostages. On a happier note
of programming, announcement two weeks from now, approximately Thursday night,
March seventh, iHeart and I will be doing a countdown
(13:16):
with Keith Olderman live State of the Union podcast special
on YouTube. Right after Yeah the State of the Union,
President Biden talks, he stops, we go live on YouTube
on camera with the podcast tomorrow's podcast today around ten Eastern.
(13:37):
I think still working out the details, but me on
camera I'll shave and take viewer questions at the end
of it. Two. Not gonna kid you. The premise of
this is we want to try out live video capability
here for key nights during the rest of the campaign.
So we'll start ten pm Thursday night, March seventh, the
Countdown with Keith Olderman live State of the Union podcast
(14:01):
special on YouTube. A nice catchy name for it too,
and it will be viewable again later on YouTube, and
the regular podcast will appear in the regular places wherever
you podcast, but we'll change up a little bit. We'll
do it live. And also of interest, here time to
salute the man who broke the color barrier in Major
(14:23):
League Baseball, Jackie Robinson. No, not him, the tragedy of
William Edward White of the eighteen seventy nine Providence team.
That's next. This is Countdown.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
This is Countdown with Keith Alberman. This is Sports Center. Wait,
check that, not anymore. This is Countdown with Keith.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Ulberman in sports date line Nashville, Tennessee and dateline Salt
Lake City, Utah. Congratulations Nashville congratulations, Salt Talaka City, You're
getting Major League Baseball expansion franchises. There is a catch.
(15:26):
This will happen sometime around the year twenty thirty two.
That is the conclusion of my former ESPN colleague Jeff Passon,
pointing out that it has already passed a quarter century
since the last Baseball expansion clubs took the field back
in nineteen ninety eight, and once the game started to
expand in nineteen sixty one, after sixty years of stasis,
(15:47):
baseball had never gone more than sixteen years without selling
absolutely nothing of value for as much money as possible
and adding at least two more deadbeat franchises to the
bottom of the pile. It hasn't been much a topic
of conversation, one owner anonymously told Passing, even though the
expansion fee that the other owners would share would probably
(16:11):
be about four billion dollars per team. Well, why isn't
a topic of conversation Because baseball realizes, even if the
fans don't yet, that there is going to be a
huge economic shakeout after the failure of the company that
had most of the local TV rights to the current teams.
The money growth is going to stop at least temporarily.
(16:33):
Plus there is this unresolved mess about the Oakland maybe
Las Vegas, maybe Sacramento. Maybe they stay in Oakland A's anyway.
Jeff Passing at ESPN says Nashville and Salt Lake City
are now co favorites for expansion, and there is some
news in that. It had been thought for decades that
if the game ever expanded to the West coast, the
(16:55):
new franchise would go to Portland, Oregon, not the other one.
He says, Salt Lake has now leapfrogged Portland. Of course,
neither may wind up with that ex franchise, neither Portland
nor salt Lake. The last time the A's moved to Oakland,
in nineteen sixty eight, the only way Baseball avoided losing
its unique anti trust exemption was to immediately grant a
(17:19):
replacement expansion franchise to Kansas City, so the next Baseball
expansion could be to Oakland. Dateline East Brookfield, Massachusetts. One
of the countless great character actors and perhaps the greatest
of all sports comedy movies, has died. Paul Tomato played
(17:41):
Captain hook player coach Tim McCracken of The Bad guys
the Syracuse Bulldogs in the utterly politically incorrect hockey movie
slap Shot, starring Paul Newman. He passed away at home
on Monday after a long fight against the neurological disease.
To Motto also played a Green Beret in The Deer Hunter.
He was in Heaven's Gate and Suspect, and as he
(18:04):
liked to joke, quote, I'm probably the only actor that
ever beat up Paul Newman, almost beat up Robert de
Niro and held a knife to the throat of chaer.
Everyone who knew him said, Paul to Motto was as
nice a man as they ever made. Tell him about
a charity for kids, and he'd show up in his
Syracuse uniform from the movie, carrying another Syracuse uniform auctioned
(18:25):
off for charity. But he looked so wild, his big
eyes flaring, his hair flying outwards, that how he appeared
in slap Shot had served as the basis for the
comic book and film character Wolverine. Paul to Motto was
seventy five years old. So one last time, for those
(18:47):
of you who know your slap Shot still ahead of
(19:38):
us on this all new edition of Countdown, let's take
one show from this month to remember the man who
broke baseball's color line, William Edward White of the eighteen
seventy nine Providence Grays of the National League. No, it
wasn't Jackie Robinson. I'll explain this not so glorious history
in things I promised not to tell. First. Yes, the
(20:00):
daily round up of the miscrants, morons, and Dunning Krueger
effect specimens who constitute today persons in the world. The
Bronze Worse alex Andreida, Florida State representative from Pensacola, Republican
sponsor of HB seven fifty seven, another right wing nut
job bill. This is a media accountability law that would
(20:23):
allow people to sue no news organizations and require judges
to presume that any anonymous source is lying and is
automatically guilty of malice. And it would require a quote
veracity hearing about any story anybody wanted to sue over.
You'd have to have a hearing where a judge would
decide if the story was true or false within sixty
(20:46):
days of the filing of the lawsuit. Cool says local
Florida talk show host Trey Radel. Signing this into law
will destroy conservative media in this state. He adds, while
certain Republicans may think they're going to be suing and
taking on the New York Times in the Washington Post,
here's the news. Liberal trial lawyers are going to have
(21:07):
a field day with center right media in the state
of Florida. This Riddell guy, he too is a conservative
radio host. This Republican state legislator is backing a gun
bill that is pointed at his own side. Good work, Sparky,
the runner up worser Senator Mike Lee of Utah, you
(21:29):
know him. There are more evil Republicans, There are more
vicious Republicans, but there probably are not dumber Republicans. Mike
Lee is honked off at reports and the widespread conclusion
in Washington that the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorcis
will never have a trial in the Senate because Senate
Republicans are way less dumb than House Republicans are now
(21:53):
except Mike. Mike Lee has written Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell to insist that the impeachment not be tabled and
that there be a trial, and there must be one.
There must be one, There must be one, and all
is Republic and colleagues are in favor of it. And
look at all the signatures on his letter, and there
are thirteen signatures. He only got thirteen other senators to
(22:14):
sign his letter, and there are eleven blank spots on
the letter helpathetic. Worse yet, on the letter the signatures
of Senator Blackburn, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Braun and Senator
Roger nine Marshall. They are clearly all in the same
handwriting Oops. But our winner Elawn Musk, while Putin is
(22:41):
now prosecuting Alexei Navalni's brother, and Putin has promoted the
head of the prison service who clearly helped to kill Navalny.
Twitter x got hold of the new account established I
think just Sunday or Monday by his widow, and right
after Julia Navalnaya reposted her video Saint Putin had killed
her husband, Twitter x under Musk suspended the account out
(23:05):
suspended Navalny's widow's account, of course it did. After an
international outcry. Somebody managed to talk Elmo down from his
shroom high or whatever he was on that he will
eventually ode on, and Twitter issued this statement, our platform's
(23:25):
defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged the account
as violating our rules. We unsuspended the account as soon
as we became aware of the error, and we'll be
updating the defense. Unquote Elon Musk's platform defense mechanism against
(23:46):
manipulation and spam is a guy named cat turd Elon,
I am owned by Vladimir Putin musk Ovite two days
worse person.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Finally to the number one story on the countdown, and
before we reached the end of Black History Month, I
wanted to salute the fact that in sports, Black History
Month begins and ends with the men who integrated Major
League Baseball, William Edward White and Fleet Walker. No, not
Jackie Robinson, William Edward White and Fleet Walker. This is
(24:39):
in no way to diminish in the least what Jackie
Robinson did. His success on the field and off, especially
in nineteen forty seven, not only reshaped American sports, It
reshaped America. If he had failed, if he had hit
one ninety seven that first year instead of what he
did hit two ninety seven, all of the mindless prejudices
(25:01):
and cliches of the segregated country we were would have
been reinforced integration would have been deferred or defeated. And
Lord only knows what kind of blighted society might already
exist here and not just threaten us. But Jackie Robinson
did not break the baseball color line. In the winter
(25:22):
of eighteen eighty three eighty four, the minor league team
in Toledo, Ohio, moved intact into the American Association, which
was then the other major league, the lesser rival to
the National League in baseball. Toledo's starting catcher was a
former Oberlin and University of Michigan star named Moses fleetwood Walker,
(25:45):
and he was an African American. On opening day of
the American Association season May first, eighteen eighty four, he
broke the color line. Toledo started its season on the
road on the road in Louisville, Kentucky. The baseball color line,
as we have understood it historically was broken nineteen years
(26:08):
and twenty one days after the Civil War effectively ended,
and it was broken in Kentucky. Indeed, the America and
the American Association of eighteen eighty four, in which Fleet
Walker and later in the season his brother well Day
Walker survived unimaginable Hatred and Abuse had eleven other teams
(26:30):
besides Toledo and Louisville in it. Among them in the
American Association, Richmond, the capital of the Confederate States of America,
also Baltimore, which nearly sided with the South in the
Civil War, and Washington, a collectively mixed message, and Cincinnati,
then an utterly Southern city, and Saint louis It is
amazing that the Walker brothers survived and thrived. Fleet Walker
(26:56):
batted two sixty eight, well above the league average for
that eighteen eighty four season, and even one of the
fiercest racists on the team, his own pitcher Tony Mullane,
said Walker was the best catcher he'd ever played with.
The Toledo team dropped out of the American Association that winter.
Walker continued to play in the Miners, working towards another
(27:17):
shot at the big leagues until eighteen eighty nine, And
that is when baseball unofficially brought down the color barrier
that Jackie Robinson would eventually break through. We celebrate Jackie
Robinson and we all but forget Fleet Walker. He's not
even in the Baseball Hall of Fame, nor is there
some kind of plaque somewhere saying he was Major League
(27:40):
Baseball's first African American player. Of course, in part, that's
because fleet Walker also wasn't actually Major League Baseball's first
African American player. The distinction, in fact belongs to a
man who never claimed it, who did everything possible it appears,
to hide and deny it. On the twentieth of June eighth,
(28:04):
eighteen seventy nine, Joe Start, the first basement of what
was then one of the National League's top teams, the
Providence Grays Providence, Rhode Island, broke his finger. There were
no twenty five man rosters or twenty six man rosters,
and no farm teams from which to call anybody up
in eighteen seventy nine. So the eighteen seventy nine Providence
Grays did what many clubs before nineteen twenty did when
(28:28):
they needed an extra player. They signed a kid off
the streets, or in this case, they signed a kid
off the campus of Brown University. And his name was
William Edward White. He was eighteen years old. We think
they called him Bill, but nobody's certain. And on June
twenty first, eighteen seventy nine, he stepped across the foul
(28:49):
lines at the Messer Street Grounds in Providence, and he
broke baseball's color barrier, and nobody really knew it for
one hundred and twenty five years. That's when irrefutable evidence
was unearthed that William White's father was the president of
a railroad in Georgia, and his mother was one of
(29:11):
the slaves he owned. She herself was of mixed heritage.
William White was evidently light skinned, Caucasian featured, and spent
his life in the old now unused and heartbreaking term passing.
His college thought he was white, his wife thought he
(29:31):
was white. His census takers thought he was white. When
he died in nineteen thirty seven, the death certificate listed
him as white. Deep down, he may have considered himself white,
and thus, since race is a non scientific concept, he
was white, whatever that means. Or he may have just
(29:53):
chosen to enthusiastically embrace the opportunity to avoid the hell
that was living in America for blacks of the nineteenth
century and for most of the twentieth and now sadly
much of the twenty first. We don't know his motives.
We don't know Also, if he only played that one
(30:13):
day in the National League because somebody suspected he was
of mixed heritage. It's just as easy to think that
he was a one day emergency replacement, and the Providence
Grays had three games until the next game after that,
and they rearranged their lineup, and they just dropped him,
as dozens of other teams did to dozens of other
one or two day Big leaguers literally for the next
(30:35):
forty years. We do know there is no evidence that
he ever proclaimed himself to be an African American, nor
that the team had any idea, nor that he ever
acknowledged his accomplishment. That fact that White clearly did not
self identify as black leads many to the interpretation that
White was not the first African American in baseball, because,
(30:58):
at least passively, he was insisting he was not black. Regardless,
there were at least three African Americans in the major
leagues before Jackie Robinson in nineteen forty seven, owhen there
was nearly a fourth. Charlie Grant, a top second baseman
from the early Negro leagues, whom John McGraw, the manager,
(31:20):
had at spring training with the nineteen hundred and won Baltimore,
Orioles McGraw said he was a Native American called Tuckahoma.
When people saw how well Tukahoma played, they knew he was,
in fact Charlie Grant. There was also nearly a fourth.
In nineteen oh five. The newspaper of The Boston Traveler
reported in mid season that the team that would become
(31:43):
the Braves was fed up with its lousy second baseman
and was about to sign the top collegiate player in
the country, Mattie Matthews of Harvard, a black man. It
did not happen. It was nineteen oh five. Matthews instead
signed with a minor league team in Vermont. There was
nearly another fourth. In nineteen sixteen, the Oakland Oaks of
(32:05):
the Pacific Coast League signed a top local amateur player
named Jimmy Claxton. They believed he was a Native American.
He was and also an African American, and he was
released five days later when they found that last part out. Ironically,
that was not before a local candy company rushed out
(32:25):
a baseball card of him. There is a Jimmy Claxton
nineteen sixteen baseball card. Jimmy Claxton William Clarence Mattie Matthews,
Charlie Grant, Fleet, Walker, Well Day Walker, William Edward White
buried by history even during Black History Month. And why well,
(32:50):
I think because we like our history, especially our social history,
to have struggles and pitfalls and even danger, provided it
has a happy ending. And can you have heard these
stories and say that Claxton or Matthews, or Grant or
the Walkers had any kind of happy ending? Or William White.
(33:11):
William White was born in eighteen sixty before the Civil War, Thus,
since his mother was a slave, and not by the
laws of the Confederacy, but by the laws in force
at the time in the United States of America. Thus,
by those laws, the man who actually became the first
African American in professional team sports in this country sixty
(33:34):
nine years before Jackie Robinson, was a man who was
born a slave and spent his life in a segregated
racist society passing as white, never acknowledging his place in history.
And exactly what is happy about that? I've done all
(34:07):
the damage I can do here? Thank you for listening. Countdown.
Musical directors Brian Ray and John Phillip Schaneale arranged, produced
and performed most of our music. Mister Ray was on
the guitars, bass and drums, Mister Shanelle handled orchestration and keyboards,
and it was produced by Tko Brothers. Other music, including
some of the Beethoven compositions, arranged and performed by No
Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olberman theme from
(34:30):
ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN Inc.
Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by my companionists
Company in company by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium
organist ever, and I announce he today was my friend
Richard Lewis. Everything else was pretty much my fault. That's
(34:51):
countdown for this the two hundred and fifty ninth day
until the twenty twenty four US presidential election, the one
one hundred and fortieth day since dementia J Trump's first
attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the fourteenth Amendment, the Insurrection Act, the justice system,
the mental health system to stop him from doing it again,
(35:11):
and swear about it on CNN while we still can.
The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says, the news
warrants till then. I'm Keith Oldremman. Good morning, good afternoon,
good night, and good luck.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
The crazy shit that Trump says.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Someday you watch in CNN, I will feel a glow
just thinking you and the crazy shit Trump says to night,
Thank you, Nancy Faust. Countdown with Keith Olreman is a
(35:59):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio Apple Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
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