Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

What is the exact nature of Donald Trump's health crisis?

Is he dying?

Is he well?

Is he sick?

Is he fine?

Is there some acceptable explanation for his swollen face and narrowed eyes, last shown publicly on Friday?

And what does the enlarged left hand mean?

And what does the bruised right hand covered in makeup mean?

And are those ballooned and gorged ankles as benign as claimed by his latest doctor, Captain Barbarabella.

Is the President of the United States, whoever he is, whatever we think of him, the most important man in the world.

Is the President of the United States?

Gravely ill?

Would they tell us if he were?

Would they tell him?

No?

It's all just chronic veinous insufficiency.

And behind these questions, these literally life and death questions, why is the national news media still giving the clear decline, the accelerating decline in Trump's appearance and clarity, and likely in his physical health, less attention than they are giving right now to the irrelevancy that is Biden's cognition levels from last year lost in the Trump's Stein cover up.

The Gallaine Maxwell hostage video, Trump's planned terrorism in Chicago, the John Bolt raid.

Lost in all that, Trump on Friday looked like he had just changed out of a hospital gown.

Face so puffy even for him, that his eyes looked like slits, barely open.

Right hand with a contusion, some sort of clear tape on it, but it could have been traces of blood near the fingers, running from the thumb through the middle finger and then up under the shirt sleeve, badly covered in smeared makeup.

That was the right hand.

The left hand so swollen it looked like something they would draw for a cartoon character.

The base of those fingers forty or fifty percent larger than the ends of those fingers, and his ability to use that hand clearly impaired enough to make him hesitate as he turned a photograph around.

And we didn't see the ankles this time.

We saw them when he was in Alaska with Putin, and they were wider than his feet.

It's not like this is something new.

Middle of July, a bruise on his hand, some kind of sticker or tape on it, makeup atop bat, too much handshaking, the White House said, knowing that no one from a major news organization would even imply that this was a ridiculous and insulting excuse that was more transparent than whatever they had put on his hand after they detached what must have been a line for a blood draw or an ivy or a transfusion or something else in which the veins on the top of the hand are accessed because the ones at the inside of the wrist or the elbow can't be isolated or are insufficient.

And then it was the middle of February, meeting with Emmanuel Macron.

Same hand, same plastic cover up, same makeup, same journalistic indifference.

In his first term, Donald Trump lied about everything health wise from a COVID infection and serious enough that his physicians were ready to ventilate him to a routine colonoscopy that he didn't want revealed so he would not have to transfer presidential power, even temporarily to Mike Pence.

For a couple of hours, the President of the United States was unconscious with a rubber hose up his ass.

Actually, that's an improvement.

His personal physician before the first election made a statement insisting that Trump might as well have been immortal.

He later admitted Trump dictated that statement.

Trump lies about everything else.

He and those around him lied blatantly and almost nonchalantly about his health once when his life was imperiled.

We didn't get answered about the shooting last year for hours.

We still haven't gotten most of the answers about the shooting.

So there is a history of deceit on this topic, and there is also a history of bad health.

And nobody he is asking these questions ahead of all the others.

What is the exact nature of Trump's health crisis?

Why can't he fully open his effing eyes?

What is wrong with him?

Is it circulatory?

Is it cardiac?

Is he getting enough blood to his brain, or maybe more correctly, is he getting even less blood to his brain than he has for the last seventy years?

Is he dying?

Is he in fact in heart failure?

Is his condition, whatever it is, manageable or is it debilitating?

Is he debilitated right now?

Is whatever going on the cause of Trump's cognitive loss?

Or is that something separate seventy nine years of age?

This could be anything.

It could be chronic venus insufficiency plus something else in one hand and the need for IVS or blood jaws from the other hand, and a face swollen enough to forcibly close his eyes.

But anybody who has seen congestive heart failure in a relative or friend knows that none of this, especially the swelling at the extremities, is inconsistent with that diagnosis.

But the point is The New York Times tried to break Joe Biden a year ago because he would not prove to them he wasn't slowed.

Where is the Times musing?

Are Trump's quadruple excised ankles and hands healthy in this Ohio diner?

These cardiologists don't think so.

Where's the Washington Posts sidebar nestled behind?

It's now constant praising Trump with faint damnation about his lower legs, looking like he was preparing to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Where is the Jake Tapper instant book?

What is the exact nature of the President's health crisis?

Would they tell us?

Would they tell him?

Would he believe them?

Trump's latest terrorist invasion is now planned.

It is of Chicago, a couple thousand Red State National guardsmen and or active troops.

This is about the Governor of Illinois, JB.

Pritzker, Just like La and Ice and the illegal usurpation of the California National Guard was about the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, just like DC was about an entire democratic government led by a mayor who responded to the first attack against her and her city with the stupid assertion that maybe there was a silver lining, which served only to show Trump her vulnerability.

Just like New York, when it comes, will be about Zoran Mamdani, either to screw up his election or to give him a crisis on his first day as mayor.

This is all designed now to dirty up Key Democrats and to show the fascist cult that he will do it, and to warn his opponents that he will do it, and to dare somebody to stop him.

And guess what, nobody is stopping him.

Fake a crisis, build a giant, dangerous photo op out of threats of terrorist violence by the government, then later say things were so bad in Illinois, I your savior had to step in.

It is the complete road map on how to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.

Trump using troops and federalizing the National Guard and fabricating an emergency is unconstitutional.

It is a sweeping violation of the possecommatatis Act, it is not a Title thirty two exception to section five oh two pertinent to the Possecommatatis Act.

Title thirty two allows a president to let the federal government pay for the more extensive training of state National guardsmen so the states don't have to pay.

It does not let him do this, and the insistence that there is precedent for Trump doing it, that it's a well established precedence that dates all the way back to twenty twenty, when Trump gassed protesters outside the White House so he could pose with the first Bible he had ever held at a church he'd never been inside.

In other words, building a photo off out of threats of terrorist violence by the government, and then later saying things were so bad during the Black Lives protests, I your savior had to step in.

That's what Chicago will be.

That's what the new side threats against Mayor Bowser are.

Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures where bad things will happen.

What are you gonna do, asshole?

Have her hit by lightning?

The response to this none.

The response you must give a creature like Trump, who, at his peak at his best is a psychonic narcissist.

The response must be hey, old man, f you, and she still won't do that.

So now on Friday he comes back another threat to quote, get her act straight, or she won't be mayor very long because we'll take it over the hell you will.

The threats against the mayor of the nation's capital city are mirrored now by threats against the state of Colorado.

Not the governor, not a mayor, there everybody in Colorado unless they release from prison the corrupt county clerk Tina Peters, who let election deniers have access to the actual Colorado state voting equipment and got her ass sentenced to nine years in jail.

Trump is now demanding she be freed.

Quote.

If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures again.

He did this the sitting president because a she was convicted on state charges, so he cannot pardon yet another in soer directionist.

And b because after the election, the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, tried to appease Trump, and as mayor, Bowser just discovered you do not flinch when he does something like this.

If you flinch, he will be back for more from you.

You do not flinch.

You kick him in the nuts.

The son of a bitch threatened the Commissioner of Baseball yesterday, because the Commissioner of Baseball has not put statutory rapist Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame yet, and now Trump also wants Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame, presumably in the same wing, even though the Commissioner of Baseball does not decide who goes into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and there has not been a Baseball Hall of Fame vote since Trump made his demand about Pete Rose, but the Commissioner has not said no to Trump as long as Trump has been going to games, going to games using free tickets, I might add, supplied to him by the New York Yankees, because billionaires can't afford baseball tickets.

The threats Trump carries out are against the individuals and entities that do not fight back.

When I say fight back, I don't mean destroy him, usurp him.

They don't have to destroy him, they don't have to depose him, they don't have to damage him.

They just have to say no, and he goes away because it's easier to find somebody over in the next county who won't say no.

The Pentagon's Internal Intelligence Agency did not say no.

It issued its assessment of Trump's photo op attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

It correctly said those facilities were not obliterated.

He criticized them, they did nothing.

He has now purged the head of the intelligence agency and two other veteran a political military leaders who did not fight back.

That's what the jets are about.

That's why Trump is stalling for Putin on Ukraine.

Change your position one hundred times and give Putin two weeks to respond to each new position, and two times to claim four years will pass.

Send out your eyeliner to buffoon JV vance to explain on meet the press and not be challenged that.

Of course, Zelenski has to negotiate.

All wars end in negotiation.

World War two ended in negotiation.

Oh you remember that, right, Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo meeting with FDR and Truman, just before Hitler killed himself and they burned his body, just before they hung Mussolini upside down from an s O filling station, and just before they dropped two nukes on Tojo.

Those were negotiations.

That's why they are going to the mats with killmar Abrado Garcia.

First he had to be out of the country immediately a terrorist threat.

Then he had to be returned to the country immediately to stand trial.

Now that a court has ruled that he cannot be kidnapped and disappeared to l Salvador and he can go free on bail, Suddenly they had threatened to deport him again, this time to Uganda unless he accepts deportation to Costa Rica.

And what happened to the part about how he had to be returned here immediately to stand trial on all those things they said he did.

They're willing to lie, to destroy this man, to destroy his family, to destroy the law.

They're willing to change their own story, change it again, change it a third time, blackmail this man.

All because Trump cannot be wrong, cannot be challenged, cannot be seen as anything but omniscient and omnipotent, and also can I be seen as so sick that he can't fully open his own damned eyes.

Trump has become convinced that he gets to decide everything and that everything you have is a gift from him.

Stock market went up.

He did that, stock market went down Well fears that he wasn't in sufficient control of the stock market.

This is not just evil and insane and probably exacerbated by serious, profound physical illness.

It is messianic.

And a Messianic dictator would start a nuclear war and destroy everything rather than be found out, rather than be proved evil by something like whatever is in the Epstein files, the Epstein files which apparently were hidden in John Bolton's pants, in John Bolton's house or John Bolton's house, is that where they're transferring Glaine Maxwell next.

Every step that Trump's criminal conspiracy posing as a government tries to hide the truth makes his cover up even more important than whatever it is he is trying to cover up, and boys he trying to cover it up.

And so you do not have to rank highly knowing the truth about the organized perversions and crimes of Epstein and Maxwell and Trump's involvement or non involvement to actually care about the cover up, but to believe that Trump's Stein is somehow resolved or Trump's somehow cleared by what is almost literally a hostage video by Glaine Maxwell, proven liar, proven child sex trafficker, to believe that she has somehow cleared him as a corner of MAGA, and nearly all of the Republican Party now says it does believe.

Is to say, in essence, sure Glene Maxwell is a liar, and sure I AM going to pick and choose which of her seven hundred and fifty lies I believe and which seven hundred and forty nine of them I do not believe.

They believe her when she lies to the Deputy Attorney General, who eight months ago was still Trump's personal lawyer, that Trump never did anything wrong in her presence and was always a gentleman.

Do they believe her when she lies to him that Epstein did not kill himself in prison?

Do they believe her when she lies to him that there was no client list or black book or records?

Do they believe her when she says that a picture of herself, Virginia Geffrey, and Prince Andrew is a fake?

Do they believe her after that interview?

That interview with an attorney who either was there solely to get her to say so unconvincingly that Trump was uninvolved, or who, since he never asked one pointed question or one follow up, that lawyer fulfills a variation on George Carlin's old joke that's somewhere numerically literally somewhere somebody has to be the worst lawyer in the world, and somebody else has an appointment to see him in the morning, and that may be Todd Blanche, because if Lionel Hutts weren't from the Simpsons cartoon, he'd be Todd Blanche.

Do they believe her in line to the fact that after that interview she was transferred from a high security Florida hell hole to a club fed in Texas, even though you can't transfer a registered sex offender into a light security facility for nonviolent criminals unless you rescind her sex offender status.

Do they believe her in light of the fact that two British tabloids are reporting that another inmate in that Texas facility to which Maxwell was transferred clearly as a reward.

Another inmate there, named Julie Howell, gave an interview by email in which she said, every inmate I've heard from is upset Maxwell is here.

This facility is supposed to house non violent offenders.

Human trafficking is a violent crime.

Within hours of the publication of those quotes that inmate says her lawyer was summoned to the warden's office and told she was being transferred to the hardcore Houston Federal Detention Center into a windowless cell there.

When did they believe Galane Maxwell?

And when do they not?

When do they turn gravity off in the universe?

And when do they turn it back on?

And when are they so desperate that on the subject of forced sex with children do they turn as their expert to Jim Jordan.

Now Pete Rose is dead.

By the way, that first sliver of Epstein files that Trump is hiding got to Congress Friday with no coverage, thirty three thousand pages of junk, nearly all of it already publicly available.

No media coverage, of course, because John Bolton raid, because Glaine Maxwell interview, release, because is also sending.

Of the Epstein files over to the House Oversite Committee today.

Are you Are you in support of them releasing all gut it open if they.

Wanted to, people shouldn't be hurt.

But I'm in support of keeping it totally open.

I couldn't care less.

You got a lot of people that it could be mentioned that of those files that don't deserve to be people because he knew everybody in Palm Beach.

I don't know anything about that, but I have said to Pam and everybody else, give them everything you can give them, because it's a it's a Democrat hoax.

It's just a hoax.

The whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax.

Glayne Maxwell might as well have claimed Donald Trump is a virgin the comic Relief.

Nancy Mayce held a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach over the weekend, or was going to.

The attendance was eight one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people, plenty of good seats available.

Local news reports she walked into where the podium, saw the disaster and kept walking.

She didn't even break stride.

So also of interest here in an all new edition of Countdown, it sounds like another comedy bit, but it's not.

A confidant of the Mayor of New York City tries to give a local reporter cash wrapped up in a bag of opened potato chips, sour cream and onion rippled.

The friend says it was just a gift, a gift to friendship, and says to the reporter, quote, please don't do in the news.

Nothing about me wise words to live by.

That's next.

This is Countdown.

This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown.

I am going to read to you the greatest document in the history of the English language, well at least the greatest sports document in the history of the English language, unsurpassed for now one and twenty seven years, Special Instructions to Players from eighteen ninety eight, when Major League Baseball faced a crisis unlike any other in its history before or since.

The ballparks were growing larger, but the seating was becoming more intimate.

The fans were sitting closer to the field, and thus they could hear the play swearing and swearing and swearing and swearing at them in a way that would make two days players blush.

It was so bad that players were threatened with being banned for life if they did not read these Special Instructions, then sign a document saying they had read them and would obey them, and then give the document back Because there were so many curse words printed in it that technically the Instructions to Players was considered legally obscene, and anybody who tried to send it by the US Post Office would be arrested next as we do a crossover between Sportsball Center and Things I promised not to tell.

I don't think you'll believe this was real.

For a long time, baseball historians didn't think.

So that's how bad it really is.

First believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.

The roundup of the miscrants, the morons, and the Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the effing world.

Lebron's worse Blondie, Pam Blondie.

It's not just that she is evil and without morals and she should be the one being deported to some other planet.

It's not just that she was the backup choice when they couldn't get that grunge Matt Gates past the Grunge Magas.

It's not just that her previous biggest case was putting the baseball player Dwight Gooden behind bars for a couple of weeks.

It's not just that she's incompetent at her job.

It's not just that she sounds like a guy trying to do an impersonation of a woman.

It's not just all of those things it's also that she is a complete idiot.

In one of her occasional appearances on Fox News, and by occasional iamine, she was once on something like seventeen consecutive week nights as the Attorney General of the United States.

In one of her occasional appearances last week, she decided to praise Trump.

While that's a shock.

She decided to praise Trump and this occupation, this illegal terrorism against the residents of the District of Columbia.

And she decided to praise the members of the National Guard who have been illegally turned into super cops, robocops, cops with military grade weapons being carried around on the streets of Washington, which was a city improving in terms of its criminality and its ordinary downtown issues.

And of course, they didn't send any of the members of the military to the troublesome areas where all the crimes are committed, like say, the White House.

They sent them to places where the public and visitors would see who was in charge in this dictatorship.

So Pambondi decided to praise them on Fox News and she said, quote, the Metro Dade police are over the moon that they have this help from the President the Metro Dade Police, and there isn't really such an outfit, but if there were, they would be in Metro Dade, in Dade County, which is part of the municipality we know as Miami.

Metro Daid police would be in Florida, which is where Pambondy used to be until she became Attorney General of the United States in January.

It is now late August.

She should have some idea where she is.

She doesn't.

She thinks she's still in Miami, or possibly she thinks that Miami and Washington, DC are the same place.

That's the Attorney General of the United States of America.

A bozo.

Speaking of which the runner up worser, Winnie Greco, part of the Eric Adams gang that has been running this city into the ground since Bill Deblasio finished running this city into the ground.

Sure, bring on Cromo.

Now we need somebody worse than the two of them combined.

Ms Greco was at one point Adam's top advisor and had a city hall job worth one hundred thousand a year, and then she got fired or she quit or something and got a new job at city Hall worth two hundred thousand dollars a year.

She didn't have that anymore, but she remains connected to Adams's inexplicable campaign to get re elected as a post to finishing fourth maybe third in the election if he's lucky.

Ms Greco is in trouble again.

Now.

She is not the mayor Adams advisor who was indicted and purp walked last week.

That was somebody else.

Nor the donors those were other people.

Nor the fundraiser that was somebody else.

This is the Adams confidant accused of seeking cash to get in to see Adams and also living in a suite at a hotel that the city was supposed to be using to help x cons transition back to regular life.

No, no, no, no, you actually have to be a convicted criminal to live here.

Ms Greco is of Asian descent, and that is relevant only because that's how she explains what the New York news site The City has reported about her, and what the city has reported is quote that she attempted to give money to a reporter from the city following a campaign event in Harlem last Wednesday.

The failed payoff a wad of cash in a red envelope stuffed inside an opened bag of Hers sour cream and onion ripple potato chips.

Greco and the reporter, Katie Honan, walked to the Whole Food's next door.

While inside the store, Greco handed Honan the opened bag of chips with the top crumpled closed.

Honan, thinking it was an offer of a light snack, told Greko more than once she could not accept the chips, but Greko insisted that she keep them.

The two parted ways before entering a nearby subway station.

Honan opened the bag and discovered a red envelope inside stuffed with cash, at least one one hundred dollar bill and several twenty dollars bills.

The reporter then called Greco and told her she could not accept the money and asked if she was still nearby so she could give it back.

Greco said she'd left the area.

Honan told her she had to take the money back, and Greco said they could meet at some point in Chinatown.

In an interview later, the City asked Greco what her intention was in handing money to the reporter.

In response, she said she'd made a mistake and apologized over and over.

I make a mistake, she said, I'm so sorry.

It's a culture thing.

I don't know.

I don't understand.

I'm so sorry.

I feel so bad right now.

I'm so sorry, honey.

She then called the city back, advising that we call her attorney, Stephen Brill, and adding can we forget about this.

I try to be a good person.

Please please, please don't do in the news nothing about me.

I just wanted to be her friend.

Greco added, I just wanted to have one good friend.

It's nothing.

Ms Greco claims this is the Asian way of being friends, giving people money in envelopes stuffed into bags of hers sounder cream and onion, rippled potato chips, or less cringy conveyances of food.

And of course, she has coined a new phrase to go right next to WinCE.

Please don't put in the newspaper that I got it mad quoting it again.

Please don't do in the news nothing about me.

But of course Wint is a comedy writer.

Ms Greco is not, we think.

Please don't do nothing in the news about me.

I'm sorry I misquoted it.

Please don't do in the news nothing about me.

I actually cleaned the quote up.

Please don't do in the news.

Nothing about me sounds like a song lyric, doesn't it.

But the winner is the worst.

Speaking of food, the cracker barrel protesters if you somehow missed this, congratulations.

I was last week years old as the kids when I discovered that this was not about craft cracker barrel cheese, which they've been selling since before I was born, but instead it's about a series of restaurants founded much later than cracker barrel Cheese, founded in nineteen sixty nine.

And the mag Assholes are self martyring again because the company changed its logo from an old white guy in overalls in an old timey chair leaning against a barrel next to the words cracker barrel.

They've changed that logo to just the words cracker barrel in the same font and everything.

The right wing thinks this is woke and that the liberals are getting away with something again like the Genes ad with the actress Sydney somebody like this is the most important issue in the world and everybody is concerned about it, and it's like cracker barrel cheese.

Restaurants they sell just cracker barrel cheese.

There's a series of restaurants in the South.

I don't know.

I haven't been to one.

I'm not in the South.

That's nice.

I don't expect you to know the difference between the f train and the seven Cracker barrel.

Holy crap, the company literally removed the guy and just you have to visualize the logo.

If the barrel in the Cracker Barrel logo is the barrel, then the guy is, by process of elimination, the Cracker.

I don't know if the actual Crackers know this, but Cracker has always been a nickname for stupid white folks from the South.

It's not a compliment.

It's so not a compliment that even the Atlanta baseball team got rid of it as their nickname before Atlanta got rid of much of its racism, in fact, before Cracker Barrel Restaurants debuted.

So the company, after fifty six years, removed the part of the logo that was the white equivalent of a minstrel show guy in blackface.

And the white guys are all kill them about it.

I swear I thought this was about cheese.

It's about their demand that we continue to call them crackers, white trash o fays honkys.

I mean, it's as if somebody has removed all the mirrors from their world.

On the one hand, this should be a lesson to all food and food service companies whose clientele tend to be well crackers, maga.

Whatever your product is, don't worry about it.

Just change your name to something that insults them, something that insults your customers.

Literally, waffle House should change its name to Luftwaffa House or luftwaffle House.

Any KFC south of say Kentucky, don't bother with restoring the Kentucky Fried Chicken name or the picture of the kernel or anything.

Go directly to Honky Fried Chicken.

The waste management corporation you operate in the South, you must therefore call yourself there White trash Management.

It's so simple.

Just adopt a name insulting these people.

Then cut back on the quality of the food you sell or the service you provide, raise the prices, reduce the portion size, start making the waffles out of cardboard.

Just use a racist name by cracker, insulting white people, and put some character out of the background and background of gone with the Wind in your logo, and your profits will double overnight because these people's minds are gone.

Hello Food's turble but it says Cracker on the outside.

So we come here, which reminds me there actually was somebody to get the award for worst person in the world today.

This is a Twitter x count called Florida Possum.

And this I've heard the word but I've never tried to spell it before.

Award vibe is strong enough that it could belong to Caroline Levitt.

That's how dumb this person is.

Are you ready from at Florida Possum?

I have been going to Cracker Barrel for as long as I can remember, well, that could be last week.

Pal, First you painted over the antique.

Look now you've ruined your logo.

As much as I love Cracker Barrel and as frequently as I have gone, you've ruined your ambulance.

Ah, I'll just cook it home.

Farewell, my friend, r Ip, you've ruined your ambulance.

I am hoping they were going for ambiance.

We're given this stupidity.

Maybe the guy meant ambient.

Maybe that's the explanation.

I'm not knowing the difference between ambiance and ambulance.

And again, the lesson here is clear.

Trump should have taught us.

This should have taught every company in the world should have taught cracker barrel.

No, no, no, no no, don't don't take the cracker out of the white the cracker barrel logo.

Put two of them in there and rename it white Cracker Barrel.

The Rubes don't care if the food is good, only if it insults them but recognizes their red neckatude, Florida possum.

You ruined your ambulance account on Twitter x and Elon should change the name of that again and call it Peckerwood Social Today's other worst person and the world.

This is sports Center.

Wait, check that not anymore.

This is Countdown with Keith Ulberman in sports Ball Center.

Well, this is a combination of sports Ball Center and the things I promised not to tell.

And every once in a while I like to bring this out and show to people that this document actually exists, as I referred to it earlier, the greatest document in the history of the English language.

In I believe the year two thousand and seven, two of these appeared.

Their small white envelope sized printed messages from it was claimed eighteen ninety five six seven eight something like that.

That were instructions, as the heading printed in somewhat old timey but not too old timey type suggests special instructions players.

The item was auctioned off two copies of it, one in basically mint condition and the other with tape on it, and sold as the last or perhaps two of the last surviving copies of a document that was given to each player in the National League when that was all there was in baseball, and they were asked to read it and give it back.

And that's why so few copies of this exist.

And it was in part of a dark corner of baseball and sports history, and more importantly, part of a dark corner in American history where all the good stuff fell or was hidden, or was dropped or was put under a pile of things by somebody who then died, and it wasn't discovered for another one hundred and ten years.

It is so improbable, it is so gorgeous in its obscenity, that initially collectors and baseball historians said it could not be real.

It must be a satire produced at some point after say, nineteen seventy, possibly recently, and just made to look somewhat aged, and it doesn't look that old.

It could have been printed recently and kind of aged up, dirtied up to look a little bit older.

And then I found in the Spaulding Baseball Guide for the year eighteen ninety nine, I think a reference to the fact that there had been special instructions to players produced by a special committee that had been convened by the National League to address an extraordinary problem that threatened the future of baseball.

Swearing by players, swearing by players at other players, at umpires, at owners, and especially at fans.

And there was a story told about what happened to the players who did this, and how bad it was, and how many extraordinary things had to be done to stop it.

But I have teased you long enough.

I will tell that part of the story after I read to you with some words skipped the special instructions to players.

This is legitimate, It has been verified, It actually existed, and the problem existed.

And it is magnificent and brings the nineteenth century, not just of baseball but of America alive in a way nothing else does.

When I first read this, the men of the nineteenth century who played baseball became living figures for me, no longer just ancient yellowed CPA photographs of players with bats swinging at baseballs that were hanging from the photographer's ceiling by a string that you could see.

Oh no, they were men of flesh and blood and a vocabulary of obscenity that would made Andrew dice Clay rethink his life special instructions to players.

In a contest between two leading clubs during the championship season of eighteen ninety seven, the stands being crowded with patrons of the game, a gentleman occupying a seat in the front row near the player's bench asked one of the visiting players who was going to pitch for them.

The player made no reply.

He then asked a second time.

The gentleman, his wife, who sat with him, and others of both sexes within hearing distance, were outraged upon hearing the player reply in a loud, brutal tone, oh go f yourself.

On being remonstrated with by his fellow players, who told him there were late present, he retorted he didn't give a damn that they had no business there anyhow.

This shocking indecency was brought to the attention of the league at the Philadelphia meeting in November eighteen ninety seven, and a committee was appointed to report upon this baseball crime, define and suggest for it a remedy.

In response to nearly one hundred communications addressed to umpires, managers, and club officials soliciting definite, positive and personal knowledge of obscene and indecent language upon the ball field, the committee received a deluge of information that was so appalling as to be almost beyond belief, showing conclusively and beyond contradiction that there was urgent need for legislative action on the part of the Lank League.

That such brutal language as you blank sucking son of a bitch, you blank eating bastard, you blank lapping dog, kiss my blank, you son of a bitch.

A dog must have blanked your mother when she made you.

I blanked your mother, your sister, your wife.

I'll make you blank my blank you blank blanker and many other revolting terms are used by a limited number of players to intimidate umpires and opposing players, and are promiscuously used upon the ballfield.

Is vouched for by the almost unanimous assertion of those invited to speak and who are confident to speak from personal knowledge, whether it be the language quoted above or some other indecent and infamous invention of depravity.

The league is pledged to remove it from the ballfield, whether it necessitates the removal of the offender, for a day or for all time.

Any word, sentence, or expression unfit for print or for the human ear, whether mentioned in these instructions or not, is contemplated under the law and within its intent and meaning, and will be dealt with without fear or favor when the fact is established by conclusive proof, signed by order of the Committee, and then in black bold print parentheses unmailable must be forwarded by express end parentheses.

Special Instructions to players from eighteen ninety eight.

I keep this relic framed.

I dust it regularly.

It hangs on my wall high up so no children could read it.

Well.

I can't think the last time there was a kid in this place, and it's it's the damnedest thing I've ever read.

It seems.

I understand the doubting Thomas's and I told them to ogo f themselves because there was evidence that this existed.

And the reason there are a few copies is a player was then handed this by the manager of his team.

So visualize a manager, possibly a fellow player, in uniform new York, Chicago, Cincinnati, wherever the twelve teams of the National League were in those early days days of eighteen ninety eight, handing this document to a player who was then supposed to either sign it or another document saying they had read it, and give it back to the manager to read it in the manager's presence.

And many of these players barely could read, and somebody had to read it to them, and then they would be returned to the National League office and held for all time.

We don't know what happened to all the signed ones.

Two of them stuck in the back of somebody's I don't know, Spalding Baseball Guide somewhere.

Two of them we know of, still extant and in my collection.

And to me, the quotations, as I said, bring the eighteen nineties alive in a way that nothing else possibly could.

Those were real men who could have been standing in the middle of any street in America an hour ago or an hour from now, talking that way, despite the fact that there were ladies present.

That could have been almost any woman member of the Republican Party in Congress today who was then responded to by the men who say, lady, there are ladies present.

It is, as I suggest, the greatest document ever written in the English language.

You may think there are others.

You might have that Bible thing or Shakespeare.

No, I'll take this.

So the last explanation is unmailable must be forwarded by express.

When this was printed in eighteen ninety eight, the possession of this was not considered a crime.

But if you put it in the mail.

And this has recently come up, of course, with the efforts to prevent sending abortion medications through the mail, the same law is still on the books.

This was considered obscene material that could not be sent by the US Mail and had to be delivered by Express, by Federal Express, by Adams Express, by a guy driving a team of horses who said, Hi, I'm here with the stack of special instructions to players.

I wonder what this is about.

Holy crap, as I said, I keep it framed.

I keep it up on my wall.

Every once in a while I bring it down and read it aloud, because nothing, nothing will ever match it.

In terms of the nearness, the almost reach out and grasp, the nineteenth century quality, this document is as close as you will ever get to time travel.

To time travel I've done all the damage I can do here.

Thank you for listening.

Most of our countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil our musical directors have Countdown.

It was produced by Tko Brothers.

Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.

Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.

Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust.

The Old Woman theme from Me ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of ESPN, Inc.

Is the sports music you heard earlier in this segment.

Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.

My announcer today was my friend Kenny Main because sports everything else was as always my fault.

So that's countdown for today, Day two hundred and eighteen of America held hostage, just two hundred and forty four days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA and Jeffrey Epstein or whatever it is with the swelling in his extremities.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

Till then, I'm Keith Olberman.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, good luck, and please don't do in the news Nothing about Me.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

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