Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

Of course Trump's not dead.

On the other hand, how could you be certain?

And how could his own White House have possibly made it look more like he was, or make it look more like he is desperately ill or had surgery or it is going to have surgery or what.

He has never voluntarily shut the f up for five consecutive days in his effing life, and yet they maximize the ways that would emphasize that he just had shut the f up?

Can Trump run for a third term if he's dead?

What if he faked his own death for whatever reason?

What's the Constitution say about that?

Federalist society?

And most importantly, why are any of us complaining because we didn't see him for two days and didn't hear from him for five to start?

No, it is not ghoulish nor unfeeling to talk about the possible non violent death of the President of the United States, especially when he and his staff seemingly did everything possible to make it look like he was dead or gravely ill or something.

It is not ghoulish or unfeeling in the least because these people are always up to something and he has a record of lying about his health for decades, and there has never ever been a time when he voluntarily shut the f up this long, to say nothing of the fact that at the peak of the speculation, somebody put out a fundraising email for Trump headlined I want to try to get to Heaven, and that's the second such email with that same headline to come out in less than a week.

I want to try to get to Heaven.

Hey, pal, don't let me stop you.

Throughout this, I was convinced, and I remain convinced that the only thing that explains the fact that it was quiet to quiet and explains that three and a half hour circle Jerk Cabinet meeting comedy roast last week, and explains the bizarre JV.

Vance interview with USA Today about the possibility of a tragedy in which Vance succeeds Trump.

You bet your ass.

The only thing that explains all of that is some kind of life jeopardizing surgery or treatment or condition that they all knew about and we still don't.

There are no circumstances under which Trump voluntarily decides to just take the holiday weekend off and not say anything not possible.

He gave an interview to the Daily Caller on Friday, unless they are lying about it.

And by the way, the Daily Caller is not reliable on you know facts.

And in the interview, no video, no audio, a couple of photos.

He went to his golf club Saturday and Sunday, nowhere near the pool photographers, let alone the reporters.

No questions, no comments, Only a couple of long distance telephotos, at least one of which looks like there is a bandage, a big bandage on the left hand.

No evidence he played golf, just a shot of him in a cart.

And it was so bad and so unlike Trump that some key MAGA influencers repost did video of him Saturday in the same golfitzire from June twenty eighth, talking to people, only he was not talking to people on Saturday.

They just made it seem like that's what the video meant.

They're asking the world to believe that Donald Trump chose not to talk.

It's not possible.

Therefore, it's something else, what could keep him quiet, Something that made the cabinet think they might not see him again.

Get your praise in for dear leader before you who you know is the self debasement by them at that thing, the ones like Hagsith and Bondi who sit there day after day praising him for all the things he's done, and especially all the things he hasn't done, but hallucinates he has.

That turns out all this time to be in the short version.

They could expand that endless d list celebrity roast to three and a half hours.

Are they really planning to keep that up every week or every couple of days for three and a half years.

That idiot from the Labor Department, Laurie Chavez Dreamer, the one who hung a giant North Korea style banner with Trump's head on the outside of her building, has to tell Trump she's done that.

She invites him to go see his quote, big beautiful face, hey, Secretary of the Department of Slave Labor.

That may be big, and that may be a face, but nobody has ever said it was beautiful.

It is not that these idiots humiliated themselves praising him to his big, ugly face live on TV TV around the world.

By the way, the BBC still covers these things live.

They do that humiliating praise non sense sense.

Every one of these meetings that's why they were hired, and they have no self respect to lose.

That's why they took those jobs.

It's not the fawning dear leader cult worship that's their job.

It's the three and a half hour part where they perhaps not praising him seeking long term advancement, but instead humoring him, expecting some sort of near term exits.

Is it possible we are not all inferring too much daydreaming, wish fulfilling.

Is it possible there is something both wrong and imminent, that it was wrong and imminent last Tuesday, and it's still wrong and imminent, you know.

Now.

It goes without saying we've had too many presidential assassinations and assassination in its attempts, But a president dying from bad health in office is so rare that you literally have to be about eighty five or older to have a clear memory of it happening in this country.

FDR died in April nineteen forty five.

Before that, it was Warren G.

Harding in nineteen twenty three heart attack.

So unless you're one hundred and seven or so, you cannot have a vivid memory of Warren G.

Harding's heart attack Before harding.

It was Zachary Taylor in eighteen fifty and William Henry Harrison in eighteen forty one, and Harrison and his thirty one day presidency is so removed from our reality now that when remembered at all, poor President Harrison the first is remembered as a punchline about why you should always remember to wear your hat when it rains.

It is not ghoulish.

It is not wrong to wonder what the f is going on.

Half of presidential science fiction is about a serving president who is dying of illness or something inexplicable that they try to keep from the public.

From President Mitchell and Dave to President Lindbergh and the plot against America to the unnamed president in Advise and Consent.

Because it's not like Trump has spent the last month or so constantly talking about going to heaven.

Alright, he has.

I wanted to try to get to heaven.

Last year.

I came millimeters from death when that bullet pierced through my skin.

My triumphant returned to the White House was never supposed to happen.

But I believe that God saved me for one reason, to make America great again.

I wasn't supposed to be crookred Hillary in twenty sixteen, but I did.

I wasn't blah blah blah, but by the grace of Almighty God, I did.

So now I have no other choice but to answer the call to can do it alone.

You've been with me through everything when they launched it.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

Just because I won a historic landslide and I've unleashed the Golden Age of America, that doesn't mean we can take our foot.

Just remember that the odds are like three to two that until sometime in the last ten years, he'd never heard of God.

And this goes on for a lot longer, this fundraising email, and that's just the first one.

As I said, I'll spare you, And it never really does.

Although he drops a couple of gods in there, it never really gets back to that headline.

What's with that headline?

Does he want his people to think he's about to die?

Is there some sort of strategy here?

What is exactly is the cell point of I want to try to get to Heaven.

I mean, Jesus suffering half I know what we do.

Let's get everybody thinking you're about to die and they'll send more money.

Then there is all the involuntary evidence.

A week ago, Trump hiding his right hand from cameras.

Tuesday, Trump hiding his right hand again, his hand looking like they had just paved it.

Somebody posted a shot of Queen Elizabeth greeting the tempt they had hired as Prime Minister.

Same effect on the hand, like gravel on the hand two days before she had died.

Then the bandage on the hand on Saturday, and the reminder from the website.

Public noticed that in twenty eighteen they did a coronary calcium CT scan on Trump and even his quack doctor of the time, Ronnie Jackson, who said if he ate better, Trump could live to two hundred.

Even Ronnie Jackson acknowledged that Trump's score on the calcium test was one hundred and thirty three.

When you are confirmed to have heart disease, if your score is one hundred or higher, that's seven years ago.

I'm sure the White House is not lying about the hand.

All the repeated hand bruising over the last six months or so, all the hiding of the hand, all the obvious places where they put something in a shunt, or a needle of some sort in the hand, and it causes that kind of bruising.

No, no, no, no, that's just from too many handshakes from too many people who just love him.

It must have been a long cabinet meeting.

He shook everybody's hand thirty five times each And then finally, what the hell with JV Vance?

Why did JV Vance do an interview about Trump's health and his own readiness to succeed him with USA Today, which has become a go to news site for Trump administration leaked and especially planted stories.

He we have video of Your boss.

Is one of the oldest people to ever be sworn into office.

You're one of the youngest people to ever be second in line.

Are you ready to.

Assume the role of commander in chief?

And why should Americans trust you to leave the country.

Well, I've got a lot of good on the job training of the last two hundred days.

But also say that the president is an incredibly good health, He's got incredible energy.

Yes, things can always happen, Yes, terrible tragedies happen, But I feel very confident that President of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term and do great things for the American people, and if God forbid, there's a terrible tragedy.

I can't think of better on the jobs training than what I've gotten over the last two hundred days.

I know he didn't ask the question, but what the hell, JV?

Was it a surprise?

Doesn't sound like it was a surprise.

Trump's been getting sicker and sicker and crazier and crazier every day for ten years, probably sixty years.

Something has accelerated, even if it's just age.

And you don't answer that question with the president is fine.

I don't worry about such things.

Vance, you lie about everything else.

You don't lie about his health.

You don't lie about his health.

Now, I mean, Vance is dumb, but he's not that dumb.

Maga is furious, of course.

How dare you say Trump is sick when he's immortal.

It was a holiday, it was labor day.

He just want he was taking time, he didn't want to, he was going to but he played John Gruden and it's just went to the You saw him in the car.

There was pictures of him with his grandchildren.

How dare you bring up his grandchildren, like he ever took a holiday off from being on camera, name me the last legal holiday when he shut the f up.

Being on camera is his only proof of life to himself.

This whole story, whatever it is, whatever it isn't, is Trump's own fault.

That is his white House that let him do an interview supposedly with no video or audio.

That's his white House that offered no explanation, not even a bad one.

That's his campaign that put out an I want to get to have an email in the middle of speculation that he was already dead.

Oh you hit reply?

Ah No, this was supposed to be to God at good dot com.

That's his cult that sends a time this nation to the question of presidential health by making up stories about Biden.

And lastly, on that subject, to the media, Why aren't you all asking about his health every day?

Why wasn't this mentioned once on the Sunday shows.

Why isn't on any of the websites a big story about this?

I mean it's a story about speculation.

You did four hundred and seventy four stories about speculation about Biden last year.

It didn't stop you that you didn't have any information where's the first one.

Do you have any guts left?

All of you?

One person to step out and go, I'm going to risk my career here.

Just one, just one with another skill.

I know, I know the odds of there being a reporter in America who has another skill, the odds of their being a reporter who would not starve if they lost their reporting job, those are pretty high.

Certainly not in Washington, DC.

But what the hell are you guys doing collectively?

What about all the editors?

Why aren't you all asking about his health every day and his whereabounts for the last five days, his last week?

What the hell are the I want to try to get heaven emails about?

You are still self flagellating over supposedly not covering Biden's health enough last year.

By the way, you covered it enough.

You covered it hourly, You covered it ten times as much as you're covering the story that was headlined on Twitter, on affing Twitter, the story was headlined Donald Trump missing crickets.

Still still there are more stories right now about Biden's health than Trump's.

All of this has been best summarized, as usual, by the wise satire of the online New York Times pitch bot account President Trump, the anonymous author posted Saturday, has not been seen for three days, raising fresh questions about Biden's health.

Speaking of health, Rudy Giuliani auto accident yesterday rear ended thoughts in well thoughts from the make America Sick Again files.

And that's of course the acronym massa.

They are this close to banning COVID vaccines.

We're trying to already.

You will not be able to get the COVID vaccine in the Red States and a lot of Blue ones, even with a prescription.

They've so confused this that some pharmacy chains will not touch the COVID vaccine all because the far right cannot ever possibly acknowledged that government has to intervene sometimes.

Illinois is already looking at leading a consortium of Blue states willing to combine resources to cobble together their own ad hoc vaccine program.

The Wall Street Journal had a story terribly ironic.

One remember to bookmark this to save, especially if COVID rages in the Red States this winter or anything else does.

As Trump sat with top donors at his New Jersey golf club last month, he made a private admission he believed the coronavirus vaccine was one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency, but he couldn't bask in it basque.

Trump told donors who were paying one million dollars to be there, that he wished he could talk more about Operation Warp Speed, the government program he initiated that helped expedite the development of the vaccine, attendees said.

The guests included Pfizer's CEO Albert Borla, whose company developed one of the first COVID nighte seen vaccines, and quote as an aside, Hi, I'm the CEO of Pfizer.

I'm sitting here donating a million dollars to this psycho turd trying to kill my customers instead of taking credit for helping me save my customers.

My name is Elmer J.

Fudd Borle, billionaire.

I own a mansion, any yacht.

Bottom line here is Robert F.

Kennedy Junior is going to have to be removed from the government, hell from the country.

As with Trump, it's us or him.

A nice op ed by Bernie Sanders, but getting Robert Kennedy to resign is not going to happen.

He needs to be chased out of the country.

Same for Christy Nome.

It's hard to believe that anybody that disconnected from reality for whatever reason it is actually in charge of anything.

Something is deeply, deeply wrong with Christy Nome.

I thought she had to have been referring to the wildfires or Trump's delusion that he turned the water on, or but no, when she went on Meet the Press yesterday and said, quote, LA wouldn't be standing today if President Trump hadn't taken action, then that city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.

When she said that Christy Nome was in fact referring to Trump's usurpation of control of the California National Guard, she actually means the militarization where they then did nothing like in DC, where the troops are mulching, not marching, just mulching.

You update an old baseball joke.

Mr Eyes of Christy Nomes had showed nothing.

Okay, Wednesday will be the next Trump Stein story.

Congress and Roe Conna a Democrat, and Thomas Massey, a Republican, unless Trump recovers, will joint news conference and has kind of explained yesterday.

What will be explosive in the September three press conference that both of us are having with ten Epstein victims, many who have never spoken out before.

They're going to be on the steps of the Capitol.

They will be telling their story, and they will be saying clearly to the American public that they want the release of the Epstein files for full closure on this matter.

Congressman, I hope you have one hundred and seventy five thousand American flags there to really sell it to the right wing conspiracy theorists, because they're the ones who are going to keep the story alive.

Can't just be you and me and George Conway.

What's amazing is James Comer's committee subpoened anything left that the Epstein estate might have that he might have signed about his bad prosecution by alex Acosta in Florida, and they're getting an interview with alex Acosta, and they are getting the birthday book.

The Epstein estate is providing this group, this committee the Epstein birthday book, the one the White House says doesn't exist or it doesn't have Trump's letter in it or whatever, plus unreported other documents we don't know about Hey, maybe that's what made Trump go virtually Mia and your humorous relief, well, your relief anyway, from Verisite and g Elliot Morris at strength in numbers.

The problem here is the public is schizophrenic on Trump and crime associated press.

NORK poll out this week NARC finding that sixty five percent of Americans say crime in the US generally is a big problem, and eighty one percent agree when they're asked specifically about crime in large cities.

When asked is it a problem in your community, only twenty percent say it's a big problem.

Use of the military, Fifty five percent say that is acceptable, thirty seven percent say no.

Use of the military to take control of the local police departments, it's reversed, fifty percent say it's unacceptable, thirty two percent say yes.

So you can.

According to the American public opinion right now, you can send the military into the big cities, but they can only mulch Trump.

Total approval is fifteen underwater.

Given a choice A or B pathway to legal status or deporting most unauthorized immigrants, sixty percent favor the pathway.

So where's the humorous relief I promised?

Uh?

The Congressional generic ballot from verisite for the midterms.

Democrats forty nine, Republicans forty one, which is about what would be needed at this point in history to statistically flip the House.

Of course, you have to have elections to do that.

Also of interest here it's an all new edition of Countdown Worst is pretty good.

And yes, a veteran fascist propagandist has gotten the year that nine to eleven happened wrong.

Another star baseball pitcher will have to get Tommy John surgery.

So Baseball wants to change the rules to decrease Tommy John surgeries, never realizing that there should be more Tommy John surgeries.

And I'll explain all that, but more importantly, I wanted to mention briefly what might be the greatest compliment I have ever heard made to a teacher to a school teacher.

This is sixty one years ago, now, nineteen sixty four.

Maybe this has been told publicly.

I don't know.

Maybe there's been some greater compliment to a teacher.

I have to imagine that's the case, But I've never heard of one.

The students in this teacher's first grade class so loved her, and the parents so loved her and what she did for their kids, that when talk began to circulate in the school that she might be switching to teaching second grade the next fall.

The next school year, all the kids in her class and all the parents asked if their first grade class could go with her to the second grade.

Intact, missus Martine Weiner taught the same twenty five or so kids in first grade, and then taught the same twenty five again in second grade.

How about good reviews actually in the second grade, though it was twenty six kids.

About a month into the school year of nineteen sixty four sixty five, they decided that the kid in the first grade who had taken home the three hundred page math workbook one weekend and finished the whole thing because he thought it was fun, he was probably just going to be spinning his wheels the rest of the year, and maybe they should put him in the second grade immediately, literally in September, send a bunch of kids down from that second grade classroom at the end of the hallway and help him just pick up his desk and move it, the whole desk with all his stuff in the desk, and move it from the first grade classroom and plunk it into a second grade classroom.

There are no reports as to whether or not there was a party in the first grade classroom after the kid left, but we know they said at the time, exactly who of our teachers in the second grade can handle him?

Missus Winer and her group of twenty five incumbents.

Missus Weiner's classroom, of course, was at the Sugar Pond Public School in Hastings on Hudson, New York, and she handled it completely perfectly.

I was a fish out of water in that classroom for about twenty twenty five minutes, and she and my new classmates made me feel right at home.

Imagine being given as this kid who was deemed to be too whatever that he had to be moved up a grade during the school year, and somehow making that work.

And that's when I stopped being Class of nineteen seventy six and became Class of nineteen seventy five.

So the fiftieth reunion is this year.

In fact, it's this month, and even though I graduated elsewhere, I'll be going to this one.

There will be more than a touch of sadness to this reunion, though.

Over the weekend, my friend Pat Sinatra, told me she had gotten the news that missus Weiner had died on Friday, just before the school year began.

Ninety eight years old.

I'd heard from her over the years many times notes I even saw her once or twice before she moved to the Midwest.

Pat stayed in touch with her and said she asked about me a few times recently, and Pat told missus Weiner I was causing trouble as usual, to which missus Weiner enthusiastically answered good.

It is a remarkable thing that a bunch of rapidly aging men and women aged sixty six to sixty eight all loved the same person for literally sixty two of their years.

I guess there isn't much more to ask for from life than that first and second grade classes start at Sugar Pond tomorrow.

I hope somebody there does something in missus Weiner's memory, especially the part about how she was so good in caring that all the kids and the parents asked for another year of her gentle and patient and unfailingly happy teaching.

I'm just sorry we couldn't have gotten a third year of it.

Starting about now, George Crowing pleasure to have you here.

Thank you.

This is the best news show ever.

I told that to one of your producers, and I want you to know that I've seen them all and it's just for especially the first.

Thirty five minutes.

Thank you.

So's just just unparalleled.

I got bad news between you and I.

We got six minutes to completely still.

That in my back.

Yeah, that's good.

I'm still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown Sportsball Center and things I promise not to tell merge yet again baseball and pictures and injuries as the baseball pennant races really begin, and the assumption that more pictures than ever are getting hurt, and how it's terrible they all have to have Tommy John surgery.

That whole line of thinking is backwards.

To tell me, John surgery and other operations save nearly all the pitchers for whom just fifty years ago would have seen their careers ended if they got any of the injuries.

It's a life saver.

It's a career saver.

I'll tell you the sagas of three young pitching prospects of the nineteen sixties before there were such surgeries.

One was named tom Sever, another was named Gary Lynn, Nolan, and the third one was named Lynn Nolan Ryan.

Plus, if baseball really thinks fewer pitching surgeries are an absolute must, I have the solution.

I guarantee it will work.

I guarantee near one hundred percent success.

Two small rule changes, and the number of serious pitching injuries will drop to almost none.

Next in sports Ball Center First, believe it or not, there's still more new idiots to talk about.

The roundup of the miss Grants, Morons and Dunning Kruger effects Smon's who constitute today's other worst persons in the world.

The Bronze worse.

Milanya, the first immigrant of the United States, mother of a first generation American citizen unless Hubby gets away with destroying birthright citizenship.

Milanya and Mark Guducci, the new editor of Vanity Fair magazine, who I mentioned last week in a different context.

Guducci reportedly tried to get the Floatus on the cover of Vanity Fair, to which the staff of the magazine threatened to walk out because he would be mainstreaming and normalizing fascism.

They refused to work if he did not abandon efforts to put Milania Trump on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Apparently it's been abandoned.

But the real interesting story here is that they're that whole idea that they would walk out.

That's one anti Millennia leak, which almost simultaneously was followed by a pro Millennia leak, presumably from the Millenia Trump press staff to the New York Post of course, the pro Trump House organ If you will forgive the use of that term.

The quote from the unnamed source, she doesn't have time to be sitting in a photo shoot.

Her priorities is first, Lady, are far more important.

These people don't deserve her anyway.

Unquote Yeah, yeah, Milenia Trump would never do that, would never bother to be on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.

She was on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine in February of twenty seventeen.

Of course not she'd never never do that.

She did it already.

She used to be model.

You never know when she might have to go back to it.

What a bunch of crap.

By the way, if this editor Griiducci and Vanity Fair, if they sound familiar, they were on the list last time as the rumored location of the comeback of you Know Who, My ex or, as the Daily Beast headline called her RFK Junior's digital lover.

Oh well, Olivia.

Uh.

The runner up were Sir Candace Owens again after the school shooting in Minnesota.

I didn't see this at the time.

Quote in a tweet or something.

The government is behind this.

Each shooting is more traumatizing than the last, because the goal is to scare us into compliance.

It is the tried and true strategy of nine to eleven and the Manson murders.

Both CIA operations do not ever agree to hand over your Second Amendment rights.

So, among other things, you're suggesting here that Donald Trump was behind the shooting in Minnesota.

Agree on that.

Although this is such an old conspiracy theory, I'm really surprised even somebody as stupid as Candice Owens is pushing this.

Did she have Stephen A.

Smith On to comment on it?

If you want a good conspiracy theory to push, Candy brain, Maybe the government is behind school shootings, But let me translate that into reality.

Maybe Republicans take no action to stop school shootings because they depend on political contributions from those in the child murdering business.

And maybe the Republicans take no action to stop school shootings, to try to encourage schools to buy guns or hired armed guards, and to encourage parents to buy guns because more guns means more cash for the people in the child murdering business.

And maybe the Republicans take no action to stop school shootings to make home schooling even more viable, more attractive.

See, you have to be a certain age to remember this, but home schooling used to be called truancy.

You aren't a teacher, you don't have the time, you don't know one topic that you're teaching, let alone five different ones.

But you're gonna teach your kids at home with all the distractions of being at home for twelve years, and somehow you're gonna let them be exposed to other ideas and viewpoints and just learn to behave among other people.

Even if they ultimately reject all those ideas and viewpoints and people and they accept yours, You're gonna do all that.

Homeschooling is one of the reasons America gets dumber every year.

Not every homeschooled kid is a moron, but a vast majority of them have absolutely no perspective on the world outside and couldn't tell you if there's another thousand people in the world or seven billion.

Maybe try one of those conspiracies, Candy.

Also, how's the macro on suit going?

But our winner the worst?

Speaking of conspiracy theory, nutjobs, Tucker Carlson, how many times can you destroy your own career?

I mean, I've been accused of doing it to my own career a couple times.

But even I at my supposed worst would be a piker and amateure compared to this asshole.

Tucker Carlson, Fired by CNN, fired by MSNBC, fired by Fox, rehired by Fox, given the eight PM show on Fox, and then fired again by Fox, then hired and essentially fired by Elon Musk.

How do you get fired by Elon Musk if you're crazy and now fired even from the fringes of American media and the conspiracy theory section of that, with a conspiracy theory that just doesn't add up, even among conspiracy theorists.

And when I say doesn't add up, I mean this literally, Tucks and Carlson has moved into nine to eleven trutherism grifting a little late in the field, and he's got one small problem math.

I mean, listen to this with a video attached to it.

For nearly twenty five years, the true story on nine to eleven has been withheld from the American people.

Why we decided to find out for ourselves.

Who's this?

Wei is the other person in the room with you?

Get all five episodes of our documentary series at Tuckercarlson dot com on September eleventh.

An official story on nine to eleven is a complete lie, and there's a picture of Bin mood.

But wait for nearly twenty five years, twenty five, twenty twenty twenty five.

Now, I hate to break this to you, Tucker, but nine to eleven was nine eleven two thousand and one.

Let me see, twenty twenty five minus two thousand and one equals twenty five.

No, no, it doesn't equal twenty five and equals twenty four.

So if we're not yet at the anniversary of nine to eleven, that means nine to eleven is not nearly twenty five years ago.

It's nearly twenty four years ago.

Unless you've gotten the year wrong, Tucker, and you think nine to eleven took place in two thousand.

Seems like getting the year wrong is a bad start for your nine to eleven Truther bullshit.

I mean nearly twenty five years ago.

If that's true, you could say nearly fifty years ago or nearly one hundred years ago.

Those are just as inaccurate.

Tucker, Oh, he must have hit a math wall Carlson two days other worst person.

And this is sports Senate Wait, check that not anymore.

This is Countdown with Keith.

Ulberman, and it's Sportsball Center time combined with things I promised not to tell our number one story on the Countdown.

And this starts with a man you may or may not have heard of, even if you are a baseball fan.

His name is Randy Rodriguez.

He is a pitcher with the San Francisco Giants.

On Friday, he turns twenty six years old.

And I don't know what he'll be doing on Friday for his birthday, but one thing we know he will not be doing is pitching.

It has been quite a one month period for Randy Rodriguez.

About a month ago, maybe more like two, he was a middle relief pitcher, a setup man for the Giants, and he was so good at it.

This season he came into his own that he became an All Star and he made it to the All Star team and pitched in the All Star Game.

And during the All Star Game, everybody said, this is the soon to be closer, the number one relief pitcher of the San Francisco Giants.

And then Randy Rodriguez did not pitch well in that All Star Game, and when the season resumed in the middle of July, he didn't pitch well for the San Francisco Giants, And as the weeks went by, the Giants still traded the men above him in their depth chart, their closer, and they traded the men below him in their depth chart, their setup man rogers.

They traded them both because they had All Star Randy Rodriguez to become the closer.

And then he started to get the elbow pain and then it became intolerable, and then they put him on the injured list, and then they said he had a right elbow sprain, and then they sent him for an MRI and they determined that his ulner collateral ligament was torn.

Surgery has been recommended.

He is to get Tommy John surgery.

They may fots around with it, but eventually it will happen.

He will be out for all of this year, certainly, no matter whether he has the surgery or not, and probably all or most of next and the cry goes up again in every corner of baseball and sports.

These Tommy John surgeries are ruining baseball.

We have to have fewer of them.

By two twenty three, more than a third thirty five percent of all active pitchers in Major League Baseball had had Tommy John surgery.

That's declined slightly in the two years since, but not a lot.

We have to change the rules somehow.

We have to make sure pictures don't get Tommy John surgery.

It's ruining the game.

This is totally backwards.

This is totally backwards.

Tommy John surgery has been the greatest thing for pitchers and in fact for baseball, other than free agency and a lot of television exposure and some superstar players who seem to have been unique to the half century, Tommy John surgery and related surgeries on pitchers arms and shoulders and elbows and sternum's have been the greatest thing to happen to baseball and certainly to pictures since I was a child.

It saves guys like Randy Rodriguez, and ultimately it saves baseball because a star pitcher who was injured has a chance of coming back.

Now, the surgery happens because the injury happens, but the injuries have always happened.

The surgery happens because now we know what the injuries are, because the MRI and other devices allow us to see inside the human body without cutting it up for what used to be referred to as exploratory surgery.

Have you ever been in a doctor's office where the guy said, I'm not sure what's wrong with you, but I want to do exploratory surgery to find out.

I had a guy say that to me about my shoulder about two thousand and seven.

I walked out of the room.

I don't even think I paid him.

You're going to open me up rather than just look at the pictures you just took of my shoulder.

And in the old days, that's all they had.

Tommy John surgery is named for the first guy who underwent it, who had a replacement ligament put into his elbow a transplant.

His name was Tommy John.

I know him very well, or knew him very well in any event, and he was simply out of business at the age of thirty one.

His ulner collateral ligament had torn.

They found this out by going to a doctor named Frank Job in Los Angeles, and he put John in a certain position with his throwing arm, his left hand up in the air, and he said, now push your arm forward.

Does that hurt?

And he said a little.

Now, let me push the arm back, and if it hurts, then we know that the ligament is actually torn.

And he pushed the arm back, and the sound I will not recreate for you here, but apparently it was like oh, only much much louder and much much longer.

And Tommy John said, what do we do about this?

And doctor Job, who spell length has said, you are tired.

There's nothing to do for it.

And Tommy John, who has a few holes in his intelligence but otherwise as a really bright guy, said, I'm thirty one years old.

This is how I make my money.

I have no other skills, and you're telling me I'm done.

There's nothing medical science can do to help me.

Nothing.

You can't put a new ligament in there.

Now.

There's just on the radio this morning as I was driving to your clinic, there's been another heart transplant.

You're telling me you can't put how complex is a heart compared to the ligament that's torn in my elbow that's causing me this pain when I throw the baseball.

How complex, Probably about a million times, and you can transplant a new one, transplant a ligament into your elbow to replace the torn one.

I never thought of that.

Well, you can see where it's gone from there.

Even then, they couldn't be sure what they would find when they operated, but at least that exploratory surgery had some clinical basis to it.

Doctor, it hurts when I do this, don't do that?

What we can operate now?

And they did it, and it was successful, and it wasn't initially a universal cure for any of the pitcher's problems, and it still isn't.

The second man to get Tommy John surgery was a great fellow named Brent Strom, and it didn't work for him.

He might have been the first, and then it would be Brent Strom surgery.

It might have worked, and it might have been Brent Strom surgery, but instead he had to retire and became a pitching coach and is still doing that today.

In any event, Tommy John surgeries save guys like Randy Rodriguez and baseball injury happens because the injury happens because guys are throwing overhand, which used to be illegal in baseball because it is not a natural use of your arm.

Do it long enough and it's going to hurt.

It's going to at least hurt.

Do it long enough and you'll tear something, you will break something.

It used to be illegal to throw overhand in baseball.

It was automatically a ball, and if you did it too often, they threw you out of the game.

They changed those rules in the eighteen seventies because they simply couldn't stop pitchers from throwing overhand, because you could throw the ball harder, you could curve the ball if you threw it overhand, and most importantly, you had more control of where it was going to go and how you could elude the batter.

It became a motivating factor in a pitcher's success and thus the amount of money he made doing baseball, and the rule against overhand throwing was eliminated one hundred and fifty odd years ago.

The injury occurs because guys throw too hard.

They throw too hard, because a guy throwing one hundred miles an hour is going to be making twenty percent more than a guy throwing ninety five miles an hour in most cases, never mind the used to be ninety miles an hour got to the top salary for a pitcher in baseball.

Ninety miles an hour might get you a job pitching for Columbus and not Columbus Ohio, Columbus Georgia.

They throw too often.

Pitchers used to warm up before games from a flat surface, not from a mound.

Yes, they pitched more often in games, but a warm up consisted of twenty or thirty or however many pitches that were essentially hard catch.

Now they throw up, throw games essentially in the bullpen before they throw a game on the mound.

And lastly, of course, threw too many breaking balls.

Twisting the wrist, the elbow, the fingers.

Imagine going to your door and grabbing your head handle there or your doorknob, particularly an old door knob, and twisting it to open the door.

But do it every twenty seconds.

Tell me how many minutes go by before you begin to feel like you've torn something in your elbow or your shoulder.

That is how to be a major league pitcher.

Only you have to do it while moving your arm with such force that it produces a speed on that doorknob of ninety five, ninety six or ninety seven miles an hour.

In other words, what you do which will cause you in less than an hour to go, how that really hurts?

Okay, these guys do only at higher speeds and more often so.

Some of the ideas that are floating around and resurface every time somebody like Randy Rodriguez gets hurt.

Oh, he was a promising prospect, and now he's going to have to go through maybe a year and a half in which he'll still get paid, and he'll recuperate, and his arm in fact might be stronger than it was.

The odds now are something like nine out of ten that the arm will actually be able to throw the ball faster when he comes back.

Terrible.

We're crucifying these guys.

And kids get these surgeries at sixteen.

So, in other words, a baseball player or would be baseball player whose career dreams were dashed as a teenager can now continue to pursue them because of these surgeries.

The ideas to eliminate or decrease the number of Tommy John and other related surgeries on pitchers include and I'm not making any of this up from the Commissioner's office.

This story leaked last year putting a limit on how many pitchers a team can use in a season, like you can only use twenty pitchers, Sorry, you're out of pitchers.

You're going to have to use your catcher is going to have to throw.

And we know how well that works.

If you've ever watched a baseball game in which a catcher comes out and throws forty one miles an hour two hitters who can then hold their swing back half a second and hit the ball seven hundred and fifty feet.

That's one.

Now, the idea of putting a limit on how many pitchers a team can use in a season is like saying, Okay, we're going to limit the number of beds in this hospital, and therefore there'll be fewer sick people.

Here's a good one.

I believe this comes from Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who we don't know if he's ever actually been to a Major League baseball game.

We know he does not enjoy baseball particularly and certainly, without question, does not understand anything that happens on the field.

This was apparently from him or his office every starting pitcher must throw six innings.

You can't come out of the game.

You can't be voluntarily taken out of the game period.

I don't care if he's dead, he has to pitch six innings.

Actually, there would be certain ways out, but the idea would be no longer to incentivize throwing as hard as you can, but incentivizing pitching six innings.

Though the teams would still pay pitchers based on how hard they threw and how many strikeouts they got and how effective they were over say, a period of four innings or five innings.

No, make them throw the sixth inning.

And by the way, the whole thing of pitchers coming out after five innings, that's not about injuries.

It used to be.

It used to be a thing called pitch count.

It's now more about the fact that the resources available to hitters, combined with the practical experience of facing an individual pitcher in a game, means that if you've batted against a pitcher twice, the third time you come up against him, your ability to know what his pitches may be, where they may appear, how they may try to deceive you, what they look like coming out of his hand, and little ticks and gestures and tips, as they say, may be accompanying each individual kind of pitch should be enough for you to send his next pitch to mars.

Pitchers don't face hitters for a third time, not because they've already thrown a hundred pitches in a game, but because they've thrown nine, ten, eleven pitches to an individual batter, and on pitch number twelve to an individual patter, kaboom.

That's why they come out.

Maybe you want to eliminate videotape and digital tape and reviewing of the bat the batters at bats during a game.

Maybe you want to stop that.

That would be much better than must pitch six innings again.

Force them to pitch six innings and they'll throw slower, they'll do less damage to their arm, while you pay them more the faster they throw.

There are rules changes in baseball that you could implement that would, in fact, reduce Tommy John and other surgeries to almost zero.

They are draconian, They make very little sense.

They make slightly more sense than forcing pitchers to pitch longer, when the problem is that pitching longer hurts them more, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Or somehow branding time tell me John Surgery as this great evil.

They are draconian, but I guarantee they will work in whole or in part.

I'll less than in a minute.

But I wanted to tell a story of three pictures from my childhood and what happened to them, and how the thing has changed in the ensuing now nearly sixty years.

There was a pheow named Gary Nolan.

He was a pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds in nineteen sixty seven, A rookie who was still eighteen years old when he unexpectedly made the rotation of the Cincinnati Reds in nineteen sixty seven.

That year, at the age of eighteen, he threw two hundred and twenty seven innings, which would be more than anybody is likely to throw this season in baseball.

He struck out two hundred and six batters.

He won fourteen games and lost eight for the Reds and was considered the young flame throwing ace, the star young pitcher, the teenaged phenom.

Meanwhile, in the minor leagues was a pitcher who had appeared briefly for the New York Mets the year before.

His name was Nolan Ryan.

In fact, his name is Lynn Nolan Ryan, and Gary Nolan's middle name was Lynn, so it was Gary, Lynn Nolan and Lynn Nolan Ryan in the miners.

Nolan Ryan, who had pitched once or twice for the Mets in nineteen sixty six, he barely pitched it all in nineteen sixty seven.

The Mets brought him up in September just to look around and to see what was going on and to have some tutelage from veteran pitchers and to get use again to the major leagues.

He was twenty years old.

In nineteen sixty eight, he suffered a series of blisters on his fingers, so he couldn't pitch because his hand hurt too much and there'd be blood during the game.

They had him walking around with his fingers in cups of tea during the season, and then they switched it to Picklebrian.

He wound up throwing only one hundred and thirty four innings in nineteen sixty eight only eighty nine in nineteen sixty nine.

In fact, Nolan Ryan was twenty five years old before he pitched as many innings in one season as Gary Nolan had at the age of eighteen.

So Gary Nolan was abusing his arm with this overhand throwing and not so good mechanical delivery at eighteen and Nolan Ryan didn't get to that workload until he was twenty five.

Nolan Ryan pitched until he was forty six years old.

Nolan Gary Nolan shoulder and elbow woes the next year, in nineteen sixty eight, they left him in Florida.

When the season worked out or began, they left him in Florida so he could work out under the warm sun.

Today you get Tommy John surgery or other forms of rehabilitative surgery or just rehabilitation on an injured shoulder that does not require surgery or elbow.

In nineteen sixty eight, the state of the solution for Gary Nolan was, don't send him to Cincinnati where it's cold, have him warm up in Florida for a while.

Well, it was two full seasons before he was able to take his turn regularly the Red's rotation again in nineteen seventy.

He pitched for three years.

He was great, not quite the pitcher he was before, and he had a lot of pain.

Then he missed almost all of nineteen seventy three, when he couldn't lift his arm over his head, and all of nineteen seventy four he came back again.

He had two more great years.

He hurt that arm or maybe the shoulder again in nineteen seventy seven at the age of twenty nine, and he never pitched in Major League Baseball again.

He was done at twenty nine.

The workload was too much and there was nothing to do for him.

Even though Tommy John surgery had been successfully implemented three years earlier, they didn't know what was wrong with him.

I think it was the shoulder.

It was put down, as all injuries to pitchers were in those days, to a sore arm, you were encouraged to go to Florida and keep pitching through the pain and hopefully things would get better.

Remarkably, in many cases things either got better or a pitcher's pain tolerance grew so much that they were able to pitch through it.

But usually by the time of twenty nine you were done, and Gary Nolan was done.

The third pitcher from my youth was named tom sever in nineteen sixty seven.

He was twenty two.

He had a different kind of pitching delivery than everybody else.

He used basically his ass.

He pitched with his lower body, which was remarkably sturdy.

Let's put it that way, sturdy.

He was low to the ground as he released the ball, and he had what was called a drop and drive delivery, originated by Christy Mathewson, the great Giants pitcher of the very early twentieth century, perfected by Bob Feller, and then re perfected by sever.

Sever pitched two hundred and fifty one innings in nineteen sixty seven.

He won sixteen games, He was Rookie of the Year, and he threw at least two hundred and fifteen innings every year until he was thirty five.

He never had a serious arm injury, he had buttocks injuries, His delivery was perfect, and he won was something of a physical oddity.

And what was the whole outcome of this?

What lesson did Tom Sever take away from his success and his longevity, And he pitched until nineteen eighty six and tried to come back in nineteen eighty seven, What was his takeaway that he and the other great pictures of his era who lasted simply prepared better than the others and were more diligent.

And Gary Nolan just did something wrong in the way he pitched, that it wasn't physical, that it wasn't overhand pitching.

That the freaks in this equation were not Tom Severer and Ferguson Jenkins and other pitchers of the time, but the freaks were the guys who didn't succeed.

And I took the list of the other pitchers to Tom Seber from the nineteen sixty seven Mets, the team with which he broke in, and I asked them.

I asked him about each of them and what happened, and he remembered many of them.

And I said, what about Bob Hendley, Oh, yeah, I had arm?

He was twenty eight in nineteen sixty seven.

Dick Selma, Oh he was.

It was the harder.

I threw heart, much harder than I did.

What happened to him?

Sore arm?

He pitched through it.

He lasted a while, but he had a sore arm.

How about how about Bill Denahey, you're on his rookie card.

It's the Bill Denihey rookie card featuring Tom sever on the side there.

Yeah, Well, he threw harder than I did too.

What happened to him?

Sore arm?

Dennis Bennett, what happened to him, sore arm.

After a car crash, he hurt his leg and he came back and he was pitching different less roar, number two pick in the draft one year.

Yeah, sore arm.

Don Shaw, their left handed relief pitcher, was twenty three in nineteen zo you had a sore arm.

How about Chuck Aestrada, great pitcher of the Baltimore Orioles of the nineteen sixties.

What happened to him?

Oh, he opened the season with us, then his sore arm came back.

About Nick will Height, the left hander who they got from the Dodgers, Oh, yeah, sore arm.

Billy Winn traded to the White Sox for Tommy ag that winter.

Oh, I think he had a sore arm.

Alan Schmels, great pitcher, overhand, fastball pitcher from California.

Oh man, he was a killer.

I used to pitch against him in the semi pro leagues and he was a boy.

Could he throw that ball hard?

Is what happened to him.

Got into a couple of games, then he had a sore arm.

Is it Jerry Hinsley sore arm?

Ralph Terry who finished up was his last season, Well, yeah, he had it.

Was a great pitcher with the Yankees.

Then he had a sore arm.

How old was Ralph Terry when he finished up with you guys, I don't know.

It's thirty one.

Everybody else got sore arms.

I said, how about some of the other great Mets pitchers of the nineteen sixties, the great pitching prospect Dennis Muskgraves, and I never heard of him.

Said he got a bigger signing bonus than you did.

Came up through a couple of great games in nineteen sixty five, and then at Sieber now said sore arm.

I went, yeah, Dick Rustick threw a shutout in his first game, I think maybe even his first two games sore arm.

The surgery that saved the equivalent of all of those guys is Tommy John surgery and the various different surgeries done on other parts of the arm and shoulder.

The surgery became routine once the MRI replaced the X ray as the only visuals of the interior of the body.

It is the solution.

It is not the problem.

Previously, if a pitcher had a sore arm, you just sent him someplace warm and told them to pitch through the pain.

Steve Barber at age twenty six.

Steve Barber of the Baltimore Orioles was so good that every time he took them out and they said he's going to throw a no hitter.

One day he threw a no hitter, but he was so wild that he lost the game.

He gave up runs without giving up a hit twenty six.

It looked like he was on his way to the Hall of Fame.

Sore arm finished for the season nineteen sixty six.

Starting in nineteen sixty seven, the future Hall of Famer Steve Barber pitched for seven teams in the next eight years, kept getting traded or released.

Pitchers were fungible.

The investment in them was negligible.

We believe baseball historians do that.

The most money Steve Barber was ever paid in the season was thirty seven five hundred dollars by the Yankees in nineteen sixty eight.

By the way, that was an awful lot of money for a Major League Baseball player, particularly a pitcher in nineteen sixty eight.

And what would happen if if you broke Steve Barber and there was no surgery to repair him, Well, you were out thirty seven million dollars.

That was where the Yankees, who were owned then by the CBS television network.

Zach Wheeler of the Philadelphia Phillies is paid forty two million dollars a year to pitch.

He's not pitching at the moment either, and he even avoided Tommy John surgery, which he's already had this time.

It's thoracic outlet surgery to correct the problem in his upper extremities, meaning his arm and his shoulder.

Thoracic outlet surgery to correct blood clots.

He might not even be able to pitch next year.

It's a very very serious thing.

We don't have Tommy John surgery for a thoracic outlet syndrome.

There's surgery, but who knows how well he'll recover.

You don't throw out forty two million dollars, Maybe you throw out thirty seven five hundred dollars or let it turn into an asset worth half that.

But that's why there's Tommy John surgery, and that's why baseball will always have pitchers who get injured from throwing too hard or curving the ball too much.

But if you want to eliminate the twenty to forty Tommy John surgery is a year.

As I said, I have the solution.

It's very simple.

It's two rules changes, just two.

They'll never do it.

The new rules are one.

Any pitch that registers one hundred miles an hour on the radar gun is a ball.

I don't care what it does.

I don't care what the batter did with it.

It's a ball.

If you throw three in a game, you're ejected from the game.

If you throw in triple digits three times in one game, you're thrown out of the game.

None of this You have to pitch six Who will teach pitchers how to regulate their own and to stretch out and to pitch only as the old fashioned pitchers did to save something for the last inning.

Don't throw as hard as you can every time.

No, no, no.

They won't do it voluntarily.

They know it's costing them success and money and fame.

All these things are dependent on throwing the ball as hard as they can, with as much energy and exertion as they possibly can manage, until their arm falls off, which it does well.

Now, of course, what happens if all the good pitchers are getting thrown out for throwing the ball one hundred miles an hour, which you're paying them to do.

Well, you balance it out, ball hit one hundred miles an hour by a batter their exit v LO, their exit velocity, that's automatically an out.

So you're going to encourage hitters then to just meet the ball and try to dunk one over the second baseman's head for a single rather than trying to hit seventy home runs in a season.

Now, there's one thing these two rules have in common.

They're stupid.

They would destroy the game that I don't particularly enjoy that much anymore, but the fans love and pay exorbitant ticket prices to go see and watch on TV, although realistically that about a tenth of them are watching the big games as many is watched in New Year nineteen eighty.

For some reason, the postseason in baseball is not interesting to almost anybody anymore unless it's their team involved.

But that's a different subject.

It is related to this whole subject of how the pitcher's throw and how the hitters hit.

But I'll leave it for another time because that will take another forty five minutes of your time.

And then I'll say, and that's my preface, Let me go into further depth.

But the idea of punishing a pitcher for throwing hard is not going to work.

It didn't work in nineteen sixty eight, it didn't work in eighteen ninety three, it didn't work in eighteen seventy.

That's why they had to make overhand pitching legal, because the pitchers knew what worked and what didn't.

The pitchers knew what got the hitters out, and it wasn't just finesse yes.

You could be successful by mixing up fast fastballs and fastballs that only looked fast, off speed pitches, curveballs, a variety of the mental game, the Greg Maddocks game.

You know why it's called the Greg Maddox game because he was the only one who succeeded at it in the last fifty years.

It's Greg Maddox.

He was doing something totally different Tommy John surgery, which baseball is trying to eliminate and would have to do.

You literally would have to do something stupid like I just suggested, call every pitch over one hundred miles an hour a ball or worse yet, a walk.

Ejecked.

Pitchers who throw one hundred miles an hour punish hitters who hit the ball more than one hundred miles an hour, stupid things, exactly the opposite of what the fans want to see.

Baseball could do that, or it could just say, yeah, these surgeries are, in fact a gift from the gods.

We're Randy Rodriguez turns twenty six.

The poor guy, He's going to miss at least a year, maybe the year chronologically the best year of his career.

It's going to be spent recovering from surgery and having to watch his team go on without him, and then in twenty twenty seven he'll be good as new.

What would Steve Barber had given for that?

What would Gary Nolan have given for that?

And they want to eliminate Tommy John surgery.

I've done all the damage I can do here.

No surgery will help you now.

Thank you for listening.

Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Phillip Schanel.

Our musical Directors of Countdown was produced by Tko Brothers.

Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums.

Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards.

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

The Olberman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN, Inc.

Is the sports music you've just heard twenty odd minutes ago.

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

And my announcer today was my late friend and hero, George Carlin.

Everything else was, as always my fault.

That's countdown for today, Day two hundred and twenty five of America held hostage again and just and forty seven days until the scheduled end of his lane duck lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by MAGA or Jeffrey Epstein or the pavement on his hand, or because the body double doesn't show up for work tomorrow.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday.

Until then, I'm Keith Olberman.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

What do you think of that one, Stevie?

Is that a good show?

Was that any good?

Did you like the baseball part?

What do you think?

You've had enough surgeries?

Do you need Tommy John surgery too?

Well?

You only have the three bad legs.

What I know.

I went too long.

I shouldn't add lib I'm much better when I pre write everything.

Me for notes is well, you better have an hour.

You're right, and it's that I could be talking to you guys.

What Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio.

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