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NFL Network Announcer (35:48)

The NFL International games continue on NFL Network, and here our stars come out in the morning. Week 10, Bajan Robinson and the Falcons take on Daniel Jones and the Colts in Berlin. Then in week 11, Jaden Daniels and the Commanders face Tua and the Dolphins in Madrid. Snooze off. Game on it's Sunday Morning Football continues November 9th at 9:30 Eastern only on NFL Network.

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Keith Olbermann (36:45)

Learn more@probane.com this is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on this episode of Countdown, the anniversary was last week, in fact the 25th anniversary. And it was during the World Series. And today this is still during the World Series. And after a number of years in which this saga had cooled in importance, it seems to have reasserted itself as a part of baseball lore that I was in the middle of the night, Roger Clemens of the New York Yankees threw Mike Piazza of the New York Mets broken bat at Mike Piazza during the World Series or didn't throw it at him or threw it at me in the Yankee dugout. And it all ends with Mike Piazza threatening to sue me. And and and and next in things I promise not to tell that's so long that I will start it immediately after the end of worse persons. Then there'll be a commercial and then part two. First, believe it or not, there are still more new idiots to talk about the roundup of the miscreants, morons and dunning Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's other worst persons in the world. We have a tie at bronze for worse ice in D.C. with oh no, you want details. American ISIS arrested a man named Sam O' Hara in a raid in D.C. at Logan Circle. He was arrested for playing Darth Vader's theme music. The Imperial March arrested the ACLU has sued on his behalf because guess what? Satire is still legal. Also, if you're wearing masks, how do we know you're not members of the Imperial thing from Star Wars? But it's what they wrote about ICE that I'm quoting here. Point four the law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down, peaceful protests, etc. Etc. I just like the formal use of the only part of Star Wars I stayed to see. Yes, you're looking at the guy who walked out in 1977. I'm not saying I was physically triggered, I just didn't really it did give me a headache. I just didn't like it. But I still find the reference to it in El legal action reassuringly funny. We may all be making our jokes inside concentration camps where the guards wear logos with Donald Trump's face on them, but at least we'll still be having fun. That's tied with somebody who'll be there in her little Ilsa, she wolf of the SS outfit. Kayleigh McEnany smiling all the way through Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump's lying liar Flingen Flungin Kayleigh McEnany, One of Trump's lying liars from the first time around. No, I'm not doing a second take on this. Smiling all the way through, as she always does, because she's a sadist. This is the reaction to Trump trashing the economy, particularly the economy for food, particularly the economy for lower income television viewers and the elderly, people like my age and older who, who watch a lot of Fox News. Not that I do, but they do. And smiling all the way through this, I cannot possibly. Even if I played this clip and risked a lawsuit from Fox in playing it, I could not possibly, possibly convey to you Kayleigh McEnany's desperate smile all the way through this. Everything's fine. They have a gun at my back. They're going to shoot my family. They're going to put me in the concentration camp too. Kayleigh McEnany, one tried and true brand is making a big comeback as consumers tighten their wallets. Hamburger Helper, the mix of Mac and cheese and ground beef is seeing a surge in sales. Isn't that great? People are starving to death already. Isn't that great? And you helped. Kayleigh McEnany, the runner up, the priceless Annapolina Luna, who, if she did not exist, would have to be created. This may be the dumbest person in America. I know. I keep going back and forth among the various members of the House of Representatives, in the Republican caucus in the House and the Senate, and I keep saying, no, no, ultimately it's still Boebert. No, no, it's. It's McLean from Michigan who once demonstrated in the past week the idea that there were protesters. She demonstrated this by moving her arms. She. She balled up her fists and did her little arm March. Lisa McClain Absolute IQ, none detected, but the original one may be Anna Paulina Mihoff Luna. Anna Paulina posted this. Repjack Kimball asked me for receipts, but blocked me before I could respond. Weird flex. So here are the receipts, Jack. Anna Paulina Luna posted that there were receipts showing the no Kings protests were backed by$294 million by the Soros Foundation, Buffett, I presume, Jimmy ACLU, Indivisible, and planned Parenthood. This wasn't grassroots. It was a billionaire funded. She doesn't say what it was. She just says a picture of herself grabbing a mic and looking intently like her car is on fire in the parking lot. And this Rep. Jack Kimball of the 54th district of California wrote, this is large. Anna Paulina has found proof that no King's marchers were paid nearly 42 cents each for participating. So she reposted all of this, a screenshot of what Jack Kimball wrote in response to hers and just turned it into a fight and said that Jack Kimball asked her for receipts, which he did not. But the most interesting part, of course, is there is no Representative Jack Kimball. The giveaway is Anna. You never met him and he's supposedly a Republican and he's from the 54th district of California. And I know for people like Anna Paulina Luna, the number 54 is might as well be the same as 294 million. It's an inestimably large number that's double or triple her IQ. 54 the 54th. There is no 54th congressional district. Jack Kimball is one of the oldest satirical accounts on Twitter X. And she fell for it. But a screenshot is forever. Congratulations on reclaiming your crown. Here's your crown, moron. But our winner as always, Cuomo. I'm sure you heard something about this. Andrew Cuomo's self defenestration campaign continues apace right down to election day. He's going to make sure that nobody in the city of New York, other than possibly in Staten island, thinks well of him ever again. He will bring down his brother, who is already pretty much down as it is. He will bring down his late father's name. There will be a bid to remove his late father's name from what is actually the Tappan Zee Bridge connecting Tarrytown, New York and Rockland county across the Hudson. They will do it. He is destroying the Cuomo family name and his father was actually a very good governor. Andrew Cuomo, according to reporter Nick Garber talking to conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg this morning. Sid Rosenberg, you may have seen, has the darkest tan of anybody who was not injured in some sort of radiation accident. Cuomo asked this in an interview about the man who's going to defeat him in the mayoral election as he defeated him in the mayoral primary. Zora and mom dan. God forbid another 9 11. Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat? Sid Rosenberg Scumbag looks like a burn victim. Sid Rosenberg replies, he'd be cheering. Cuomo paused and chuckled before saying, that's another problem. I was here on 911 and I was here in the months after 9 11. And I have been here, in fact, in this city. I got back from Angeles in late June or the beginning of July of 2001 and I have lived here ever since without interruption. I don't think I've been away for more than three weeks at a span since then. And the one thing that has not happened in this city since then has been problems created by people of the Muslim faith. Of all of the religions in this city that have done the most to try to outreach to other groups to try to heal the wounds and, and practically speaking, to invest their money in the areas that were blighted after 911 members of the Islamic faith. I just, I don't get the enmity. It's probably from people who were not adults on 911 who have now conflated everything because of scumbags like Trump and scumbags like Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo is not a Democrat. I don't know if he's a Republican. I don't know if he has any convictions whatsoever, though I think he should have been convicted of something. I just think to say this about somebody who is likely to be the next mayor of New York indicates a total lack of responsibility or interest in anybody alive except himself. I think he should go to hell. All I know for sure about his convictions and how you would describe Andrew Cuomo is the he is Andrew Cuomo, today's worst person in the world. Before the World Series ends, I have to tell this thing. I promise not to tell, because by the time of the next one of these segments, no matter how long it lasts. The World Series will be over. So here is our number one story, Things I promise not to tell and my favorite topic. Me and the series will be over, which is more than I can say for this story, which is chronologically and in terms of storytelling time. The longest one of these I can not only imagine having told, but ever telling. It started on the night of October 22, 2000, and it ended. Well, I'll let you know if and when it ever ends. I was enjoying the second night of one of my childhood dreams come true. I was the host, not just of the telecast of the World Series, but it was an all New York City series, a Mets vs Yankee series, a Subway series. I'd literally dreamt of it since 1967. The manager of the Yankees had been the first person I ever interviewed on TV. Fifteen years earlier I had worked with him in TV. He was a friend of mine. I had just covered the Mets through their playoff run and knew all of their players. My face had been on an advertisement in dead center field in the Mets stadium for the entirety of the year before and the players all knew me by name. Where we were that Night Yankee Stadium was not only where I saw my first baseball game, but was about seven eighths of a mile from the hospital in which I had been born and my first home was four subway stops away. The night before this event, as I hosted the start of the first game of this Keith of Palooza, I was supposed to introduce the public address announcer of Yankee Stadium, Bob Shephud, whose voice I had heard nearly every day since I was 8 years old, so he could then introduce the players and this epic World Series would begin. And it dawned on me in the seconds before I was supposed to do this that I literally had the power to stop the 2000 World Series from ever happening. If I just kept talking and never actually said here is Bob Shepard. Well, I could delay it briefly until they cut my mic off and then fired me on the spot. Anyway, this was game two and now that our pre game show was over and I had waved to my mother who had seen her first game at Yankee stadium just, ooh, 66 years previously and she was seated in the family seats that were just nine rows up from our on field set, I had crawled into the position I would assume for the entire game as the dugout reporter. I was hunched over on a stool squeezed between the far end of the Yankee dugout dugout and our Fox Sports first base camera. A thin chicken wire fence separated me from the dugout itself, in fact, it was a formality. I was more or less in the dugout. Players, coaches, and that night, as I settled in, my friend, the Yankee manager, all came over to say hello. Roger Clemens of the Yankees, who I had also known since we were both rookies in Boston sports in 1984. He lasted. I didn't. Roger Clemens had struck out the first two Mets hitters. Clemens was a strange man about whom I had heard a strange tale of teammates in a college summer baseball league who were all wearing their wallets in their uniform, pants, back pockets during a game, because one of them explained to a friend of mine, we have this crazy kid Clemens from Texas on this team and we don't trust him. In Boston. I had found him a little nervous, little standoffish, but doing his best to be professional. But by now there were rumors swirling around Roger Clemens about amphetamines, performance enhancing drugs, and you knew not to talk to him before or after a game unless you had to. And if you had to, you chose your words very carefully and made sure that whatever you did, you had to start with something mundane, like the score of the game. And if you could let him bring up anything controversial or complex, he would then probably do it. So now, as this game continued, after two batters had struck out Lee Mazzilli, the former Mets star, now Yankees coach, another friend of mine was on the other side a little fence. And as Met superstar Mike Piazza stepped in as the third batter of the game, Mazzilli leaned in and said conspiratorially, let's see if Rog flips him again. In mid summer 2000, Roger Clemens had beaned Mike Piazza with a fastball. There was a hospital visit involved. Nobody was convinced it had not been intentional or that Clemens would not do it again, even though it was the World Series. Mazzilli and I leaned forward. Piazza was a deeply complicated guy, too. During the playoffs, he had walked up to me and asked me if it was true. I and then he quizzed me about the relative merits of the suburbs. And then he wanted to know if I had really taken up residence in his favorite Southern California hotel. And we talked for 15 minutes about that. The next night I saw him, smiled, said hello, and he looked at me like I had just sworn a vendetta against his family. For a long time I thought it was me. Until about 10 years later, the great Vin Scully said that Piazza was with the Dodgers. And when they were both together there in Los Angeles, Vin had had the identical experience with Piazza. Best friends on the team. And then, no indication Piazza remembered even meeting him the next. I mean, that was Ben Scully. Clemens, as it turned out, did not throw a baseball at Piazza, but instead pitched him inside in on his hands. And Piazza tried to stop a swing that was half self defense, but instead, the odd angle and the force of the pitch shattered Piazza's bat. The ball veered to the right, describing a circle into foul territory. The head of the bat shot out towards Clemens on the mound. A second piece flew briefly into the infield. Piazza was left holding just the handle. And it looked as foolish as that sounds. But lost in this description is the fact that that all happened at once. And even from our side angle in the Yankee dugout, it looked to Mazzilli and me as if Piazza's bat had simply exploded, like it was a trick device of some sort. I saw Clemens reach for the baseball. I thought it was the baseball right in front of him. And then, just as quickly, he and I at the same moment realized it was not. It was the barrel of the bat, which was slightly rounded, just a little darker than a baseball, but could, in the heat of an instant following a bat explosion, it could be mistaken for a ball. So far, so good. But right then, Clemens, realizing it was part of a bat and not a ball, promptly threw that part of the bat at me. Jesus, Maz, I said to Mazzilli, why did Clemens throw that bat barrel at me? The Yankee coach looked incredulously at me. He didn't throw it at you. He threw it at me. That's what it looked like. We were lined up perfectly. If Roger Clements had thrown the barrel of Mike Piazza's bat, say 120ft instead of just 6 or 7ft, he would have hit either me or Lee Mazzilli in the Yankee dugout. As it was, since nobody knew exactly what was happening, Piazza had started to run down to first base in case the ball was fair. He didn't know where the ball was either. For that initial split second, you really couldn't tell which flying object was the ball, and also whether the ball was fair or foul. So Roger Clemens's throw certainly looked like it was aimed at Piazza. As Piazza went down the first baseline and as Piazza took Umbridge. And there was another split second of confusion when it looked like Piazza might charge out to the mound to try to sock Clemens for this and for the midsummer beaning, I said to Mazzilli, wait, did he throw that bat at Piazza? Mazzilli just shook his head. I don't think so. Who in the hell Knows he's been here two years. I haven't figured out anything he's done so far. As the umpires then got involved, Clemens repeatedly tapped his own chest, and not in a bragging way, but in a kind of what looked like that's on me way. Two bat boys collected the three main pieces of the bat and a bunch of smaller shards, some of them smaller than a toothpaste. The fox, play by play, man, threw it to me in the dugout. Well, I said, I can tell you the Yankee dugout doesn't know what happened or why. Joe Mazzilli laughed quietly and then hit me in the arm while I was on the air. I postulated that Clemens was looking for a ball, hit back to him, instead found the piece of the bat and then discarded that piece of the bat so he could keep looking for the ball that he discarded it kind of where Piazza was running might have been deliberate, might have been a coincidence. I do remember suggesting that if Clemens had really aimed the bat at Piazza, that from that distance, with the strength and accuracy of a major league pitcher, he clearly would have hit him with it. Piazza then promptly grounded out to end the inning. And as Clemens came back towards the Yankee dugout, where Mazzilli and I were, he again stopped to talk to the umpire, who's Charlie Reliford, over the noise of 56,000 fans at Yankee Stadium. I couldn't hear a damn thing, but it sure looked like Clemens was again saying, that was on me. I asked Missili if he could find out if that's what Clemens was doing. And half an inning later, Mazzilli reported that Clemens indeed thought for a second it was the ball and that he threw it and that it was on him and that it was not intentional and it was not directed at Piazza. Now I did something kind of stupid. I suggested to my bosses that I should go ask the commissioner of baseball, who in a World Series game had the power to eject any player for any reason, although that power had not actually been used since 1934. What he thought of all this? The producer said, yes. And I thought, me and my big mouth. I now had to crawl out of that little space between camera and dugout, and I mean literally crawl, hands and knees to exit back into the seats via where the groundskeepers kept all the extra dirt. I knew where in the stands the commissioner was sitting. I went there, I got to him, I asked him. He assured me there was no discipline coming for Clemens and they'd look at the tape of the game again that night. Or in the morning. But he really didn't think Clemens had tried to hit Piazza with the bat. Well, they would look at the tape and they decided both that Clemens did not try to hit Piazza with the bat and that he should be fined $50,000 for, I don't know, not trying to hit him with the bat. So I made it back to the dugout, reversing my crawl like I was recreating the movie the Great Escape. As it turned out, Piazza's little squib shot that caused all the trouble with the exploding bat was about the hardest thing they hit off Clemens all night. Over eight innings, he struck out nine Mets batters, he walked none, he gave up only two hits, and he only hit one batter. And then, incredibly, after Clemens left the game, the Yankees almost blew a six nothing lead in the ninth innings. A Met outfielder named Jay Payton hit a three run homer off future hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, and the Mets had a chance to tie the game or go ahead off Rivera in the top of the ninth. And then he got out of it. And the final score was 6 to 5, Yankees. And with the game over now it was Keith Interviews Clemens time. I went to the prearranged spot at the other end of the Yankee dugout, where another friend of mine, the Yankees PR director, had guaranteed me he would go and get Clemens and they would emerge. After Clemens left the clubhouse to do what was a contractually obligated interview with Fox and me, Apparently, Roger Clemens started making his way towards me the moment the Yankees finally won that game. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, security closed the only Runway from the Yankee dugout to the clubhouse so that a dignitary could use it as an exit from his seats. The dignitary was Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, noted front running Yankees fan and ticket freeloader. And while Fox literally delayed the start of every newscast on every one of its stations in the country, even on the west coast. And Joe buck and Tim McCarver kept showing replays again and again and promising my interview with Roger Clemens. Rudy Giuliani took his God damn time leaving the field. His idiot son Andrew grabbed some dirt from the field. I half expected him to eat it. Instead he stuffed it in his jacket pocket. Giuliani now waited for his entire entourage, one of his wives, some of his, I guess they were friends, assorted political riff raff. And as my producers screamed in my ear, where is Clemens? Giuliani waited until they were all together on the field and finally he marched them down into the dugout and up through the Runway. And after all this delay, Clemens came out and finally I could ask him about throwing the bat shard at or near Piazza. And at that moment I remembered what I had learned about Clemens in Boston. If you started an interview with something controversial, he might very well walk away. If, on the other hand, you did the boring game outcome question, he would answer anything you asked and he might even bring up anything controversial himself. But you had to do the stupid game stuff first. So which was harder work, Roger? I asked. Eight innings of two hit ball or watching the Mets nearly tie it in the night. His answer was not bad, but he did not bring up the bat. So I asked another question about what he thought of his performance in that game. Well, that did it. He started talking about having to overcome his emotions in the first inning. And now I could say, well, since you brought up the emotions, the bat throwing incident, did you throw that piece of broken bat at Mike Piazza? There is a freeze frame from that interview in which Roger Clement's eyes are bugged wide open. Well, Glemons basically confirmed what the guys in the dugout had told me. He had told them, you can believe him or not, but he thought the thing he grabbed was the ball. And when it wasn't, he threw it away just in case the ball was somewhere else near him and he had to have a free hand with which to pick it up. He explained the chest taps. He was indeed saying to the umpire, umpire Charlie, as Clemens called him, accompanying his apologies to the umps for throwing the bat. He said he didn't even know where Piazza was at the point he threw the bat. That it was as straight and nonpartisan and frankly as informative an interview as I've ever conducted. Meanwhile, everybody else in that stadium, everybody else in that city, everybody else in the Tri State area was convinced of one of only two things. Roger Clemens had tried to impale Mike Piazza with a shard of his own bat, or the Mets were crybabies who could not tell that Clemens obviously did not try to impale Mike Piazza with his own bat. There was no middle ground. I found this out specifically the next day when the TV sports columnist of the New York Times, Rich Sandomir, who was a friend of mine, called to interview me about the interview. Why didn't you ask him about the bat first? Nobody cared about how he pitched. He threw a bat at at Piazza. I said, you're a Met fan. And I explained the theory of not making Clemens end an interview before he said what you needed to know. I went through the whole thing I just recited here. It was amazing to see those few days how every sports reporter and columnist in New York self identified as either a Met fan or X Met fan or a Yankee fan or ex Yankee fan. And you can still see it today as this story from 22 years ago is recollected by others. They wrote what they felt as kids. Clemens was the victim. Or Clemens tried to kill Mike Piazzi like he was a Dracula and they had the wooden stake to go through his heart. Meanwhile, we learned recently from Joe Torrey, the Yankee manager, another one of my friends, that they all hid something from us that night. The thing about emotions. After the incident in the first inning, Roger Clemens went back to the Yankee clubhouse and started to cry. This might have had something to do with embarrassment or grief, but since he had noted that he had had to check his emotions, I always thought, well, he might have been a little over amped for that game, naturally or otherwise. All right, so before I present anything else out of chronological order, let me go back to the moment I thanked Roger Clemens for the interview and threw it back to Joe buck and Tim McCarver in the Fox booth. Because this is when the real trouble started. They were pretty much done for the night, but I had another two hours to go in a live post game show on Fox's Cable Sports. We had about four minutes until that show started. And it suddenly occurred to me that although this was not the most important event in the history of the World Series, the bat would become part of the iconography of baseball. I had been at Yankee Stadium often enough over the years to know the two kids who ran the visiting clubhouse. And right then, they were still packing up the Mets bats and equipment and the Met dugout. So I ran over and asked the senior of them, what happened to the pieces of the Piazza bat? The answer to that question has haunted me for 22 years. It resulted in me being threatened with a lawsuit by Mike Piazza. The owner of the Boston Red Sox said he was threatened by Piazza over the same bat. And then came the moment during that World Series that Mike Piazza confronted me. And we talked about restaurants. The rest of this crazy story after this.

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NFL Network Announcer (66:50)

NFL International Games continue on NFL Network and here our stars come out in the morning. Week 10 Bajan Robinson and the Falcons take on Daniel Jones and the Colts in Berlin.

Keith Olbermann (67:03)

Fireworks in the fourth quarter.

NFL Network Announcer (67:05)

Then in week 11, Jaden Daniels and the Commanders touchdown once again face Tua and the Dolphins in Madrid. Snooze off. Game on it's Sunday Morning Football continues November 9th at 9:30 Eastern only on NFL Network.

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Keith Olbermann (67:56)

So back to our number one story on the Countdown and the saga of the night in the 2000 World Series and all the nights since when the bat of Mike Piazza of the Mets shattered Shidoubi and Roger Clemens of the Yankees picked up the barrel of that bat and tossed it at him. Or just tossed it away, having mistaken it for a baseball or made up a story that he had mistaken it for a baseball. And I was in the Yankee dugout as the reporter and I was hosting the game for Fox and I interviewed Clemens afterwards. And then before our two hour post game show on cable, I went over to the Met dugout and asked the clubhouse attendant there what happened to the pieces of Piazza's back. Well, the guy explained that Bobby Valentine, the Mets manager, had asked that one of the Pieces go to a friend of his in the stands, and he, the clubhouse attended, had handed it to the guy. A second piece he believed was kept by the Yankees. He wasn't sure about that. The third piece, the handle was. Where was it? Where is it? He asked the other attendant. It's here in the garbage, the kid said, I did a double take. The garbage? Yeah, the kid said, under the dugout bench. And there it was, stuffed in amid all the empty bags of sunflower seeds and the crushed Gatorade cups. I said, what happens to it now? Gets thrown out. They clean out the dugouts first. So I said, look, can I borrow it? This would make a great prop for our post game show. And the attendant says, sure. And he pulls it out of the pile and hands it to me. Just about 7 inches of a baseball bat, and all there is is Piazza's uniform number 31 written in magic marker on the bottom. Bottom. Listen, I said, I won't be able to bring this back to you for like two hours. We're on for two hours. Will you still be in the clubhouse? And he said, are you kidding? We have to be here at 8. He and I'll be out of here in 10 minutes. I said, you want me to bring it back to you for game three? And he says, garbage? You gonna bring back garbage? Throw it out, keep it, whatever, what do I care? So I use the bat fragment as a prop in the show repeatedly. And I stuck it in my shoulder bag and I thought, I'm not a scrounger, but this is a valuable piece of memorabilia and I'd like to keep it. So I'll either I'll auction it off for charity and bid against myself or something, or I'll make a donation to a baseball charity and I'll keep it. And that was it. And two days later, as the World Series shifted from Yankee Stadium to Shea Stadium, I got a phone call from one of the PR guys at Fox Sports. Did you see the paper? And I said, no, not yet. And he says, piazza told the guy from Newsday that you stole his bat and he wants it back. And I said, what? If I hadn't asked about it, it would be on a garbage scow right now, being towed out to be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean. And he says, maybe, But Piazza told this John Heyman, he's gonna sue you to get it back. So now I go to the ballpark with extra excitement on my plate. I'm waiting for Mike Piazza to tell me he's gonna sue me. So I go out onto the field, I'm wondering how long it's going to be before I run into Piazza. And like two minutes after I step on the field, I turn around and he's walking towards me, and he looks at me and he says, hey, Keith, Wild one the other night, huh? Say, listen, when you lived at Shutters, did you ever eat at Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica? Nothing about the bat. We're talking about restaurants in Santa Monica, California. And I say, well, yeah, but did you ever eat at Shay Jay's? And big smile from Piazza. Oh, man, I love Shay Jay's. I love Jay. Give me your number. This winter when I'm home, let's go eat at Shay J. And I said, I'll pay for it and I'll order the sand dabs. Now we're talking about sand dabs, how to prepare sand dabs at a restaurant. And then he says, hey, sorry, I gotta go hit. Have a good show. That was it. He's in the paper threatening to sue me. We see each other on the field, he starts the conversation. No mention of suing me, not one word. Next day in the paper, more Piazza quotes about how he's gonna sue me for stealing his back. Next night, game four of the World Series, we're just about to go on the air with the pregame show, and now Piazza comes over again, coming in from the outfield to the dugout, and he says, hey, this must be really cool to do what you guys are doing. Have a great show. And by now, the only thing I can think of, he does not know I'm the same Keith Olbermann he keeps threatening to sue. So the World Series ends and the Yankees beat the Mets. And if you look for it, there's this photo of the traditional post game awarding of the World Series trophy and the Most Valuable Player award. And it's Commissioner Bud Selig and Derek Jeter of the Yankees and me. And just before it happened, George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yankees. He's crying and he leans in and I give him a hug and reassure him. And he asks me if my mother went to the game. And I said, you know, my mother, she'd never come to Shea Stadium. She hates it more than you do. And he says, I love her more than ever before now. So the Series ends, and it's not been that great a series, but it's been exciting, and it was the dream from my childhood. And the Yankees have won, and my friends are happy, and I've not heard another Word about this lawsuit, nothing from Mike Piazza. And I told the Fox people, well, if I'm not gonna hear anything more from them, it's easy. I'm gonna keep the bat, and I'm gonna donate $25,000 to this charity, the Baseball Assistance Team, which helps ex ballplayers in financial need, because, A, I'm not a scrounger, B, it's a great cause, C, that's actually much more than the bat handle would be worth on the open market, and D, the acronym for the Baseball Assistance Team. And that's perfect. It's about Piazza's bat. You get it. And then nothing for a month. Whereupon Fox gets another letter now from Piazza's agent, fellow named Manzon, and he threatens to sue again. And that's the end of it. Never heard from him again. So now it's the next year, 2001, and I'm back in New York working for CNN, doing the news. And I go to a Mets game, and I see Piazza, and I give him a big smile, and I offer my hand and I say, still owe you those sand dabs from Shay Jay. And he just stares at me and walks right past me. And I see a cop I know who works next to the Mets dugout, and the cop says, mike has been asking him about me. Is that Keith Olmen, the one who stole my bat? So now I'm not just keeping the bat. I want to sue Mike Piazza for being a pain in the ass. And then 911 happens, and ballplayers are doing charity things, and sportscasters and newscasters are doing charity things, and I think, well, this is the time when the baseball season resumes. I throw the bat handle in my bag and I go out to a Mets game, and I go up to Piazza's locker before the game, and I pull the bat shard out and I say, take this, Mike. Auction it off for charity. Let's do some good with this. Or if it's too much trouble, you sign it and I'll auction it off. We can leave my name out of it, whatever you want, however you want to do it. And he looks at me like I've just insulted his mind. Mother, and says, no, it's too complicated. And he turns away. And I think to myself, this is the strangest athlete I have ever met. And just before the season ends, I go to another Mets game. Now, this time, it's one of his teammates who takes me aside and says, you know, Piazza never stops talking about you stealing his bat from the Clemens game last year. He Says he still wants to sue you. Didn't you try to give him the bat back in the clubhouse to auction off? Didn't I see the. And I say, yeah, I did. And he refused to take it. And the guy laughs and he says, great player, excellent catcher, I love him. Strangest player I have ever met. Comes 2002, nothing happens. See Piazza at several Mets games, nothing happens. 2003, nothing happens. Now, I can't pin the year down on this. It's one of the Red Sox, Yankees playoff series, either 2003 or 2004. And I'm leaving the field as they're clearing the media off just before the game starts. I'm going out through the Red Sox dugout liter at the same spot where the kid handed me Piazza's bat handle three or four years earlier, where the trouble all began. And I see the new owner of the Red Sox team approaching from the other end of the dugout. Keith. John. John Henry. Nice to meet you. Have you got a minute? And I said, well, yeah, they're kicking the media off the field, so. And he laughs and he says, I can take care of that. And he yells at the plainclothes cop, and he says, he's with me. And the cop nods, and John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox. And I sit down on the Red Sox bench before the start of a Red Sox yank. And there are no other reporters out there. And I think, okay, what did I say about the Red Sox? What is he pissed off about? Instead, John Henry says, can I ask you about Mike Piazza? And I laugh and I say, sure, what about him? And he says, you have part of his bat from the World Series with Clemens, right? And I say, yeah. And he says, well, tell me the whole story. So I do what you've just heard, and John Henry says, that's what I was told. Thank you. Huh? I thought it was me. So that other piece of the bat that was handed to a friend of Bobby Valentine's during that game, that friend is a great friend of mine. And after 9 11, he said, wouldn't it be great to get Mike Piazza to sign this? And then we can auction it off for the victims families or the cops or some other charity. And he gives me the bat, and I call the Mets, and they approach Mike and they call me and they say, mike loves the idea and I should come to one of the spring training games. And he'll sit. So the next March, I go to one of the Mets spring training games, and I go up to him in the clubhouse And I introduce myself, and he looks at me like I'm from Mars. And I say, well, I brought the bat. And he says, what bat? And I explained that we had arranged to have him sign the bat from the World series for a 911 charity. And he erupts at me, I'm not signing that bat. Sure. For charity. You think I was born yesterday? Now I say something to John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, like, welcome to the club, club. Did he threaten to sue you, too? And he laughs and says, yes, that's the next part of the story. So while we're trying to straighten that out, his agent calls me and asks if I will give them the bat to auction off for charity. And I say, sure. And I go to another Mets game, and I go to the clubhouse, and I have the bat again. Now, Piazza says, no, I can't take the bat because of pending litigation, but if I want him to, he'll sign it for me. Me, All I have to do is come back a couple of weeks later. So this is what I wanted to ask you, Keith. Is he the strangest ballplayer you've ever met, or is it just me? There's one more part to this. Flash forward to 2014. I still have the Piazza bat handle, the one I unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza. The middle portion, the one John Henry unsuccessfully tried to give back to Piazza. Piazza has been sold with the proceeds going to charity. So where is the third piece, the barrel of the bat, the part that Clemens threw at Piazza, if you're a Met fan, or was unfairly accused of throwing at Piazza if you're not a Met fan? And the answer finally arrives in a sports memorabilia auction catalog. That year, while one of the visiting bat boys was handing the middle part of the bat to a friend of Bobby Valentine and John Henry's in the stands, the Baron, which landed near the Yankee dugout, was scooped up by the Yankee bat boy, who put it in the pile of Yankee broken bats. And as it turned out, right at that point, the Yankees strength and conditioning coach, Jeff Mangold, who was on the bench, said, wait a minute. That's the pile of broken bats they're gonna throw out. They shouldn't throw it out. It's history. And he grabs that part of the Piazza bat and puts it up in his home office. And now it's 14 years later, and he wants to auction it off for Cherry. So he auctions it off, and I think, well, hell, it should be alongside the other piece of the bat. My other piece of the bat, the handle. So I win the auction. There it is on my wall, complete with a baseball card showing Roger Clemens about to throw the barrel. Reasons left to your imagination. Two thirds of the famous bat. I'll sell it someday, I'm sure. But I'll always have the memories. My memories. And John Henry's memories. And if you're wondering, no, unlike John Henry and I, that Yankee strength coach Jeff Mangold never tried to give it back to Piazza or get it signed by Piazza, or auctioned off for charity with Piazza. Which means that on top of everything else, Jeff Mangold is smarter than John Henry and I put together. Yes, the story took three hours, but I think you'll agree it was worth it. Hello? Hello? You still there? Hello? Hello? 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 Philip Chenale, our musical directors of Countdown. And it was produced by TKO Brothers. Mr. Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. Mr. Chanel. Chanel handled orchestration and keyboards. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by my friend and the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Foust. The olderman theme from ESPN2 written by Mitch Warren Davis fears courtesy of ESPN Inc. And it's the sports music. Other music arranged and performed by the group. No horns allowed. My announcer today, keeping with the baseball theme, was Tony Kornheiser. Everything else was, as always, my fault. That's Countdown for today. Day 281 of America held hostage again, just 1,182 days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term. Unless he is removed sooner by Maga and Epstein. Or that patch of pavement on his hand, or a stuck escalator, or a psychopathy test, or Tylenol. Or his jet made out of poop. Or the ark he's building. He's building an ark. He thinks it's pronounced arc. He thinks arch is arc. Now, he's fine. He's fine. The next scheduled countdown is Thursday. Until then, I'm Keith Alderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Foreign Countdown with Keith Ulberman is a production of iHeartRadio. 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