Domingo German, the New York Yankees starting pitcher on Wednesday night in Oakland, faced 27 batters and recorded 27 consecutive outs to pitch MLB's 24th perfect game. An incredible feat against a lowly 21-61 team, but a feat made more incredible when considering it was done by a pitcher who allowed 17 runs (15 earned) on 15 hits with four walks and two hit batters over his last two starts totaling 5.1 innings.
That story led the news almost everywhere. But, evidently, that wasn't the top story on ESPN's "First Take" on Thursday morning. Team 980's Chris Russell took offense to that when, instead, the potential departure of James Harden from the Philadelphia 76ers was their first topic of discussion, according to Russell. So, here is how the Rooster decided to start his show on Thursday, after giving a rundown of several topics he wanted to cover and mentioning some people who work for the station by name, he finally got to his first topic.
"We will talk about James Harden, that guy, at some point. I mean, talk of 'Cold Pizza' [sic] today, talk of 'First Take' I mean we gotta do multiple segments on James Harden, who stinks, by the way. Stinks might be strong, can not be counted on in any way shape, or form and if you're gonna give me the regular season and a playoff game or two, I need more than that for $40 million," Russell said, "We'll get to all of that. But I wanted to start the show the way any reasonable sport show should be started today. School is out but I'm gonna teach you guys the way to do sports talk radio. I'm gonna teach you what's important, I'm gonna teach you how to lead a show, I'm gonna tell you what we should be talking about on Thursday, June 29 when there's nothing to talk about."
Russell then highlights how the previous day's show began with a conversation about the brilliance of Shohei Ohtani.
"Like if you're actually thinking and actually working and preparing and thinking about your show, whether it be a TV show or a radio show or a podcast or a blog or a column or whatever, that's what you do," he added. "So I took umbrage, obviously, that the 'First Take' - 'Cold Pizza' [sic] crew on ESPN which I do not have to watch, but I do watch regularly, not every day, but regularly to see what they're talking about to see if anything they're talking about pisses me off, makes me happy, fulfills me, or gives me [gasp] god forbid, an idea to talk about on my radio show which comes up several hours after their TV show. You know, it's called show prep. Something people in our industry should try a little more of.
"So I was watching this morning to see what 'First Take' would lead with. And to nobody's surprise, they lead with the NBA...."
Eventually, Russell found his way to talking about German's perfect game. By the way, his final line, 9.0 innings, no hits, no runs, no walks, nine strikeouts, eight ground ball outs, and 10 fly ball outs on 99 pitches (72 going for strikes) to lower his ERA on the year to 4.54.
Russell got to all of that and how rare a feat that is... eventually. Tap the player above to listen and see just how long before Russell got to the No. 1 story of the day, the story that he couldn't believe "Cold Pizza" (a show that has not been on the air for over 16 years) did not talk about first.
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