Crime in Sports - #325 - Too Many Accusations, Not Enough Jail - The Slipperiness of "Jungle" Jim Rivera
Episode Date: October 18, 2022This week, we go back in time to look at man man who grew up in an orphanage, during The Great Depression! He turned to street gangs, boxing & baseball, but WWII came calling before he co...uld become a pro at anything. While in the Army, he was boxing champion, and convicted rapist, sentenced to life in military prison, but he gets another shot at the outside world, because he happens to be the star of the prison baseball team. A major league career, brings him some World Series glory, a cool nickname, and more sexually deviant charges. Even retirement, and old age doesn't stop more very awful charges from coming his way!!Grow up in an orphanage, even though your father is still alive, get thrown in prison, rather than fighting Hitler, and always slip out of truly disgusting accusations with "Jungle" Jim Rivera!!Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!! Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports crimeinsports@gmail.com facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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The Queen of the Courtroom is back.
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you can say anything it's an all-new season judy justice only on freebie Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports!
Yay!
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.
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I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you folks so much for joining us here.
Stretch run of coming around the back of the track here.
Rounding third base. How dirty.
That's it for Crime and Sports.
And speaking of that, we are
going to round third base today with a guy who
rounded third base many times in many different
ways. And that'll make a lot of sense later
and be kind of a gross joke. So
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And this week, we are back with,
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And then for small town murder, we're going to talk about another Back by Popular Demand subject here.
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Then you're in trouble.
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My Italian brethren for torturing Jimmy.
It's funny as hell when he looks at a name and goes, oh, that's a lot of vowels.
I don't know what to do. Jay Leonardist.
Oh, yeah.
That's the last name.
That's not bad.
Yeah. I only know that name because of you that was my great-grandfather's name it was almost my name without that reference i'd be like
what the hell is that gay to know gay to know what the hell does that mean
either way that said let's get it on here we have-ass episode. We're going old-timey today, baby.
Hell, yeah.
I love it.
And, yeah, we figure last week, well, last couple weeks, we had Alden Smith, we had Allen Iverson, we had modern-day athletes.
And, you know, Iverson, kind of 90s, 2000s guy.
I mean, he's still on those Car Shield commercials.
Can't get rid of him.
Late 30s, early 40s.
You remember all this.
Yeah.
And then Alden Smith just happened now. So, I mean, you could be 15 and remember that so that's that's fine uh but
we love the old timey episodes they're so much fun and they're fun for us because the listeners
don't like them um well they do the listeners like them when they listen to them but what happens is
they don't listen to them because they look at and and go, I've never heard of that guy. And then they skip it. Who the fuck is that?
Yeah, I'll listen to the one I've heard of again.
So these are the best episodes, though.
So those people are missing out.
So all of us will sit around in a huddle here and enjoy this.
Here we go.
We'll talk about Manuel Joseph Rivera, better known as Jim Rivera.
Joseph Rivera, better known as Jim Rivera.
Later on, he'll go by James Rivera, then also Manuel James Rivera.
The Joseph gets dropped right out of there at some point, and it's gone.
Turns it right into James.
Turns it right into James.
He goes by Jim.
That's his main name.
And his nickname, he is Jungle Jim Rivera.
I don't like this at all.
Jungle Jim.
Yeah, Jungle Jim.
Well, it's not anything derogatory.
Okay, good.
He loves it.
He fucking loves it.
He's got neon signs.
He created it, for Christ's sake. Well, he didn't create it.
Jungle Joe doesn't sound near as good.
No.
Well, he didn't nickname himself.
It was a reporter.
We'll get into all that, though.
He is born July 22nd, 1921.
So a little bit old, this guy here.
The man's 100 years old.
It would be 101 at this moment in time here.
Maybe he's still alive.
You don't know.
We'll talk about it.
That's the mystery and the suspense of a crime and sports episode.
Is he alive?
At 94, did he flip in a median while on a meth jag and get crushed by his own truck like Steve Howe?
Maybe.
We don't know.
We'll get there.
It's possible.
So he's born there.
He's born in New York City.
Both his parents are from Puerto Rico.
Oh.
And they went to New York, and he's born there.
He's got a huge family, too.
He's got 10 brothers and sisters.
Jesus.
So there's 11 total, obviously.
Six brothers, five sisters all together in the family.
He's got five brothers, five sisters.
So, yeah, it's a crowded house, let's just say.
Sure enough.
He's raised at 112th Street in Madison, which is in, at the time, Spanish Harlem.
At the time, though, that was still Italian Harlem at the time.
That wasn't even.
Really?
This is the beginning of.
Yeah, this is the 20s, for Christ's sake.
Yeah, we were still down in Little Italy.
This is still Godfather Two Days.
You know what I mean?
With Robert De Niro walking around.
Most of my family wasn't even fucking here yet.
I can't think of anybody that was here yet, honestly.
So, so I don't think my one great grandfather came till anyway, it doesn't matter either
way.
That's where they grew up.
His dad is a merchant Marine.
So he's gone like eight months out of the year gone.
So it's his mother is at home in an apartment in a tiny apartment in a shitty area with
11 kids in the house.
And he keeps popping in and giving her one more every fucking year.
There you go.
And then he gives her the old salute and he heads back out.
I assume.
Go load the ship.
I was going to say, merchant marines, that's a boat thing.
We've talked about this before.
You always hear about guys back in the day being in the merchant marines.
I haven't heard of anybody being in the merchant marines
since maybe the 40s probably. I don't know has it dissolved i don't know i don't know
it's probably going strong we just don't know about it maybe people are keeping it under the
hats i'm not sure i feel like these are uh uh ships that that were uh uh helping and and
escorting i was gonna say were they escorting commerce? That's what it seems like. That's what it sounds like.
Yeah.
Well, you know what?
Everybody, the Merchant Marines are an organization of people who militarily escort boats of commerce across seas.
I know that to be true because I created it.
We know that because we just made it up.
And in today's world world if you say that and
then someone says it's not true you can yell at them because and tell them yes it is yeah because
you said it so that means it's true well actually no i said it so i don't know but you now heard it
so now that you out there listening heard it you could argue it with someone else because you go
no i heard this so that means it's two guys told me two guys that's the law now in the world is if you heard it then i mean that it's true what from one person
no two two all right no two idiots not one two idiots that just happen to have microphones and
talk about criminal athletes so um problem is uh jim's mom dies when he's three.
Oh, my God.
Oh, no.
1924, his mom dies.
Holy shit.
Yeah, he's three years old, and dad's a merchant marine, so they're, you know.
They just take care of each other?
Well, no.
No, that's the thing.
Some of the kids are older.
They kind of band together and get jobs and hop the rails.
This is during the 20s, so there's jobs now.
But later on, as we'll talk about, it gets rough after the Depression and all that.
Whereas him and some of his brothers and sisters, I know his sister Mary went with him to the same one.
They were all sent to orphanages.
Oh, shit.
1920s orphanages, guys.
Oh, no.
We're talking, this is Annie.
This is some Annie shit.
Yeah, this is like, and that was like a fucking cleaned up version of what this was like.
This was bad times, man.
This is not good.
Without the magic.
Without anything good.
There is nothing magical here whatsoever.
No talent.
Yeah.
There's not magic. There's ghosts. That's the difference. no talent. Yeah. There's not magic.
There's ghosts.
That's the difference.
It's just goblins, not magic.
Yeah.
It's all the opposite.
Yeah.
It's one of these Catholic orphanages and with nuns and all that kind of shit here.
Now, there's differing stories where I know his, I think originally the first orphanage they went to was in Puerto Rico.
They were in Puerto Rico for a while.
But then when he's a little bit older, they end up in New York.
And that's where he is.
He's raised in the orphanage in New York here.
What is it?
Blauvelt, New York.
It's about 15 miles north of the city.
And, yeah, it was run by a congregation of Dominican nuns.
So, yeah.
And he lived there for, you know, till he's 16 years old.
Oh, a long time.
Yeah.
From the time he's, you know, what, three to 16.
Yeah.
He's raised in the orphanage.
13 damn years.
Gets an education in there and, you know, learns how to – picks up some sports.
He likes boxing.
He likes baseball.
He's very athletic.
He turns out to be about 6'195 later on when he's full grown, whereas 6' back then was a big guy.
That was a – you know, that was considered, oh, boy, 6' was like the mark of like, damn, you're a big guy.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
A lot of people are a lot shorter so um uh anyway the i did a little
research on these orphanages back then just to see what they're like and holy shit are they
they're this was like a huge deal in the 20s like after world war one and after the flu pandemic
there a lot of people died in both of those so there was a fuckload of orphans like i mean there was so many
oh my god we had an orphan epidemic i mean it was crazy they'd be between the war and yeah between
the war and the flu i mean it was like a one-two punch of like killing all these people and leaving
a lot of kids with nobody there you imagine surviving one and being taken by the other
that's that happened to a ton of people yeah happened a lot and especially to the people who would come back from the war with uh like damage to their lungs
from mustard gas and shit like that back then they would come back and then they're susceptible
to everything they get sick they drop right dead so that was a problem back then too and also i
mean the everything was filthy back then it It was the sewage wasn't good.
I mean, it was very easy to get sick back then.
Think about that.
There were no Lysol wipes.
No, no Lysol wipes.
No.
I mean, refrigeration was sketchy.
Think about this for like meats and shit.
Purell my ass.
Yeah.
Things you're eating.
There's a lot of disease out there.
They didn't even know not to touch the chicken to the beef.
Oh, no.
They'd slap them together, make them dance, make them slow dance.
They'd fuck the chicken and then cook it, and it was fine.
Stick a New York strip right up a chicken's ass.
There's that, and then there's the extreme of my mother who puts on, this is how my mother makes chicken.
I shit you not, it's the funniest thing.
I remember watching this as a kid going, whoa, what did this chicken eat? Like, I don't know if it was nuclear waste in there or what was happening, but she puts on the big, giant, like, yellow, thick dishwashing gloves that go up to your elbows.
To the middle of your cat.
She puts your forearms there.
She puts those on and then gets the chicken in the sink, right?
And it's on.
It's like a 15-minute process of methodically washing.
She bleaches chicken, Jimmy.
She puts bleach on it and then washes it off to kill salmonella.
She's nuts.
She's bleaching her chicken?
She would bleach the chicken and then wash the chicken with soap after that
and then wash it, rinse it thoroughly.
That's the whitest meat you've ever had.
She's so paranoid about that shit.
Yeah, it was scrubbed.
You don't have to bleach all the whites, Angela.
She is bleaching away, man.
Bleaching chicken.
Bleaching chicken to kill, because bleach kills things.
Yeah, but also me.
Yeah, that's the point I'm making.
That's my whole point. Angela, that's the point I'm making.
That's my whole point.
I'm like, Ma, what are you doing with the bleach?
You got to do this.
Don't worry, I'll get it off with Dawn.
It was like some weird shit. I could picture my grandmother going, my bleach kills anything.
It's okay.
I put bleach on.
It'll kill.
It's some old world thing on your lunch.
Yeah.
It's so fucked up.
But yeah,
anyway,
that's how things were.
So they had,
I guess because of all of these,
like basically homeless orphaned children,
then cheap housing was becoming harder.
They weren't building any new houses and it was still,
you know,
we were in a really weird time.
And at this time, too, this is no social safety net.
This is pre-welfare, pre-food stamps, pre-you name it.
Just do it on your own.
Well, this is just live in the street with your kids and, you know,
fucking go to soup kitchens maybe if the church has one.
Figure it out, son.
Yeah, not good times, basically.
A lot of people riding the rails and shit covered in soot.
Stealing apples and day-old bread.
Yeah.
I'm picturing what movie you saw that in.
Every movie that Joe Tomlinson did.
You picture a cart pulling away and somebody grabbing a couple apples off the back and like with soot on his face running over to his friend.
Basically just Aladdin.
Yeah, kind of Aladdin, yeah.
This is basically Aladdin is what's going on here.
Minus magic carpets.
That would have helped a lot.
I just see somebody like with nothing eating an apple.
Yeah, just with a little newsboy hat on them.
Yeah, and I stole it.
So they characterized these people, these children, as belonging to the, quote, dangerous classes, which means they were very poor.
It's called hungry, you guys.
That's the thing.
So there would be groups of kids.
This is where newsies came from.
Most of them were homeless kids. You know i mean that's that's who they were so they would do that to try
to make money and whatever they would uh you'd have shoe shine stands with a bunch of kids shining
shoes and shit like that it was uh you know not too not too great here but there's a guy here who
created the children's aid society in 1853 devoted the children's Aid Society, not AIDS Society.
Not the Society to Give Children AIDS, but Society to Give Children Aid.
That's a very dastard society.
Singular aid is fine.
Multiple aids.
Now we're going into the can't be legal territory, right?
Don't pluralize it, otherwise it's murder.
You can't have a whole society dedicated to it.
Picture at the fundraiser.
It is our goal to someday make every child in this country just teeming with AIDS.
That's what we're looking for, ladies and gentlemen.
Teeming.
Little weak children roaming the streets.
That's a real covered in lesions.
Not a T cell among them.
It's the only way to go forward, people.
No medication, no, no, no.
So yeah, this guy created trade schools and built lodging houses and all this type of shit here. So they basically said there was in the 1870s.
By then, there was about 30,000 homeless children like in the by themselves, like neglect, like parentless homeless children wandering the country.
Figuring it out by themselves.
Yeah.
They band together in little groups.
They form gangs.
I mean, they're fucking homeless children.
Yeah, this one guy, this is Brace.
This is the guy who started all this.
He said, the best of all asylums for the outcast child is the farmer's home.
Okay.
His theory was. His was his child slavery well his theory is these people these kids have
nowhere to live and you know they have uh able bodies and nowhere to live these people have
all the land and all the room in the world for them and all the all the need for their work
why not put them together that you can't treat them like a worker make them like sleep in the bunkhouse but then you get them a room in the house you treat them like one of the
kids and now you got extra farm help and this kid is better off than he would have been in an orphanage
that's his that's his uh theory anyway yeah yeah he uh he called it emigration as a as a cure for
pauperism so emigrate to farms is what he's talking about. They said farmers need all the hands on deck and food and space is plentiful in the West.
So they want to take what they basically described as like New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, D.C., urchin children and ship them out West to farms.
That feels really gross.
That feels weird.
that feels really gross it feels weird it's like it's so strange too because it's like you'd say to a kid like oh no our the little dog you know spot went to a farm upstate and you know he's
gonna be great and he's running the fields that's what they're saying with these kids like oh no
little frankie went to a farm out west he's doing great he's running around he learned how to ride
horses now he's so happy he's a cowboy family there's a lot of smiles oh my god yeah
he said this was better than locking them up in orphanages on the east coast so this guy so we're
gonna export them we're gonna export them out there just ship them out so this guy uh got like
kind of the the the aster 400 like the wealthiest of the city's elite people and you know basically
guilted them into saying hey you rich fucks, you should do this wonderful charity thing.
It'll look really good for you if there's pictures in the paper of you, you know, helping
little pauper children.
And they were like, cool.
So they did it.
It was known as placing out.
That's what they called it.
We placed him out.
That means, poof, he's gone now.
He's in Utah on a dude ranch.
It's totally fine.
It's a nice way to say evicted and made into child labor.
Yeah, that's all it was.
They did say, though, usually there was groups of children and there would be like a couple adult chaperones who would take the train out to rural destinations with them and then drop them off and buy that it i'm sure when they oh yeah i'm sure i don't know what kind
of background checks they were doing back then when they would get to where they're going the
chaperones would take them to large public gatherings sometimes they didn't even have a
place to go they just take a group of children go on go on a train get off the train in like you know nebraska say and then they would go to like the
center of town and put up posters and shit saying there's kids to adopt here and they just kind of
stand around with a group of kids and then farmers would come up and go i'll take a couple of them
kids i'll take yeah give me a boy and one of them girls there yeah i guess you know the blonde and
yeah one of them wow that's
what they did you just go just hock your kids let's bring them out there come on incredible
fingers crossed kids this is the town i have a feeling holy shit it's fucking insane so and the
vetting i'm sure was do you want him sure do he's yours that's what it is they'd show up do you have
a land and
they may i got a farm over here and i got a family and they go well there you go there you go johnny
it's better than you know being a hobo i suppose and then they just send them there
that's disturbing isn't it so sometimes they were pre-arranged things where they go to a
pre-arranged home but it was more than more often, they'd just go to a town and just post up with a bunch of kids and have them all adopted.
That is stunning.
Like a box of puppies just standing there with them.
Yeah, in front of PetSmart.
Yeah, just standing out in front of PetSmart with a box of puppies.
My lab accidentally fucked my poodle.
That's what it is.
Here, they're cute, right?
I don't know what they're going to look like later, but they're cute now, so take them.
Good news, hypoaller cute now. So take them. Good news.
Hypoallergenic.
Take one.
Well, sometimes they would take these kids away and adopt them out even when their parents were still alive.
Like the parents wouldn't be able to take care of the kids.
They'd put them up for adoption.
And back then, not adoption, they'd put them in an orphanage. And back then then an orphanage was like a pawn shop kind of for these parents the alive ones they'd put them
yeah they'd put the kid in there and they'd they'd be like we'll be back for them and then they'd
save up and they'd come back and get the kid later on it was just a place to like hold a kid for a
while and then got your ticket yeah well sometimes i guess the date would pass by on the ticket and they would adopt the kids out anyway, even though the parents are still alive and want them back. So they'd be on a farm. There's a woman here named Hazel Latimer, and she was sent away even though her family was still alive.
She said, quote, I just finished eating and this matron came by and tapped us along the head.
You're going to Texas.
You're going to Texas. Like tapping them like you're going to Texas.
You're going to Texas.
Yeah.
When she came to me, I looked up and said, I can't go.
I'm not an orphan.
My mother's still living.
She's in a she's in the hospital right here in New York.
So her mother's just sick and couldn't take care of her at the time.
And the woman said, I love it, kiddo.
The woman said, you it kiddo the woman
said you're going to texas no use arguing that's what she said no use and they just shipped her
off to texas even though her mom was still alive and they didn't even tell her mom they didn't
she didn't get to see her mom she just shipped her off so that's the that's the system he grew
up in but he didn't get shipped out west he stayed in with these dominican nuns at this place north of new
york city so okay that's where he stayed and then um finally in 1938 his dad remarried so a single
guy wasn't going to take care of these kids that's the thing back then back then it was like so many
kids like now if you're if your wife died you'd be expected to take care of the kids if you have
kids like you couldn't just give them away if you're their father people people would expect
oh now you're gonna you know do that back then on tinder and get him a mom boy back then single mom
it was a single dad it was just like well give him away i guess i mean you can't obviously obviously
you don't know what to do with him and then once he remarried then it was okay
again so when his dad remarried in 1938 they came and got him out of the orphanage and gave him back
to dad he gave him but yeah his dad he moved in with his dad he's now 16 he's now 16 is the thing
though almost 17 years old um now he that's so they're poor too. They're on like government work programs.
His dad's doing like government road work and, you know, jobs that way.
So they don't have a lot of money.
So he goes out too and him and his brothers and everything.
They're all trying to hustle here and there for a dollar doing any kind of construct day
labor they can or whatever.
He can work now.
That's he's just, yeah.
He's, he's a strong kid too.
This guy is strong. He's a strong kid too this guy is strong
he's a real sturdy strong guy so he uh definitely is is ready to work he's got a lot of energy
he's coming out there um problem is too though at a certain point here his dad dies not too
long after that then his stepmother dies too oh my god so it's a real fucking it's a real mess it really is i would say so and he said
too this we're talking late 30s before like we always think of the depression and we think okay
the stock market crash in 29 if people know even that much some people but stock market crash then
you figure okay that lasted a few years you almost think once roosevelt came in in 32 it like
immediately took place but that we were in such
a hole like even digging out year by year by 1938 we were still fucked i mean it was still
world war ii is the thing that that got us out of the depression you know what i mean
economically war does fix economies but it did well that one especially when it's like all hands
on deck and we had to like make physical bombs and planes and, you know, shit and materials to make things.
Yeah. Yeah. So it's a it was a totally different thing.
So at that point, there was no jobs in 1938.
I mean, there was fucking nothing here.
And then Europe was starting to fall apart already.
So that didn't help to have markets all shaky and it was bad stuff.
So he was saying there was no jobs to be
had you know they were all trying to scrimp to put together whatever they could him and his friends
and brothers and whoever he could get together trying to scrimp and save he ended up being uh
in a little gang type of thing and he goes you know nothing crazy but yeah you know a little gang
nine ten of us running around you know yeah a bunch of poor kids looking for a fucking looking for a buck.
I mean, that's all it was trying to do something.
He said he never had a home life because when he was a kid, he lived in an orphanage.
And then when he came home, everybody died.
So not much of a home life going on for him there.
He said he got arrested for like breaking and entering a couple of times during this time period and some petty kid things that they were doing you know just dealing shit and
you know causing ruckus they're a little street gang you know a little little street gang trying
to make some money so uh yeah you just it's so funny to picture this like back in the day
they're all we all picture them with the hat on yeah You know what I mean? It's just, yeah.
Playing wiffle.
Stickball. Stickball and stealing shit.
Yeah. So he starts going
by Jim at age 17.
Not a Jim in his name.
Not a Jim anywhere to be found.
But people start calling him Jim here.
He's
trying to work too and do all this
shit. And he said construction jobs help build up his strength in his body.
So he liked doing that.
And, um, he also at night when he wasn't cutting up and fucking off and getting in trouble,
him and some other friends in the neighborhood were learning how to box.
So that was a thing that he was getting into.
Boxing was huge in york in this time period
anytime from the 20s to like the 70s boxing in new york was enormous friday night fights were
the big deal it was a huge monstrous fucking thing i can't even explain it to you especially
with any kind of ethnic people you know what i mean the italians puerto ricans irish anybody
they were very much into
they all had their fighters that they'd root for and it was very uh kind of broken down that way
on ethnic lines so um he started fighting and he would uh fight amateur fights with his friends uh
they a couple of his friends got into it a guy named jim dorso was another fighter and uh he was
a he was with him in the orphanage, this kid.
And they started boxing around New York City.
He said he would fight every Friday night.
He'd box, amateur boxing.
Then every Sunday, play baseball because all of these towns had their own kind of semi-pro.
They didn't really get paid, but they were just like the best guys in the town had a baseball baseball team and they'd play the best guys in the other town okay that was a big thing back then so
he that was always on sunday these these kind of rec league games uh that's how the uh yankees
pitcher sparky lyle who won a cy young i think in 76 he actually that's how he got found was
pitching on sundays at some middle of nowhere rec league in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, he struck out like 20 guys one day and it was in the newspaper.
And so some scout saw it and decided to come take a look at this kid while he was playing somebody's dairy or some shit.
And fucking, yeah, pretty weird shit, right?
It's like a league of their own.
Yeah, that's how people got found back then, though.
That's literally how they got found.
Because, I mean, there wasn't an internet to just look up or there wasn't like a scouting database.
You heard about a kid from another guy and then you got on a train and physically fucking went there to see if he could play.
That might be the only story of like a normal person with a day job getting a sports career.
getting a sports career.
Because every other time, it's like the Eagles allow people to try out and you get a guy that runs back 25 yards and then his career's over.
Yeah, that's it.
It's so dumb.
Yeah, you may be decent amongst your friends,
but you can't play at the highest level.
No, that's why they had that Crows vs. Joes show
to show you how far off even
a decent regular athlete is to an actual professional athlete it's like you know you
gotta your fat friends might you might outrun them yeah but you're not gonna outrun somebody
that spends six days a week in the gym yeah your honda civic with your dirt bike muffler is not going to beat this
ferrari it's just not this ferrari is just gonna fucking smoke it because it's a ferrari embarrassing
it's not gonna be pretty i know you put rims on the civic too but it's still not gonna make it
any any better nice biceps but you're not that guy sorry this doesn't even happen if you don't
know when crystal pepsi was discontinued what was in Al Capone's vault,
or which famous meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin,
then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia. But that's okay. I am here for you.
I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast, WikiHole,
from SmartList Media. Discover the craziest rabbit holes on wikipedia with me
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and if you listen to my podcast you've learned that that's the sciency term for eardrum
we embark on a hyperlink roller coaster as we start out on a wikipedia page and go from link
to link to link to link care careening through trivia, oddities, and unexpected connections
until we collectively shout,
How the hell did we get here?
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Taylor Swift is soaring high.
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So, yeah, he goes by Jim there.
I guess a friend of his, the Jim Dorso guy he was hanging out with,
his name was Jim, and so everybody started calling Rivera Jim, too,
for some reason.
I don't know why.
He's Jim. You're both Jim now so he just said okay I guess I'm Jim now and started going by how you doing I'm Jim and he just started
calling himself Jim well listen it's a great name yeah that's I guess so I like it he joins the
semi-pro team baseball team that represented the Valencia Bakery. So that's who he's repping.
The bakery, Steve.
He's on the bakery.
He's on the bakery team, literally.
Margaret, swing harder.
Fucking pies are shit.
Jesus Christ.
This guy makes good cookies, but he can't play second for shit.
I'm telling you.
We're going to drop him.
I swear to God, I can't take this anymore.
The bread's good, yeah.
His flour's on the cake impeccable. Oh, man. oh man shit arm well that's how you've got good pitching a little
flour on the fingers it would make that ball drop an extra three inches who knows so he's he's the
uh he's worried so valencia bakery and then fighting every friday night he's doing all of
that um it's no school genotus in you notice in here? Stopped going to school.
Yeah, where's that?
He was going to school at the orphanage, but then once he came out, there's no time for school.
He's got to work.
Oh, there's jobs and sports.
Yeah, you got to do shit.
He's got to eat.
At least he was eating at the orphanage.
So he had a few professional fights that I can't find record of here, probably because it was the 30s and they weren't real high level.
But anyway, I think he's a middleweight at this point, and he has a few professional
fights, doing very well athletically.
He's a two-time gold glover as well in the state of New York.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
Two years in a row.
So pretty good fighter.
Not too bad.
But you know what's happening during all this time, 1938, 1939, 1940.
Hitler is sweeping across Europe and the Japanese are taking over the rest of the world. So it's not going well on that front.
So World War II is cranking up and he joins the Army Air Corps in 1942.
Okay.
That's the Air Force now, right?
I believe that turned into the Air Force later, the Army Air Corps probably.
This is, if you've ever watched All in the Family, this is where Archie Bunker served as well.
He always said, I was in the Air Corps.
So, yeah, love that shit.
So, anyway, 1942, he also is on the boxing team there in the Army.
And at Camp Barkley in Texas in 1942 1942 he becomes the camp light heavyweight boxing
champion or the regional heavyweight light heavyweight boxing champion as well so beating
the shit out of american troops good for you beating the shit out of his fellow soldiers good
for you he's also playing on the camp's baseball team as well they all a lot of sports teams
he they have him here after basic training they have him
teaching judo in the army yeah he's teaching other people judo they have him teaching classes on
hand-to-hand combat because he's a he knows judo somehow so he's a pretty badass guy if you think
about it like he's from an orphanage gold gloves boxer knows judo enough to train other people.
Right.
Like, he's a pretty tough son of a bitch.
Doesn't even care what you call him.
Jim, sure, sounds good.
Judo is the 40s Krav Maga, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
I guess you could say that.
But, yeah, hand-to-hand combat back then, this was actually having a plan rather than just going to put up your dukes.
Right.
So either way, he's teaching all of
that everything's going swimmingly for him i mean you know the army was kind of the great equalizer
for everybody back then you went in the army and then for world war ii and you could kind of come
out and everybody was kind of almost on equal footing you could step into the world here so
everything's going well judo boxing baseball boxing, baseball, and also the ladies.
Oh, yeah.
He likes the ladies, and unfortunately for him, he's at a dance at the Barksdale Field in Louisiana.
Yeah.
And he finds himself a young lady to dance the night away with there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's all nice and good.
She's a captain's daughter, which is risky right away. to dance the night away with there. Hell yeah. Yeah, that's all nice and good.
She's a captain's daughter,
which is risky right away.
Her father is stationed somewhere else,
and they dance at a couple of different events at the USO.
The USO back then is where they would go
and have parties,
and girls from the town would come
and dance with the guys and hang out.
Bob Hope will entertain. that's where the entire like you know baby boomer generation came from was people meeting at these dances that's literally what it was yeah there was
every story from back then as we were at the uso dance and i saw her from across the room and
she was handing out punch to people and oh boy couldn't resist her. So she is a student nurse as well.
So, I mean, yeah, she's a student nurse at the USO.
This is all, you know, very 40s.
Way around my anatomy.
That's what I'm talking about here.
So apparently he wanted to get to know her way around her anatomy here for a little while,
and they were getting along real well.
Now, I guess they had dated a few times going to these USO dances, around her anatomy here for a little while and uh they were getting along real well now i guess
they had dated a few times going to these uso dances and he he's a crazy dancer jim he loves
to dance he's the guy in the 40s and 50s who would jump up on the table and dance and go crazy and
fucking spray beer all over the room and do all that shit he was the so fun he's the known as the
class clown of the team at all times. Cut up. The cut up.
So this isn't quite as funny.
The nurses have to be in by a certain time.
They had a curfew.
You know what I mean?
So they had to be back at the nursery.
I don't know where the fuck they were.
So they had to go back to the nursery, I suppose.
Wherever the fuck they were, the nurses.
Wherever they are, the nurses, wherever they stash them.
And one night, it was a Saturday, they go to the USO dance and they dance their fucking asses off.
They get on a bus to go take her home.
I guess they get off the bus and she said, I don't want to go home.
I want to go through this park and walk around and I'm having a nice night.
I don't want to go back to the nursery and whatever.
So he goes, all right, yeah, I'll walk around with you.
What do I fucking care, right?
Yeah.
So they walk around a little while and not sure exactly what occurred there.
It's a little bit dicey because it's 1942.
But in the end of this, the next morning, he gets arrested for rape.
Jesus.
The rape of a captain's daughter, by the way.
Not good at all.
Yeah, he's arrested by the army, obviously.
This is a court-martial situation.
Don't fucking hang you for this.
This is not good.
Yeah, I mean, he could get life in prison for this.
This is a life in prison offense here.
So, yeah, Jim says she was a captain's daughter, too.
So they really threw it to me in the court-martial. So this was, yeah, he had some pull, yeah. Jim says she was a captain's daughter too. So they really threw me, uh, threw it to me in the court martial.
So this was, yeah, he had some pull apparently.
And, um, apparently though he said, I did not have sexual relations with that young
lady right here in front of us that we're talking about.
And so they did some kind of good God this must have been a really disturbing think about a
1942 examination to see if you're a virgin okay they did a medical exam they did a cherry check
there a little quick cherry check and i can't imagine what a disturbing scene that was in the
1940 in 1942 to go through that.
But apparently when they did this, they said that she was still a virgin.
Okay.
Which, I mean, you can't say definitively from any sort of medical thing.
Now she's not after our examination.
Well, I mean, now.
We weren't as gentle as we were hoping.
I'll tell you what.
But, you know, beforehand, I'll tell you.
So Jim said, at first they tried to get me for rape, but they couldn't because we proved she was still a virgin.
We.
We.
We proved it.
Made him sound like, we proved she was a witch and still a virgin.
That sounded like.
Also, Jim, there's ways of raping people minus that.
Well, yeah.
But back then, that was, did you stick it in her or not?
And he, you know, she said, he stuck it in me.
And he said, I didn't stick it in her.
And they were like, well, let the doctor decide.
That's how.
Yeah.
There's a thing in here still.
So, no.
Either that or he's got a real tiny dick.
Either one.
We're not sure.
But he said they couldn't because we proved she was still a virgin.
Then he said, quote, so then it was assault with intent to rape.
And anybody can get you on that.
What?
Rewind that tape, sir.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Hold on a second.
So then it was assault with intent to rape.
And anybody can get you on that. to know what you mean sir my when i this i heard this because this isn't just
printed i saw an interview that he did where i watched these words come from his lips so that's
how i know that's how i know this is true that he said it otherwise i would have been like they
must have misheard him or something no no no i watched these words come out of his lips and my head i was like looking down doing shit and i when
he said that my head snapped up like are you fucking serious rewind that 10 seconds i was like
wow how many times have you done that man he acted like every guy out there has at least four or five
assault with intent to rape charges because it's so easy to put.
But no, it's just assault with intent to rape.
And anybody can get you on that.
How can they get you on that?
I've never been accused of that.
Never.
In my entire life.
No.
Not once.
I've never assaulted anybody with any intent.
I've never had the intent to rape minus even assaulting.
Yeah, you can cut the intent to rape right off of there because I'm not doing that.
But the assault with intent to rape, anybody can get you on that.
But then he goes on to say, quote, but she ain't got no marks on her because I never touched her.
So then he said, like, you know, whatever.
So then it was attempted rape.
That's how it works.
They dropped the assault now. It's just attempt. It's was attempted rape. That's how it works. They dropped the assault now.
It's just attempt.
It's just attempted now.
Yeah, it's just attempted rape.
It's reduced the charge.
Yeah.
So he goes to a military court to have this charge.
You know, he has his trial and he is found guilty of attempted rape.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
He is sentenced here. this is some shit here
you sir may fuck off life in prison in a military prison it doesn't matter if you rape or not you
get life nice try is what he said life in prison we're gonna keep the front penalty as if you had brutally raped her anyway
you should have seen what we would have done if you actually raped her oh my god forget about it
wow holy shit um you know if i i'm hot i'm kind of on the fence there if you if you
depends on i'd love to know the ins and outs of that i want to know the facts because
i'm kind of kind of on board with life if you attempt to rape someone nobody nobody is um i
don't think anybody wants to defend rape ever that's never a thing where you're like now i
think that blah blah blah but an actual they're not even an assault so that what they're saying
i don't know what they're saying.
They're saying that there was, whatever it was, is nobody was physically hurt or actually raped.
Yeah.
So you can't really say a life sentence in a military prison is proportional to that.
You know what I mean?
Actual rape, yeah, make the argument.
You know what I mean?
Sure, yeah.
Beat her up, tried to stick, well, let's make the argument. Yeah. You know what I mean? Actual rape, yeah, make the argument. You know what I mean? Beat her up, try to stick, well, let's make the argument.
You know, extra.
But the fear that you feel between both, they're pretty equivalent.
It's horrifying.
Life in a military prison for a 21-year-old?
You might be right.
That's a heavy penalty.
I'm taking a weird stance here, but let's be realistic
here.
That's, that's heavy.
That's a bit much for that.
Yeah.
For, for an attempt.
If it was like a brutal, then we could tell, like I said, but it doesn't seem like there
was any brutality here.
Small town murder last week, a man murdered his wife and got out.
That's what I'm saying.
Like horribly.
Dissected or like a fucking frog like a seventh grade science frog and that guy got out this that's i mean life in a in a that's just life
in a military prison just seems like a that's heavy that's a lot yeah it just seems like a
a little heavy i mean whatever but then um it was reduced after that there was an appeal and it was
reduced to 20 years okay okay so first they reduce it to 20 years so that seems more like heavier
than the murder last week heavier than the murder but you can argue that yeah attempted rape 20
years that's that you could that's proportional yeah just life in the military prison was like
no chance of ever getting out.
It was just like, we're going to hold you here for the next 70 years.
Seems like a little much is all I meant.
Because he did some awful shit that wasn't proportional to this part.
Yeah.
You did some disproportional shit, so now we're doing some disproportional shit.
You went out of your way, so we are too.
That's what we're doing.
So, yeah, maybe you're right.
Anyway, he then gets it reduced to nine years and then it gets reduced to seven years.
He's whittling it like a piece of stick, man.
Every time here, he said, quote, I am innocent, but the court found me guilty.
So, well, that court found me guilty. So.
Well, that means you're guilty.
That's according to the military that you joined.
You're guilty.
So he now later on, he will be approached by a captain in the military, in the army, who was on the board that tried him.
This is 20 years later.
He'll talk to a guy
and the captain apparently said that most of the board believed he was innocent but the uh um the
the father of this girl apparently had a lot of pull over the proceedings and that's why
it even went on they said they probably didn't have enough evidence to even prosecute that
anything really happened but that's why there's such a stiff sentence occurred from that board and that's
why it was reduced later on because in the other in the higher up appeals that guy didn't have any
more power that captain couldn't have any influence over that he only had an influence over the
initial board apparently so that's what he was saying here so um yeah that's how that goes so during this time now he is in a military prison yeah
while the war is going on by the way oh well the war is the best thing that ever happened to him
well he could be dead he could have not made it through this whole thing so instead um he's here
and that is that's shocking i gotta say just the whole to the or his life to this point has been
pretty shocking it's just been the whole thing's been a we don't talk about a lot of people who grew up in an orphanage in the 20s.
You know, it's not a sidestep to flotilla to the beaches of Normandy by attempted raping someone by attempting to rape an officer's daughter.
Like, right. It's a very odd thing.
It's not as shocking, though, Jimmy, as the sales back in 1942.
So many sales. But it's so much here let's find out head
on down to if you happen to be in 1942 uh head on down to tyndall's jewelers and get yourself
this is fucking amazing all of these ads have war themes to them which is so fucking funny because
that's all anybody can think about because that's all that's going on.
Yeah, that's the only current event right now.
Everybody's got somebody over there, so everybody's following it.
This is the ad, and it's got two pictures of two diamond rings on it.
It says, quote, wartime, peacetime, all the time.
Diamonds say I love you.
What?
Did that work?
It gets worse somehow.
Somehow, that's not even the worst part.
Then it says, no bombs or tanks or planes ever built or ever to be built will stop love.
I've never heard of a diamond ad that references bombs, tanks, or planes.
That's such a weird. I've never heard of a diamond ad that references bombs, tanks, or planes.
That's such a weird.
You think he might die, and he might, but you'll still love him.
Get him to buy you a diamond first.
Just in case.
Never forget his memory with diamonds.
Let's see if by the end of it they're like, and just in in case it's a good remember me by for love goes on regardless of conditions.
It kind of that's kind of what they're saying.
Sticking around.
And diamonds, the fitting symbol of our finest emotion are everlasting, just as is love.
So as long as love remains, quote, as usual, our diamond business shall continue, quote, as usual.
So we're not going to stop for the war.
We aren't closing until everybody's dead.
Until everyone's dead or no one loves anyone anymore.
That's a little close.
Until hate rules.
Until hate rules the world.
For real beauty and quality, see our engagement and wedding rings by Traub.
It costs no more, often less at Tyndall's.
You're quality jewelers so that
was a pretty gross one and then let's say you can't get to the war you can't make it let's say
you're either a woman you got to stay home or you're like a guy with like a club foot or something
whatever it is here you're too old you're too lame you whatever you got going on we have the baseball team you have to manage you have to
manage dotty and kit we have for you here uh some some home entertainment items oh yeah here zenith
gives you the same reliable performance on distant shortwave or local stations day after day, year after year. And they mean radio, everybody.
See and hear these outstanding 1942 Zenith performers.
Oh, here's the radio phonograph combination.
What?
Yeah, the Wilshire is the model of this one. It's a radio and record player.
Oh, yeah.
Automatically plays up to 12 records
and receives American and foreign broadcasts.
It's one of those long wave that has all the European ones on the end of the dial.
My grandfather had one of those in the basement.
Yeah, it was cool as fuck looking.
It had, like, the whole long thing that you could pick up.
Like, you could get European stations and all that shit.
So, yeah, Radiogram, Radio Organ.
What the hell is radio organ?
I don't know what that is.
I've never seen that word before.
It couldn't come out of my mouth.
And 14-inch speaker, genuine sapphire needle, 10 tubes, including rectifier.
Oh, well, you need that.
You got to put your tubes in your rectifier every time.
Rectify your tubes.
$209.95 300 209 so 200 but still 99 that's
probably five grand now though you know what i mean that's that's your that's all that's
entertaining the whole family that's what it is this is all there is this is the center of the
whole family's entertainment and then the the Zenith Universal Portable.
Well, portable radio here.
The portable radio guaranteed to play where other portables fail or your money back.
Only Zenith has this.
The built-in movable wave magnet.
Oh, I've got to have that.
I don't know.
For reception in planes, trains, and ships.
You can listen to this on a plane, apparently.
Three-way operation from self-contained battery or 110-volt AC or DC.
No power blackout.
Complete with battery.
$39.95.
Oh, it's got a battery in case the power goes out.
With this, you needed to have a portable radio back then in case some war thing happened.
You never know.
Who knows?
Instructions of where to be.
The Japanese are coming across the ocean again.
We've got to be ready for that.
So you can buy those on layaway, by the way.
Or let's say you're tired of being in all this time here.
Head on out to the movies.
There's good stuff playing in 1942 we have uh laurel and hardy in yeah uh great
guns and crime doesn't pay a double does not pay double feature fuck yeah um also uh this doesn't
sound this sounds like a porn jane winters and joe e brown jr star and youth must be served
oh my god that sounds like a porn, doesn't it?
That sounds like teachers are fucking high school boys.
That sounds like.
Or she is the youth that is being served to the party.
She's being served.
Friday only, Ronald Reagan, Lila Liss, and Eddie Foy in Murder in the Air.
Oh, you forget he was an actor.
Oh, yeah.
Also, a comedy cartoon. Yeah, you forget he was an actor oh yeah also a comedy cartoon yeah you
forget he was an actor when everybody else was in a fucking war too yeah um there's a bunch of
those guys who are like hey where were you him i'll even throw sinatra in there and i love sinatra
but you know um so saturday night gene autry and smiley burnett and Faye McKenzie star in Sierra Sioux.
So there's that.
And then Cary Grant in His Girl Friday also, which is a very famous movie.
That's playing at that time.
And that's great.
Guns again.
And then all the listings.
Jesus Christ.
Go West, young lady is playing.
Dressed to Kill.
Roaring Frontiers.
There's a lot of Westerns here.
Holy shit. A lot of westerns
If you don't want that though
Let's say you're just going to stay home
And catch up on your hygiene
Make sure to get yourself
Some Colgate Dental Cream
That sounds like you rub it on your teeth
Before you lay down
And you leave it on there like a cream
Like on top of a pie.
Yeah, like some eczema shit that you rub on after.
Yeah, like egg whites.
Yeah, it cleans your breath while it cleans your teeth.
Yes, scientific tests prove conclusively that 7 out of 10 cases Colgate dental cream instantly stops oral bad breath.
Colgate dental cream, you see, has an active penetrating foam, Jesus,
that gets into the hidden crevices between your teeth,
helps clean out decaying food particles,
and stops stagnant saliva odors that are the cause of much bad breath.
And Colgate has a soft, safe polishing agent that cleans enamel thoroughly yet gently,
makes teeth naturally bright, sparkling.
Besides, Colgate's delicious wake-up flavor makes it a favorite for children and grown-ups
alike.
And there's a picture of a young lady here with her finger on her cheek and a little
bubble coming out of her mouth that says, if it's you're missing use colgate dental cream i wonder what the flavor was what's wake up flavor
is it peppermint or is it it's probably a mint it just says ribbon dental cream on it so i don't
know what the fuck the ribbon is probably the mint part i assume and then finally also you might want
to need maybe you're going to get a new place you know
what i mean maybe there's you've adopted some orphans yeah from the east so you gotta get gotta
get a new house here i found a couple new houses here i found oh here's some houses unfurnished
to rent uh here's one here we go it's in uh north knoxville tenn Five-room house in excellent condition. Convenient to the bus.
That's nice.
A stone house is another one by owner.
Five rooms and a den with two bathrooms and a garage.
Beautiful view.
$55 a month.
$55 a month?
Yeah.
Rent it for less than $60?
Not too bad.
Here's a big ad.
A real suburban home, in big letters.
Situated on Cherokee Road,
Woodson addition.
This home has four bedrooms, two
baths, large living room, dining room,
kitchen, large screened-in porch, two-car
garage, modern conveniences
— let's find out what those are —
including electric water heater
and stoker.
About three acres of land,
well terraced with abundance of fine shade
and an outstanding view of the distant valley
and smoky mountains.
$75 a month.
Wow.
What the fuck?
Holy shit.
Can we go back to those times prices?
Wow, that's pretty amazing here.
God damn, this is wild, all these.
And then finally, maybe you need a new ride.
Well, a used new ride.
Go pick up a new car, a used new car, because they weren't really making them very much.
Carter's Cars, the best trades in Knoxville.
Let's see what you can get.
A 1941 Plymouth Fives passenger sedan.
It's only a year old.
How much do you think that goes for?
Oh, right around 1250
825 oh my god they're so rad too those cars yeah they're fucking dope and five passengers that is
a generous amount of space because you can't get three people in those today no god no tiny
fucking oh this is the 40s though huh these huh? These are actually pretty big. 42.
These are big cars, yeah.
Yeah, these are big.
1941 Ford 85 Coupe 795.
1939 Chevrolet Coach 495.
Awesome.
1934 Plymouth sedan.
Uh-huh.
$89.
$89.
Because it's 10 years old, you guys. 34 Chevy Coupe.
Okay.
Dope, right?
Yeah.
That's a cool.
$75.
Unbelievable.
$75 fucking bucks.
Ford 85 Deluxe Tudor, $1940, $695.
1936 Ford Coach, $195.
1938 Plymouth four-door touring sedan, $445.
1939 DeSoto touring sedan, $565.
Holy shit, man.
And then also on the same ad, in the same fucking thing, first sale, one pair four-year-old mare mules at a bargain.
Two female mules. Yeah. you can buy any of those cars cars bargain not we don't even tell you how much they are or a mule either one two bucks
now let's say you have your new house you have your new car in the driveway you got the american
dream you really back then for for for three grand you bought everything. You bought everything.
You're going to need to entertain.
Yeah.
And how do you entertain?
By, of course, making some food.
So I found some recipes in the paper from 1942.
This is amazing.
Recipe number one, liverloaf.
I've never been nauseous reading something before
until I found liver loaf
i can't i can't find in my brain a way that that sounds tasty oh my god this is a whole meal
liver loaf buttered new new potatoes creamed cabbage bread rhubarb conserve
or constant whatever the fuck chef's toss salad tangy dressing okay liver loaf one pound beef
liver chopped one quarter cup one quarter cup chopped cooked bacon one cup soft bread crumbs
one tablespoon minced onions this might sound good out there.
People eat Scrapple, remember.
Half cup of milk.
This is liver and onions.
Just in a loaf.
This is a meatloaf in a liver.
One teaspoon minced parsley, one quarter teaspoon celery salt, quarter teaspoon salt, quarter
teaspoon white pepper, two eggs beaten or four yolks.
Now, mix ingredients and pour into buttered loaf dish.
Bake 40 minutes in moderate oven.
Doesn't even tell you the temperature.
Moderate?
Moderate oven.
You call it.
We're cooking a liver.
Why don't you tell us how to cook that?
A lot of people still had the fires back then that they were stoking, so you couldn't really tell a temperature.
You just say, you know.
You just know when it's ready to cook?
Medium heat. Yeah. It's insane and then the embers are red
uh the chef's tossed salad what is a chef's salad 1942 have yeah 12 thin crisp carrot strips
okay that's specific one cup sliced rad. One quarter cup thinly sliced spring onions.
One quarter cup salt.
One quarter teaspoon salt.
One cook cup peas.
One cook cup peas.
One cup cooked peas.
Holy shit.
That fell apart.
One cup shredded lettuce.
One cup.
Four tablespoons tangy dressing.
There's only one cup of lettuce in all of that.
That's not a chef salad.
Four tablespoons of fucking dressing. There's only one cup of lettuce in all of that. That's not a chef's salad.
Four tablespoons of fucking dressing.
That is,
chef's salad is like ham in it and shit,
doesn't it? That is soggy with dressing.
You'd be picking around looking for lettuce.
There's more fucking,
there's a cup of thinly sliced radish.
There's as many radishes as lettuce.
That's too much.
Too much.
And then to make the tangy dressing is uh salt dry
mustard teaspoon paprika blah blah blah it's probably terrible who cares either way there you
go um so liverloaf liverloaf that's a nice liverloaf and radish salad dinner if you want
that everybody that sounds great i had liver and onions when i was a child and i would never eat that i
had one bite and threw up i will never eat that too because it's gritty and weird oh god the
that flavor is horrific grandma told me it was steak my steak oh grandma while my grandfather
laughed because he knew i was catch it i took i said why does it smell so weird and she said
but get the hell out of here eat the goddamn steak steak. I said, oh, Jesus, I'm sorry.
I ate the steak.
And I just went, I was like, what?
That's disgusting.
And my grandfather, that was the funniest thing in the fucking world.
It tastes like blood.
I told you, no.
That's what it tastes like, meat blood.
It's so bad.
It tasted like if you took, you know in a sneaker, there's like a soul, like a thing under your shoe, under your foot that you can take out.
That's like a little padding thing.
It tastes like if you if you made like a meat out of that.
That's what it tastes like.
It's got like a sweat and like dirt and there's blood, dust and blood and blood.
Disgusting.
The wait is over.
So far, you're not losing.
The only thing you're losing is my patience.
Quickly, I see that.
Bing!
The queen of the courtroom is back.
I didn't do anything.
You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in the face.
I see he's not intimidated by anything.
I can fix that.
New cases. She wanted to fight me. and slapped you in the face. I see he's not intimidated by anything. I can fix that.
New cases.
She wanted to fight me.
Leave her alone.
Okay, so, um.
This is not a so, this is a period.
Classic Judy.
Did you sleep with her?
Yes, Your Honor.
You married his cousin.
His brother.
That's not him.
Yes, ma'am.
I would make a beeline for the door.
The Emmy Award winning series returns.
How did I know that? I have a crystal ball
in my head. It's an all new season.
It's streaming. You can say
anything. Judy
Justice. Only on
Freebie.
So, yuck. Either way, while he's doing this, he's playing on the baseball team in jail.
The jail, of course.
Everybody had a baseball team back then.
Every bakery, every prison, everything had a baseball team.
Nine years of Army Air Corps jail baseball.
Baseball.
But by 1949 here, or actually it's the 46th season, he starts to be noticed.
Somebody notices him and sends a letter to a scout.
The scout sends a letter to a baseball manager on a semi-pro minor league team,
like an independent minor league team.
So they end up getting a look at him,
and he catches the eye of the owner of the Atlanta Crackers.
Is that right?
Yeah, minor league team here.
And they sign Rivera here for the 49 season.
Wow.
They finagle some shit and get him out of jail after four and a half years.
What?
That's how it works, yeah.
They finagle something because you could do –
Billy Martin got Ron LaFleur out in the fucking 70s,
and that was a thing you could do back then.
You could just go as like a sports coach.
You could go pick somebody out and they'd just let him out.
Well, if he's going to play sports.
Yeah.
I realize he's got a penalty phase that he has to go through, uh let's make him serve that time on the diamond where i can benefit
from this he's really hitting the hell out of the ball i'll tell you what hate to waste that so he
said the reason why he got sentenced so harshly was quote you know that nurse it wouldn't have
been so bad but i had stuff on me like breaking and entering when I was a kid.
I never done any time for it, but it was on the record and it made it look tough.
So they looked at me as like, oh, you're this thug who now you join the army and now you're raping officers' daughters and you're out of control.
They treated me like criminal behavior evolves.
Like, you know, from breaking in, like maybe I try to rape somebody next time I broke in somewhere.
That sort of thing.
He said, this is amazing.
Then he goes into this.
They couldn't make the rape charge stick, so they called it attempted rape.
Gross.
Now you tell me, what's attempted rape?
Where do you draw the line?
There's a lot of legal.
Okay, this guy already is too close.
Wow.
Between that and, I mean, anybody could get you on assault with intent to rape.
Anybody could get you on that.
What a sentence.
That is a bit much.
It's a wide question, man.
He just said, where do you draw the line well i mean
if we're talking theoretically sure is driving by somebody on within a car attempted rape
i guess you could say that or do you actually have to try to force your penis or another
thing into somebody that's that's probably along those lines i would imagine telling a girl she got a cute fat ass is that rape is that attempted rape because i clearly want to fuck her i where do you
draw the line well probably pre whatever you did i'm gonna say that's where you draw the line it's
it's back a few paces yeah back this way from where you ended up is where the line is.
That's clearly, by the law anyway, that's what it is.
I think they made that perfectly clear by sentencing him to prison, right?
By sentencing you to life at first.
They made sure you knew what was going on here.
Where do you draw the line?
Finally, they had to call an assault with intent to commit rape.
I got 20 years.
Hell, they were giving guys 20 years for AWOL. So
back then if you went AWOL.
He's saying rape is equivalent to not
showing up for your military job?
He was saying that you could basically
for any little thing, you could get sentenced
to 20 years and, you know, any little
thing like trying to rape a chick in his
mind is a little thing, which is ridiculous.
With assault.
Jesus Christ, man. thing like trying to rape a chick in his mind is a little thing which is with assault with assault jesus christ man he said uh it was knocked down to 11 then nine i did the four and a half earl man
owner of the chattanooga team tried to get me out because i was doing so going so good for the
prison team but i never played pro ball till 49 so his first like organized pro minor league ball here is when he's 28 years
old think about that he's a well pest that's like when you should be in your prime right crushing
so um here's uh he goes to the minor leagues here he's in a couple days he plays for gainesville
he plays for the atlanta crackers he plays for gainesville he plays for the
atlanta crackers he plays for what are the name of these teams the gainesville g-men um the
pensacola flyers the atlanta crackers and then the seattle rainiers which is a famous team very
famous team with that red r hat yeah so um either way here he said he did all of that. 1949, he comes in, he starts playing center field.
For the Gainesville team here.
And this is from the paper.
OK, from an article from the newspaper.
Watch Jim Rivera cavort in the clubhouse, dash around on the diamond and play pranks on teammates.
And you get the idea that he doesn't have a care in the world.
You get the idea that he didn't't have a care in the world he gets the idea that he
didn't learn his lesson about uh assault raping one jesus christ i mean where do you draw the line
really i i mean i suppose right here jim quote-unquote paid his debt to society but yeah
it's tough to have a flamboyant out there uh outgoing personality when people know what you've done
hopefully he keeps his dick in his pants but we don't know so 1949 he plays in 137 games
uh here we'll call this grace he got to the majors after all that even though we're past
grace probably because he did attempt to rape a woman so right either way, making it here, we'll just call it grace. I don't fucking care.
So he has 529 at-bats that year, 142 runs he scores, which is incredible.
That's incredible. Has 177 hits, 36 doubles, 16 triples, which is a lot, 13 homers, 102 RBI,
and he hits 335.
He's getting on base a lot. how he's crushing it yeah he's
doing amazing here uh 1950 he plays for both atlanta and pensacola in the two uh leagues here
for pensacola where he plays 124 games he hits 338 with 20 home 20 homers 29 doubles
fucking ripping it up over here. It's pretty goddamn impressive.
So then they move him up to Seattle.
And in Seattle he does wonderful, and we'll talk a little bit more about it.
But it's AAA Seattle, actually.
And he plays in 166 games, has 739 plate appearances that year, which is a lot.
135 runs, 231 hits. He hits.352 that year which is a lot 135 runs 231 hits he hits 352 no that year jesus
christ that's really good if you don't know anything about baseball 20 homers 112 ribbies
and 33 steals by the way his first year in gainesville 49 he had 55 stolen bases so he's
fast he's a he's a nut but his style we'll talk about it but
he is the best way i can liken him is lenny dykstra in the in the 40s and 50s is the best
way i can liken him like when lenny dykstra played now he's obviously out of his mind but when he
played and he got arrested all bunched on it but when he played he was a fan favorite because he
was crazy he'd run into the wall everything he did was full blast full bore i'm not the biggest guy but i'm gonna stick
it right up your ass kind of a guy and that's what jim is except jim also has like a real like
fun streak to him like he's also mr jokester and all that kind of shit so he's got all that going
for him uh he's crushing shit he dives in he's like the first guy to go head first when he
slides into bases oh he's the first guy to do that regularly and uh you're obviously the way they
teach you in baseball to slide into a base is feet first yeah one one foot out well not technically
but back then it was back then it was spikes up, break up that double play.
But he said that he's seen a lot of people, when you slide in hard to a bag, break their fucking ankles like that.
So he said, I'd rather break my finger than an ankle any day of the week.
I'm not doing that.
So he dives in head first.
It's his style.
Strategically, it's smart because you can move your arms in different ways that you can't move your legs. So if you're sliding in, your foot just goes straight,
and somebody knows where to tag you.
If you slide in head first, if they go to tag your arm,
you can move it around the back.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
At the same time, though, when you're going feet first,
you can kick the ball out of the glove,
and you can fucking knock the guy over with your shins and take him out.
Back then, a hard slide at second base was mandatory.
If you're on a double play ball, you had to go in and fucking destroy.
That guy better be hurt.
He better be limping away from it or else you're-
Destroy his shins.
Your teammates are fucking mad at you, basically.
So either way, he did it.
He's stealing all these bases.
He's hitting the ball all around the park. They really
like him. He's stealing bases
all the time. They fucking
love him. One reporter
said, quote, he runs in the outfield
like a deer on the bases like
an express train and he throws like a
rifle. So really getting
their similes in there and working
it out. So July
23rd, 1951.
By the way, when he was in Seattle, he caught the eye of Rogers Hornsby,
who is Hall of Fame, very famous baseball player, a great hitter,
and a guy who was managing in the minors at this point.
Made famous for children in the 80s by his very expensive baseball card.
No, that's you're thinking of um
you're thinking of uh not honus wagner but also rogers hornsby's hornsby had one too he had one
too yeah okay and now it's the most expensive one ever it was just sold the his baseball card
topped honus wagner's card oh okay recently interesting so either way hornsby here is um
he's a legend so mean, guys like that.
He takes a liking to Jim while he's in Seattle there.
But on July 23, 1951, the Chicago White Sox purchase his contract, Jim's contract, from the Seattle of the Pacific Coast League.
The Chicago White Sox pay the club, they'll say, between $50,000 and $65,000.
That's so much money.
Which is a fuckload of money.
He was the MVP of the Pacific Coast League, too.
He's the best player in AAA, basically.
Which, a lot of these guys in AAA are 19, or in the minors are 19, 20 years old.
He's fucking almost 30.
So he's a man.
He's in his physical prime. He's fucking almost 30. So he's a man. He's in his physical prime.
He's not, you know, he's strong.
So, yeah, he comes up there.
Doesn't last long, though.
On November 27th, 1951, the White Sox trade him.
Before they even get to do anything with him, they trade him here.
They trade him with Joe D. Mastry, Gordon Goldsberry, Dick Littlefield, Gus Niharos to the St. Louis Browns.
That's a lineup.
Yeah, for Sherm Lawler, Tom Upton, and Al Widmar.
So, yeah. Now, apparently, the Browns bring him right up to the majors, and there are complaints that they are hiring him. Yeah. Now, apparently the Browns bring him right up to the majors. Yeah. And there are complaints that they are hiring him.
Yeah. Actually, he's dangerous.
Yeah. People are like, that's not good. They look at his record.
He seems to be a bad guy.
Yeah. Here's this is from an article here.
Compliments were lodged against the Browns for our compliments.
Complaints were lodged against the compliments.
Good job hiring that attempted rapist.
We need to find out where the line is, folks,
and he's going to tell us.
Didn't today's Browns just do this same thing?
I think they did, yeah.
I think you're pretty close on it here.
Complaints are lodged against the Browns for hiring,
just replace, put a name here.
A terrible man.
Because of his background that included a five-year term in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, St. Louis owner Bill Veck, who is the craziest son of a bitch ever.
He's the guy you ever see the picture of the guy who's like two foot eight in the batting stance and he'd put him in a game so he couldn't.
You know what I mean?
No strike zone.
He did all that crazy shit the
disco demolition night all that that's all bill weck's idea yeah he owned the white socks at that
time did he also do the the dime beer night no i think that was cleveland but he would have done
dumb shit like that he did all sorts of crazy shit he's known for it so uh he'd be a fun bonus
episode actually to talk about him because he's fucking crazy. He did so many crazy shit.
So they said that owner Bill Veck, as well as Commissioner Ford Frick, were aware of his background, of Rivera's background.
Veck's reply to the complaints was, quote, I thought that in this country the idea is to give a fellow a chance to straighten out.
Oh, boy.
Not to be raping people out there.
Jesus Christ. Is that what the – I don't know if that's what it is i don't know either well ford frick the commissioner said quote if the purpose
is punishment then rivera has already been punished if the purpose is for improvement
then this man has a greater chance to make good by being allowed to live as others
since rivera has come into baseball his conduct has been beyond question.
If in the future he shows he's not profited by his experience,
this office will take action.
Okay.
All right.
So there's that where obviously there's leeriness,
but then there's this where Rogers Hornsby says in the newspaper,
quote,
he's the only player in baseball I'd pay my two bucks to pull to go to the ballpark
to watch roge he said he's the only one because of his the way he plays he's fucking plays like
a maniac and he loves it so um yeah they said that hornsby warned him though when he brought
him in quote i'm on the spot and so are you he told him basically like now i've thrown my neck
out there for you.
Listen,
you get rape and I'm going to be in trouble here.
Let's just put it that way.
He said,
I think you're the best rookie I've ever had under me,
but they're not going to let you forget your past.
They're going to give it to you as hard and as mean and as often as they can.
Jesus,
that sounds,
they're going to rape you.
It sounds like he's going to prison as often as they can. They're going to get you in the shower. They're going to get you when you think lights are out. They're going to rape you. That sounds like he's going to prison as often as they can.
They're going to get you in the shower.
They're going to get you when you think lights are out.
They're going to get you all the time.
My God.
Rivera said, quote, what can they say to me that I ain't already heard?
Am I going to pay attention to a guy calling me names now?
It's like being born again.
Don't I know what a chance I got now?
Don't I know what a chance I had before?
Or don't I know what I had before? And then he said, quote, look, he says, I'm not fooling myself.
I know what kind of life I lived before. I never amounted to anything. But this is different. I
got a chance to be somebody, to live like a person. I got a nice wife and child. I got money for the
first time. I got something to live for now to fight for.
Okay.
Well,
you could have fought Hitler before too.
And you raped somebody instead or attempted to rape somebody.
So that was,
you had something to fight for the freedom of the,
of the,
of the world.
But instead you fought for your own.
Yeah.
Instead you fought,
you fought for a captain's daughter's fucking badge.
That's a different side.
You know, this is fucking your bad guy.
So anyway, Rogers Hornsby said, quote, I think he'll make it.
I think he'll make it.
He said then Hornsby went on to say, I'd rather watch Rivera rather watch Rivera play more than anybody else.
He does everything he can to beat you.
So he goes to the St.
Louis Browns, which people, if you're younger and you don't know baseball history, they're going, what the fuck is a St. Louis Brown?
That doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah.
Well, they originate.
They were first.
This is the funny thing.
They were originally in pre-1901.
They were the Milwaukee Brewers.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
Milwaukee Brewers.
Is that right?
Absolutely.
And then they went to, then they were a charter member of the American League back then, as a matter of fact, back in like 1901.
And then after the 1901 season, they moved to St. Louis and became the St. Louis Browns. And after this season, this is the 52 season, after the 53 season, they relocate to, Jimmy, do you know?
Cincinnati.
Baltimore. They become the Orioles. Is that right yeah they're the orioles that's who they are the browns i do like when teams
move to cities and change the uh the mascot of the team or the the name of the team you know
what i mean yeah like the browns moved to baltimore became the ravens yeah i don't like
arizona cardinals that's no the utah Jazz is the one that's the funniest one of all.
Dumbest shit on earth.
Yeah, there's no jazz in Utah, obviously.
And the dominant religion frowns upon having fun.
Yeah, it's like basketball, where the jazz moved to Utah, where they don't allow music.
Right.
The Minneapolis Lakers moved to Los Angeles where there are no lakes.
And the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah where they don't allow music.
That's the line from basketball, I believe.
That's hysterical.
It was fucking funny.
Those boys are terrific.
The 1952 St. Louis Browns.
They go 64, 90, and 1.
That's not great.
No.
One because they had a tie.
You could have curfew ties back then, and that's how it would work.
It's too late.
We've got to go home.
Well, if you don't play them again, and it was like the going away game, and that's how it would work.
Curfew tie or a ballpark darkness is the other thing.
A lot of ballparks didn't have lights still back then.
That's wild.
Yeah, it's pretty interesting here.
They're terrible.
They finished seventh in the American League.
This is just American League, National League,
and if you win your division, which is the whole league,
you go right to the World Series.
There's no playoffs in between.
So it's regular season, World Series, that's it.
So, yeah, they're playing here manager is
rogers hornsby for this team now um he says this is from 1952 up to now this is from the newspaper
quote up to now big jim as he likes to be called hasn't lived up hasn't lived up to this tremendous
build-up except for his blinding speed river Rivera has not looked any different from the ordinary rookies.
He has yet to flash the form that earned him the most valuable player tag
in the Pacific Coast League based on a.352 batting mark
and leading figures in runs, hits, total bases, runs batted in,
and stolen bases.
So he's not doing well.
Now, right around this time in July, the season goes on,
they fire Rogers Hornsby
in June. Is that right?
Yeah, they shit can Hornsby.
Don't give him much of a chance at all
here. And then in July,
they decide, don't
need you either, and they trade
Jim away as well.
They trade him
July 28, 1952
by the Browns with Daryl Johnson back to the White Sox for Ray Coleman and Jay Porter.
So there we go.
Now that year for the Browns, he played in 97 games actually, hit.256.
Not bad.
Not terrible.
He's a rookie.
Four homers, eight stolen bases.
Not terrible.
Then for the White Sox in 53 games, he hit.320.
Or I'm sorry, he hit.249.
.320 is on base.
He had three homers, 18 ribbies, 13 steals.
So pretty good.
I mean, he's got to feel good.
He's a major leaguer.
He's 31 years old at this point.
Unbelievable.
And he's completing his first major league season
he's actually got contributing yeah going on and then it's got to feel the last day of the season
must have felt great for him you know what i mean i can't imagine yeah right up until the time he
gets arrested in the clubhouse it must have been wonderful for him it must have been wonderful for
him right up until the point when everybody else was getting changed and cracking beers and smoking
cigarettes and joking and laughing
and talking about what they're going to do in the
off season and where they're going to go fishing
and he's being dragged out in handcuffs.
He's being dragged out in handcuffs from the
clubhouse. Yeah, not
wonderful here. He is
charged with
what do you think?
I'm terrified.
Raping a 22-year-old married woman.
Of course he is.
In Chicago.
Starting to get a pattern here.
Seems to be a violent rapist.
Seems to really lean into the rape a little hard here.
He admits being intimate with the woman but says that he did
not rape her he said this was all happy consensual business here okay said we were at a hotel because
she's uh married and he found out or something oh yeah oh yeah yeah he's also in the military
is another guy he's like another fucking military guy too he said so yeah he's arrested it is a
charge what does this say here uh pulled right out of the
clubhouse it's the complaint of a 22 year old wife of a soldier that claims that he claims that he
raped her she's also a statistician for the baseball team she works for the fucking white
socks you can't do that and was working as an usher that day at the park. Oh, Jesus. You can't. Come on, man.
Jesus Christ.
He's a co-worker, bud.
He's held overnight for questioning by the Police Sex Bureau.
That's why they went to SVU, I think, rather than the Police Sex Bureau.
That would be amazing.
Law and order.
Police Sex Bureau is a different show completely.
Iced tea on that show would be amazing. Police Sex Bureau is a different show completely. Iced tea on that show would be amazing.
Police Sex Bureau, I'm going to see how freaky you get and open up.
Open up, it's the freaky check.
Sex Bureau, we got a camcorder.
Sex Bureau, that would be amazing.
Sex Bureau, me and Coco is here.
We're here.
Oh, we're going to make it sexy if it ain't already. Don't you worry about nothing. Sex Bureau, me and Coco going to
show you how it's done. Now that we romped all over y'all, made this a real nice night
for everybody. Let me tell you all about Car Shield. And to tell you more about Car Shield,
here's Ric Flair and Allen Iverson, because i know you want them in your house also they're very trustworthy people police sex bureau open up
that sounds like they're gonna either have sex with you or or force you to have sex like in
front of a panel of people and then they're gonna give you notes on it of what you can do better.
Like they used to have like the farm bureaus of guys that would come in and tell you how your farm could run more efficiently and shit by the government.
Maybe that's what this is.
Have you seen American Psycho?
Oh my God.
Fuck like he fucked.
The police sex bureau.
What the fuck?
It's an asshole.
Eat it.
This is why I love old timey episodes.
You can't.
You're not going to pull this out of tonight.
No one ever.
Why do we make fun of Mike Tyson's obvious speech speech impediment but we give ice tea like the best
the best roles in tv and he can barely speak but his whole his whole communication is his whole
business he fucking he's a rapper he's i mean speaking is what he does you know what he's
saying yeah you know what he's saying but he says it loud and clear it's hard man is going to
investigate he says it's so loud and so clear you know exactly what he and clear it's hard man is gonna investigate he says it's so loud
and so clear you know exactly what he's saying it's hard to listen to
he's one of those people that his his voice makes me happy i don't know what it is yeah
it's motherfuckers there he is yeah it just makes me happy so So he is the woman he has denied raping to the police sex bureau.
Yeah.
God, that does sound like a fun guy, right?
Yeah.
Is Mrs. Janet Gator.
And they call in the paper the accusation and told them the attractive brunette statistician submitted willingly after inviting him to her Southside apartment.
So he said, she invited me over.
We did the fucking dirty.
And then now what's going on over here?
So yeah, he's arrested during the game.
He was pointed out by this woman.
And it's pretty interesting of how she recognized him, actually.
How do you think she id'd him well she id'd him because she said when she met him he said quote i'm jim rivera the great
baseball player so that'll do it as a pickup line plus she keeps track of how many stolen bases he
has because she's the statistician so i assume she knows who he is at that point. So, yep, arrested, pointed out by him.
They drag him out of the clubhouse in fucking handcuffs here.
She told police that she was walking her dog outside of her place there and was carrying books and newspapers when he introduced himself.
Or I guess she heard a whistle.
Yeah.
And the dog reacted to the whistle.
She said, I don't know if the person was whistling at me,
whistling at the dog or whatever.
Now the dog like lunged toward him like playfully.
So she has a bunch of books and newspapers in her hand
and dragged the one hand away so she dropped a bunch of her stuff.
Yeah.
So then he comes up and starts picking up her stuff with her,
which is,
you know,
like a romantic comedy fucking meeting,
you know,
like,
you know,
your cliche help.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Your dog was so friendly and wanting me to pet it that it lunged at me.
So then I help you pick up your stuff.
Oh,
Hey,
here you go.
Sorry about that.
No,
I didn't mean to be so attractive to dogs.
You know what I mean?
I don't mean to be such a great dog guy.
I'm just a great guy.
Just dogs know it.
They're just, they sense my greatness, man.
What do you do?
I'm a magazine editor.
Okay.
So that's a romantic comedy to be that.
So anyway, he helps pick up the packages and escorts her.
Let me help you carry these back to you.
We live right here. No problem. Let me help you carry. Let me help you get to a secluded place. That's her. Let me help you carry these back to you. We live right here.
No problem.
Let me help you carry.
Let me help you get to a secluded place.
That's fine.
I'll help you carry.
Now, they got to the apartment.
She said that he went in ahead of her.
She opened the door, and he walked right in with the packages and put them down.
And then she said he refused to leave when she asked him to.
She said, you can go now. And said quote take it easy that's what he said take it easy let me pitch some ideas to you first um no how about no you just forced your way into
my home stranger how about not this is now negotiation. You would like me to leave. How about no?
How about no?
You take off those clothes.
Stranger who's done four and a half years federal time for rape.
I don't know.
Or attempted rape or assault with intent to rape or whatever the fuck it was.
So she said she decided that since he wasn't going anywhere, she'd offer him something to drink because it is 195 four. It is 1952 when you have to be polite.
So she offers him a soft drink, gets him a bottle of soda.
So, you know, whatever.
And she has a cup of coffee with him.
They sit and chat, I guess.
And then she claims at that point that he became amorous, as she put it, and he resisted.
But she said she was too terrified to physically uh resist him
anymore she couldn't fight him off because she couldn't physically she didn't want to i guess
she was too terrified to physically fight him off and couldn't so she said he forced her into a
bedroom and forced himself on her and Jesus. And she called police.
And there.
No, she didn't call police.
She called her husband.
Yeah.
Later on that night.
Who then called police.
And then the police went to talk to her.
And she said.
Then she went to the hospital.
And they said, well, yes. This woman's had sex.
Yes.
You know.
Whatever that is.
And she said she identified him as the guy.
And there you go.
So he's her husband is a a in the Fifth Army headquarters in Chicago and was working part time as a theater usher at the time of the incident.
So that's why he was at work.
So that's what was going on.
So they book him uh for rape
is what this is and uh yeah the charges here though uh they he demands to take a lie detector
test that's what he says i want a lie detector she was into this this was a we've hooked up
this isn't like a you know we talked and she said come back to my place and i went back to her place like this is fucking crazy so um it is a rape charge he ends up going
and gets acquitted on the rape charge actually right goes to court gets acquitted on it and um
yeah so now are they gonna let him play because this is all like during the season and uh ford
frick there the commissioner says that his status hasn't been determined yet.
He asked permission to do barnstorming,
which is playing where there's no teams.
They go, major leaguers do that.
He was denied permission to do that,
and he signed to play for a club in the Puerto Rican Winter League
while awaiting the decision from the commissioner here.
He says that they had a room where they lived in, this girl and her husband,
at the Gladstone Hotel.
And he said she invited him up to her room at the Gladstone and her husband got mad about
it because he found out and that's why the charges were filed.
That's his side of the story.
That's his side of the story.
He says later on, this is an interview I saw years, years, years later.
He said that after it was all over, she called me and tried to get together again with me.
After the court, after everything, I said, you got it.
Some kind of nerve on you.
Go fly a kite.
That was his exact quote from it.
He said.
Only once.
Yeah. He said, yeah, we did it, but but it was on purpose like she was into it and uh
his lawyer robert romano said uh he called a hearing before the judge he called in the paper
he called it a kangaroo court and he said he continually objected to her testimony. They went right after an alleged rape victim here, went right hardcore at him.
Romano, the lawyer, said, quote, I've been denied every right.
You've already held my client before you.
You've already held my client before you.
You heard the evidence.
I'll make this offer to the public.
I'll have my client take a lie detector test anytime if this woman will take one too. So she doesn't take one, but he arranged,
they arranged for him to have a lie detector test by a mutually agreed upon agency by the
defense and the prosecutor. And I guess he passed it because they dropped the charges.
He doesn't get acquitted. They end up,'t doesn't indict because because of the lie detector.
So November 12th, 1952, he's given, quote, indefinite probation by the by the major leagues here.
That's not a good.
No, he's on double secret.
Don't fuck up or you're suspended forever.
No, he's on double secret. Don't fuck up or you're suspended forever.
Ford Frick orders him on indefinite probation and said that the White Sox,
one more slip up by him would result in his expulsion from baseball.
He said the penalty imposed on Rivera was a lenient one here.
That's what he even said, Frick. He said, I could have made it worse.
He'll be permitted to play. He said that Frick said that he considers Rivera guilty of, quote, a certain type of moral delinquency despite his exoneration by the Cook County grand jury.
What does that even mean?
He's not living up to the best image of the league.
He's a married man.
He's having affairs with married women, even if that's true and it wasn't rape good god his moral turpitude gross just out of here
he's terrible yeah i don't you don't have to hang out with him you know but either way they also say
for uh the next year the white socks are not allowed allowed to trade him or sell him or anything like that as well.
And he places the burden of responsibility for his conduct on and off the field with the White Sox.
It is their job to watch him, basically.
He's on probation and the White Sox are his officers, is what he's saying.
He's saying he'll penalize the team if he does something wrong as well.
Pinkertons get into it.
That's it.
So the commissioner recognizes, as does the Chicago American League club, Frick said, that they have an obligation to the public to maintain the highest possible standards of morality among the men who are connected with the game.
Yeah.
connected with the game.
So he disclosed that he called Rivera to his office on October 20th,
four days after the rape charge had been dismissed and received the player's entire history.
He said,
I made it clear to him that because of his previous difficulties,
he was lucky.
He was lucky to have gone as far as he did.
He said,
I hope he realizes he from hereafter,
we're not going to wait until
he gets to court. So
from hereafter, anything goes down, you're
out. Done. Done. Yep.
He said, to the best of his knowledge, this is
the first time a commissioner of baseball
has had to make a decision on a morals
charge. Well, it's not
going to be the last, Chief. I'll tell you that much.
Hang in there. Wow.
In Chicago, the president of
the white uh white socks mrs uh grace kamiski she expressed her delight over the commissioner's
ruling that permitted rivera to remain in baseball she said i had hoped and prayed that rivera would
be given another chance he really deserves a chance because i believe the recent charged
against a charge against him was unfair wow i don't believe the recent charge against him was unfair.
Wow.
I don't believe the fans will reject him. I have had many, many letters from fans all favorable to Rivera's cause.
We'll sit back and watch him play and hope he'll appreciate this new lease on baseball
life given him.
Ma, that's two charges of rape, though.
That's what I mean. You have two accusations. In less than 10 years. Yeah, that's frightening. That's two charges of rape, though. That's what I mean.
In less than 10 years.
Yeah, that's frightening.
That's a lot.
So then Frick said the commissioner cannot place himself in the position of going over
the heads of the American grand jury.
He's saying if they didn't indict him, how can I?
Yeah.
Good God.
He said at the same time, the commissioner recognizes, as does the Chicago American League,
that they have the obligation that we've talked about before.
And it's obvious that Mr. Rivera has been guilty again of a certain moral delinquency.
So either way, 1953 is on the field.
No problem, though.
For the White Sox, White Sox and 53 finish 89, 65 and two.
Not two ties.
Third in the American League.
Yeah.
So not too shabby here.
In this lineup as well, Nelly Fox, who's a guy people have heard of.
He's a great player for a long time.
Second baseman.
Minnie Minoso is in this.
A lot of guys with, like, old-timey names.
Sherm, Nelly, Chico. chico uh mini mini couple of bobs a sam red guy named red wilson
a guy named rocky a guy named vern a guy named fred and two guys named bud
two two two buds not one but two buds so there you go. Not too bad here this year. That's the team. They're a good team, though. That's 89-65 is a good team, but you finish third and there's no wild card. Your season's just over. That's it. Done and done and done.
from the newspaper here.
But Rivera was the same way, diving headfirst into bases,
crashing into walls and diving head over hills in the outfield grass.
Playing like that just came natural to me, said the man,
who was still in good enough shape to win the, by the way,
he won later on he'll win the state handball doubles title when he's an old man.
Later on.
His kind of all-out play earnednamed earned him the nickname jungle jim okay oh from all the running all right yeah he said quote we were playing the dodgers in
an exhibition game and i was up against don newcomb he didn't throw a very good curve and i was a
fastball hitter i got one and hit it good when i I was going to second base, I was swinging my arms kind of crazy,
and then I made this wild headfirst slide.
In the next day's paper, Chicago sports writer Howie Roberts called me jungle gym for the first time, and it just stuck.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Distracting the second double play ball guy.
Just waving around and all that shit.
And I guess when he was out in the outfield too like
when he would wave off other outfielders he'd do it all crazy so they just called him like whatever
so um yeah he said the the head first slide all the people talked about it he slides different
than everyone else what's he doing it made him like this showman because he's slitting the head
first he's crazy he said quote i'd rather have a broken finger than an ankle that's it that's all it is
and he says he thinks sliding in head first gives the runner a bit of an edge because in a close
decision and calls for close scrutiny by the umpire he said he thinks it's better which i
think that's true i think you're right so um this year he plays in 156 games which is every single
fucking game that's what they had back then. So it was 154.
They go to 156.
Anyway, so either way, he has 639 plate appearances, which is not too goddamn bad.
Hits 259.
Not too shabby.
Leads the league in triples.
16 triples.
Leads the league.
11 home runs.
78 steals.
26 or 78 ribbies, 26 doubles,
15 steals.
I'm sorry, 22 steals. Not bad.
So good season.
His best buddies on the team were the second baseman
Nellie Fox and catcher
Sherm Lawler
and a pitcher named Billy Pierce.
And he said, we used to hang together
and play cards.
That was really not much else to do back then. named Billy Pierce. And he said, we used to hang together and play cards. So that was their whole,
really not much else
to do back then.
Nellie Fox, he said,
he was just a little guy
and played with everything he had.
He set an example
and they played like that.
Just quickly to give you
an overview of the American
and National League
at this point
because they're a little different.
The American League consists of,
this is the standings,
I'll read them down that year,
Yankees, Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators,
Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics.
Wow.
This is before they went to Kansas City and then Oakland.
And then the St. Louis Browns in the cellar as usual.
So nine.
Losing 100 games.
Yep.
And then the National League, Brooklyn Dodgers, Milwaukee Braves.
They just moved there from Boston a few years ago.
Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants, yet to go to San Francisco.
Same thing with Brooklyn.
Cincinnati, still technically known as the Red Legs at this point.
Oh, wow.
Not technically the Reds.
They were called the Reds, but they were technically the Red Legs.
Cubs and then Pirates after that.
So that's the league at this point.
1954, they finished 94-60-1,
which is third in the AL.
94 wins, no playoffs, third in the AL.
Go home.
Yep.
That's pretty rough.
The Chicago White Sox general manager said about Rivera here, quote,
Jungle Jim may not have the fattest average in baseball,
but he gives the fans a show with his daredevil running and sliding,
his terrific fielding and clutch hitting.
He says that's the also runs like a deer and all that shit.
So anyway, 1954, Jim here, 145 games played, pretty good.
286 batting average, so that's not bad at all.
That's eight triples, 13 homers, 61 ribbies, 18 stolen bases.
Pretty good year.
Not too shabby at all.
I mean, not an embarrassment.
Definitely a major leaguer. Putting ball in play yeah 1955 white socks go 91 63 and one uh-huh third place jesus
christ it's brutal and the yankees are winning the dodgers the dodgers are in the national league how
good are the yankees really good they're a dynasty through this time period. This is Mickey Mantles coming up.
They just dropped DiMaggio.
This is Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Elston Howard.
This is quite the squad here.
Roger Marris later on.
It's at this point that he buys a Cadillac in 1955.
He's very proud of this Cadillac.
Big old Cadillac.
Cadillac big old Cadillac and the Comiskey the owner of the team he said
that he understood Jim's basic weakness
was which was a generosity that let
others take advantage of him he was one
of these guys before before entourages
he had an entourage he had friends he
had people guys from the orphanage his
family is given to we had a lot of
people to take care of, too.
He's giving away his dick, too, James, even to people who don't want it.
He is definitely making an appearance.
He's going to package it up and put a bow on it if you're getting it, whether you want it or not.
They said that he could be taken advantage of.
They said he could be booked for personal appearances, and they wouldn't even pay him, and he'd be okay with it.
He'd do shit for free all the time because he just thought that's what you did he was so happy to he was so happy
to be there even guys that you know whenever he'd go out that people would stick him with the tab
all the time he was really terrible with money basically just awful about it the only thing
that could be worse is if he had a coke habit that's the only thing that could make it worse
or like a gambling habit habit so kaminsky suggested that the white
socks to him to jimmy said listen how about we hold back a portion of your pay to put aside for
you there's a little nest egg like a degenerate gambling comic yeah like that oh that's i got a
story for you about that one by the way too, too. I know one. You know one?
Should we?
Yeah.
No, no.
I got a story that happened four days ago.
Oh, my God.
No way.
Yeah, there's a message.
Oh, boy.
Oh, no.
I didn't know that.
It's still bad.
Norm was a terrific man, but he used to have his – he wouldn't get his check from comedy clubs because he would just go gamble it all.
So his check would go through his agents, and they would give him portions because they didn't want him to be broke.
That's what happens.
It happens to a lot of people.
So gambling is rough, but this guy, it's just pissing it away here.
So Jim was happy.
He was like, will you do that for me?
That'd be great.
He was saying, no fucking way.
Yeah, let's do it.
So he said, take the money, put it aside.
So apparently he got by 1955, there was $7,200 in his account with the White Sox.
So that's good.
That's a lot of money back then.
Right.
Jim came in and asked for $7,000.
Jim, you know, that's all you got.
Well, this is what they wanted from me because he saved up.
Now he wanted to buy a new Cadillac. So they're like, now you have the money. Otherwise, you would have's all you got well this is what they wanted from me because he saved up now he wanted to buy a new cadillac so they're like now you have the money otherwise you would have pissed
all the money away he's like i have 7 000 i want to buy this cadillac so he had 7200 so kamiski
you know filled him out a check and gave it to him and it was for 7200 and he said that but it's
for 7200 i only wanted 7 000 and he, that's $200 more than the car costs.
And the guy said, yeah, but you're going to need something for tips.
He said, if you're pissing it away, just piss it away.
Whatever.
Just get rid of all of it.
Yeah.
And then he said, 256 hitters shouldn't drive $7,000 cars, is the other thing he said, which I thought was really fucking funny.
That's a great line.
What are you hitting?
I don't know if that's a $7,000 car batting average there, Chief.
Maybe swing at a $4,000 car for now.
A little lower.
Hit 300, you get a $7,000.
That's Cadillac territory.
Cadillacs are for closers.
So 55, he plays in 147 games. He hits 264 with 10 homers, 52 ribbies, leads the league in stolen bases with 25.
So does something.
Yeah, he's doing all right.
Not too bad at all.
And for the first time ever, he has more walks than strikeouts, too.
He's even getting better at figuring that out, which that's one of those things.
Your eye and balls and strikes and everything, that's one of those things, your eye and balls
and strikes and everything.
That's how long you've been playing the game.
So if he hasn't played half as much as anybody else, his age, it's a, he's learning these
skills that you should learn when you're 22, 23 coming up.
He's can't learn them till now because he didn't have time, but, uh, he's doing well
though.
And he's playing a good outfield.
They'll move him to first base.
He'll play there.
He can play wherever he's playing a good outfield. They'll move him to first base. He'll play there. He can play wherever.
He's very versatile.
1956, White Sox finish 85-39.
You know what place that is, Jimmy?
Fourth.
Third place.
Third place.
Valleys are consistent.
This is the era of what's known as the go-go White Sox.
This is kind of their what's known as the go-go White Sox. This is kind of, there's famous, you know, team eras.
Go-go White Sox are a certain era of team where they're all real fast.
When did they start the playoffs?
Did that not start until the 70s?
Yeah, that didn't start until, yeah, until the late 60s, early 70s that started.
I think that started the same time the DH started.
They brought a playoff.
This would have been an amazing time to watch baseball.
If you've got to see extra series between fucking the Dodgers and Giants,
between Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
They blew it.
Yeah.
Oh, they absolutely blew it.
Yeah, they absolutely blew it.
And baseball back then, too, was in that we don't change anything.
Yeah. Which was silly. And now, was in that we don't change anything. Yeah.
Which was silly.
And now they're in the we'll change everything.
It's not even fucking baseball anymore.
We'll make it.
We'll fucking let you use your feet.
We'll put clocks and computers in and we'll make it so there's like all this shit.
We'll make managers irrelevant.
We'll make catchers irrelevant.
Why don't we just fuck having a catcher?
There's no more framing after whenever next year or something.
So why have catchers anymore?
Just have a big black thing with an outline like you put on the side of your house when you're a kid.
And wherever it hits, it'll light up.
Why don't we do it like that?
Let's just do it like that.
Have a machine back there that catches the ball and just fires it straight to second after every play.
Why have stolen bases anyway? They just clog up the game and get in the way. Fuck stolen every play that's why i have stolen bases anyway
they just clog up the game and get in the way fuck stolen bases too don't have that have guys stand
there while a guy pitches at a black mat that registers strikes or not and a guy sits there
waiting for the pitch he wants and tries to hit home runs with it let's just do that it's so dumb
how about that that'll be the baseball and they'll be like that's what the kids will like
guess what the kids don't like that either? The kids don't like that either.
No, they don't like what you're doing to the game now.
Now, old people hate it and the kids still think it sucks.
Guess what? You can't make baseball from a slow pastoral three hour game into some fast paced fucking fucking X games.
That's not what fucking baseball is.
So you can't make it that and that at the same time.
All you're doing is ruining it for everybody.
I went to watch football yesterday with my dad and there's that little Italian guy that
you're going to be in your fucking 80s was there.
And I asked him, I haven't seen him in fuck dude since before.
So I asked him how he'd been and he goes, oh, I'm good.
I'm going to be here this this week.
Come by on Tuesday and watch the games with me or thursday whatever the game the next fucking
series is starting and he goes i'll be here to watch the baseball games or whatever the fuck
this sport is i'm telling you he's in his 80s and he fucking hates it but he can't he won't walk
away from baseball because he's from fucking
new york and that's what yeah he's so old he grew up with this shit that's what i mean but
now it's like you can't even identify what the fuck's happening i'm all for changes that are
better for games but they've they've changed it to take in all of like the they've taken it and
change and taken all of like the nuance out of it as far as the little things and little tricks and
little gamesmanship things are like no no no we just want this to be an athletic display is it is it
fantasy sports that did this not because nobody plays fantasy baseball like they do with football
they don't gamble on it so no it's not the same as football it's not like football though it's not
as big obviously football everybody in an office is doing it this is but anybody watching the
regular season of baseball it's just for fantasy i don't even think it's for that man it's gotta be they want everything to just
look like a home run derby where it's just like pitch hit quick and there's no like if they want
that stop fucking needling guys about steroids because that's what steroids do is they hit
fucking home runs by the way i'm just gonna say this off the top of on the home run thing and the
steroids thing and this isn't like a the home run thing and the steroids thing.
And this isn't like a Homer-ish thing because I'm a Yankee fan or whatever.
But this fucking hatred for Aaron Judge is insane.
If you're out there going, fucking Aaron Judge, I hate him.
I think Otani should be the fucking MVP or whatever your reason for hating him is.
You're fucking crazy if you think that.
I swear to God. Ask whoever's closest to you am i a little off lately they're gonna tell you yes
because that's crazy not for this just for everything your mind is off this is a guy who
seemingly real nice guy hasn't done anything to anybody pretty pretty humble polite to reporters and fans alike he's
adopted he had a tough life all the shit are there his parents are right there next to him
he's a nice kid coming yeah fuck you how you mother barry bonds at 73 motherfucker
okay he's not saying fuck barry bonds he's just hitting home runs and people are hating him because, oh, by the way, Barry Bonds, the same guy who while it was going on, nobody would fucking acknowledge what he was doing.
They're all like, that's a bullshit steroid record.
We all fucking know it.
It's all bullshit.
Fuck that guy.
The guy who still is in the Hall of Fame, even though he's 500, 500 and was a fucking Hall of Famer before he ever touched steroids.
Still not in the Hall of Fame because you hate him so much.
But you can also say that I hate Aaron Judge because it's crazy.
Stop it.
Because now with, I think Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa, what they did to baseball is make everybody think that now anybody that's good at home runs obviously is just doing it with steroids, which gives a shit.
There isn't even a fucking accusation of that now because they test them all the time.
Aaron Judge is not a fucking steroid guy.
He's six foot seven.
He's just a monster.
He's huge.
The thing they're all saying is when they figure out what masking agent he's using, then all this is going to come down.
Because he looks like he's on.
Look at him.
He doesn't look like he's on steroids.
He's a noodle.
He's fucking big. He's tiny. Yeah. He's going to get bigger as he he looks like he's on steroids. Look at him. He doesn't look like he's on steroids. He's a noodle. He's fucking big.
He's tiny.
Yeah, he's going to get bigger as he gets older.
He's a young guy still.
He's so skinny.
He doesn't look like a home run hitter to me.
He doesn't.
So, I don't know.
And guess what?
Whatever masking agent he's using, I'm sure everyone else is using it if that happened.
And no one else is hitting 62 fucking home runs.
So, what are you talking about?
And if he hits 62 clean, that's awesome no one's done that in fucking 60 years and we're like fuck him fuck him yes the guy in the angel's amazing he mvp great sure i don't care has nothing
to do with this stop being crazy you know what it is james he's handsome and successful and nobody
well he's on the yankees too he's on the Yankees, too.
He's on the Yankees, too.
He's got three things working against him.
It's Derek Jeter all over again.
How dare you hit 320 and fucking have 3,000 hits and get laid and win World Series and
make good plays in the field and hustle and try hard and smile and talk to people?
How dare you do that?
Yeah.
It's crazy.
It's fucking insane. It's insanity.
That's insanity. He'll be torn down.
They're gonna want to...
Anybody that does well
at anything, they want to tear you down. That's
fucking nuts. Wait till Aaron Judge
rapes a chick, then fucking tear him down.
But till then, leave the fucking guy
alone and let him enjoy hitting 62 home
runs. He looks like he's gotta keep his head down
and feel guilty because he hit 62 home runs.
But Jeter did get a lot of respect, too, though.
From the players.
Fans fucking hated him.
He sucks.
All the players were like, that dude's nasty.
Ask him, you know?
But I think Jeter acknowledging fans and stuff
is something that made people kind of like
Aaron Judge just
he just hit 60 62
and then walked into the fucking
dugout no no acknowledge I think
that plays a part too fuck
no the other team the fucking players
didn't even they stood there and even fucking
they didn't even give him a chin up like good job
dude nothing the fucking other team
everybody
scumbags man it's crazy it's ridiculous They didn't even give him a chin up like, good job, dude. Nothing. The fucking other team. Everybody hates him.
Scumbags, man.
It's ridiculous.
Wait till he does something to you.
Yeah.
There's also just a fucking, I'm going to say this.
This country is a real provincial trailer park, and they definitely have it in for anything
New York related.
They don't like that because that to them feels like you're better than me. you're better than me you know it's it's a we have a real big you ain't
better than me bullshit it's la too because when the when the super bowl everybody fucking hates
them but la isn't even a real place it's fucking you know what i mean like la desert look it's not
a real place nobody has any pacific pride from there nobody nobody cares it's all a fucking bunch of actors
yeah new york you actually have like multi-generational fans that have been here
it's it's stupid i'm just tired of people i'm tired of people's fucking i'm tired of
dumb anger if your anger is based on the fact that you're stupid i don't want to fucking hear it
i just don't just mad at people because you can't understand why it's liked yeah because you know
you can't understand why you're not as good as them that means that's on you you should figure
the fuck out nobody else it's not on us why don't you hone the things that you're good at
i'm sorry that playing the spoons is not more coveted in this country. I apologize. But yeah. 62. Imagine that.
You just hit 62 home runs.
It's crazy. And they're just
people are like...
Against the most difficult pitching
in the history of baseball. Oh, yeah, yeah.
The most scrutinized everything.
Those guys back then couldn't hit the pitching.
Yes, they could, by the way.
They just measure fucking speed
differently. You notice in like 2007 and 8, all of the sudden, everybody threw 103 miles an hour.
What do you think?
Just human beings figured out how to throw 103 miles an hour all at once?
They changed the way they fucking measured radar.
Dumb shits.
The same fucking thing.
Just read stuff.
Nolan Ryan threw 108 miles an hour when they did the correct thing on him.
Threw 108. Just like guys throw 108 now. It's the same thing.
Same exact fucking thing.
Nobody's special. Nobody's special.
That's what's great. Nobody's special
now. Same thing with basketball.
Not any more special than people were then.
Watch Dr. J float through the air
and you tell me, well, shit, he couldn't
play now. Yeah, he could. Jump right over people's heads.
Same fucking way they did then.
Athletes are amazing when the top tier of athletes are just amazing.
Yeah, the best ones are fucking incredible.
It's always been that way.
No matter what kind of training, no matter what kind of weightlifting,
no matter what kind of nutrition, not going to make people throw harder.
That just doesn't exist.
The human body throws about 108 tops, period.
That's it.
That's what it does.
That's about it.
All right.
Off my soapbox there. Sorry. It was fun, period. That's it. Do what it does. That's about it. All right. Off my soapbox there.
Sorry.
It was fun, though.
You know what?
I don't give a fuck.
These are for us.
It's the last whatever.
Last 12 episodes.
You don't like it, click it off and eat my shit.
I don't care.
I really think it comes down to a lot of anger towards people, though, is handsome and ability
or beautiful and ability.
It really hurts to be ugly and
talentless i know it i'm familiar just calm the fuck down and people used to look to the talented
and more attractive as aspirational and maybe i can you know at least that's good i can live
through that be pathetic and live through people don't fucking what happened to idolizing people
and being pathetic that way go read us weekly and fucking sit there wish you had that life rather than hate the person it's
it's the same amount of it makes the same amount of sense it's stupid either way it does feel like
a kick in the balls though when george clooney gets a billion dollars for making tequila and
he was already rich and handsome it does hurt a little bit it's true it's true that's a guy
that's got a mortgage it stings that's life look man that's why yeah because it's true there's
people that look up at us in wide-eyed admiration yes and that's crazy that they should do that but
i'm just saying there's that no matter where you are, if you're lying in the sidewalk with nothing, there's somebody in the gutter next to you down one rung looking up at you in wide eyed admiration.
And Cohen got it figured out.
Wish I could get up on that curb.
That's what it is.
It's a fact.
There's always somebody shittier.
So just realize that and don't hate the people who aren't shitty.
Be happy for George.
Be happy for Aaron.
Be happy for people that are doing something with their lives and i don't know making a paycheck i guess
he was adopted for christ's sake he started out with a tough life happy people never hate people
for shit like that you know what i mean and i get that it's hard to be happy people have fucked up
things happen in your life hey great i'm a miserable son of a bitch too but i can recognize achievement and not be angry for fucking christ's sake like holy shit i'm so upset that these people don't have to
have the phone calls with their ex-wife that i have to have yeah there's that too so jealous
of them that they aren't being bitched at constantly by somebody they don't have to be bitched at no shit man
oh fuck so all right back to this guy here back to our guy here uh here we go jim says uh we were
the go-go white socks then but they were also the go-go white socks under paul richards when i broke
in with the white socks we won with speed defense. There would be headlines in the paper like White Sox bomb
Kansas City two to one. We would win with four hits and a sacrifice fly and two error to errors.
That's a shitty day. It's a shit day. These are the days back then they used to wet down.
Chicago is famous for it. The White Sox would wet down all the dirt and all the shit in front of the
infield. So the balls would go real slow so they could beat out infield singles.
That way the initial bounce into the ground would kind of kill it.
So they'd run out bases while everybody else was hitting for power.
So that was how they did it here.
So he said that he loved those days.
He said, I'm serious.
I would have played for free.
My favorite memory, I hit for the cycle at Washington.
My homer was an inside the park one.
I was going to be content with a triple, but third base coach Tony Cuccinella waved me on in.
So, yeah.
He hit for the cycle, one, two, three, and then an inside the park home run.
What a day.
Yeah, that's a crazy day.
In Washington, too, that had weird dimensions, that park, too.
Oh, really?
You hit one out into a corner, it was an inside the parker.
Those parks used to have super strange dimensions in different places.
So, yeah, he said that the team got along great.
He said that he doesn't ever remember a scuffle in the locker room or anything like that other than the police dragging him out.
1956 here, 139 games, hits.255.
He has 12 homers, 66 RBI, 20 steals.
Damn fine.
By the way, just a quick overview of who is in the league at this point. Let me give you the hit and home run leaders for this year, for 56.
Hits, Hank Aaron, Harvey Kuhn, Al Kaline, Nellie Fox, Richie Ashburn,
Mickey Mantle, Bill Verdon, Stan Musial, Ken Boyer, Jackie Jensen.
Wow.
Home run leaders, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snyder, Joe Adcock, Frank Robinson,
Eddie Matthews, Willie Mays, Wally Post, Ted Kluslinski, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snyder, Joe Adcock, Frank Robinson, Eddie Matthews, Willie
Mays, Wally Post, Ted Kluslinski, Gil Hodges, Stan LaPotta, Vic Wertz.
There's a shitload of Hall of Fame guys in there.
Holy shit.
That is wild.
Legends.
So after this season ends, he marries his second wife.
Really?
Yep.
A woman named Phyllis.
Phyllis Crane.
She is from Indiana. And this is, you know, everything woman named Phyllis. Phyllis Crane. She is from Indiana.
And this is, you know, everything's going well for him.
The sports writers like talking to him because he's always good for a good quote.
He's a real colorful guy and all that kind of shit.
At this point, too, he gets real into going to movies all the time.
Some days he'll go to the movies and see two movies before a night game.
That's how he'll spend his whole day.
Double matinee, a little cinephile. Yeah, and then he'll go to the movies and see two movies before a night game. That's how he'll spend his whole day. Double matinee, a little cinephile.
Yeah, and then he'll go to a game.
He's known as the team's film critic.
Newspaper reporters will ask him, what did you think of this?
And then he'll give his review and shit.
There was a couple of trade rumors that came up, but he was always deemed too popular to get rid of.
They were always like, we can't get rid of him.
The fans are going to be mad if we get rid of him.
So 1957, White Sox, 90-64-1.
Good for second place.
Oh, they're moving up.
Moving up here.
This year, he said he felt better about hitting because he got a shipment of his own bats in.
He got his own signature bat they made for him with his signature on it and all that. And he's got a new stance at the plate here. So he says he's doing really well. He gives his his coach Johnny Cooney says he said helped him out. He said I had ordered my own bats at the beginning of the season, but they didn't come. And I'd been using teammate Fred Hatfield's bats. And he said they finally came in a couple days before the New York Yankees series
and I've been doing great ever since.
I've had hot streaks before, but I've never hit
long balls like that.
He had five home runs.
He had four home runs in five games
since he got his new bats, so
not bad. He also says, Cooney's changed
my stance and that's helped out a lot too.
And yeah,
he says he's got me hitting flat-footed like
this see he said no stride it keeps me from turning my head he's just got me doing all the
things i knew i should do but but i didn't concentrate he said i wish i would have learned
this a long time ago it says in some of the records i'm 35 but i'll be 37 in july i never
played ball till i was 27 on the count of all that time I'd done.
On the count of that rape and stuff.
A little rape charge in the army there.
Yeah, in baseball,
I don't know if the team did it to make
him not seem like they didn't have a 30-year-old
rookie back in the day, but the
league just said he was born in 23 and not
21. Wow. But then
he, everywhere he went, they would
talk to him. He'd go, I was born in 21, by the way.
I'm not, I'm two years older.
Yeah, absolutely.
So 57, 125 games, 256.
He seems to hit around in the mid-250s.
That's about where he goes.
Not too bad, though.
What does he have?
14 homers, 52 ribbies, 18 steals.
Not too shabby.
Yeah.
1958, 82, 72, and one. Good for second place again. God damn it. 52 ribbies 18 steals not too shabby yeah 1958 82
72 and 1
good for second place
again
god damn it
god damn it
this year he hits
what is this
225 this year
not good at all
he only plays 116 games
this is when he had
a bunch of injuries
this year
and a muscle pull
he had a broken hand
he had a whole bunch
of weird problems
9 homers
35 ribbies
21 steals he steals a lot of bases this guy that whole bunch of weird problems. Nine homers, 35 ribbies, 21 steals.
He steals a lot of bases, this guy. That's kind
of what his whole game is. He's real good at stealing
shit. He's good at stealing
shit like women's
virtue. We both said
that at the same time. That's amazing.
1959
White Sox. They finish
94-60-2. good for first in the american league
world series which means you go right to the world series against the now los angeles dodgers
is that right absolutely man uh there we go um he is a uh this year he's kind of a platoon starter
he's kind of coming in and out, pinch hitting, defensive replacement, runs for people, that sort of thing.
He has a lot of energy, though, and he's all cheerleader in the dugout.
Yeah.
He's good to have around.
He was, he stays in good shape.
So, you know, they say that he's always ready.
His coach said, I love that he's always the first man in uniform before every game so they uh one night here in cleveland on the 22nd
this is the they have the opportunity to clinch the pennant this night this means to go to the
world series and um i guess wow uh jim perry is that um no that's Gaylord Perry, never mind. Jim Perry starting for Cleveland, and Rivera's in the lineup.
The Sox take a 2-0 early lead.
Indians get a run back in the bottom of the fifth.
Mudcat Grant relieves Perry.
What?
Hell yeah, Mudcat Grant.
Fucking awesome.
Relieved Perry in the top of the sixth and surrendered a one-out home run to Al Smith.
And then Rivera is the next batter.
He hits a home run to right center.
And that lead will hold up.
And it was the pennant-clinching home run, basically, this home run.
And he said it was his greatest moment ever in sports or baseball or anything.
It was the greatest feeling ever.
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, you send your team to the World Series. That was the greatest feeling ever. Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah, you send your team to the World Series.
It's a pretty big deal.
Yeah, they were just ecstatic over it.
He played in 80 games that year, so pretty much half the games they had him in.
Only hit 220, four homers, 19 ribbies, five steals.
It doesn't play that much.
Is there another Mudcat that played baseball?
There probably is, huh?
I'm sure there was.
There's got to be more.
Well, we have Catfish Hunter, and there's other cats and fishes and i saw a mud cat play in an old-timers game here and oh yeah he looked
so old it may have been the same dude this guy would be like a hundred now yeah it was in it
would have been early 2000 he'd still be 100 it might have been 70 that's possible yeah so the 1959 world series yeah okay here um he's on the bench and uh you
know just kind of sitting around yeah during this one game here i think it's game two the manager
says to him you're going in the game they move the center fielder uh from or they move the right
fielder to left field and replace the rookie that was in left field with Rivera.
Yeah, who hasn't done shit at the plate in the series, though.
But right after the switch was made,
there's a hit, a long shot that everybody said off the bat
was going to be a triple.
Like, oh, there goes a triple over the head of the guy here.
And Rivera said, I knew about Neal's power to right center so I was already playing him a little deep and he said that he didn't even have time to flip his sunglasses on he said at first I
didn't think I was going to get to it but I finally caught up with it a couple feet from the wall
it was a good catch but Smith would have probably made it to the guy who he replaced he said. He said, it may not be my greatest catch I ever made,
but probably the one that most people remember.
You know the Willie Mays running away basket catch?
It's that exact catch he made.
Really?
That exact catch.
Over the shoulder.
Over the shoulder, caught like this, and then turned around.
It's that exact.
And it saved the game.
Like a wide receiver going for a touchdown.
Yeah, exactly. Over the head running. Unbelievable. It saved the game. Like a wide receiver going for a touchdown. Yeah, exactly.
Over the head running.
Unbelievable.
It saved the game for him.
It was a huge game-saving catch.
They ended up winning that game.
It was super heroic.
And he said, I just ran for the fence and there the ball was.
I didn't bother snapping down my sunglasses because they don't help out here anyway.
Wow.
So, yeah, this makes this amazing catch.
It's incredible, and everybody loves him.
He's known as a White Sox hero.
And in the series, though, he has no hits.
Not a hit.
11 at-bats and no hits.
But one giant catch.
One giant catch and three walks is what he has.
So, not bad.
The catch is huge, but the dodgers overcome them and win four
to two they win the series this is sandy kofax john drysdale dukes night there's a lot of you're
not there's a lot of yeah they were they were a really nasty team at that point so there he is um
he's still known for that by the way people still know like white socks fans know that catch
they know the catch in the in the 59 world series because they didn't go to the world series very often so yeah when they did it was memorable um
1960 jfk is running for president okay and may have already won the presidency this year i'm
not sure so either way he's at a game in washington jfk yeah and here is uh rivera rivera gets a gets a fucking
autograph from him on a baseball what now presidents aren't used to signing baseball
politicians are used to signing flat things not to hold a baseball and sign it right as you get
a specific muscle that you have to use you don't touch your hand to it because it's curved it's
hard to do you have to know what you don't touch your hand to it because it's curved. It's hard to do.
You have to know what you're doing.
Otherwise, it comes out all sloppy and shitty.
So he goes, yeah, sure.
There you go.
There's your ball then.
Yeah.
Jim looks at it and he goes, quote, what kind of garbage college is that Harvard where they don't even teach you how to write?
What kind of garbage writing is this?
He says.
What kind of garbage writing is this?
You're one of the richest
families in america and you can't write what kind of garbage college is that harvard where they don't
even teach you how to write but that's the kind of guy he was no matter what was on the ball he
would have said that because he wanted to show he'd break the president's balls or the nominees
balls or whoever the fuck he was at the time so 1960 only 48 games uh and these are all
like a lot of pinch running and stuff he only has 17 at bats oh that year hits 294 though which is
fine but he's not hitting hardly at all 1961 season he fractures his thumb in his first pinch
running assignment of the year while sliding in head first in the third, which is the problem, he gets hurt.
And as soon as he gets off the disabled list in June, the White Sox release him, June 10th, 1961.
That same day, though, he signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Athletics.
They've moved there by now.
They suck that year.
They're 61-101.
Oh, God. Jesus. Not good good they just moved to the 162 game
season um he plays the whole year there 64 games has 141 at bats he hits 241 what is it two homers
10 ribby six deals not the best uh at the end of the season in october they uh he is released by
the kansas city athletics and that's going to be it for Major League Baseball for him.
He played in 1,171 games, though, which, I mean,
for a guy who didn't play until he was 30, that's not bad.
That's pretty amazing.
256, he has 83 homers, 422 rubies, 160 steals.
Not terrible.
Mainly, though, what is that?
56 triples, which is a lot.
So not bad.
1963, he ends up in Seattle, as we'll talk about.
He's going to coach a little bit.
Then he's going to go to Mexico.
He's going to be like a coach player down there.
He's going to be like Jake Taylor in Major League.
I picture him waking up with a sombrero over his face.
Bad knees.
Yeah, going, is that you,lbert you know could have done this shit at least you could say it was the yankees
so he um he's really after a couple years with seattle he goes back to seattle with the rain
ears of the pcl there and at the age of 42 he's finally released on june 12 1963 yeah he's finally released on June 12th, 1963.
He's 42.
He said, quote, I knew this moment would come, but it's hard to take.
I'm not bitter.
Everything I have in this world, I owe to baseball.
He said he wants to manage a team in the Puerto Rican Winter League where he's played and managed before.
And he says, I hope to stay in baseball somewhere, somehow.
So his all-time team, by the way, what's his best team of all time, they say, when he retires here?
Who's your favorite of all time?
He said his all-time team is Ted Williams in left field, Joe DiMaggio in center field, Tommy Heinrich in right field,
Eddie Robinson at first base, Joe Gordon at second base, Phil Rizzuto at shortstop, Red Rolfe at at third base yogi barra catcher and whitey ford
and ally reynolds are pitchers basically that's like they're mostly yankees those are like
he just named mostly yankees i like the yankees you guys i watched them beat the shit out of us
for the entire decade of the 50s them i'll just take them now in the minors and mexican leagues
here he goes he plays for uh seattle he plays for
indianapolis around that time after 63 when seattle releases him he goes down he to mexico city to go
for the mexico city tigers where he plays and manages like you know both 34 games down there
then yelisco he goes down there. 87 games in 64.
He's done by 64, though.
After 64, he's done.
He never has any kids,
by the way.
Huh.
No kids.
Not a one.
Yeah, not one.
I don't know if it's some weird
orphan experiment they did to him,
killed all his sperm or what,
but he's got no kids.
Never has any kids.
No eugenics involved?
It's so strange, right? any kids involved it's just not so
strange right weird how did this guy not slip one past the goalie honestly he's fucking everybody
throwing it everywhere voluntarily or not they don't even they don't even have to want it so he
moves to crooked lake indiana is where he goes here and he uh keeps in shape he plays racquetball
and he golfs he wins a handball thing for seniors and all this shit when he he in shape. He plays racquetball and he golfs. He wins a handball thing for seniors
and all this shit.
In Crooked Lake, Indiana,
it's by Angola, Indiana,
where his wife is from.
He buys a bar there.
No, that's Louisiana, Angola.
Different Angolas.
Yeah, Angola, Louisiana is the prison.
He buys a place named-
Terre Haute, Indiana.
That's right.
There you go.
He buys the captain's cabin in
1965 this is a it's a bar it's a bar restaurant club on a on a lake like from his window you can
see the lake and all the boats are lined up it's like one of those places so it's seasonal it's
only open in the summer got it one of those where it's got 360 view of water god yeah okay that's exactly right
um and he also calls it jungle jim's saloon he has big uh neons of jungle jim's saloon
and uh he's a becomes a beloved local in indiana here um here's people here's a uh uh
wenzel this lady named wenzel she says says if he became one of those guys whom you either liked or you didn't,
and he was the same way with people.
If he didn't care for you, you found out quickly.
This old lady said, quote, if he didn't like you, he would tell you to go straight to hell.
An 88-year-old woman said that, which I think is hilarious.
And they like guys like that.
Yeah, that's hilarious, just like an old lady.
So they said he would dance all the time. He loved loved to dance he would do all sorts of charity shits had a lot of friend
friendships um the wenzels here uh gene wenzel had been let go from his position with the angola
metal spinners before uh for performing the successful all metal spinners with Ron O'Byrne. This is a band, by the way.
Oh, OK.
He said they said times were tough, but Rivera always made sure that these people had food
on their table.
He supported them in their tough times.
This guy, this lady says, quote, My God, that guy.
When my husband was between different jobs, we were trying to save money and he fed us.
I hope he's in heaven because he deserves it.
He was a great guy.
There'll never be another one like him.
Lady, do you know what he was accused of twice?
And counting.
Yeah.
Then another patron said people enjoyed going to the bar and visiting with Jim.
He was one man with a heart of gold.
Oh, heart of gold here.
Also inside in this Cabin's Club,
they had the Screwball Club in there.
And that was down a flight of stairs in the basement.
And they said it was like walking into a sports kind of a bar,
all sorts of memorabilia from the White Sox,
big photos of him playing baseball and everything.
And one person said,
we'd go every Friday night and have baskets in the bar room along
with many others.
Regular patrons were, they name a bunch of people, it doesn't matter, and said he loved
them all dearly.
They said the Screwball Club was named the Screwball Club because it was the home of
the Screwballs of America.
What is that?
I have no fucking idea.
What is that? I have no fucking idea.
But they said, this lady said,
That's wild.
That's crazy.
This was said like over 20 years ago.
Long before Twitter.
Rivera said, was said like over 20 years ago long before twitter rivera said jungle jim said quote i
can't complain anytime you get up in the morning and you go to bed at night you should be happy
with your life okay one employee here elsie brown served as a hostess for him for 20 years
and uh said she ended up once he got rid of it the she worked for the new owner she worked there
for like 40 years which is crazy this woman said he kept the same employees on for a long time he was good to work
for he had no family of his own so he treated treated the help more or less like family
that makes sense i guess um yeah yeah yeah so anyway they um this was like kind of the whole
like for the locals it was a real neighborhood spot and they said they'd kind of the whole like for the locals. It was a real neighborhood spot.
And they said they'd be at the bar.
Once the bar would die down, then Jim would play cards with people and all that.
And he couldn't wait.
Here's one lady who said, I could not wait until I was able to sit with with them at that bar for my first legal drink.
It was where I realized that teachers were real people too, and quite fun.
Every Christmas Eve when I was in my teens,
we would go there for Christmas Eve
prior to the Selman family Christmas Eve party.
I can remember Jim making me my first golden pheasant,
the drink.
And I will not say if I was actually legal at the time or not,
but in Jim's eyes I was, so there's that.
Yikes.
That sounds, that's a terrible sentence.
That's horrifying.
Give me five minutes, by the way.
1976, the White Sox unveiled their new uniforms.
Did you ever see those, the shorts?
The ones with the shorts?
No.
Look it up.
People have posted.
In the 70s, the White Sox had uniforms with shorts.
They chose shorts.
Shorts, high socks.
It was fucking ridiculous.
They looked like assholes.
Their shirts had collars on them, Jimmy.
What? They looked like Hooger's waitresses? You don't need a collar. They were like
turn-of-the-century 1900s
outfits. They looked like
a rec league softball team
would have these outfits. That's what they looked like.
They're ridiculous. They're super famous
for it. Guys standing there pitching with their knees showing.
It's so stupid.
You're going to slide in that shit?
Yeah, that's what they did.
It's nuts.
Bill Veck, the owner here, he brought in Jungle Jim to be the model, by the way.
So there's all sorts of pictures of him pulling him up like it's a skirt on his leg and all
that kind of shit.
So look those up.
White Sox shorts uniforms are fucking crazy.
Actually, I'll post the thing of him holding his leg up.
So 1979, he gets involved in a new baseball league.
It is a slow-pitch softball league.
That's not a baseball league.
That's just beer league.
He said, it's a lot of fun.
It gives everybody a chance.
I think it's a family game.
The only sport where any kid can play, whether he's skinny, short, fat, or big, they can play softball.
He says he's turned down coaching offers in baseball because he didn't like the system.
But when contacted by Johnny Walker, the president of Fort Wayne's new entry in the American Professional Slow pitch softball league. This was a professional league. He said, it's really a coincidence because he said, Walker
called me and asked me what I thought about pro softball in Fort Wayne. And I told him that it
would be successful. That is not true. Um, so he decided to manage this team in Fort Wayne. Um,
they were the Fort Wayne, some shit. And then they changed to the Fort Wayne Huggy Bears, which were little lollipops in the shapes of bears.
What?
That's a Huggy Bear?
That's a Huggy Bear, yeah.
And he said at first the players took some teasing, as you might imagine.
But there's only so many jokes you can make about anything.
So it's died out about being the Huggy Bears.
That was my dog's name.
And it was anything but.
Huggy Bear?
Because you couldn't touch him.
Oh, God.
Don't touch him.
That's Huggy Bear, who will bite you.
Oh, my God.
That's so funny.
Joe Pepitone played in this league, by the way,
who was a major leaguer for years with the Yankees.
Years and years and years.
So, yeah, Huggy Bear Candies is their range.
And he said, it may be difficult for a group of grown men to call themselves the Huggy Bears, but I'll tell you one thing.
The little kids love us.
We're the only team anywhere that passes out free suckers at our games.
1982, Jimmy.
March of 1982.
He's arrested.
Uh-huh. At 59 years old jesus on charges of child molestation and
contributing to the delinquency of a minor oh my god he made me my first drink wouldn't exactly
say i was legal but that's cool his eyes i was in his eyes i was. His eyes aren't the law. Where do you draw the line?
Well, we have a very clear line drawn here.
There it is, yeah.
In the charges filed against him, the girl is between the ages of 12 and 16 years old.
Jesus Christ.
He's 59.
Yeah.
In reality, she is 14, we find out.
Oh, my God.
14.
14. 14.
14.
59.
14.
No.
So what the fuck are you doing exactly?
Does he have a successful comedy special or anything?
Nothing.
Not even nothing.
Awful.
He's got nothing. Any kind of goddamn thing. Nothing. Awful. God who gots. He's got nothing. Robes.
Any kind of goddamn thing.
Nothing.
So, I mean, he gets arrested for that.
The whole town is shocked.
I'm sure.
Because he's been Mr. Fucking Town, every guy, for so long.
Yeah, he gets arrested, and he's like, oh, man, I got to at least change the name of my fucking business now.
This isn't going to go well.
I can't be that anymore.
I got to change it.
You know what?
I'm changing it.
I'm redoing the whole place.
And he calls in the only man who can possibly renovate the entire captain's club.
And it's Dexter Manley, interior designer from New York City.
And he says.
How is it you've come to arrive here?
Holy fucking shit, bro.
You're like, you are the white trashiest of the white trash.
Like, seriously.
Like, you're like, you're orphanage trash, number one, which isn't your fault.
It's not your fault.
I mean, they knew.
I feel like they knew.
Like, you know what I mean? Like, let's not place this one.
He's a little, you know like you know what i mean like let's not place this one he's a little you know you know what i mean so he's we'll keep him here you know not on a farm
he'll probably rape a cow we can't have him out there so you were you got out of world war ii
hitler didn't kill you like you're just raping people and attempting where do you draw the line
sir here you go i'm gonna this is a marker i'm
drawing a line right here on the ground it's that's the line sir you you've crossed the white
trash line a long time ago so i'm sorry i'm not decorating this place vince didn't even want to
talk to you he was disgusted that's that's how and you're a showman, but white trash. Sorry, you're like an El Camino engine hanging from a tree in the front yard.
Goodbye.
Poof.
And a poof of feathers and boas and everything else.
He's gone.
Jim's very confused.
He turns around and he goes, some fruit was over here.
I don't know who he was.
Thank God he didn't go to World War II with the sexual perversion.
He would have unleashed that guy on a village that's lawless?
Holy shit.
So a month later, or actually two months later, Jesus Christ, the charges are dropped against him.
What?
Okay.
Let me read to you why the charges are dropped, because this wouldn't be dropped now.
Okay?
He submitted to a lie detector
oh god because that's his jam yeah i got him out of one last time not to say he didn't have
contact with this girl they didn't find that he didn't have sex with this young girl
they found out that from the lie detector test that it indicated quote indicated rivera had reason to
believe the girl was older than 14 oh my god that doesn't matter you're 59 the fact is she's not
who cares what he believed are you fucking fucking nuts? So there you go.
So he got off on that.
Didn't go.
But he definitely had sex with a 14 year old.
Jesus.
That's interesting.
Wow.
So he's they pretend everyone's like that.
I guess that was a mistake.
Like it never happened.
Goes back to his business.
Everything's fine.
1985.
He's at his business in the bar and they do a TV interview for a tv special called once a star and um he says he likes a small town he says i think you get a lot of privacy out here which
worries me he'll stay out of my gross business he said people don't butt in on you like they do in
a big city uh he said tell you that you shouldn't be doing that bad stuff yeah they they'll they
sweep it under the rug here.
He says, the only thing I don't like about a small town,
and which they're all the same,
is everyone knows what time you get up and what time you go to bed,
and who you're banging and what kids you got in your room.
But other than that, I'd rather be here.
I think the living is cleaner, the air is cleaner, it's not noisy,
everybody knows everybody.
So if you go somewhere and you want to have a good time, you leave you don't stay here you go someone else so you go somewhere else so i like
it better so uh anyway they said to him in this thing you don't have any sons do you because they
were asking about basketball or baseball lineage you don't have any sons do you and without missing
a beat he goes not legally so that's the not that I know of in this way.
And you wouldn't want to be his son at this point.
I mean, I don't even feel bad for him, but I do feel bad for a lot of other people, including Jim Rivera, a personal trainer at the New York Sports Club.
That's not good.
Jim Rivera, senior assistant director at Boston University.
Oh, geez, that's not good. Jim Rivera, senior front-end developer
at some skincare place in the Bronx, New York,
which is where he moved to in the Bronx
is where he's from.
And then Jim Rivera,
information technology professional
in Lakeland, Florida.
And Jim Rivera, branch manager
at the Providence Savings Bank
in Dublin, California.
Oh, what the hell?
Jim Rivera, military police in the New York.
Oh, no!
With the U.S. Army in Bronx, New York.
So it's all him.
Couldn't be any better.
1990, he sells the captain's cabin to a guy named Chuck Brunson,
which sounds like Charles Brunson is trying to hide.
Going by Chuck Bronson now.
And he kept in contact with everybody.
They said that I was a patron before we brought it out.
This is the new owners, bought them out.
I thought I was a personal friend because he called me Hoss.
Took me a while to know that he calls all the guys Hoss
because he couldn't remember their names.
That hurts.
I thought we had something, man.
That's amazing.
When we bought him out, he wanted to leave his memorabilia, but we wanted him to have it.
We felt bad.
The bar still holds a small memorial to Rivera, an encased autographed baseball sitting next to his rookie card.
He said, we still received Christmas cards from him and Nancy,
and Jim was the one who addressed and signed them.
He had a very rough life but would give you the shirt off his back to help you.
He said, wish my husband Dick was here, as I'm sure he'd have a lot more to tell you.
After that, 2000, he sells the place, moves down to Port Charlotte, Florida, retires.
2002, he doesn't.
On the bay side.
2002.
Is it over there?
Yeah, I guess it is.
That's where that hurricane hit.
That's right.
That's right.
2002, he does an interview with the Sun-Times down there,
and he says, thank God I was able to play baseball.
Yeah, without it, you'd still be in military prison probably.
Or murdered.
Or murdered. He said, without it, I wouldn be in military prison probably or murdered or murdered
he said without it i wouldn't have been anything i wouldn't have even met my wife nancy i first
saw her in my restaurant and said there she is that's the one for me i had to chase her for a
year but it was worth it she's the greatest his version of chasing i don't want to know what that
is i don't know if he had to endure his dick is is out, though. That's all I know for most of the time.
2005, the White Sox brought out the members of the 1959 World Series team before Game 1 of the World Series.
It was the first time they'd been back since then.
And so he was on the field for that, actually, in 2005.
November the 13th, 2017, he dies at age 96.
He made it to 96 years old.
96.
This can't keep his dick in his pants fucking guy kid, 96 years old.
Avis Wenzel, the lady who knew him, said, quote, he was one man with a heart of gold.
That's him.
Can't get enough of Jungle Jim?
There's a couple ladies out there who've had plenty of him, but if you can't get enough of jungle jim there's there's a couple ladies out there who've had
plenty of them but if you can't get enough there is on ebay you can buy one of his baseball cards
1957 tops number 107 uh jim rivera baseball card here it's only 11.74 too yeah it's not in the
best shape it's not perfect but just to have it's pretty fucking cool a lot of them no i might order that it's only a dollar shipping and handling too that's kind of cool and then this
is cool as shit jim rivera uh game used 1959 chicago uh bat game used baseball bat from back
then it's his uh you know his louisville slugger with his name scripted on there i think it's real
it looks old as fuck i mean it could be yeah it
could definitely be real i don't know if it's game used or what it's not autographed so either way
795 bucks for that bad boy though worth it if it's real if it's worth yeah if it's got like
some kind of whatever real than a an accused child molester may have touched that that may
have touched that in the world series who knows knows? Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Either way, those were his signature bats
that he was talking about that he finally got
and he could get a little more pop with.
But either way, that, everybody,
is Jungle Jim Rivera.
Wow.
And really fucking crazy story.
He's one of those.
That's a fascinating story.
It is.
It possibly, very well possibly,
may have never happened. And it did. That's incredible. Yeah, very well possibly, may have never happened.
And it did.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
That's great.
Could have never happened.
Yeah.
Multiple things could have never happened.
We don't know if he's a rapist or not, but we do know he has three different rape charges
over a 40-year period, which is a pretty good span for... It's just a lot, man.
That tells you that... Oh my God, James, he was in Mexico where that stuff is not
tracked very well.
That's what I mean.
And the fact,
well, not back then
in the 60s especially,
but for him,
for a 59-year-old man
to have sex with a girl
who's definitely 14,
even if she said,
I'm 18,
still,
I gotta wonder about his,
whatever,
his moral setup
or whatever the fuck because that's gross but either way
that's jungle jim rivera i hope you enjoyed that if you did i don't know give a review if you want
doesn't really fucking matter but you can if you feel like it shut up and give me murder.com that
matters head there and definitely get tickets for the virtual live show october the 27th it's a
small town murder halloween spectacular we'll tell the story just like a real live show October the 27th. It's a small town murder Halloween spectacular.
We'll tell the story just like a real live show.
We have the pictures
and everything like that
except you are in your living room
rather than in a theater.
We're in our studio.
You're in the living room.
We'll all just pretend
it's a good time
and the episodes are so much fun.
They really are.
You get to kind of feel
what a live show is like.
It's so much fun.
It'll be available
from October 27th
and a week afterwards.
You can watch it anytime you want in there.
Watch it 10 times. You can do anything you want with it
in there, but do that. That is
shutupandgivememurder.com or
moment.co slash
smalltownmurder to get your tickets for that
and get your merchandise, get your tickets
for everything. Get whatever the hell you want
there. Follow us on social media at
Crime and Sports on Twitter and Facebook
at Small Town Murder on Instagram.
Patreon, Patreon,
Patreon. Oh boy.
Patreon.com slash
Crime and Sports is where you get all the
bonus stuff. Anybody $5
or above a cup of coffee.
Right. A cup of coffee
a month will get you
the whole back catalog of of bonus episodes like 150
cheaper than starbucks it's cheaper than starbucks really good stuff and it'll get you new episodes
every other week one new crime and sports one new small town murder bonus and you'll get access to
all of them this week for crime and sports we are going to go back to one of our favorites and one
of the most one of the favorites of everybody, really, who we bullshit.
And we get asked all the time, when are the next personal ads there this time?
We're going personal ads.
These are people's desperate attempts for love in the newspaper in like the 80s and 90s.
And it is so funny.
And then for small town murder, another back by popular demand here.
We are going to talk about small town festivals and county fairs and talk about the weird
shit that goes on there testicle festivals and baby throwing and all sorts of craziness
we'll talk about it all that's patreon.com slash crime and sports so get on that and what you also
get for that is a shout out because man we can't appreciate you more for doing that thank you for
hanging with us and uh the bonus content is just our way of saying thank you for doing that.
That said, we'd like to say thank you again right now.
Jimmy, help us say thank you by hitting me with the names of the most wonderful fucking people who would never have three rape charges over four decades.
Hit me with them now.
This week's executive producers are Christina Punt or Punt.
I imagine it's Punt.
And JB and Yeti Shetty in Canada.
Thank you guys so much for everything you do for us.
It's truly appreciated.
Other producers this week are Rear Admiral Steinschweiker, Daughters of the American Dream,
Corporal Carl Kirshner, Jerry and Jean Lungardt, I believe, in Minnesota,
Shep Proudfoot, Happy Hour Checking In in Midland, Texas,
Peyton Meadows gate oh see
gaitano de leonardis i almost said
jessica finch my best friend tiffany gonzalez law firm c to uh seymour shit stain and associates
uh meister oh it's mr fred blassie and uh in a breakfast mess. What is it? Classy Freddy?
Classy Freddy.
From what?
What is that?
Classy Freddy Blassie's a wrestling manager.
Oh, he's in a breakfast mess.
The Hollywood fashion plate.
Whatever that is.
Oh, what?
A breakfast mess?
A breakfast mess?
Yeah, I don't know.
Is that a military thing?
I don't.
Gary Friedman is the most fun person ever.
I like it.
I'll try to figure it out tonight.
He gives me so many references that I have no fucking idea what they are.
Karen Vanden Hendy, I think. She's
given it to us both ways, James, I believe so.
Oh, well, thank you. That sounded filthy after this episode.
Frank the South African Birdwasher, Gaza's limo driver who hated Ricky, Judge Chamberlain
Holler, Janice Hill, Megan and James Kokich, Ralph Cramden, obviously. Reverend Myron Weinberg.
Adam looking for the pipe.
Wyatt.
Hey.
Kyle Matthews.
Michelle Reier.
Leanne with no last name.
Louisa Todd.
Leah Miller.
Jessica with no last name.
Victoria Moss.
Cammy with no last name.
Dan Glissick.
Glissack.
Alexander with no last name.
Brittany Page.
Rachel Krempa.
No.
Han Cot. Cote, maybe. Katie Orth, Queen of Pop, Tara Cobb, Kathleen Isbell, Paige Cameron, Alison with no last name, Amber Laguio, Chris Zobel, Quinn Percenton. Phillip Milligan. Alicia with no last name.
Tabby Schmidt.
Chris with no last name.
Paula De Man.
Kara Kropp.
Janae Baggett.
Oh, boy.
Bagot.
Baggett.
I don't want to.
Bag it up.
Let's go.
You know what I mean.
Ellen Mollet.
Bea with no last name.
Mollie?
I don't know.
Matt Lewis.
Sherry Riddle.
Fallon Caldwell.
Jay with no last name.
Stroke.
Oh, boy.
What does this say?
Stroke and Moy-
Okay.
It's probably gross.
Stroke I Moynan.
Stroke of Moynan.
I don't-
It's probably gross.
I don't know.
Stroke him if you got him, everybody.
There it is.
Connie Colas, Colias, Colias.
John Nosebush.
That can't be right.
That's awesome.
Lena Osborne, Anna Signor, Tyvon Sands.
Tyvon?
Tyvon?
Oh, it's probably Tyvon Sands.
Cicely Gouge, I think.
Michael Watts, Cam Ferguson, John Shea, Kathy Wilkerson, Charisse Mutchler, Thomas Kelvey,
Reese Mutchler, Thomas Kelvey, Ricardo Ortiz, Jennifer Guthrie, Enzo Puccio, Annie Jankowski,
Taylor Nolan, Cheyenne Martin, Alejandro Morales, Mary Sullivan, Whiskey Char, Corrale, Amy Angelo, Abby Secret, Sauce Puya, I don't know. Paper Cut Serial Killer. Brett Carpenter. Jalen Robinson.
Eleanor with no last name. Tracy Hill. Jennifer Murphy. Chelsea with no last name.
Hannah Heather. Coverstone. Audrey Stanley. Danny Sofa. Katie Pridgen. John with no last name.
Jonathan Benison. Thomas Lapira. David Hadley, Serena Witsky, Pat Mawini.
That's not real.
That's fake as fuck.
I know what Mawini means, you son of a bitch.
Ryan McCluskey, Amy Simpson, Chris Gagazonian. Emily Beardsley. Susan Rosenberg.
Juana with no last name.
Olivia with no last name.
Melissa Howell.
Raven.
Oh, yeah.
What?
Yeah, I'm sure that's it.
That's right.
Joseph Smith.
Alicia Rodriguez.
Lauren Ray.
Aaron Welch.
Pamelo Visival.
Visilelios.
Visilisle. Aaron Welch, Pamelo Visceval, Vissalelios, Vissalissa, Vissalissal, sorry, Pam.
Mrs. Bristle, what the fuck did you say?
Angie Doyle, Michelle Burkett, Jesse Werner, Vash Valentine.
Wow, that's a cool. All right, Megan Lindacre.
I'm admiring it.
It's beautiful.
Nikki with no last name.
Kayla Morgan.
Jameson Weld.
Brandon Baccarin.
Brandon with no last name.
Edna Crabapple, 87.
Samantha with no last name.
Stephanie Castor.
Allie Jago.
Tara Beaudry, I think.
Fucking Dave.
What?
Jeff Ace.
Stefan Moore.
Nick Hurlbutt, Jesus. Riley
with no last name. James Knight,
Brian Holleran, Virginia Liu,
Christina McCormick, Gretchen with no last
name. Cooper Craig, Pat with no last name.
Sidney Alexander, Benny Lapps,
Michael Klein, Kim Perry, Brianna
Boyer, Jenna Pletz,
Lindsay Whelan, Stephanie Earl,
Ashley Witt, Cara Vanden
Dandy? Oh, that's, see Witt, Cara Vanden Dandy.
Oh, that's, see, she's giving it to us both ways.
I think that's the same person.
Jake Wright, Stephen Bach, Nicole Mary, Rachel Shiev, Bethany, Karen, Michelle,
Rachel, ah, Shiev.
Dan Wolf, Todd Wigman, Amy Kay, Tyler Sanders, Kelly Clark, Shane Smith, Melissa T, Suplex Sunny, Lee Cummings.
I wonder if that's the same lady we know.
Maybe not.
It's possible.
Joni Woodling, Lily Truesdale, Taylor Caracciolo, Dr. Tingren, Kylie Novak, Kathy Spellman, Claudia Rodriguez, Layla Radich, Sig Dippy Daddy WFML.
My fuck.
Ryan Van Fleet, Eric Mueller, Brooke Burmeister, Sierra Featherston.
Yep.
Steven Maynard, Brittany Grimes, Ashley Falls, Danny Carter, Joshua Morlock, CJD, Debbie Smith, Tomos Roberts,
Stephen Michael Sanchez, Paul Miller, Jen Silvius, Lawrence Hurd, Laura Spaeth, KTB, Jesse Gordon, fucking it's falling apart, Lindsay Harris. Tyler Race. Wheels are coming off it.
Bree Thole.
Ro the Cat.
Meow, meow.
Sarah Sulins.
Paige Luber.
Mondi can't get.
Oh, Mondi, they can't get tickets to Austin.
I'm really sorry. There are a lot of people that really want to get to that Austin show.
We have, by the way, Austin, I think we have a few artist tickets that are like ours that
they put aside for us, like a couple dozen maybe. We will release those at some point. Very soon, I think we have a few artist tickets that are like ours that they put aside for us, like a couple dozen maybe.
We will release those at some point.
Very soon, I imagine.
So keep checking.
Follow us on social media.
Follow the show on social media.
We're available.
Nick.
With no last name.
Yeah.
Aaron Haggard, Andrea Chapman, Jeremy Holman, Emily Smith, Shea Anderson, Gina Ribeiro.
Yep, I think so.
Alina Moore, I think.
Corey Geisbrecht, Matthew Bebbington, Greg Carr, Liz Berliner, Rhonda Green, Thomas Andy, Stephanie Davis. Hey!
Christy Arias, Estella Lumareus.
I don't know.
Adam Vela, Piku.
What?
Justin Golightly, Tori Johnston, Johnston, sorry, Tori.
Suzanne Ann Walker, Shanna Neal, Heidi Schilling, Rachel Brandy, Brandly, Brandilly?
I don't know.
Danny Breider, Kyle with no last name.
Shadaya, Shadaya Elashker.
Kelsey Johnson, Dana with no last name.
Taya Berry, Alex Blackstone. John Kelly.
Janet Borth.
Rebecca Knapp.
Madison Graham.
Brittany Shippey.
Nope, that's Brett.
Brett Shippey.
A different person.
Haley Brown.
Nicole Doss.
Caitlin Felix.
Alexis Guillen.
Guillen.
Alyssa Powell.
Dustin Johnson.
Dana Palmer.
Tracy Curran.
Justin with no last name. Melanie Flight. Sherryran, Justin with no last name, Melanie Flight,
Sherry Leist, Sarah with no last name, Jessica Mallory, Rosie is my cat.
All right.
Good for you.
Courtney.
Good for you, Rosie.
Court Fleischer, Emily Turchy, Rebecca Jones, Mark Latuska, Wendy Pittman, Elizabeth Kreska,
Feegan?
Feenog?
Feenig?
Johnson. You know who you are.
Holly Bonchella, Erica Whiting, Phil May, Amanda Hicks, Melissa Wolf,
Alyssa Bates, Victoria Cannon, Steph with no last name, Tamara Wolf,
Drake Fisher, Greg Little, Remy with no last name, Caitlin Kalasik,
BMP, Osaka, Luka Janakado. caitlin calicala sick uh bmp ola osaka lujaconeca osaka luka genekido you got that i'm never gonna get that quinn carson jill with no last name georgie lynn aaron lurskin jenna klein victoria
curry mia nyman donna axley davis coleosos uh pam lessard celeste with no last name, Lauren Har,
Kenneth,
oh,
what is this?
Clyburn,
Brendan with no last name,
Melissa with no last name,
Morgan Burke,
Isaac Messmer,
David Counter,
mine,
Joseph Bailey,
and all of our patrons.
You guys are phenomenal.
Thank you.
Thank you so much,
everybody,
for all that you do for us. And we hope we're turning around and doing it to you just as hard
god damn it
thank you
I don't fucking care
thank you so much
there you go
thank you
if you want to follow us
on social media
very easy to do so
just look up
Crime and Sports Podcast
hosts or
go to our
shutupandgivememurder.com
there's links there
there's links to everything
god damn it
holy shit
thank you for joining us
for Old Timey Day it's been so much fun hopefully we shit thank you for joining us for old timey
day it's been so much fun hopefully we'll get to find maybe one more old timey story before this
is all over with at least regular length episodes we'll find them for patreon either way thank you
so much live from the crime and sports studios we will see you next week Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
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