can mix it -- okay so do the salt and pepper all over, lather that baby up, right, on the outside, in the cavity. you could also chop up -- but not with the thyme, just the salt and pepper. mix that up also with some thyme, you could do a little rosemary if you want, under the skin, with some butter. before you're going to cook it. >> uh-huh. >> so that butter will just melt in there and then get a nice big bottle of cheap white wine to baste with butter. >> yes, hi. >> happy thanksgiving, and remember to give thanks to the farm workers who work tirelessly every day to get that food to our tables. that is tonight's last word. i'll see you on the sunday show starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern right here on msnbc. good morning, and welcome to a special holiday edition of "morning joe" on this thanksgiving morning.

we hope you and your family are having a wonderful day. now, over the next two hours, we're going to revisit some of our best conversations from the past year. and up first, one of the biggest political books of the year, "the divider," which looked at the oval office during donald trump's presidency. writer susan glasser and peter baker joined us to talk about many of the key moments from their best-selling book. >> a book titled "the divider, trump in the white house 2017 to 2021." in it they break down the chaotic moments in the previous administration from the disturbing meeting with vladimir putin to how close he came to pulling the u.s. out of nato. peter and susan, good morning, congratulations on the book. there is so much in here, just when we thought we knew everything. i have a stack of questions. i hope you can stay until noon there's so much. let me stay on the theme of the election, and susan, jared and ivanka effectively two days

after the election day turning their backs and walking out saying -- jared leans over to ivanka and says we're moving to florida. that's an important moment because they abandoned donald trump and all the election conspiracies and opened the door to all the nut jobs who came in after them. >> yeah, it's a pretty amazing moment, right? you know, so for four years, the president's daughter and son-in-law basically used the argument to all of those krilt -- criticizing the president in the white house, it's important he has family around, we're here for critical moments and the most critical moment comes, they're not believers, they tell others, in the election conspiracy. they're not election deniers. what do they do, they buy a $34 million lot on a private island in miami. they closed on the deal weeks after the election in december even while trump was continuing

his attack on the election, and you know, essentially they just abdicated, jared kushner told others that he was not going to fight for if it rudy giuliani was going to be in charge of this election attack. it's really this key moment, i think, and it really sort of shows the hollow argument of the jared and ivanka promotors. what was the purpose of them being there if they're going to walk out in the biggest crisis of the trump presidency. >> that, peter, was my next question to you. they know the election wasn't stolen, and instead of standing in there as the few people who actually do have donald trump's ear, they turn and walk away and move to florida and open the door to rudy giuliani and sidney powell and the my pillow guy. was there any attempt by either of them to step in and tell their father, their father-in-law that this had gone too far? >> not really. obviously he knew because they weren't part of this. at one point jared kushner tells

his father-in-law, look, if you're going with rudy, i'm not going to be part of this, and he heads to the middle east to work on the remainder of his peace interests and whatever business interests he wants to pursue after leaving office, and it's really, you know, not just them. a number of people. people who were called by bill stepien, team normal, basically withdrew once they realized that they were not going to be influential, that stepped back, and it was that void that rudy giuliani, sidney powell, mike lindell, mike flynn, all of these martial law, seize the voting machines guys basically filled. there were fewer and fewer people left to fight against them. when mike pence was under pressure by the president to try to stop the electoral college count or take away the states that joe biden had won, marc short, his chief of staff goes to jared kushner and asks him to intervene with the president, can't you help here.

and kushner says i'm doing middle east, i'm not working on this right now, and that's a key moment. >> they washed their hands of it. susan, that's the end of the administration. you guys start at the beginning, and you say the most important day in the administration probably was the first one. january 20th, 2017 because it set the stage so much and set the tone so much for everything that followed. >> that was a key reason we wanted to do this book. you know, we watched the events of january 6th, and, you know, there was actually this observation by michael beschloss on the afternoon of january 6th. he said, you know, this day has been foreshadowed by every day of this presidency. and i think if you go back to january 20th, 2017, you really begin to see the through lines, and you know, there's a lot of after the fact rationalizations, people like bill barr who say, well, you know, he really went too far after the election, but anybody who i think closely

observed trump from the beginning, it's hard to see january 6th as anything other than the inexorable violent culmination of what he was doing for four years. peter, first of all, congrats to you and susan on the book. donald trump was, shall we say, an unconventional foreign policy president, and there's so much in here about his meetings with putin, and helsinki. i was hoping you could focus on this headline, which took my breath away when i read it over the weekend, that he nearly gave away the west bank, tell us how that could have happened? >> yeah, no, that's right. one thing about doing this book is we built on the work of our incredible colleagues including your great book, john, and a number of others, and i want to make sure we pay credit to people who who have come before us, working the same territory, what struck us is even with all of the great reporting done over the years, there was still so much to learn. we decided to do this book after he left office.

all the things we have learned. president trump calls up steve mnuchin, put him on the phone, hey, king, i've got a great deal for you, i'm going to give you the west bank. anybody that understands jordan where the palestinian population is a restive force in politics understands that was not anything king abdul wanted. he told an american friend, i nearly had a heart attack, i doubled over. i couldn't breathe, and went to where donald trump's view of the world was. it was very superficial and transactional. he was going to give the king something the king has no interest in having. it explains a lot about his foreign policy, based on someone who didn't spend a single day in office. he didn't know the difference between the balkans and baltics.

he knew nothing about so many things. it was startling to them, even after they spent time in his presence. >> so, susan, off of that anecdote and beginning to read the book over the past couple of days. i'm not a naive person, i don't think, about either politics or the world around us. but i found myself subjected to some sense of depression over the fact that this president who presented such a daily danger, perhaps an hourly danger to the country, to the institution of the presidency, seems to have been surrounded by people who knew how dangerous he was and said nothing. how do you explain this? >> i think that's one of the enduring mysteries of this trial, and i think it is a trial that the country has gone through with the trump presidency. you know, in many ways, donald trump was so close to damaing

so many institutions. it was about people. what peter and i were struck by, without these advisers many of whom had alarming views of donald trump. he would have been another old dude shouting at the television between golf games. it really mattered. one of the paradoxes is often some of the worst enablers were often also the resisters at key moments, someone who served in trump's white house said there are no heroes in the trump white house. this is someone who actually served there, and i think that's the complicated story. figures like john kelly, like even bill barr, you know, they, again and again and again they facilitate trump. in some ways, they give him the successes to the extent he had them, and yet at key moments they're also the ones who were sounding the alarm.

i think it's just amazing to me so many people were willing to go into the wood chopper of the trump white house, knowing inevitably but diluting themselves that they would not somehow also be chopped up. >> peter, congratulations, i don't know when you guys sleep because every year you come out with an extremely important, well-researched book. i take my hat off to both of you. on this one, i think one of the intriguing things about the trump presidency, was it sort of random chaos, which is one theory of his presidency, that he never really had a theory of the case. there wasn't a particular strategy, but you seem to be implying that actually he came into office with a strategy even if that was just broadly empowering the u.s. president and empowering himself. talk about that a little bit more, how he had a sort of plan, that there was a theory of his case? >> well, i think his theory of the case was to bend the institutions of american government to his desires and

needs. every president, of course, is meant to, you know, use the federal government to achieve policies he or she eventually, you know, promises in a campaign. what's different here is he was turning into instruments of political power, particularly apolitical institutions or institutions we expect to have more political goals like the justice department, the military. institutions that are not meant to be, you know, tools of a president's political needs, and we saw this again and again, and we saw people, as susan mentioned, fight back, like general mark milley, chairman of the chiefs of staff, outraged by the president's efforts to turn into a military commitment, you're destroying the international order. you don't believe in the things we fought world war ii for, doesn't end up submitting the resignation letter. decides i'm going to fight within. that campaign that the president has, the war on institutions is, in fact, a four-year war that leads up to january 6th. you can't understand january

6th, 2021, until you understand january 20th, 2017, and every day in between. >> congratulations on the book. it's really a history of the trump years. it's amazing that you were able to produce this this quickly, something this comprehensive. i want to go back to foreign policy for a minute. we're still in the middle of this awful war in ukraine, putin's invasion and the way nato has responded. and pulled closer together. but trump never got nato -- how close did trump come to actually pulling us out of nato? >> you know, gene, that was one of the really alarming things that when we went back and did more reporting, we knew at the time of course that trump, you know, had called nato obsolete. that he had railed against it, but again and again, very senior officials told us while we were working on this book that that

was not fully understood how very close donald trump came to pulling the united states out of nato at the beginning of his term. this was, i think, a direct challenge to, you know, the infrastructure that u.s. allies had in place in europe, and, you know, imagine putin moving into ukraine had trump succeeded in more fully sundering the nato alliance. one of the moments that really struck me at the end of the trump presidency in 2020 is he insists on pulling thousands of troops out of germany. these are, you know, a key part of nato's strategy in europe. he insists on pulling 10,000 troops out of germany because he's personally mad at angela merkel, the chancellor of germany because she won't break the quarantine and come to washington in the middle of the covid pandemic for an in-person summit, and trump, the very next

day after lafayette square, a couple of days after the conversation with merkel that makes him furious, he sends an order and says pull him out of germany. it's one of the first things the biden administration had to undo. trump was trying to move the headquarters of u.s. forces in europe, the headquarters of u.s. forces in africa. it's an extraordinary moment, and it shows you, again, the personalization of power that trump had and that he thought institutions could simply be -- even national security could be subject to his anger at the german chancellor is a remarkable moment, i think. >> peter, you and susan paint a portrait of the former president desperately trying to win the affections of vladimir putin. tell us about the reactions of some members of the intelligence community, senior officials about that meeting on the sideline between trump and putin and helsinki, and about an extraordinary meeting on the sidelines of a summit in japan. >> yeah, you're right about

that. we all remember that meeting in helsinki. it was jonathan lemire's great question that provoked the answer everybody was so stunned by. the president of the united states believed russia more than his own intelligence agencies. we know politically a lot of people said, oh, my gosh. privately we learned intelligence officials were stunned and disturbed by this. dan coats, the director of national intelligence picked by trump, a republican senator and ambassador, a loyal republican for many years was so stunned that he said, you know, he told people afterwards, does putin have something on president trump. maybe there is something there in all of this. even he, the head of the intelligence agency who had access to all the information out there didn't know for sure whether the american president had been compromised in some way because his behavior was out of

sync with traditional american views. you're right, it's interesting, the view didn't seem to be reciprocated by pruitt. there was a meeting in osaka, japan, a g20 meeting where the president has a side meeting with president putin, and bragging about all the different ways people were trying to honor him, the israelis were going to name a settlement after him. you know, trump heights, and putin says maybe they should just name all of israel after you. putin's view, he gets trump's number, he understands the narcissism and flattery required to deal with him, and he's sort of mocking him to his face in a private meeting. it makes you wonder, of course, you know, you want to know more about that relationship, and probably more will be learned in years to come. i thought it was a telling moment. >> unrequited love of vladimir putin. the new book is titled "the divider trump in the white house 2017 to 2021."

peter baker and susan glasser, as i said, i could keep you here all day. there's so much here. we want people to buy the book and read it for themselves. congratulations, great to see you both. still ahead, presidential historian, jon meacham on his new book about president lincoln, the lessons learned from the civil war that can be applied to today's political climate on this holiday edition of "morning joe." itical climate on this holiday edition of "morning joe. customizes your home insurance, here's one that'll really take you back. wow! what'd you get, ryan? it's customized home insurance from liberty mutual!!! what does it do, bud? it customizes our home insurance so we only pay for what we need! and what did you get, mike? i got a bike. ♪ only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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eventually to become worthy of? at all rates, whatever may be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now. shall we stop this bleeding? >> that was daniel day lewis, portraying president abraham lincoln in the 2012 steven spielberg film lincoln. the challenges lincoln endured during his presidency to preserve democracy, provide crucial lessons to the country today, something our next guest writes about in his new book. joining us now, presidential historian, jon meacham, his new book entitled, "and there was light," abraham lincoln and the

american struggle is officially out today. congratulations. also with us for the discussion is msnbc contributor, mike barnicle and author and nbc news presidential historian, michael beschloss. >> almost selected as secretary of war for lincoln. at the last minute -- >> guy from massachusetts. >> "the washington post" eugene robinson is still with us, and he has the first question. >> jon, congratulations on the book, and i will read it eagerly. i'm curious, you know, it wasn't really until he got into the war that the sort of stated and open goal of lincoln was to get rid of slavery. and he tried everything to canine of keep the union together, yet earlier, before he

was president, he had given the famous, you know, a nation divided against the self cannot stand speech, as if he knew all along that it was going to -- it was going to come to that. was he playing for time until the moment was right or was this a genuine shift in lincoln's thinking? >> well, as a conscientious politician, which is not an oxymoron, and i think that's one of the key points here is that if you're going to send someone to the pinnacle of power, you need to make sure there is a moral compass, there is a commitment to something larger than your own hold on power, and in many ways, i think that's a hugely important lesson about lincoln for us today. he was anti-slavery persistently. in the politics of the time, he believed that slavery could not be extended to the territories.

that was the defining political issue of the 1850s. it was what the douglas/lincoln campaigns were about for the senate. and remember, lincoln kept losing, so being an anti-slavery politician in the 1850s was not a guaranteed winner, but he believed it. and gene, as you mentioned, he comes to cooper union. he talks about how there is a strong distinction between us and them, between the north and the south, between the free states and the slave states. they believe slavery is right. and we believe it is wrong. and on that issue, democracy itself would hang because the aristocracy of race in my native region, in the south, wanted to perpetuate its own power at any cost. even unto 750,000 people dying in a civil war.

one of the great facts of american history is that these slave owning interests in the united states of america preferred civil war, an immensely bloody civil war to living up to the declaration of independence, and lincoln stood in that breach, and said, my ancient faith teach me that all men are created equal. and that without that, democracy and the point of the union fail. >> and risked his own reelection as you write about in the book in 1864. you connect well in this book the events of lincoln's time to the events today. perhaps providing a little bit of a road map, the title, it's right there. then there was light. it was so dark, but somehow he saw the light and showed a way to get there, what should we take from that as we look at today when so many people say we're so divided, there's no way to stitch it back together. social media is an accelerant on

the fire. all the things that lincoln didn't have to deal with. what do you take away from lincoln's experience from today? >> i think what president lincoln and the era teach us is that if you believe in the promise of the country, if you believe that we are all created equal and there's a self-interested reason to believe that. it's not just morally good, although it is. but if i respect your dignity and your equality, maybe not you, but, you know. >> right. understood. >> but if i respect you, you are more likely to respect you. it's a covenant. it's of, for and by the people, and you can't have everything perfect at once. but living with ambiguity in the constitutional order is hugely important. you cannot have -- every political question could be total war. politics has to be about a mediation of differences. and there is reason to hope the title of the book comes -- is a play on frederick douglass said,

i do not despair of this country, the fiat of the almighty, let there be light has not yet spent its force. frederick douglass thought that and he helped create a climate of opinion that lincoln was also an architect of. he believed in the promise of the country, and he believed that without union, chaos resulted. because one of the criticisms of lincoln is, in fact, the abolitionists thought this, when you're preserving a union that gives the slave owners and these awful people too powerful a voice, his question was, if we just let them go, there's no way to free the enslaved. it becomes its own entity. and becomes a nation among the powers of the earth. so we have to fight. so one of the things you have to answer is what's worth fighting for. and constitutional democracy, i think, is one of them. one of th.

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two lead stories in the "new york times" this morning, lead story on the right-hand side of the front page, "most voters say u.s. democracy is under threat but few feel urgency. ♪, twinned with that story is "activist army to watch a vote, trained to aggressively seek irregularities," so today i would submit that we are a much smaller nation in the sense that the toxicity, that toxic cloud of politics has so overwhelmed this country that we do feel divided from one another. what hope do you see within the framework of what lincoln had to contend with, which was a rupture of the concern, compared to today where things travel literally with the speed of light. >> yeah, well, speed is relative, right. so for lincoln, newspapers

telegraph. that was an information super highway. so the world is remote, but it's not as though it's the war, he was dealing with mass communications, he was dealing with a country that could agitate itself, could manufacture emotion, could capitalize on the emotion of division, which is what politicians were doing at the time. what gives me hope is that here was this fallen, frail and fallible man, who was not perfect to go back to eugene's question, not perfect at all who transcended those limitations and convinced just enough of us to do the same thing. i think we have to look at lincoln in the same way we look at ourselves, which is not expecting perfection but hoping

that we can get just enough right, and lincoln did it. barely. but that's been true since the garden of eden, right? we just barely get it done, and his capacity to believe that, in fact, we had it been ourselves to govern ourselves, the whole point of the gettysburg address, right, is to take the country back to its first principles and its first principles was not the constitution, four score and seven years ago was the declaration of independence and that central sentence that we are all created equal, a radical and revolutionary idea. and he wanted, he was willing to fight for it. both literally and figuratively. i pray that we are figuratively fighting for it. but if we don't believe that, then, in fact, the national experiment doesn't work.

because nothing unites us except in an assent, an agreement with that idea. >> and how unbelievable, jon says that lincoln got it done, but he got it done just barely. i mean, he got it done appamatox courthouse, less than a week later, abraham lincoln is dead, a 30-year fight, and it was a 30-year fight, michael beschloss. and this doesn't just apply to lincoln. you look at, for instance, lbj, who actually chided richard nixon for being too self-righteous on civil rights in 1957 when he was vice president, who did not have a great background fighting for civil rights, and yet what he did in '64 and '65 absolutely

extraordinary. with lincoln, you had somebody who represented a run away slave in the 1830s and 1840s. he represented a slave owner. he fought in the 50s. he came back, gave extraordinary speeches in the 50s, talking about stopping the spread of slavery, and yet in the '56 campaign, he would say different things in northern illinois than he said in southern illinois. in southern illinois sounding far more, actually, sounding less like the abraham lincoln we know. and have come to cherish. but there's a quote that jon writes early in his book from lincoln where he says i walk slowly, but i never walk backwards. this is a pragmatic politician who understood that it wasn't just the south that was filled

with racists, that he was actually dealing with a racist north who was fine preserving the union, but they weren't so fine having slaves freed and certainly did not want to live in the same communities as black people. and that's the background that abraham lincoln, the political mine field he was walking through for 30 years. it's an extraordinary story of what he accomplished. >> it sure is. and, you know, the fascinating thing, this is, by the way, my copy of jon's book arrived by pony express last week. we have been reading, read it twice. compulsively readable, classic meacham book in two ways. number one, fascinating story. who in american history could be more fascinating to learn more about than abraham lincoln, and we have new discoveries about lincoln, but more than that, what was the most tragically divided career in american

history? it was 1860. very close runner up, sadly, is 2022. and three weeks before the 1860 election, this country was not only divided but lincoln had to decide if he was going to become president, did he feel so strongly that he was willing to go to the edge of civil war. my question to jon is, you know, these two apocalyptic sides to lincoln, number one, the great uniter in all history, but also at the same time, he felt so strongly about union and his hatred of slavery, which you write about beautifully that he was willing to go to the brink of civil war. what does that tell us about 2022? >> it tells us that if we believe in the american proposition of the equality and liberty under law, then we have to be willing to stand up for it. i don't think we're going to get

to mass armies but we are living with civil chaos with periodic violence as we all know, and i think what the lincoln example -- and i've learned so much of this from you, michael -- the lincoln example is, in fact, that he was not willing to compromise. he comes to office, 39% of the vote, not on the ballot in a huge part of the south, and a perfectly plausible deal is put on the table, what is america if not an exercise in compromise. his hero is henry clay who had done it again and again, and he said no, that he was not going to surrender a principle before he took his dually elected office, and that moment is vital. it's like churchill in 1940. same with fort sumter. william seward and winfield scott and others did not want

him to bet the entire country on sumpter, but he said, no, in fact, there has to be a point in which we will not let things go. >> and this is our red line. >> for us, i think the red line has to be are these going to be democratically, lower case d, fair and free elections, and if so, we respect them. and if you don't respect them, then you are falling out of a democratic covenant and you're falling into a state of nature. >> you know, jon, we just want to end up with what you said, there's a time for all seasons. and for lincoln, reading your instant classic, reading eric phoner's, the fiery trial, you see lincoln, and, you know, some people, some historical figures are just a joy to read, with all of his failings and flaws,

winston churchill, just it's a fascinating read. fdr, the tragedy of polio, but he was such a positive figure and seeing the joy of him just fighting over and over again his affliction to become president of the united states through depression of war. lincoln, i found, i mean, lincoln is hard. he's struggling with slavery. with how in the world do i sell this when i come from a state, a northern state that voted 70% in a referendum to keep black people out of the state. and it's this struggle, but i bring all of this up to say, as you said, he had that struggle, and then he got elected president of the united states, and suddenly the clouds part,

and he really does make the decision. and here i'm not going to compromise. i don't want war. will work in good faith with the south. but on so many of these issues, it was almost like lincoln at that point just really stealy resolve, and suddenly you notice the compromises start getting moved to the side. he's where he needs to be to stop the spread of slavery, and he refuses to compromise. >> and it's -- to me, one of the main reasons i wanted to do this was to explore why did he do what he did? we all know kind of how he did it. you know, the great politician, the great statesman, but why did he do it? why did he believe in american democracy? why was he antislavery? i think a lot of it goes back to

his parents' religious background. he was not a convention gnat christian at all. he was more of kind of a unitarian guy with a tragic sensibility. but he believed that as theodore parker said, the abolitionist minister, the arc is long but bends toward justice. he also knew it doesn't bend toward justice if people aren't insisting that it swerve toward justice. there are always going to be forces of reaction pulling the other way, and that conscientious insight, the capacity to bring conscience to bear on political, economic, cultural issues of contention. that's where american greatness comes. it's where human greatness comes. and i'm not mindlessly celebrating this guy at all. i don't think we should look up at him adoringly or down on him

condescendingly. i don't think we can dismiss him from the american conversation. everett dirkson once said, every american politician has to get right with lincoln and i think every american in this hour, i believe, needs to grapple with what he did because as mike just said, we may be confronting this question ourselves. and so why wouldn't we want to be in conversation with someone who saw us through a storm like this. >> jon meacham, thank you very much. "and there was right light" abraham lincoln and the american struggle. historian, michael beschloss, thank you as well. michael besc thank you as well.

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unbelievable. i haven't seen anything like that in my life. >> that is bill buckner getting a do-over on "curb your enthusiasm," national baseball columnist for the "new york times," tyler kepner, full disclosure, tyler is one of my oldest friends. we worked at the vanderbilt hustler when we were 18 years old. tyler was the star.

i was riding his coat tails. the editor of the sports section, the editor of the whole paper. and still doing all right. it's great to see you. we showed that clip partly because you talked to larry david for this book. what was that like? >> that was so much fun. i wanted an angle on bill buckner that hadn't been explored too much. larry david is not known for sentiment. and yet he redeemed, in a way, bill buckner on a national stage, right? he was able to have buckner make the catch and be the hero in new york city instead of the opposite, and so he talked about editing that piece and how it really brought him to tears almost just because buckner, there was a sincerity about buckner, he had to live with that for so long. he handled it well. >> one of the most moving moments in fenway, buckner came back to throw out the first pitch, the entire place erupted and i don't know if there was a dry eye in the house. >> in the lot of ways that was

comedy, "curb your enthusiasm," that larry david gave buckner that moment to be redeemed in front of the world. buckner had to live with that, and went under ground a little bit, and didn't make a lot of public appearances or deal with it. did larry have to convince buckner this was a good idea. >> part of larry said he wanted him to drop the baby, he thought it would be funny. but he said deep down he really did want him to catch it because there was something good in buckner's soul. >> only larry would say that. >> only larry would say that. he said it was easy for him because buckner's daughter is an actress, and he cast her in a later episode. he said, so it was an easy trade because she was wonderful and bill was wonderful, and everybody wins. >> i'm going to say, that was the most painful world series, probably the most painful sporting event i've ever watched. watching on tv, almost passed out about 12 times. i never blamed buckner in

realtime. i won't say because i know there are human beings out there, i have the people that i blame. i will tell you, even in realtime, i never blamed that series loss on buckner, and i don't know a lot of true red sox fans who did. >> most of the season, he was lifted for a defensive replacement. at the end of his career, he couldn't play defense, his bad feet, and the manager wants him out there to celebrate. >> every post game, they had dave stapleton for defense, but they wanted to keep him in there to celebrate with his team. >> obviously the book is on the world series. i guess you rank the best world series of time. i have them 2004, 2007, 2018, after that, what's next. >> the greatest i saw was 1991. it was braves and twins, two last place teams the year before, meet in the world series, first world series ever in atlanta.

minnesota had been there a few years earlier. the home team wins every game. so everybody goes home happy. you go back to minnesota, down 3-2, the braves, and minnesota wins in a walk-off by kirby puckett in game six and a shutout by jack morris. hall of famers doing hall of fame stuff. extra inning games. it was incredible about that series, though, i'm so glad you said that. it broke our heart, everybody in the south, but every pitch mattered. the moves that each one of the managers made, it really was like seven chess games played out. and you could see it unfold. i've never seen a series like that! right. it was incredible. i talked to tom kelly who was the manager of the twins back then, talking to terry pendleton about hitting the double where lonnie smith hesitates around

second base. >> lonnie froze. >> jack morris, you know, staying in for ten innings. you don't see that anymore. so, yeah, it's great to go back. >> willie's friend tyler, quick question, are you a savant on the world series like joe is, have you seen like -- can you remember each year, each player. >> i tell you what, you can ask me any world series game since 1979, i can tell you the starting pitcher. >> joe, 1934. joe. >> cardinals, the gas house gang beat the tigers. >> 1950? >> the yankees swept the phillies. >> '60? >> one of the coolest world series. >> yes. >> mazaraski wins it with a walk-off. what's cool about the series is the yankees crushed the pirates in three of the games. >> 55-27 was the overall score.

pittsburgh won the game. >> the pirates squeaked by with that incredible shot. >> '63. >> you've picked the good ones. >> '63 was cofax. >> dodgers swept the yankees. >> thank you, sweetie, you picked the right ones. >> i can't do it. >> willie. >> let's talk 1988. what i love about the book, we know the headline, the kirk gibson home run, he hobbles around. you go back and talk to the central players. i had forgotten this. dennis eckerley that gave up the home run, it was the bat before that that might have cost them. >> bases empty, two outs, all he has too is get mike davis who hit .196 that year. he had been teammates with davis the year before. he's taking him seriously. he would face 95 more batters in his post season career, didn't walk anybody. he walked mike davis. if he had gotten mike davis out,

gibson wouldn't have been in the game. davis steals second, gibson can relax. all it takes is a single now, and he hits it over the fence. >> "the grandest stage." >> that does it for us this hour. thank you so much for joining ugs. us. ing ugs. us. us. us. us. us. ♪limu emu & doug♪ it's nice to unwind after a long week of telling people how liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. showtime. whoo! i'm on fire tonight. (limu squawks) yes! limu, you're a natural. we're not counting that. only pay for what you need. ♪liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty.♪

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