"Five Minutes of Fire": California Baseball, Starkweather Homicide, Children of Thalidomide

<v Speaker 1>This is Jason Kosla, and you are listening to the Surely, Surely,
<v Speaker 1>Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome
<v Speaker 1>back to the Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast Special
<v Speaker 1>Edition five Minutes of Fire. We are here talking about
<v Speaker 1>the lyrics of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.
<v Speaker 1>We're covering only five minutes at a time, which is
<v Speaker 1>about to link with the song, so it works out
<v Speaker 1>kind of nicely. So please join us as we dive
<v Speaker 1>into some new lyrics today.
<v Speaker 2>All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're
<v Speaker 2>going to be covering today. California baseball, stark weather, homicide,
<v Speaker 2>children of thlidamide. All right, date, tell me about California baseball.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So before the nineteen fifties, Major League Baseball was
<v Speaker 1>just in the eastern part of the country. There were
<v Speaker 1>professional teams West of Saint Louis. Several cities had two teams.
<v Speaker 1>New York had three. They had the Giants, they had
<v Speaker 1>the Yankees, they had the Dodgers, but the Dodgers stadium,
<v Speaker 1>Ebbitts Field, was deteriorating. People had moved to the suburbs
<v Speaker 1>and they didn't want to travel back into Brooklyn to
<v Speaker 1>watch night games, and so he was trying to get
<v Speaker 1>a new stadium built in Brooklyn, but public building and
<v Speaker 1>developments are named Robert Moses was preventing him from doing that, guess,
<v Speaker 1>and there was a little money that wasn't being exchanged
<v Speaker 1>the way mister Moses wanted it to be exchanged. And so,
<v Speaker 1>in an effort to bring Major League Baseball to the West,
<v Speaker 1>a Chamber of Converse member from Los Angeles named Roslind
<v Speaker 1>Wyman was talking to multiple clubs to see if they
<v Speaker 1>would move out to California. So Wyman decided to meet
<v Speaker 1>with the owner of the Washington Centers named Calvin Griffith
<v Speaker 1>at the nineteen fifty six World Series. Well, Walter O'Malley,
<v Speaker 1>owner of the Dodgers at the time, who who wasn't
<v Speaker 1>able to get a location for his new stadium, heard
<v Speaker 1>that she was meeting with him, and so he said, Hey,
<v Speaker 1>how about you talk to me, And he said it
<v Speaker 1>was really important to him that he have a new stadium,
<v Speaker 1>and Wyman, without any talking to anybody, said sure, no problem,
<v Speaker 1>we can get that done. He was just going to
<v Speaker 1>use this as a negotiation tactic to get what he
<v Speaker 1>wanted in Brooklyn, but Robert Moses wouldn't bend, and so
<v Speaker 1>finally he realized, the only way I'm going to get
<v Speaker 1>a new stadium is if I move out to la
<v Speaker 1>and so that is what they did. Was very successful
<v Speaker 1>for them. They the very next year won the nineteen
<v Speaker 1>fifty nine World Series. And he had a poor little
<v Speaker 1>buddy named Horace Stoneham, who owned the New York Giants,
<v Speaker 1>a team that was probably third in the lineup as
<v Speaker 1>far as New York teams were concerned, who was suffering
<v Speaker 1>the same problem, had a dilapidated field, nobody was coming
<v Speaker 1>to the games. So Walter O'Malley met the governor of
<v Speaker 1>San Francisco and said, hey, you know what, I got
<v Speaker 1>a buddy who I think you should talk to. And
<v Speaker 1>then a short time after that, Giants moved from New
<v Speaker 1>York to San Francisco, California. Baseball love it. Jason wo
<v Speaker 1>Can you tell me about stark Weather homicide? All right?
<v Speaker 2>So, Charles Starkweather was an American spree killer who murdered
<v Speaker 2>eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between get this, November
<v Speaker 2>of nineteen fifty seven. In January of nineteen fifty eight,
<v Speaker 2>very short amount of time. He was nineteen years old
<v Speaker 2>when he was doing this. By the way, he was
<v Speaker 2>accompanied by his girlfriend, Carol Ann Fugate, who was fourteen
<v Speaker 2>years old.
<v Speaker 1>Oh the gosh.
<v Speaker 2>He was known initially to be bullied in high school
<v Speaker 2>in elementary school before he actually said forget this. I'll
<v Speaker 2>tell what I'm going to be the bully now. He
<v Speaker 2>was known for walking around town being very angry, very bitter,
<v Speaker 2>very tough. If you were kind of a big shot
<v Speaker 2>football player, whatever, and you had it going good, he'd
<v Speaker 2>just beat up just because. His first murder occurred on
<v Speaker 2>November the thirtieth, nineteen fifty seven, when he killed a
<v Speaker 2>gas station attendant for almost no reason. January twenty first,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifty eight, he showed up at the few Gates
<v Speaker 2>home and was told to leave by her mother and stepfather,
<v Speaker 2>so he then killed them and her two year old sister.
<v Speaker 2>From there, he went on an interstate killing spree with
<v Speaker 2>Carol Anne Fugate. Now then, was she kidnap? Does she
<v Speaker 2>go voluntarily? Was she part of the killing spree? He
<v Speaker 2>was captured in a high speed chase January twenty ninth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifty eight. He was executed on June twenty fifth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifty nine, Caroline Fugate was actually sentenced to life
<v Speaker 2>in prison. These two are mentioned or referenced in Bruce
<v Speaker 2>Springsteen's Nebraska true romance Natural Born Killers and I would
<v Speaker 2>say even pulp fiction.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>During that high speed chase, Charles stark Weather was shot
<v Speaker 2>and he thought he was going to bleed to death,
<v Speaker 2>and that's why he stopped. And the officer on duty said,
<v Speaker 2>that's the kind of yellow son of a bitch that
<v Speaker 2>he is. Do you tell me about children of the Litamide?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Jason, have you ever been a pregnant woman before?
<v Speaker 1>Not yet. I'm hopeful though. Well, as it turns out,
<v Speaker 1>when you're pregnant, you have nausea that they call a
<v Speaker 1>morning sickness, and you have trouble sleeping. Yeah. Well, the
<v Speaker 1>company that made the litamide said, hey, we've got the
<v Speaker 1>solution for you pregnant women. We have this new drug
<v Speaker 1>called the litamide that helps you with your morning sickness
<v Speaker 1>and helps you be able to sleep. Unfortunately, this company
<v Speaker 1>did not adequately test the drug before they released it
<v Speaker 1>to the masses, and then between nineteen fifty seven and
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty two, children of the Women who took thlidamide
<v Speaker 1>during pregnancy were born with severe deformities, including only stubs
<v Speaker 1>for arms. Some people referred to them as the flipper babies.
<v Speaker 1>Because of this tragedy, the drug was taken off the
<v Speaker 1>market in nineteen sixty two. Of the ten thousand children
<v Speaker 1>born with birth defects, only half of them lived beyond childhood. Okay, guys,
<v Speaker 1>that does it for today's episode. Join us next time
<v Speaker 1>for five minutes of fire.