Bluff The Listener

CARL KASELL, host:

From NPR and Chicago Public Radio, this is WAIT WAITDON'T TELL ME! the NPR news quiz. I'm Carl Kasell. Were playing his week with Faith Salie, Paul Provenza and Charlie Pierce, and, here again is your host, at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago, Peter Sagal.

PETER SAGAL: Thank you, Carl.

(Soundbite of applause)

SAGAL: Right now, it's time for the WAIT WAITDON'T TELL ME! Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-Wait-Wait to play our game on air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAITDON'T TELL ME!

CHARLES (Caller): Hello.

SAGAL: Hi, who's this?

CHARLES: This is Charles from Memphis.

SAGAL: Hey, how are things in Memphis?

CHARLES: Warmer now.

SAGAL: Yeah, you sound relieved.

CHARLES: Yes, very relieved.

SAGAL: Well, welcome to the show, Charles. Youre going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Carl, what is Charles's topic?

KASELL: Watch two episodes of "SportsCenter" and call me in the morning.

SAGAL: Professional athletes are held up as paragons of strength, vitality and health, while we schlubs who spend our time watching them are mocked as couch potatoes. But this week, we read about a sports fan whose devotion to his or her team actually saved their lives. Our panelists are going to tell you three stories about life-saving sports fanaticism. Choose the true story, youll win Carls voice on your home answering machine. Ready to play?

CHARLES: Yes.

SAGAL: All right. Let's go. Let's hear first from Faith Salie.

Ms. FAITH SALIE: Red Sox lover Colleen Kennedy(ph) proved she's a die-hard fan during last Monday's grapefruit league game between the Bo-Sox and the Orioles. The 52-year-old's favorite player, designated hitter David Ortiz, dramatically ended his spring-training slump by hitting a two-run homer in the third inning.

Kennedy, who was in the middle of enjoying a City of Palms Park sausage dog, got so excited that she started to choke. I saw Big Papi's ball headed right at me, and I guess I just forgot to swallow, Kennedy says.

Triaging her desire to get her hands on Ortiz's ball over her desire to breathe...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. SALIE: She lunged forward, tackled by other fans desperate to make the catch. It turns out that Major League melee saved her life. Kennedy didn't get the prize ball, but the scrum did dislodge her wiener.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. SALIE: Shoving her against the stadium railing in an inadvertent mass Heimlich Maneuver. She tearfully credits her fellow fans with saving her life. Red Sox Nation is full of such big-hearted people.

Her near-death experience hasn't diminished her love for Ortiz. She gushed: I may have choked, but Big Papi didn't.

(Soundbite of applause)

SAGAL: A Red Sox fan is Heimliched, thankfully, by the crowds in the stand at a game. Your next story of sports to the rescue comes from Charlie Pierce.

Mr. CHARLIE PIERCE (Writer, Boston Globe Magazine; Author, "Idiot America"): Green Bay Packer games have always meant more than football. For example, they have meant civic pride, huge hunks of sausage, projectile vomiting, and hatred for people from Chicago.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. PIERCE: Now, though, it seems, Packer football may have saved a life. Jim Becker(ph) has been a season ticket holder for 58 years. Back in the day when money was tight, Becker would sell his blood for $15 a pint to pay for his family's season tickets. Much later, a doctor discovered that Becker's father had died young from a condition by which the blood retains too much iron, and the only specific for which is to donate blood.

Becker's 145 donations probably spared him his father's fate. The only drawback, of course, came during Brett Favre's tenure as the Packer quarterback when mysteriously, every December, Becker's blood always went to the wrong person.

(Soundbite of laughter)

SAGAL: A Packer fan gives blood to pay for his season tickets and inadvertently, saves his own life. And your last story of someone being saved by sports fanaticism comes from Paul Provenza.

Mr. PAUL PROVENZA (Comedian; Co-author, "Satiristas"): Since the age of about 7, Dylan Brody(ph) of Fargo, North Dakota, has been collecting baseball cards. The collection was Brody's pride and joy, despite his wife's pleas to grow up and get rid of all that junk cluttering the attic.

Then the floods came. Unable to evacuate in time, Brody and his family ended up stranded in their attic for over a week before any help could get to them. With no food and little water, they sat amidst 35 years of mint-condition, unopened baseball cards, each package holding a piece of bubble gum.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. PROVENZA: Containing enough sugar and carbohydrates to keep the family going until their rescue. That stupid collection ended up saving our lives, said Dylan Brody's wife. I only wish I had thought to collect Ball Park franks as well.

(Soundbite of laughter)

(Soundbite of applause)

SAGAL: All right, here are your three stories, if you will.

(Soundbite of applause)

SAGAL: Was it, from Faith Salie, a woman watching a Boston Red Sox game whose life was saved when the crowd, trying to get a ball, gave her the Heimlich maneuver? Was it, from Charlie Pierce, a man whose habit of selling his own blood to pay for his Packers' season tickets saved him from an early death? Or from Paul Provenza, a family that survived a flood by eating the bubble gum from packs of baseball cards? Which of these is the real story?

CHARLES: Wow, all three of them sound so very compelling.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. PIERCE: Compelling, I think, is the word.

SAGAL: Yes.

CHARLES: I think I'm going to go with the second story.

SAGAL: You're going to go with the second story, Charlie's story?

CHARLES: Yeah.

SAGAL: The one about the guy selling his blood? Any particular reason?

CHARLES: Um, no.

(Soundbite of laughter)

SAGAL: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, we actually were lucky enough to speak to the person whose life was saved. Here we are.

Mr. JIM BECKER: I've been donating this blood in order to get Packer tickets (unintelligible)...

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. BECKER: And when it was determined that I had this blood disease, it was just a revelation that actually, the Packers, they saved my life.

SAGAL: That was Jim Becker, the season ticket holder of the Green Bay Packers who found out that his habit of selling his blood saved his life. Congratulations, Charles. You did get it right. You've earned a point for Charlie for telling you the true story, and you've earned our prize. Carl will record the greeting on your home answering machine. Well done, sir, congratulations.

CHARLES: Thank you.

(Soundbite of applause)

(Soundbite of music) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.