DISTRAUGHT BROADCASTER ACCUSES MIKE PRISUTA, TRILATERAL COMMISSION OF "SABOTAGING" HER
PITTSBURGH - Pittsburgh radio personality Val Porter is under fire for claiming during a public appearance at Piratefest over the weekend that she, not Ernest Thayer, is the author of the immortal baseball poem "Casey at the Bat." She also faces charges for pulling a revolver on a group of Pirate fans.
Porter read the poem aloud to a group of small children and their parents while the Pirates' beloved mascot, the Parrot, acted it out in pantomime. After Porter was finished, she said she had "something very special I have to get off my chest." She appeared agitated and distraught. "The poem you just heard, which is probably the greatest in all of literature, well, I wrote that poem." (In fact, Ernest Thayer wrote the poem in 1888 while he was a writer for the San Francisco Examiner.) Porter held back tears. "And I know there are people in this room who would prefer I didn't reveal that, but I can't go on living their lie."
Porter's fellow-DVE newscaster, Tribune-Review sports writer Mike Prisuta approached Porter and tried to calm her. "Sit down, Mike," Porter said sternly, pulling a revolver from her jeans. "Frankly, you're part of the problem here." The parrot slowly backed away from her when Porter shouted, "Stop right there, you son of a bitch! Stop and nobody gets hurt." She then removed a dog-eared sheet of paper from her pocket. "Now you're all going to listen to this because I've been waiting a long time to say it." Porter proceeded to read a rambling statement for 45 minutes that, among other things, accused Prisuta, David Rockefeller and the Trilateral Commission of "sabotaging" her and preventing her from patenting certain alleged inventions that "would have saved all mankind from cancer and most other diseases."
Fast-thinking security at the convention center commandeered the public address system and played old Milo Hamilton Pirate broadcasts, which quickly lulled Porter, and most of the other fans at Piratefest, to sleep. Mike Prisuta crept toward her and removed the revolver, then he led her away. "This happens on occasion when she gets overly tired," he told onlookers. "She's been up since four this morning."
