MSNBC talk show host Keith Olbermann may be incredibly polarizing, but his tribute to his mother, who passed away over the weekend, is rather sweet. He said that Marie Olbermann was the person who made him love sports, "It was Mom who introduced me to the game, and in my teenaged years when we went nearly every day, it was she who trundled me and my sister to the ballpark. It was on her tv that I came to love the sport, and by her side that I began to understand it. And, sitting next to her, that I began to understand that I was not going to be any damn good playing it and if I wanted 'in' - maybe I'd better try talking about it."

And she was actually famous in the world of baseball lore: On June 17, 2000, Yankee second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, whose throwing problems had been mounting, threw a ball not at first base but, as Olbermann explains, "off the roof of the Yankees' dugout where it picked up a little reverse english and smacked my mother right in the bridge of her glasses." His mother, featured on the covers of the Post, Daily News and Newsday, apparently loved the attention, even sitting for an interview with her son (who was then with Fox Sports). Here's video of the tribute—mention of the Knoblauch incident starts around 1:40:

You can read Olbermann's remembrance here on his MLB blog; he said that baseball players and managers were always asking about his mother—just last month, Mets manager Jerry Manuel asked him how she was.