Category: Joe Guzzardi

Kamala Won’t Disappear

By Joe Guzzardi

Despite the sound defeat that Vice President Kamala Harris suffered in the 2024 presidential election, she’ll likely remain in the public eye. In her November 6 concession speech, she admitted that she planned to stick around. Harris said, “I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people. A fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”

For high-visibility, vainglorious politicians who have held powerful positions like Harris—San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and Vice President—giving up 20 years in the limelight goes against the grain. Harris could follow the examples that previously defeated presidential candidates set. Her options are many. Harris might start a foundation like Jimmy Carter did after his 1980 defeat to Ronald Reagan. The Carter Center, which builds sustainable housing and prevents disease from spreading in developing countries, helped the former one-term president the win the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize. After Al Gore narrowly lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, in 2005 he established the Alliance for Climate Protection, renamed The Climate Reality Project. Foundations are nice but hardly the stuff of substantial public exposure.

Or Harris could follow President Richard Nixon’s strategy. After his 1960 defeat to President John F. Kennedy and a subsequent loss in California’s 1962 gubernatorial race to Democrat incumbent Pat Brown, Nixon spent years promoting GOP candidates nationwide and, by 1968, had accumulated political favors that he cashed in on. Another Harris presidential bid, theoretically possible, is not in the cards because it would end in a comparison to Adlai Stevenson, a two-time loser to President Dwight David Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. More Harris options: she could join a high-end law firm, become a lobbyist, or retire to private life and wait for book or Netflix deal advances to come in. The Obamas got $65 million from Penguin Random House to release both their memoirs. Harris and spouse Doug Emhoff are not Michelle and Barack, but they would still command a hefty advance.

A safe bet on Harris’ future is that she will run to replace termed out California Governor Gavin Newsom, a perfect situation for her. The gubernatorial election is in 2026, which gives Harris time to kick back before stumping again. Campaigning in California would be cake for Harris as opposed to trying to sell herself to a skeptical national electorate. Harris is a known quantity in California and would benefit from incessantly glowing media coverage. As of today, Harris’ likely competition, many of whom might drop out rather than face certain defeat in a primary, are Toni Atkins, Senate president pro tem, Eleni Kounalakis, California’s Lieutenant Governor, Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent of public education, Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services Secretary, Betty Yee, former controller and the California Democratic Party’s vice chair, and finally a name familiar to long-standing enforcement advocates, the pro-immigration Antonio Villaraigosa, once Los Angeles’ mayor and unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial candidate. Harris has statewide name recognition while the others are, in many corners of California, unknown. One issue that Harris and her potential challengers share is unbending support for open borders and amnesty for already-present illegal immigrants.

The most interesting thing to watch in a Harris gubernatorial bid would be how she interacts with Newsom. For more than a year, Newsom displayed everywhere his naked ambition to displace President Joe Biden. When Harris took over as the nominee, Newsom vanished. Consider his snide remark about Harris after her coronation: “We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process. It was bottom-up, I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say.” Insiders know that Newsom, confident that he would win, favored an open convention to replace Biden. No doubt secretly delighted that Harris absorbed a drubbing; Newsom is back as 2028’s leading candidate.

In politics, four years is an eternity. When 2028 rolls around, Newsom or any other Democratic presidential nominee may be campaigning in a California that, based on the right-shift towards Trump from 2016 to 2020 and finally in 2024 for a 12 percentage point gain, may be as red as it is blue.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Kamala Won’t Disappear Kamala Won’t Disappear

Pirates WWII Teams included First Drug-tested Player

By Joe Guzzardi

During World War II, the Pittsburgh Pirates were less affected by the departure of key players than most other Major League Baseball teams who lost superstars like Bob Feller, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio to the draft. The Pirates were able to keep their squads mostly intact and added valuable players through trades. Between 1942-45, off to war went the Pirates Oad Swigart who pitched in 10 games in 1939 and 1940, Ed Leip with 35 plate appearances in three seasons, Ed Albosta, a 1946 Pirates twirler with a 0-6, 6.13 ERA mark, and Huck Geary, .160 batting average in two seasons.

Although the 1944 Pirates sent more players to World War II than they did in any previous year, they nevertheless enjoyed their most successful campaign since capturing the 1927 pennant. The ‘44 Bucs, led by one of their wartime acquisitions, All-Star first baseman Babe Dahlgren whom they acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies, posted a 90-63 record and finished a strong second to the St. Louis Cardinals. Dahlgren played in every game of the 1944 season, batted .289 and drove in 101 runs, sixth in the league.

In his two years as the Buccos’ first sacker, Dahlgren hit a respectable .271. Dahlgren, after burning up the Pacific Coast League, broke in with the Boston Red Sox in 1935 when fellow San Fransico native and incoming manager Joe Cronin thought Babe had a chance to be the BoSox starting first baseman, mostly because of his peerless fielding. In an interesting twist, and paralleling the New York Yankees’ Lou Gehrig, Dahlgren played consecutive PCL games from 1931 through 1934.

On the fateful May 2, 1939, the day that Gehrig asked manager Joe McCarthy to scratch his name from the line-up, Dahlgren substituted for the Iron Horse, hit a double and a homer. Dahlgren recalled Gehrig’s kidding reaction after his 2-for-5 day: “He grabbed me when I got back to the bench and shouted at me, ‘Hey, why didn’t you tell me you felt that way about it. I woulda got out of there long ago.” At Lou Gehrig Day, 1941, McCarthy whispered to Dahlgren, “If [a dying] Lou falls over, catch him.”  While baseball historians can quickly respond to the not-very-tough trivia question: “Who replaced Lou Gehrig,” few recall that Dahlgren was the first player ever drug-tested.

Unsubstantiated rumors that Dahlgren smoked marijuana plagued his career and after baseball, his family’s lives. In the 1940s, smoking marijuana was a major scandal. McCarthy and Branch Rickey instigated the rumors and other baseball gossips fueled the fire.  The New York Times writer John Drebinger, who wrote the lead story for every World Series game between 1929 and 1963, a total of 203 tilts, said that McCarthy had told him that the Yankees would have “won the pennant in 1940 had it not been for an error Dahlgren made against the Indians late in the season.” The Yankees’ pilot continued, “Dahlgren doesn’t screw up that play if he wasn’t a marijuana smoker.” When Dahlgren volunteered to test for marijuana, a Philadelphia doctor administered a series of examinations and declared him free of any drug use. Still, the chatter persisted.

Years later, then-MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent told The New York Times reporter Murray Chass that, “People railroaded him [Dahlgren] for illegitimate reasons. It’s a sad story. He was accused of being on drugs when I doubt very much that he was. It’s not one of baseball’s prettiest stories, and I regret that it didn’t get fixed before he died.” [of natural causes in 1996.]  Dahlgren’s grandson Matt wrote an acclaimed book titled “Rumor in Town” that debunks the baseless marijuana allegations. Matt also provided some comforting details about his grandfather’s last 25 years. “Babe continued working with young prospects and eager-eyed players. He had compiled hundreds of rolls of film dating back to the early ‘40s when he used his first 8mm movie camera to capture the likes of Joe DiMaggio and other stars from the past. Little could he have imagined back then that his idea of using film to help struggling ball players would…become a mainstay in modern baseball and coaching.” Unfortunately, these historical and priceless films were lost to the fire that engulfed Babe’s home in 1980.

Safe to say that Babe would be aghast at the common use of performance enhancing drugs in today’s baseball and the wrist slap that passes for punishment. The use, possession, and sale of performance enhancing drugs is a federal felony punishable by a jail sentence and/or fines. If Dahlgren had played in a more tolerant drug-usage baseball era, his and his family’s lives would have had been more peaceful.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Pirates WWII Teams included First Drug-tested Player

States Join Immigration Enforcement Battle

By Joe Guzzardi

The national frustration over President Biden’s immigration agenda was reflected not only in the presidential election’s results but also in Arizona, outside of the spotlight. Proposition 314, a border security measure that makes it a state crime to enter Arizona from Mexico and outside of a legal port of entry, passed overwhelmingly. The Associated Press called the race Wednesday morning after the early returns Tuesday night showed a strong advantage for a yes vote on the measure, officially known as the “Immigration and Border Law Enforcement Measure.” Prop 314 led 62.7%-37.3% with a more than two million votes reported, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office results page.

Opponents have compared Prop 314 to SB 1070, Arizona’s “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,” which passed in 2010 and was partially struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States. Only four of SB 1070’s provisions went before SCOTUS, and the court left one of those intact, Section 2 (B) which requires Arizona law enforcement to make an attempt, when feasible, to determine a person’s immigration status during a “lawful stop, detention, or arrest” if there is a reasonable suspicion “that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States.” Lawful stops would include, among other crimes, traffic violations, home invasions or drug sales. Prop 314 has similar restrictions. Before law enforcement personnel could begin the removal process, it would have to capture on video and identify the illegal immigrant crossing or articulate based on their professional experience that the suspected alien dressed in camouflage or was part of a large group packed into a van, or other actions consistent with unlawful entry. The proposal covers more than border crossing requirements: also included are Increase penalties for fentanyl sales that results in death, a requirement that legal immigration status be confirmed before welfare benefits are granted, and that legal employment status be confirmed through E-Verify. Arizona judges could, after reviewing the evidence presented to them, issue deportation orders to any illegal alien who refuses to leave voluntarily.

Although voters approved Prop 314, the border-crossing provisions would not necessarily immediately become law. The text says that Prop 314 cannot be enforced until Texas’ SB 4 is approved. Other states have taken action similar to Texas’— Iowa’s Senate File 2340, signed by Governor Kim Reynolds,  and Oklahoma’s House Bill 4156, signed by Governor Gov. Kevin Stitt. A federal court is challenging the Texas proposal, a process which could take years. The good news is that, after Arizona completes its November 25 state certification, the added penalties for fentanyl-related deaths, and identity misrepresentation, become law.

Even though Prop 314 may be years away from becoming law, pro-immigration advocacy groups and the discredited ACLU are taking steps to block it. The ACLU made the familiar claims that it would “break families apart, exacerbate racial profiling, and increase criminalization of immigrants and communities of color.” 

Residents in states that have seen their schools, hospitals and police forces adversely affected by the entry of millions of illegal immigrants are imploring their local governments to assist the feds in restoring a rational immigration system. Nationwide, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement Removal Operations have about 35, 000 agents. Stacked up against ten million or more illegal aliens, the odds against meaningful enforcement are unbelievably bad indeed. The enforcement agencies need the help state governments can provide.

Former Texas U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan and keynote speaker at the 1976 Democratic National Convention gave the best guideline for immigration policy: “those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

States Join Immigration Enforcement Battle

Consistently Wrong Pollsters Try Again in 2024

By Joe Guzzardi

In 1964, I cast my first presidential ballot for Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. I preferred Goldwater’s more aggressive solution to end the Vietnam War, at the time heating up and poised to get even hotter. Goldwater promised “a choice, not an echo.” Voters will never know how successful Goldwater’s plan might have been. But the documented facts are that although Johnson positioned himself as more moderate than Goldwater, he became the quintessential warmonger. After Johnson’s landslide victory, LBJ escalated President John F. Kennedy’s commitment from fewer than 20,000 U.S. troops to more than a half million. Following the election, the war waged on for longer than a decade as more than 58,000 U.S. service members and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotians were killed.

Since the 1964 election, 15-four-year cycles, I’ve been a registered Republican, a registered Democrat, and a registered Independent. I have lived in New York, California, Washington, and Pennsylvania. At no time did I ever miss in-person voting which must, I assume, qualify me among pollsters as “a likely voter.” Yet during the last six decades, I have never received a telephone call from a pollster asking me for whom I planned to vote. Moreover, after I inquired, I learned that no family member, friend, neighbor, or work colleague has been polled. Who, then, is polled? Given my long-standing experience as a confirmed but never polled voter, I wonder what the non-stop fuss in print media and television is all about: “Harris is up two points in Wisconsin, but down two points in Michigan!” or “Trump is up four in North Carolina and gaining in Arizona.” Comparable stories not only have headlined but consumed most of the print ink or broadcast air with one talking head after another chattering predictable points that depend on their political leaning.

Since the 2016 and 2020 polls were dramatically off the mark, no one should put any credibility in the 2024 election predictions. In 2016, Donald J. Trump’s victory shocked many Americans, especially pollsters who showed his opponent, Hillary Clinton, leading the race up right up to Election Day. All data they were looking at seemed to predict her victory. Clinton’s campaign, confident she would win, had the champagne ready to pop. But Trump, who disdained data gathering, carried swing states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania which Democrats thought were in the bag. After the ballots were counted, Trump had won 306 electoral votes, compared to Clinton’s 232, securing him the presidency. The pollsters offered weak excuses for their embarrassing failures including a farfetched claim that the results were skewed by whether a male or female picked up the phone.

The 2016 misfire was supposed to serve as a wake-up call for pollsters, but it did not. The 2020 election would be, according to the polling, an easy Joe Biden victory. But Biden won by only three points versus his projected margin of eight—another humbling for the touted polling industry. Pollsters have spent the years since 2020 experimenting with ways to induce hard-to-reach voters to participate in surveys and testing statistical techniques to improve accuracy. But expert opinion is mixed on whether polling outcomes are due for a repeat of 2020, which a professional association of pollsters called the most inaccurate in 40 years. New developments, such as the shift of black and Latino voters away from Democrats and toward Republicans and the increase of online surveys that use unproven sampling methods create additional potential for error. Referring to 2024’s polling reliability, Stanford University political scientist Jon Krosnick said, “We are headed for more disaster.”

Pollsters do a better job of identifying the core issues that worry voters. The numbers one and two are the economy and immigration. But neither the polling organizations nor the candidates have comprehensively linked the two. Immigration directly impacts federal, state, and local economies. In March 2023, three years into the ongoing four-year invasion, the Federation for American Immigration Reform published its study, “The Total Fiscal Cost of Illegal Immigration.” FAIR estimated that, at the time of its report, 15.5 million illegal immigrants resided in the U.S. Beginning in 2023, the net cost of illegal immigration to the U.S. including K-12 education, emergency medical care, and other affirmative benefits is at least $150 billion. Subtracting the tax revenue that illegal aliens pay, just under $32 billion, from the gross negative cost of illegal immigration, $182 billion, FAIR arrived at its $150 billion total. Eighteen months have passed since FAIR’s report, and millions more illegal aliens have entered with taxpayers funding every step they take once inside the U.S.

The Biden/Harris administration has given the green light to millions of unvetted illegal aliens who have unlawfully crossed or, unprecedented, been flown into the interior via the unconstitutional CHNV program that admits 30,000 foreign nationals monthly. Voters who consider the economy their main concern should realize that unchecked immigration contributes to high living costs including the tax hikes necessary to pay billions for illegal aliens’ resettlement.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Consistently Wrong Pollsters Try Again in 2024

Consistently Wrong Pollsters Try Again in 2024

Illegals Swamping US School System

By Joe Guzzardi

The news agency Reuters published a story about how the border surge has crushed, from coast-to-coast, the public school system. Titled “An American Education: Classrooms Reshaped by Migrant Students,” Reuters sent a survey to more than 10,000 school districts to gauge immigration’s impact on public schools nationwide. Of the responding 75 school districts that serve 2.3 million children, 33% said the increase in illegal aliens has a “significant” effect. In the real academic world, significant translates to negative.

The Reuters story did a respectable job of outlining the challenges schools face—the problems of integrating foreign-born students into traditional American education. Since 2022, more than half a million school-age migrant children have arrived in the U.S., according to immigration court records that Syracuse University collected, exacerbating overcrowding in some classrooms; compounding teacher and budget shortfalls; forcing teachers to grapple with language barriers and escalating social tensions in some communities.

Andrew R. Arthur, the Center for Immigration Studies Resident Fellow in Law and Policy and who held several important Capitol Hill positions advising on immigration legislation, estimates that the actual total of migrant children enrolled is closer to one million. Arthur searched Syracuse’s TRAC website but could not find the cited statistics. Then, Arthur turned to the Office of Homeland Security Statistics. He concluded that counting unaccompanied alien children plus the released family units’ minors who crossed with their parents and are now in school, the more probable enrollment total is between 700,000 and more than one million school-aged migrant children.

Reuters pointed out the obvious—that teachers across the nation face the nearly-insurmountable task of educating non-English speaking students, a challenge that will intensify since foreign-born nationals from more than 150 countries speaking dozens of languages have either crossed the border or have been flowing into the interior via Biden’s unlawful CBP-One app. Districts will have to hire more budget-draining English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, assuming they can be found.  In Charleroi, the district will have to recruit Haitian Creole speakers, no doubt in short supply in Western Pennsylvania. But tiny Charleroi, population about 4,200, will have to find the instructors since in a little over a year, as many as 3,000 Haitians have moved into town, almost doubling its population. In 2021-22, the number of Charleroi’s non-English speaking students in area schools was 12; now it’s 220, an increase of more than 1,700 per cent. Finding suitable ESL teachers is made more difficult because, ideally, the job’s candidates will not only speak Haitian Creole but also have a teaching background. Very few who fit the bill can be found locally.

As a former ESL instructor during the Southeast Asian refugee resettlement into California’s immigrant-heavy San Joaquin Valley, I have some from-the-front observations about how the unanticipated arrivals put a school district and its long-time teachers into a state of controlled chaos. Much like the U.S. cities that are coping with huge arriving migrant totals, Chicago, Boston, Denver, etc., my district had to accommodate legally present refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand as well as itinerant laborers from Mexico and Guatemala. For teachers who had no trained background in international student instruction, the burden of managing so many kids from so many non-English speaking countries was overwhelming. One unsuccessful method of coping was called “pull outs.” A translator fluent in, for example Cambodian, would enter the classroom, take the Cambodian students to a corner, and instruct them in the lesson given to him by the teacher. Multiple problems arose—did the Cambodian aide fully understand the assignment? Did the aide convey the lesson in an effective manner? The teacher doesn’t speak Cambodian so he wouldn’t know. All of this took time away from the teacher’s responsibility to educate his traditional students. Multiple other language-related problems were ongoing—the often-transient migrant students enrolled after the school year started and left abruptly before it ended. Office personnel could not communicate with parents about important school issues. Finding and paying for appropriate language textbooks was a lengthy and expensive process.

The existing system harms everyone. The international students learn little and miss out on building a solid educational foundation. Teachers and other administrative cannot keep up. U.S. kids miss out on important classroom time. And taxpayers foot the hefty education bill, an estimated $800 billion in 2021 pre-invasion costs.  As long as the border remains open, citizens and international students will continue to fall behind and taxpayers will fund every open border consequence.

Illegals Swamping US School System

Virtue Signaling MLB Spends $$ In DR But Not In Poor America

By Joe Guzzardi

With a single stroke of his pen, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred rewrote a century of baseball history. Before the ink dried, the Pittsburgh Crawfords’ and the Homestead Grays’ Josh Gibson replaced Ty Cobb as baseball’s all-time batting champion, took over Babe Ruth’s career slugging average record, and is now officially the last player to hit over .400 in a season. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when baseball’s suits, a 17-man, John Thorn-led commission, met six times to evaluate, despite incomplete data, incorporating Negro Leagues’ statistics into the existing record book. Notwithstanding Sabermetricians’ best efforts, they only located about 75% of Negro Leagues’ box scores.

The commission marginalized icons Cobb, Ruth and Ted Williams. Cobb, the former career batting average leader, won 12 titles during his 11,440 at bats compared to Gibson’s 2,164. Displaced also is Ruth, who amassed his .690 slugging title in four-times Gibson’s plate appearances, 10,628 to 2,526. Yet Gibson with his .718 mark, post-Manfred’s edict, now holds Ruth’s old title. MLB’s ill-conceived revisions anointed Gibson as the last player to hit over .400 in a single season, .466 in 1943, which displaced Williams’ .406 in 1941. Gibson did not have enough at bats to qualify for the batting title. As ESPN’s black Senior Writer Howard Bryant described Manfred’s ahistorical pronouncement: “The decision was met with great applause, but in addition to being reconciliatory, it was also a spectacular display of historical distortion and institutional arrogance.” An unanswered question that Manfred left hanging: if Gibson established records in 1943, will the April 15th annual Jackie Robinson Day celebration of his 1947 breaking of MLB’s color line be canceled? Confused fans should consider the source. Manfred is a labor lawyer, not a baseball historian

More statistical revisions will come soon; the commission is still digging into decades of Negro Leagues’ games that involve hundreds of players. Questions about which games and feats should count will be endless. Satchel Paige’s 50 no-hitters, the total he insists he hurled, might replace Nolan Ryan’s seven as the new career record. Anything is possible. The commissioners have their computers and their new-fangled analytical methods. But Monte Irvin, who played for the Newark Eagles and the New York Giants, noted the obvious: unless the players compete in the same league, no meaningful parallels can be drawn. Irvin’s on-the-record opinion is that the Negro Leagues, because the teams had shallower pitching staffs, can’t compare to the majors.

Manfred claims that his baseball ideological history makes amends for the terrible biases that kept talented black players out of the major leagues because of their skin color. “Correcting an injustice,” is how Manfred attempted to explain the inexplicable. Beyond the clear fact that the leagues were separate entities, the inherent suggestion that MLB’s stamp of approval validates the Negro Leagues is an insult to Gibson, Paige, Irvin, Robinson and hundreds of others. The Negro Leagues do not need validation.

The commissioner’s gesture does little tangible for the black players’ families that suffered through decades of the shameful treatment and does even less for today’s black kids yearning to reach the major leagues. If MLB wants to do something productive for black youths, it should build a network of baseball camps like those it has spent hundreds of millions to develop in the Dominican Republic. Envision this: Manfred summons the thirty MLB owners and demands that, since baseball is an $12 billion industry, part of that revenue should be allocated to developing U.S. black players.

Originally, MLB promoted the camps as an option to a life spent in the Dominican sugar cane fields. For the few Dominicans who made the big leagues, they could send money home to lift their families out of poverty. But MLB was the big winner because teams could sign several prospects for the same cost to ink one American player. MLB originally paid its academy players little, $600 per month, but the cash plus a green card that would give prospects and their families legal status in the U.S. was too inviting to pass up.

The Pittsburgh Pirates built its first Dominican academy in 2009 and has added to the 52-acre facility every year thereafter. Pirates’ camps have multiple playing fields, cafeterias, classrooms and the most complete weight room among the camps. Pirates’ director of international development Hector Morales called the facility “unparalleled.” Nothing remotely similar exists in the U.S. And while the Dominican Republic offers the advantage of year-round good weather, determined multi-millionaire owners could work around climate handicaps by training in Florida, Texas or California and making use of indoor facilities during the winter months. Owners lack the will to find raw U.S. talent and develop it. The California Winter League, baseball’s first integrated league, played from 1900 to the mid-1940s. The greatest baseball stars competed in the CWL — -Walter Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Andy Pafko, Bob Elliot, and Jackie Robinson, among others.

Miserly billionaire owners point to the NCAA baseball teams as the best source for future stars. But few blacks can afford college. Consider how Pirates’ great Andrew McCutcheon viewed the challenges for increased black players’ participation in MLB In his 2015 Post-Gazette op-ed, “I Could Have Been Left Behind.” McCutcheon wrote about growing up in Central Florida, poor and unable to get rides to the big showcase tournaments. He envied Dominican players that MLB could, because of the local camps, sign, develop, and nurture. When Cutch wrote his op-ed, Josh Harrison was his only American black teammate. In the decade since Cutch’s op-ed, the only change is that Ke’Bryan Hayes has replaced Harrison as one of two other Pirates’ American blacks. Florida-based The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that African American players represented just 6.2% of players on 2023 MLB opening day rosters down from 7.2% in 2022. The totals were the lowest since the study began in 1991, when 18% of MLB players were African American. Dominican players comprise about 30% of MLB’s active rosters.

McCutcheon suggested that MLB build camps, scout high schools, Pony League, Nebraska’s cornfields and Chicago’s South Side. If MLB wants to “correct an injustice” to African Americans, as Manfred insists, give them an equal opportunity to earn the lucrative contracts that abound in baseball today. Every year, owners wring their hands and shed crocodile tears about its shortage of black players. The penurious owners should put their money where their mouths are. Right now, their money is in the Dominican Republic. The inescapable conclusion: MLB owners use the billions their teams generate from ticket, merchandise, and TV revenue to fund Dominican academies whose players that will eventually displace American kids on the baseball diamond.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Virtue Signaling MLB Spends $$ In DR But Not In Poor America

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

By Joe Guzzardi

When U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) released to media outlets Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s shocking statistics about convicted illegal alien criminals that include murderers and rapists set free into the interior, the damning data’s publication coincided exactly with Vice-President Kamala Harris’ September 27 photo-op at the border. The two-term representative received the information from ICE Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner who was responding to a letter Gonzales sent to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that expressed his concern about at-risk Americans who live in sanctuary cites. Gonzales also requested detailed information about the illegal immigrants on ICE’s docket to learn how many criminals are being released into the nation’s communities. After reading the statistics that Lechleitner included in his reply, Gonzales said that ICE’s findings are “beyond disturbing” and he vowed to fund the agency with sufficient resources to remove criminal illegal immigrants. Gonzales also demanded that Biden and Harris clean up “the mess their failed policies have created.”

“Beyond disturbing” is the year’s greatest understatement. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 illegal aliens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket including 13,099 criminally convicted murders. Gonzales, a U.S. Navy veteran, and Master Chief who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, represents Texas’ 23rd district which includes more than eight hundred miles along the U.S./Mexico border. Gonzales’ congressional voting record reflects solid grades on legislation that strengthens border security and interior immigration law enforcement. Gonzales recently secured over $12 million in federal grant funding through Operation Stonegarden for 17 Texas counties and two American Indian tribes. Operation Stonegarden, Gonzales explained, helps front line Border Patrol agents curtail cartel activity and related border security efforts.

Meanwhile down in Douglas County, Arizona, just as Gonzales released the gruesome ICE statistics, Harris connected with border patrol agents and local law enforcement officials. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels told reporters that his frustration has mounted steadily during the three and a half years since Harris’ border czar appointment. Over the last 31 months, Dannels’ office jailed 3,762 illegal immigrants for border-related crimes that cost his county $12.5 million. Dannels made multiple efforts to meet with Biden and Harris, but they always rebuffed him.

Dannels has seen heat-related desert deaths and other tragedies, but the White House and Congress has “intellectually turned [their] backs on us. That’s frustrating to me.” Harris, for the umpteenth time, chided her opponent Donald Trump for allegedly scotching the so-called bipartisan border bill that President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats have falsely claimed would solve the border crisis. Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico, contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Harris pledged to, if elected, revive the bipartisan border bill “and proudly sign it into law.” On multiple other occasions and on her website, Harris has pledged to offer “a pathway to citizenship” to millions of illegal aliens, an amnesty that Americans have, for decades, rejected.

Voters beware! The failed bipartisan bill that Harris praises would have, among its other flaws, codified continued mass immigration and done nothing to end parole abuse or scrap the illegal CBP-One app. The bill’s final version only required the Department of Homeland Security to tighten the processing and releasing of border crossers when a staggering 5,000 illegal aliens per day, averaged over 7 days, are encountered. The White House and DHS know how unpopular CBP-One is so they paired up to give concerned voters a head-fake. Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would not allow 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who arrived on CBP-One to extend their two-year parole period, a benefit previously available to them. Skeptics pointed out that not only would the illegal aliens likely remain, but they could enroll in other programs that protect them from deportation like Temporary Protected Status. Since the four countries are TPS-approved, when their parole period expires, if it ever does, getting added to TPS would be just a matter of bureaucratic paperwork. CBP-One is the gift to illegal aliens that keeps on giving. As of October 2023, 1.6 million migrants were awaiting approval to fly into the U.S. via the fraud-ridden parole program. Last month, DHS briefly suspended parole when an internal investigation found that thousands of illegal aliens’ sponsors listed fake social security numbers or phone numbers and used the same physical address on thousands of parole applications. 

Whatever may happen administratively, one thing is certain. ICE, hamstrung under the Biden/Harris administration, will deport few if any illegal aliens. Biden and Harris’ priority is the exact opposite: don’t deport; import.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Harris Would Proudly Continue Unvetted Immigration

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

By Joe Guzzardi

Through September 13, Vice President Kamala Harris has visited Pennsylvania twelve times. Most of her campaign stops have been in red counties that supported former President Donald Trump in 2020. Along the way, Harris made an assortment of campaign promises and highlighted her resume to generate support for her presidential bid. Harris’ mission is to acquaint voters with her qualifications and her views for the future. A September New York Times/Siena poll found nearly one-third of voters don’t know who Harris is.

Both Harris and Trump have focused on Pennsylvania, the “swingiest” swing state in a must-win tight presidential election. Between the two, they’ve visited the Commonwealth two dozen times, exclusive of the stand-alone visits from Harris’ VP running mate, MinnesotaGov. Tim Walz and Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. When, in early September, Harris landed at John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria Airport, Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, his wife Gisele, and Johnstown Democrat Mayor Frank Janakovic joined her. Johnstown, a small city within Cambria County, has a population of 18,000. In 2020, Cambria County voted for Trump over Biden 68% to 31%. On another stop in Wilkes-Barre, part of Luzerne County, Harris, for the first time, pledged to lower the standards for federal government employment. The 2020 election results showed that in Wilkes-Barre Trump defeated Biden by a 57% to 42% margin. Those are powerful margins that Harris would have to overcome to cut into Trump’s popularity.

Harris doubled down on her economic opportunity and pro-small business agenda. If elected, Harris promised to eliminate the “unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs and increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills.” Instead, Harris called for alternative pathways to good-paying jobs like apprenticeships and vocational training or adult education. Voters who have been casting ballots since the Clinton administration recognize Harris’ promises as empty. President Bill Clinton created GEAR UP, a 1998 program designed to help high-school students better prepare for the professional world. The Department of Education squandered millions on the failed program. In a corporate world that relies heavily on technology, specifically the STEM occupations—science, technology, engineering, and math— a vocational school diploma will rarely replace a college degree.

Then, touting her credentials as the former California Attorney General, Harris pointed to “transnational” cartels, and said, “I know these cartels firsthand, and as president, I will make sure we prosecute them to the full extent of the law for pushing poison like fentanyl on our children.”

In 2022, around 73,838 people in the United States died from a drug overdose that involved fentanyl, the highest number of fentanyl overdose deaths ever recorded, and a significant increase from the 36,319 reported in 2019, just weeks from President Joe Biden’s and Harris’ inauguration. Their open border agenda began immediately. Fentanyl overdoses are the driving force behind the opioid epidemic, accounting for the majority of U.S. overdose fatalities.

Curbing fentanyl deaths is an action Harris, the so called “Border Czar,” could do today if she enforced immigration laws which would prevent cartels and other illegal aliens from entering the nation without inspection. Of all of Harris’ hollow promises, none is less convincing than her vow to prosecute drug cartels. As she moves along in her campaign from swing state to swing state, drug traffickers are crossing the Southwest border daily and pushing their deadly drugs into American communities like Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre. In Pennsylvania, overdose deaths rose by 16.4% in 2020 and continued rising to 5,438 reported overdose deaths in 2021, a 6% year-over-year increase. Expressed in starker terms, an average of 15 Pennsylvanians died each and every day of a drug overdose in the last year. Harris has failed at her most important duty—to keep America safe.

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Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Pennsylvania is The Swingiest Swing State

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

By Joe Guzzardi

September is Suicide Prevention Month. Suicide, one of the leading causes of death, is a national crisis that effects, both directly and indirectly, Americans of all ages. Suicide rates increased approximately 36% between 2000–2022 and was responsible for 49,476 deaths in 2022, about one death every 11 minutes.

Although suicide is most often measured in emotional terms—the crushing effect on family and friends—the financial cost is significant. In 2020, suicide and nonfatal self-harm cost the nation over $500 billion in medical and work- loss costs. Suicide adversely affects all professions, even those that are associated with glamour and high incomes. For example, the list of baseball players who have taken their own lives is eighty-five names long. Listed chronologically, California Angels pitcher Donnie Moore is number 76. On June 18, 1989, Moore died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Adding to the tragedy, before he killed himself, Moore shot and wounded his wife Tonya with three bullets from his .45 caliber firearm while the couple’s three children were at home. Tonya sustained injuries to her lungs, stomach, and neck.

The Chicago Cubs selected Moore in the first round of the 1973 Major League Baseball Draft. In his 13-year career, Moore pitched for the Cubs, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Atlanta Braves, and the Angels. In the thirty-five years since Moore’s suicide, the widely accepted theory is that one post-season pitch thrown to the Boston Red Sox Dave Henderson drove Moore to the depths of despair. Moore threw his fateful pitch when he entered the game with the Angels holding a 5-4 lead, two outs in the ninth inning and a 3-1 advantage in the best of seven series. The Angels were one strike away from advancing to the World Series for the first time in franchise history.

When Moore took the mound, catcher Rich Gedman, who had been hit by a pitch, was on first base.  Henderson hit a 2–2 pitch off Moore for a home run to give the Red Sox a 6–5 lead. The Angels were able to score a run in the bottom of the ninth, pushing the game into extra innings which gave the Halos beloved owner Gene Autry hope. Moore returned to the mound and stifled a tenth inning Red Sox rally by getting Jim Rice to ground into a double play. Nonetheless, the Red Sox scored off Moore in the 11th inning with sacrifice fly by his nemesis Henderson. The Red Sox held the Angels scoreless in the bottom of the 11th and lost the game 7–6. The defeat left the Angels with a 3–2 series advantage with two more games to play at Fenway Park. The Angels, however, lost both, by scores of 10–4 and 8–1. After the fifth game, Moore admitted that he made a bad pitch to Henderson. “I was throwing fastballs, and Henderson was fouling them off, so I went with the splitfinger, thought maybe I’d catch him off guard, but it was right in his swing.” Lost in the retelling of the story, Moore was injured during the Red Sox series, received cortisone shots in his shoulder, but never got healthy. After saving nine more games in forty-one appearances over 1987 and 1988, the Angels released Moore. The Kansas City Royals signed him for the 1989 season, but he played only in the minor leagues before being cut in June of that year, ending his 14-year career in baseball.

No one truly understands why Moore, age 35, killed himself. The often-cited reason for Moore’s suicide is that he could not shake his failure against Henderson which prevented the Angels from advancing to the World Series. But pitchers routinely give up gopher balls, many at key times in crucial games. Bad performances in baseball are part of the game. Moore had been arguing with Tonya, and the pair had discussed divorce. But Moore had better options including counseling or separation. Money was not a concern; in 1986, Moore signed a $3 million contract, $8.6 million today. Moore’s 13 years in baseball were more than the average MLB pitcher lasts, and for about five years, he was one of the game’s premier relievers. He pitched two shutout innings in the 1985 All-Star Game. Despite his accomplishments, Moore was deeply depressed.

Moore’s heartbreaking story has a comforting footnote. Because of her injuries, Tonya missed Donnie’s memorial service in Santa Ana and his funeral in Lubbock, Texas. To help Tonya get over her grief and at her request, family attorney Randall Johnson arranged to have Moore’s body brought to her at the hospital. Orderlies delivered his coffin to an empty room, and then wheeled Tonya in. Tonya said the viewing gave her a chance to express her feelings. “I told him I forgive him,” she told the Los Angeles Times from her hospital bed. “I told him I love him. He had a lot of problems, but I still love him. He was a sweet guy.”

Angels’ Pitcher Donnie Moore’s Tragic Story

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires

By Joe Guzzardi

Journalist Studs Terkel, who wrote “Working,” the classic oral history of Americans’ on-the-job lives, called Marvin Miller “the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis,” the United Mine Workers president for forty years and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ founder. Miller took over a failing group that represented the nation’s most exploited but irreplaceable workers —the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA)—- and converted it into the country’s most powerful union.

Miller’s introduction to labor negotiations came when he worked for the United States Steel Workers Association (USWA). In the early 1950s, the USWA, along with the United Auto Workers (UAW), for whom Miller also worked, represented America’s union strength. USWA, with 2,300 North American locals, had more than one million members. But an internal USWA shake-up prompted Miller to seek new employment. He turned down a faculty position at Harvard University when Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts asked him to consider becoming the MLBPA’s executive director. Miller, a baseball fan who admired Roberts’ sterling career—286 wins and 305 complete games over a 20-year career—agreed. After the owners tried to persuade the unconvinced players that Miller would lead them into a strike that few of them could afford —a scare tactic— in 1966, the tenacious labor leader eventually got the job.

Miller had to overcome numerous efforts made by the owners to block his ascendancy. The owners hoped that by repeatedly stalling they would force Miller, who still had no fixed plan to fund the union, to give up. Instead, the owner’s heavy-handedness infuriated the players, and they unified their support behind Miller, who in 1966 they unanimously elected their executive director. By 1968, Miller had negotiated MLBPA’s first collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the team owners that won the players a whopping increase in their minimum salary from $7,000 to $10,000 plus larger expense allowances that covered the 1968 and 1969 seasons. Miller advised superstar outfielder Curt Flood in the historic 1972 Flood versus Kuhn case which reached the Supreme Court. At stake was coveted free agency. The court ruled against Flood 5-3-1; nevertheless, Flood’s lawsuit opened the door for other MLB players to challenge the reserve clause.

On December 23rd, 1975, Peter Seitz, the neutral arbitrator, awarded Major League Baseball players, both present and future, the greatest Christmas present they would ever receive. He ruled that clause 10(a) of a player’s contract, reserving an unsigned player to his current team, was only valid for one year. After that, a ballplayer could become a free agent if the contract remained unsigned. Free agency, resulting from the 1974 case of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Andy Messersmith and the Baltimore Orioles’ Dave McNally who Miller encouraged to sit out a year, was on the horizon. After filing a grievance, Messersmith and McNally won free agency and signed new contracts with the Atlanta Braves and the Montreal Expos.

During Miller’s MLBPA executive director tenure, baseball suffered through strikes and lockouts that angered fans. But the average player’s annual salary rose from $19,000 in 1966 to $326,000 in 1982, the year Miller left the MLBPA. Miller died in 2012 and didn’t live long enough to see the explosion in player salaries. Too bad; he would have been proud of the groundbreaking work he did decades ago. In 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way player, Shohei Otani will earn $70 million, the average player salary is $5 million, and the minimum player income, $750,000.

After being rejected six times in Hall of Fame voting, four times by the Veterans Committee, and twice by the Expansion Era Committee, both dominated by owners and baseball executives, in 2020, the Modern Baseball Era Committee inducted Miller. In 2008, four years before his death at age 95, Miller told the Boston Globe that he held the HOF in contempt and was indifferent to his induction. Calling the vote “rigged” and the members “handpicked to reach a particular outcome,” Miller said, “At age 91, I can do without the farce.”

Miller was among baseball’s three most impactful figures, sharing the honor with Babe Ruth, who changed the way the game is played and Jackie Robinson who paved the way for black players to enter the Major Leagues.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe.com@yahoo.com

Marvin Miller Made Baseball Players Millionaires