Category: Joe Guzzardi

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

By Joe Guzzardi

In the mid-19th century, John Philip Sousa was one of America’s biggest “base ball” bugs, as fans were then called. In his autobiography, “Marching Along,” Sousa, born in 1854, described the joy baseball had imparted to him since way back to the Civil War. Abner Doubleday, the sport’s mythical inventor, was a Union general in the war who fought at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Throughout the war, when soldiers on either side weren’t marching or engaged in battle, they played “base ball” to break up camp life’s monotony. Commanders and army doctors encouraged “base ball” believing that it kept the soldiers fit, healthy and out of trouble. While soldiers frequently took part in foot races, wrestling and boxing matches, and occasionally even cricket or football, “base ball” was the most popular of all competitive sports in both army camps. Historians noted that baseball came of age during the Civil War, and entered mainstream American culture during those years. Note: in 1884, The New York Times style guide changed base ball to baseball, and it has been written that way ever since.

As a Washington, D.C. youth, Sousa watched the game evolve from its earliest days through the Dead Ball era that showcased baseball’s first inductees: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Honus Wagner. Starting in 1857, the 21-run endpoint was eliminated, with games instead ending after nine innings. Foreshadowing modern-day baseball, other rule changes were introduced, including called strikes — previously, strikes were only the result of missed swings. Also, cricket-style flat bats were banned, and a white line marked the boundary between fair and foul territory; the umpire no longer had to guess where the ball landed.

Sousa was more than a fan. Through his years as a bandmaster, Sousa often pitched in games which pitted his band members against local nines. Eventually, his band grew large enough so that intra-squad games between the brass and woodwind sections were played. Whenever the opportunity arose to promote the band in front of a large audience, Sousa, often called “The American March King,” would pitch an inning or two. His band members referred to Sousa as “Ace,” and he pitched until age 62.

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

In the February 1909 issue of “Baseball Magazine,” Sousa, in his essay titled “The Greatest Game in the World,” wrote effusively about playing the American Guards on Independence Day, 1900 at the Paris, France, Exposition Universelle, the World’s Fair. “What,” asked Sousa, “could have been more appropriate for two American organizations in a foreign land to do [play baseball] on the glorious Fourth?” The All-American game that Sousa loved was one of the first baseball games played in Europe.

At the behest of Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and to celebrate the National League’s 50th anniversary, Sousa in 1925 wrote “The National Game” that combined his two greatest passions, baseball and marches. The original performances featured four baseball bat solos.

As rousing as “The National Game” march is, Sousa’s classic, “Stars and Stripes Forever,” is more uplifting. Written in 1896, and congressionally approved as the nation’s official march in 1987, Sousa’s lyrics have inspired patriotism in generations of Americans:

“Red and white and starry blue

Is freedom’s shield and home.

“Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation

“But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom’s nation.

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.”

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

John Philip Sousa Baseball Ace, Happy 4th Of July

Challenges Await Resettled Afghans

Challenges Await Resettled Afghans

By Joe Guzzardi

Rental costs across the United States are rising at the fastest rate in decades. Because the COVID-related, federally mandated eviction moratoriums have been lifted, landlords can boot out existing tenants, increase rents and find new occupants. Landlords can reap windfall profits from the new ground rules, but at the expense of the many people who find themselves either homeless or anxious about the possibility of becoming homeless.

In some of the most sought-after destinations, rent has soared faster and higher than the national average. Record high rents, some as high as 40 percent above previous listings, have been seen in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Austin. Recently, prospective Manhattan renters waited more than an hour to view an East Village, 371-square-foot, one-bedroom, third-floor walk-up listed for $2,337.39 a month.

Among those caught up in the dramatic rental price spike are the recently arrived Afghan evacuees. The Department of State’s Reception and Placement Program provides the paroled Afghan evacuees – they don’t have refugee status – with initial resettlement services for up to three months. This includes $2,275 per refugee resettled, with $1,225 of that money going toward food, shelter and clothing. The evacuees are eligible for a long list of affirmative social services programs that include Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income, Head Start, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC). Some Afghan families range in size from 6-11 persons which means they require more expensive and harder-to-find three- or four-bedroom units.

As challenging as finding short-term rentals is, long-term housing is more difficult. Evacuees are, for the most part, unemployed, have no credit history and generally are required to provide the first and last months’ rent in advance as well as a security deposit, an aggregate sum that can total several thousand dollars. In Minneapolis, where rent for a 778-square-foot apartment averages $1,621, Gul Rahim finds himself, his family of 13 and his pregnant wife facing eviction. Rahim doesn’t have a job and, since he doesn’t speak English and is caring for his ill and pregnant wife, can’t look for one either. Of Minneapolis’ 1,200 evacuees, 600 like Rahim are confronting a housing crisis and may soon join the city’s substantial homeless population.

Challenges Await Resettled Afghans

As grave as the affordable housing shortage is for the evacuees, adjusting to U.S. K-12 public schools will present equally weighty problems for their children. Afghanistan has a dual education process that differs significantly from the U.S. In Afghanistan, two parallel systems ongoing at the same time. First, religious education is the responsibility of clerics at mosques, and second, the government provides free academic education at state schools. As for U.S. teachers, helping the Afghans will add to their already-substantial responsibility to instruct other international students. Overcrowded schools are coping with millions of English language learners and will now have to instruct Afghan speakers whose native languages are Dari and Pashto. Teacher time spent on English language learners detracts from the instruction that citizen children should receive, the lack of which harms their quality of education. The greater the number of students in a classroom, the less attention each student can receive from the teacher. This particularly affects students who are struggling and need the extra attention.

The housing emergency that many Afghans are dealing with and the K-12 tribulations that lay ahead are the predictable outcomes of the Biden administration’s hasty, botched withdrawal. Moreover, the open border will create the same set of housing and schooling problems for more than 1 million foreign nationals that have arrived from 150 different countries. They’ll all need places to live and education for their children. The question that Biden and his inner circle never asked is what comes next after millions of illegal aliens and evacuees arrive and need nurturing. If the question were ever asked, no one thought to consider the obvious answer – America has enough affordable housing and education woes without compounding them by importing millions more needy people.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Challenges Await Resettled Afghans

Most Endangered River Provides Water to 40 Million

Most Endangered River Provides Water to 40 Million Residents

By Joe Guzzardi

At a June 14 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee meeting, environmentalists warned that the Colorado River’s reservoir level drop might bring dramatic cuts to water deliveries provided to the seven states dependent on the river. Those states are Colorado, California, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada. Alarmingly, given its importance, the conservation group American Rivers ranked the Colorado as No. 1 on its list of the nation’s most endangered rivers.

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the committee that maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the U.S. – Lake Mead and Lake Powell – will require large reductions in water deliveries. Touton advised the committee that, in the next two months, her agency is negotiating with the seven states that count on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions. The Reclamation Bureau is the federal agency charged with assisting the western states, Native American tribes and others to meet water needs. An estimated 40 million residents throughout the region rely on the Colorado for water.

Most Endangered River Provides Water to 40 Million Residents

The committee’s witnesses were unanimous in their predictions that acute water shortages are in the near-term future. John Entsminger, the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s general manager, said that the slow-motion train wreck that’s been accelerating for 20 years has created “the moment of reckoning.” Said Entsminger, “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”

Because the Western United States is suffering through a relentless drought, analysts predict that next year the affected states will cope with a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water. Scientific Americanreported that 2021’s exceptionally dry year created a record-breaking drought, or mega-drought. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. To date, 2022 is the driest year on record in California. Researchers predict with a 94 percent degree of certainty that California’s drought will continue for at least one more year.

University of Colorado, Boulder climate scientist Imtiaz Rangwala has observed drought conditions increasingly worsen in the western and central U.S. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”

But neither during the hearing nor in the media writeups was population growth in the seven western states mentioned. The 2000 populations for Colorado, California, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Nevada were 4.3 million, 33.9 million, 1.8 million, 2.2 million, 494,000, 5.1 million and 2 million, respectively. And in 2022, the states’ populations are, respectively, 5.8 million, 39.5 million, 2.1 million, 3.3 million, 579,000, 7.6 million and 3.2 million. In slightly more than two decades, about 12 million more people have become dependent on the Colorado for water.

The link between more people and more water consumption is undeniable. Yet Congress, the White House, the media and academia refuse to have a rational discussion about reducing the flow of 1 million-plus legal immigrants which, with their offspring, drive population increases. Knowing that the nation’s western states are in a water crisis, opening the border to millions, as the Biden administration is doing, is ecological suicide. Nevertheless, the status quo on adding population continues on autopilot, consequences be damned.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Most Endangered River Provides Water to 40 Million Residents

Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics

Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics

By Joe Guzzardi

Just five months before mid-term elections, the Biden White House is concerned that ugly border optics may cost Democrats both congressional chambers. Border shelters in Texas and Arizona are bulging at the seams. Customs and Border Protection lack other options to address the border crisis and are releasing illegal aliens onto city streets. With this situation, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing, at taxpayer cost, to transport migrants deep into the interior.

The latest DHS plan comes during a record illegal immigrant surge that includes 234,088 aliens in April alone, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Religious and nongovernmental organizations at the border, which typically house illegal immigrants after CBP releases them, are overwhelmed.

In El Paso, for example, CBP recently freed dozens of migrants, penniless non-English speakers, who then sat on street corners. The El Paso Times reported that the city’s resources to help have been depleted. Agents release more than 1,000 immigrants a day despite El Paso only having enough room to house 1,700. Neither the DHS nor any other federal agency contacted El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser to warn that, because of the border surge, large numbers of aliens were on the way. The Biden administration’s policy is to operate arbitrarily, and let the local communities fend for themselves.

Sources with knowledge of the DHS plan said that taxpayer dollars would be allocated to reroute aliens to shelters around the country. The first city DHS targeted is Los Angeles. Then, future migrants will be sent to Albuquerque, Houston, Dallas and other cities. The effort to relocate migrants involves the Southwest Border Coordination Center, which comprises officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP and other agencies.

Despite the assembled experience that the multiple federal agencies assumably have, their decision to initiate the program in Los Angeles is baffling. No city in the nation is less prepared to accept mostly poor, mostly unskilled illegal immigrants than Los Angeles with its 20 percent poverty rate. The city and Los Angeles County’s populations are, respectively, four million and 10 million. Both the city and county struggle with a homelessness crisis that the aliens will exacerbate. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s latest numbers, which were gathered in 2020 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, show that the county’s homeless population increased by 12.7 percent to 66,436 over the previous year, while Los Angeles’ homeless population spiked 16.1 percent to 41,290.

Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics

Within the general Los Angeles homeless population, a Hispanic subset revealed their dashed hopes about coming to California to find a job, only to eventually be left without shelter. KQED, Northern California’s NPR and PBS member station, spoke with homeless illegal immigrants about their lives post-border crossing. Jobs were lost, illnesses occurred, rents increased to unaffordable levels and connections with family back home grew infrequent. A day laborer, who goes by “Alonso,” said that if conditions in Los Angeles don’t improve, he’ll return to Mexico.

For all the other Alonsos located in California, Albuquerque, Houston and Dallas, Mayorkas is ensuring that their lives will remain unfulfilled. In Albuquerque, the poverty rate is 18 percent, and homelessness is rising, quadrupling since 2013. In Dallas, which has a 22 percent poverty rate, shelters are full every night. And in Houston, with its 21.2 percent poverty rate, homelessness is up 5.8 percent in 2022 in year-over-year counts.

For those who point out that the administration has broken virtually every border and interior enforcement immigration law, and by so doing jeopardized a sovereign America, Biden has the audacity to equate patriots with domestic violent extremists.

Since terrorists with murder on their minds can enter the U.S. effortlessly, Biden’s insult is laden with irony. An alleged ISIS operative, Shihab Ahmed Shihab, already inside the U.S., plotted to smuggle fellow terrorists through the open border. Once safely across, the terrorists planned to surveil former President George W. Bush’s home and his institution to develop an assassination plot. Despite Mayorkas’ claim that the border is secure, the FBI warrant application indicated that Shihab claimed to have smuggled two individuals associated with Hezbollah into the U.S. for a fee of $50,000 each. Shahib, an Iraqi national, had an asylum application pending.

Biden’s immigration agenda, after 18 months as president, includes dismantling immigration law, opening the border and importing poor, limited-skilled individuals, relocating them to communities that can barely keep afloat. As well, the agenda includes disregarding terrorist plots to assassinate former presidents and encouraging fraudulent asylum claims. Little wonder the White House is apprehensive about the upcoming elections.

Biden DHS To Distribute Illegals To Stop Bad Optics

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

By Joe Guzzardi

On Father’s Day, 1964, Philadelphia Phillies’ right-hander Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game against the New York Mets in Shea Stadium. Bunning’s two-hour, 10-minute masterpiece – 90 pitches, 10 strike outs – during a double-header’s first game had special significance. At the time, Bunning and his wife Mary Theis had seven children. Eventually, the Bunnings, married 60 years, would have nine children, 35 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Few in baseball history have lived as rewarding a life as Bunning who represented Kentucky as a U.S. representative from 1987 to 1999, and then as a two-term U.S. senator from 1999 until 2011. Bunning’s baseball achievements put him in the Hall of Fame. Along his way, Bunning racked up 224 wins, 2,855 strike outs and was chosen to participate in nine All-Star Games. The fire-balling righty led the league in strike outs three times, and when he retired Bunning ranked second among all-time strikeout leaders behind Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators.

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father's Day '64
Perfect on Father’s Day 1964

In 1955, Bunning debuted with the Detroit Tigers, and in 1958, he threw a 3-0 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox. Bunning was then traded to the Phillies, his second stop in a career that also included brief stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Long after Bunning hung up his glove, he recalled in detail how he set down 27 consecutive Mets, the first National League perfect game since 1880 when John Montgomery Ward, throwing underhand and from 45 feet, defeated the Buffalo Bisons, 5-0. After attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and eating a hearty sausage and egg breakfast, Bunning headed out to Shea where the temperature and humidity would hit 90 by game time. Although Bunning said that he felt no better or no worse than usual as he warmed up, Phillies’ manager Gene Mauch disagreed. Mauch told Sport Magazine’s Larry Merchant, “We knew when he [Bunning] was warming up that this was something special. The way he was throwing so live and as high as he was. Not high with his pitches. High himself.”

For nine innings, Bunning was so relaxed that he rejected the long-standing baseball tradition which forbade pitchers to talk to teammates about no hitters in progress – considered a jinx. “Dive for the ball,” Bunning laughingly told his infielders. “Don’t let anything fall in.” With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Bunning called catcher Gus Triandos to the mound and asked him to tell him a joke. Triandos shook his head in dismay and went back behind the plate. Bunning then struck out the last two Mets and pounded his glove as his teammates rushed to share his joy in his 6-0 win. Bunning’s was the fifth perfect game in major-league history and the first in the regular season since the Chicago White Sox Charlie Robertson blanked the Detroit Tigers, 2-0.

Later, Bunning said about his flawless performance: “Everything has to come together, good control, outstanding plays from your teammates, a whole lot of good fortune on your side and a lot of bad luck for the other guys. A million things could go wrong, but on this one particular day of your life none of them do.”

But when Bunning looked back at his 1964 season, disappointment superseded his perfect game’s thrills. By September 20, the Phillies led by 6½-games with 12 to play. But then the wheels fell off. The Phils lost ten in a row; Bunning, overworked by Mauch, was charged with three losses. The St. Louis Cardinals eked out the pennant by a game over the Phils and the Cincinnati Reds.

Before he died at age 85, Bunning said, “I am most proud of the fact I went through nearly 11 years without missing a start. They wrote my name down, and I went to the post.” In today’s era, Bunning’s consistency would be a marvel.

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

Jim Bunning Dad To Nine Threw Perfect Game On Father’s Day ’64

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

By Joe Guzzardi

Meta Platforms, until October 2021 known as Facebook, is in turmoil. Infamous for its commitment to employing H-1B workers, and simultaneously undermining qualified U.S. tech workers’ careers, the Silicon Valley titan is finally getting its just rewards.

Sheryl Sandberg, a Facebook fixture for 14 years, and as Chief Operating Officer the No. 2 behind Mark Zuckerberg, will be leaving this fall. Some analysts have been long-critical of Sandberg, net worth $1.6 billion, and have pushed for at least two years for her ousting. Zuckerberg and Sandberg disagreed over Metaverse’s vision.

Since Sandberg’s COO replacement, Julian Oliver, has been named, her departure is unlikely to have further measurable negative effect on Meta. But, Oliver will have to assume the responsibility for pulling Meta out of the steady, deep decline the company is struggling with.

Meta Platform’s key Facebook products have grown old. The number of young people actively using Facebook and Instagram has drifted to TikTok which users see as more compelling. Today, TikTok, dominates the social media industry in screen time, and Amazon has become a leading player in the advertising industry.

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Then, to the dismay of its shareholders, the Meta stock price’s plunge in recent weeks has slashed the market cap by about 50 percent to $529 billion from an all-time high, and has cut Zuckerberg’s net worth to about $84 billion. As of June 7, Meta stock has stabilized at $196 per share, 14 percent above its low for the year.

In February, Facebook agreed to pay $90 million to settle a privacy lawsuit which claimed that it impermissibly tracked users after they logged out, and sold their personal information to enrich the company. Along the same lines, in January, the British watchdog group, Financial Conduct Authority, sued Meta for $3.2 billion on behalf of individuals who used Facebook in the UK between 2015 to 2019. The lawsuit claims that Facebook made its users submit personal data in order to access the platform and thereby earned billions of dollars from the tactic, Reuters reported.

For Meta, the bad news keeps piling up. Qualified black applicants have charged Facebook with shutting them out of key positions because they aren’t a “culture fit,” a possible reference to the large number of Chinese and Indian H-1B visa employees on the staff. Multiple reports allege that hiring managers confirmed to black candidates during interviews that they “could do the job” before using the “culture-fit” excuse to reject the candidate.

Facebook pledges to add 30 percent more people of color in leadership positions by 2025, but it has a long way to go. Despite incessantly touting the company’s commitment to diversity, Facebook’s 2020 Diversity Report showed little progress. Blacks and Hispanics in key technical roles increased year-over-year, from 1 percent to 1.7 percent for blacks and from 3 percent to 4.3 percent for Hispanics. Moreover, since last summer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating bias claims against Facebook and has recently upgraded its inquiry into a systemic probe that could lead to broader charges.

Meta not only denies middle-management jobs to blacks and Hispanics. The company prefers cheaper, more subservient foreign-born H-1B workers to U.S. tech graduates, a constant in its hiring practices. Zuckerberg, both directly through his congressional testimony and also through FWD.us, the pro-amnesty group he created, staunchly supports higher immigration.

Last year, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice settled employment discrimination suits against Facebook. Although the settlement sums were paltry for the tech giant, $4.75 million, a DOL civil penalty payable to the federal government and, from the DOJ, up to $9.5 million due the injured parties, Facebook should assume that the charges against it are a warning to clean up its anti-U.S. tech worker bias.

Meta needs a public relations overhaul. An easy place to begin would be to hire U.S. tech workers. Figuratively, Facebook’s image has taken a bigger hit than its net worth. With more than a half-trillion current net worth, even after the stock market blood bath, Meta Platforms/Facebook can afford to hire skilled U.S. tech workers.

Joe Guzzardi is a PFIR analyst who has written about immigration and its consequences for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

Racial Turmoil At Meta As Company Favors Foreigners

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

By Joe Guzzardi

Since baseball’s earliest years, U.S. presidents have been big fans of the national pastime. Among the most avid baseball fans were William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Richard M. Nixon. After his political career ended, the players’ union lobbied to have Nixon appointed to head the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Only Dwight Eisenhower played professional baseball, and therein lays a tale. Eisenhower grew up in rural Abilene, Kan., starred as a right end in football and excelled in center field on his 1908 high school baseball team. Ike’s brother Edgar played fullback and first base. Since the Eisenhower family couldn’t afford to send both boys to college, the brothers struck a deal. Edgar went to the University of Michigan, while Dwight worked at a local creamery and sent his wages to his brother.

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro
I have a secret

At age 21, Ike won an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point and became a star running back alongside another future WWII general, Omar Bradley. The New York Times called Ike “one of the most promising running backs in Eastern football,” but a knee injury ended Eisenhower’s football days. And to what Eisenhower called “one of the greatest disappointments of my life…maybe the greatest,” he didn’t make the Army baseball team.

But Ike had a baseball secret, one that could have altered his life’s course had it become known while he was at West Point. The year before Ike enrolled, and using the pseudonym “Wilson,” he played professional baseball in the Class D Central Kansas League as the Junction City Soldiers’ center fielder. Ike once told the Associated Press that he played poorly and was paid little. But setting off for college, Ike needed even the small sums he earned.

Years later, at a game Ike attended between the New York Giants and the Boston Braves, managers Mel Ott and Bob Coleman asked General Eisenhower to confirm whether he had played professionally, and if so, at what position. Ike half-kiddingly replied, “That’s my secret.”

Ike’s desire for secrecy is understandable. The NCAA has strict rules that prohibit student athletes from playing professionally. If found to have received compensation, the consequences, as Olympic decathlon star Jim Thorpe discovered, are severe. Thorpe was stripped of his two 1912 Olympic gold medals when the committee learned that he had played two seasons of semi-professional baseball and had therefore violated the amateurism rules. For Eisenhower, his punishment would have been immediate expulsion from West Point.

It’s likely Eisenhower knew that he had broken the West Point Code of Honor when he signed a 15-question legibility card attesting to his amateur status. As years passed, Ike stopped talking about his baseball-playing years, instructing his staff to dodge questions. A memo found among Ike’s presidential papers at the Abilene Eisenhower Library read: “As of August 1961, DDE indicated inquiries should not be answered concerning his participation in professional baseball – as it would necessarily become too complicated.”

Had West Point expelled Eisenhower, he might never have become the general who led the Allied forces to victory in World War II, might never have presided as Columbia University’s president and might never have served two U.S. presidential terms.

From his earliest days, Ike truly loved baseball. His favorite story recalls the time when, on a warm Kansas afternoon, he and a young friend went river fishing and fantasized aloud about their futures. The friend told Ike that one day he wanted to be the U.S. president. Dwight said that “he wanted to be a real major league baseball player like Honus Wagner.” In the end, Ike concluded, “Neither one of us got our wish.”

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

Ike Only Prez Who Played Pro Ball — And It Was A No No

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

By Joe Guzzardi

Among three ongoing wars, the Biden administration concerns itself with only one, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That faraway conflict, which has no national interest associated with it, spawned an inflation-spiking $53 billion U.S. taxpayer infusion into corrupt Ukraine. Biden rode roughshod over Congress, demanding that the final bill get to his desk “in the next few days,” and added that “we cannot afford to delay in this vital war effort.”

Two other incursions, both on U.S. soil, aren’t on Biden’s radar. The first is the Southwest Border war, a different battle than the Ukraine conflict since no bombings or tanks are involved. Nevertheless, the invasion of foreign nationals from more than 150 nations is a war against U.S. sovereignty, and Biden isn’t interested enough to travel to witness first-hand the nation-busting events that he has allowed to develop. In his January 2022 story, Washington Timesreporter Stephen Dinan wrote that “more than 44% of encounters with unauthorized migrants in December were with people from beyond Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A year ago, that number was just 11%.”

Second is the war against the communities – and specific to this analysis – waged against the local school districts along the border. The establishment media has devoted extensive, merited print coverage and hours of broadcast updates on the Robb Elementary School massacre. Little coverage, however, has been given to Uvalde Mayor’s Don McLaughlin’s statement to Texas Department of Emergency Management officials that, as of Oct. 21, 2021, the academic year’s first few months, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officials had to lock down schools “48 times this year due to high-speed pursuits and migrants fleeing from law enforcement.” Mayor McLaughlin had previously said that Biden’s border neglect created a series of robberies and car thefts that further stained his economically depressed city.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

For children subjected to school shutdowns, their experience is traumatic. In the late 1980s, the period which included the Stockton, Calif., Cleveland School shooting that killed five school children and wounded 32, I taught at a Stockton primary school. During that era, Asian gang drive-by murders and home invasion robberies that often included gun violence were widespread as were the subsequent lockdowns. The school’s front office issued an intercom alert, and teachers gathered their students, directing them to move as far away from the classroom door as possible. There they huddled together in the dark until the alert was lifted, about an hour later. Since the children lived in the neighborhood, they knew the potential consequences could be fatal. Lockdowns in what should be safe places like neighborhood schools is what Biden’s border agenda has brought to Uvalde’s children – American kids living in an American city in Texas, an all-American state.

Biden makes no effort to hide his scorn for border enforcement. Even though off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent Jacob Albarado killed the Robb Elementary gunman Salvador Ramos, and thereby doubtless saved dozens of lives, Biden insultingly disinvited 73 of 80 CBP, mostly from the tactical BORTAC unit, to a photo-op with the president. The event was scheduled for a large open-space facility, but administration officials cited space as a reason for the retracted invitations.

Biden is back in the White House, and Capitol Hill is making angry noises about tough gun control legislation. As for the border, no changes will be forthcoming. Once the memorials and burials are over, Uvalde and other border cities will continue, for at least the duration of Biden’s presidency, as stop-overs for illegal alien invaders. Citizens whose lives have been inexorably damaged because of Biden’s criminal disregard for his oath of office are, to him, inconsequential, collateral damage incurred on the woke path to destroying America.

PFIR analyst Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org and joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Uvalde Schools Shutdown 48 Times Due Illegal Immigration Issues

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

By Joe Guzzardi

Baseball fans who came of age during the 1950s, the National Pastime’s Golden Era, remember Morrie Martin as a journeyman left-handed pitcher who had limited success during his ten-year career. Pitching mostly for the basement-dwelling Philadelphia A’s, Martin’s career record was 38-34. Martin was credited with 23 wins as an A’s; the remaining 15 were spread out among the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Chicago White Sox, the Baltimore Orioles and the St. Louis Cardinals. The stout lefty from Dixon, Mo., made brief appearances for the Chicago Cubs, but didn’t earn a decision.

Martin was much more than a middling MLB hurler who walked more batters, 252, than he struck out, 245. Before Martin was inducted into the U.S. Army on June 2, 1943, he compiled above-average minor league credentials, 16-7, in Grand Forks, N.D., with the Class C Chiefs and in St. Paul, Minn., with the American Association’s Saints, two Chicago White Sox affiliates. Martin’s pitching stints with the Saints represented the last times he touched a baseball until his return home from WWII in 1945.

As Gary Bedingfield reported on his “Baseball in Wartime” website and pursuant to information drawn from Stan Opdkye’s Society of American Baseball Research essay, “Morrie Martin,” Martin entered military service with the Army at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., and then served overseas with the 49th Engineer Combat Battalion where he took part in amphibious landings as part of Operation Torch at North Africa, Operation Husky at Sicily and Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A's

As an engineer, Martin was among the first to reach shore. Shortly after the D-Day landing, and while on guard duty near Saint-Lô, France, Martin was hit by shrapnel in his neck, left hand and arm. Despite his injuries, Martin remained on the front lines. Late in 1944, he was engaged in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium and suffered frostbite in the bitterly cold temperatures. Nevertheless, Martin remained with his unit until 1945 when he suffered serious, near-fatal injuries.

After Martin took two more rounds of shrapnel wounds, he was buried alive in Germany when the house he took shelter in was shelled. Left for dead, Martin and two other soldiers clawed their way out to rejoin their battalion. At the Battle of the Bulge, Martin suffered a bullet wound to the thigh, and nearly lost his leg when gangrene set in.

Evacuated to a hospital in Saint-Quentin, France, Martin caught a big break. A nurse looked at his chart, saw that he was a professional ball player, and urged him to reject the doctors’ advice that he give his permission to amputate his leg. Instead, more than 150 penicillin shots saved Martin’s leg from amputation, and he slowly worked his way back to the big leagues. Discharged from the Army in October 1945, Martin joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, and worked his way up through Branch Rickey’s fiercely competitive minor league system.

On April 25, 1949, Martin made his first MLB start against the Boston Braves, the 1948 National League champions. Martin pitched seven quality innings, but his opponent, Bill Voiselle, who pitched a complete game shutout, was better. For the balance of his career, Martin shuffled back and forth between the majors and the minors. Martin peaked in 1951 with the A’s when he compiled an 11-4 record.

On May 25, 2010, in Washington, Mo., Martin died from lung cancer at age 87. For his service in World War II, he was awarded two Purple Hearts, four battle stars and an Oak Leaf Cluster. Prior to his death, Martin told a newspaper reporter how much he valued his wartime service to his country: “We had a job to do, and we did it. I don’t have regrets about the time I missed in baseball. I’m proud of what we did. I’d do it again.” Until that interview, Martin, like most of the Great Generation, was always willing to talk about baseball, but refused to speak about his war heroism.

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

D-Day Hero Morrie Martin Pitched For The Philadelphia A’s

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB’s First Fatality In WWI

By Joe Guzzardi

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants third baseman, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. They are Lt. Tom Burr, plane crash; Lt. Harry Chapman, illness; Lt. Larry Chappell, influenza; Pvt. Harry Glenn, pneumonia; Cpt. Newton Halliday, hemorrhages; Cpl. Ralph Sherman, drowned, and Purple Heart winner Sgt. Robert “Bun” Troy, shot.
 
Known affectionately among his teammates as “Harvard Eddie,” Grant debuted in the majors in 1905 after he graduated from Harvard where he starred at baseball and was the basketball team’s top scorer. Grant eventually would play 990 games as an infielder through 1915. An average dead ball era hitter, neither spectacular nor a detriment, Grant’s career average was .249 with five home runs. Grant’s best big-league season came in 1909 when he hit .269 as Philadelphia’s leadoff hitter and finished second in the National League with 170 hits. Opposition players considered him an above average fielder and particularly adept at handling bunts. In the 1913 World Series which the Giants lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-1, Grant saw limited action. He pinch-ran and scored in Game 2, and in Game 4, he hit a foul ball pop up that the A’s catcher easily snagged.

Harvard Eddie Grant Was MLB's First Fatality In WWI
Harvard Eddie Grant

On April 6, 1917, two years after his baseball career ended at age 33, and with his law practice barely underway, Grant enlisted in the U.S. Army, the first major league player to sign up. In a letter to a friend, Grant proudly wrote: “I had determined from the start to be in this war should it come to us…I believe there is no greater duty than I owe for being that which I am — an American citizen.’’
 
Tom Simon, writing for the Society for American Baseball Research, recounts Grant’s fateful demise in his defense of America against the advancing Germans. On October 2, 1918, Grant’s 307th Regiment launched an attack in France’s Argonne Forest, a rugged, heavily wooded area with thick underbrush, deep ravines and marshes. Soon, Grant’s superior officers were killed, and Eddie took command. By the morning of the third day, October 5, Grant was exhausted. He hadn’t slept since the offensive’s beginning, and his fellow officers noticed him sitting on a stump with a cup of coffee in front of him, too weak to lift the cup.
 
One of Grant’s troops, a former Polo Grounds policeman, remembered: “Eddie was dog-tired but he stepped off at the head of his outfit with no more concern than if he were walking to his old place at third base after his side had finished its turn at the bat. He staggered from weakness when he first started off, but pretty soon he was marching briskly with his head up.”
 
When the Germans pressed forward, Grant yelled at his men to seek cover while he remained standing, waving his arms to call for stretchers. Grant’s courageous effort to save his fellow soldiers cost him his life. Maj. Charles Wittlesey, Grant’s friend who led the 77th Division in the battle historians call “the Lost Battalion,” said: “When that shell burst and killed that boy, America lost one of the finest types of manhood I have ever known.’’ When the battle ended, Grant’s fellow soldiers, realizing their leader had been killed, were overheard saying, “The best man in the entire regiment is gone.”
 
Grant is interred at France’s Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery along with more than 14,000 American soldiers. World War I historian Mike Hanlon has led tours of the war’s battlefields and the cemetery where he talks about Purple Heart recipient Grant.
 
Then-MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wanted Grant added to the Hall of Fame for his service to the country. Although Landis’ fine idea was rejected, Grant had a Bronx highway named after him, and a ball yard in his hometown Franklin, Mass. The Giants, Grant’s last major league team, placed a bronze plaque in his honor on the center field fence of the Polo Grounds on Memorial Day 1921. The plaque identified Grant as Soldier – Scholar – Athlete, doubtless the order in which Eddie would like them listed.
 
 
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.