Category: Guest Authors

When Clemente And Mays Roamed The Same Outfield

By Joe Guzzardi

During the seven-plus decades that I’ve been a baseball fan, I’ve watched games at all levels— Little and Pony League World Series, high school, the NCAA World Series and countless major and minor league games. When friends ask about my most memorable baseball moments, I answer going to Puerto Rico Winter League (PRWL) games. I’m not alone in my judgment. Dick Young, a New York-based columnist who wrote about the Yankees, Giants, Mets and the Brooklyn Dodgers for more than 50 years said that the most exciting games he ever covered were between the San Juan Senators against its neighbor, the Santurce Crabbers.

Thomas E. Van Hyning’s new book, “The Caribbean Series: Latin America’s Annual Baseball Tournament, 1949-2024,” transported me back to those wonderful days in the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, when as a Puerto Rico resident, I watched some of MLB and the Negro National League’s (NNL) best “peloteros,” as the fans referred to them. Among the league batting champions were Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and Orlando Cepeda; NNL stars Willard Brown and Buster Clarkson won the runs batted in titles. Crabbers’ mound stalwarts were the Giants Ruben Gomez, a 28-year regular in the PRWL and Chicago Cubs ace and Sam “Toothpick” Jones, the first black pitcher to toss an MLB no-hitter. Santurce fielded the most successful PRWL teams of the 1950s. Author Van Hyning compared Santurce to the New York Yankees, “a franchise with a rich history and a winning tradition.” The Crabbers were all of that and more in the first season I watched them, 1954-1955. Most thrilling of all, in the Crabbers’ outfield, Clemente played left field with Mays in center, a fans’ delight as the duo roamed the deepest recesses of magnificent Sixto Escobar Stadium to snag long line drives. Well-traveled fans called Sixto Escobar the Fenway Park by the ocean. Clemente and Mays played together in numerous All-Star games, but the only time they played side-by-side continuously was as Santurce teammates.

Clemente respected Mays, with whom he had friendly competition, but Roberto didn’t worship the 1954 NL MVP. Instead, Clemente admired Monte Irvin, his childhood baseball hero who played for the Giants and, earlier, the NNL’s Newark Eagles. Mays played only one season with the Crabbers, 1954/1955, but what a season it was: batting average, .395, with 12 HRs and 33 RBIs in truncated season. “Ole, mira,” came the chants for Mays, the Spanish translation of, “Say, hey.” Clemente captured the 1956/1957 batting crown with the decade’s highest average, .396. During his 15-years-long PRWL career, Clemente played for the Crabbers, the Caguas Criollos, and the agaSenators, and against topflight MLB pitching, had career total of hitting .323, with thirty-five homers, and 269 RBIs. Clemente also had two managing stints with the Senators and guided the team to the playoffs twice.

Clemente was destined for stardom from the day that Brooklyn Dodgers scout Al Campanis, who had managed Cuba’s Cienfuegos Elephantes that winter, attended a tryout at Sixto Escobar. Campanis graded Clemente, then 18, as either A or A+ in the essential five-tools category—hitting, hitting for power, fielding, throwing, and speed. In his report to Dodgers’ management, Campanis wrote, “Has all the tools and likes to play. A real good-looking prospect.” On Nov. 22, 1954, the Pirates selected the 20-year-old Puerto Rican prospect from the Brooklyn Dodgers in MLB’s Rule 5 Draft. The Dodgers didn’t need Clemente that first season — outfielders Duke Snider and Carl Furillo hit .309 and .314 respectively, combined to hit sixty-eight home runs and helped Brooklyn win the 1955 World Series. But letting Clemente get away was an obvious Dodgers’ mistake when he won the ’66 NL MVP Award, four NL batting crowns and led the Pirates to World Series championships in ’60 and ’71. Over the course of his 18 MLB seasons, Clemente slashed .345/.382/.466 against the Dodgers with seventeen triples and twenty-one home runs in 291 career games. He didn’t hit higher than .330 against any other MLB team and is the only Hall of Famer to have been selected in the Rule 5 Draft.

The Crabbers, led by Mays’ .440 average and Clemente’s series-leading eight runs scored, topped off an excellent season by winning the 1955 Caribbean World Series. I moved back to the mainland before I would have seen a long string of Cooperstown Hall of Famers like Bob Gibson, Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Robin Yount, and Reggie Jackson. As I read Van Hyning’s book, thoughts of those great evenings I spent in Sixto Escobar Stadium, enjoying the warm Caribbean trade winds and top-flight baseball came back to me as though they happened yesterday.

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

When Clemente And Mays Roamed The Same Outfield

Dems’ Roadmap Out of Their Funk

By Joe Guzzardi

If the Democrats are as battered, bruised and confused as has been repeatedly written, then the party should act immediately to remove Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). After the 2024 drubbing that Democrats were on the short end of, and with defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris permanently out of DC politics, Schumer is an omni-present reminder of the party’s failure. When last seen, Schumer was protesting in front of the Treasury Building alongside Maxine Waters (R-Calif.), “We will win. We won’t lose,” a reference to Elon Musk’s DOGE. Yelling and arm-waving is a bad image for Waters, age 86, Schumer, 75, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA.), another shrieking protester, age 75, and the floundering Democratic Party. Waters has been a congressional fixture for 36 years, Schumer, 45 years, and Warren, 10 years although she has been hanging around Washington in various capacities for 30 years. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), 80, Senate Minority Whip, is a 42-year congressional veteran who will assumedly run for a sixth term in 2026. Durbin’s signature issue, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the unpopular and unconstitutional DACA, has been stuck in legislative quicksand for two decades.  Some DACAs are now over forty, have protection from deportation, work authorization, jobs, and families that include American citizen children.

When the American Federation of Government Employees gathered on Capitol Hill and rallied “to save the civil service” and to oppose President Trump’s push to reduce federal government’s workforce size, Maxine Dexter, (D-Ore.) said, “…we have to f… Trump.” Free speech rights may protect Dexter, an M.D. and first term U.S. Representative, but her vulgar comment could be construed as a threat to the president, a felony that carries a maximum jail sentence of up to five years and a fine not to exceed $250,000. As President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Profanity is the parlance of the fool.”

Whether engaged in free speech or felonious behavior, the Democrats’ strategy is wrong. Insistence that the Trump administration represents a “constitutional crisis” does not resonate with voters, too reminiscent of the endless pre-election assertion that fascist DJT would be a “threat to democracy.” Tennis players’ comportment could help guide Democrats to get over their automatic hysterics of all-things Trump. In tennis, after the match, the loser and winner meet at the net, shake hands, and pat each other on the back. The loser returns to the locker room, not grousing but committed to reviewing the match tapes, identifying strategically what led to his loss, and dedicating himself to practicing longer and harder to win next time. Before the upcoming tournament, the loser fires his coach, his trainer, and his dietician; he sheds deadwood. Getting rid of power-obsessed, entrenched Schumer and Durbin would be hard unless former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is summoned. Pelosi put the skids to President Biden, her friend of 50 years, to end his re-election bid. Even if Schumer and Durbin retire or are pressured to resign, New York and Illinois will remain blue, but the rest of the 2026 Senate election calendar looks grim for Democrats, especially after Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) announced their retirements

Looking back at November, woeful Kamala Harris deserves the lion’s share of the blame for her landslide defeat. Harris was a bad candidate who ran a horrible campaign. Her candidacy was, as Democratic strategist James Carville said, like starting the seventh string quarterback in the Superbowl. But the Democrats’ bench is wafer-thin. California Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) or any of the other possible candidates would have fared worse than Harris. They all shared the impossible task of winning while saddled with President Biden’s burdensome baggage—an open border that admitted more than 10 million unvetted illegal aliens, national debt increases of more than $6 trillion, and brazen disregard for the Supreme Court’s ruling that he could not forgive student debt, a decision he disobeyed when he subsequently discharged  multiple billions in indebtedness, and then bragged about his defiance of SCOTUS.  Not for nothing did President Biden have a 35% approval rating among likely voters.

On a nationally televised interview, the host asked his guest Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson if Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had knocked on his door to present the Democrat plan. In the imaginary conversation, Jefferies would say to Johnson, “We agree that government waste and fraud must be eliminated. But we have produced a better plan you should consider.” Johnson replied to the interviewer that no one from the aisle’s other side had, at any time, reached out to him. The Democrats undertaking—to forget about President Trump, he won, you lost. Make a sound plan, promote it nationwide, sell it to the voters, a task that is within your reach. Statistics compiled in 2024 show that of the 210 million registered voters 38.8 million are Republicans and forty-nine million are Democrats. The new and improved Democratic roadmap should be to stop harping about President Trump and instead explain why Americans deserve your party’s vote.

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

Pam Bondi Onslaught Righting Old Wrongs

By Joe Guzzardi

When President Donald Trump talks to his pillow every evening, he’s thanking his lucky stars that his original Attorney General nominee, the controversial Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, dropped out. Trump’s second choice, Pam Bondi, is off at break-neck speed to right many of the wrongs done by the prior administration. The same day that the U.S. Senate confirmed Bondi, she issued several memos including one to put DOJ employees on alert that if they allow their personal political views to interfere with defending federal priorities, they could be fired. Another memo Bondi distributed to her staff created what the new AG called a “Weaponizing Working Group.” The group will, among its other missions, investigate special council Jack Smith’s part in two federal criminal cases against President Trump: one over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, surge on the U.S. Capitol and another on his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Bondi directed the newly created group to examine potential federal weaponization cooperation with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ offices.

Most important to voters who voted for and support President Trump’s commitment to removing criminal aliens, Bondi ordered a pause on distributing funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, cities or counties that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement or abide by federal immigration law. Enforcement advocates have for years urged both Republican and Democratic administrations to stop funding self-appointed sanctuary cites that are, in truth, a refuge for criminals. San Francisco and other sanctuary cities and states sued the Trump administration; Bondi’s overdue actions against immigration lawbreakers have been temporarily enjoined, but better times are coming. Sure enough, Bondi has also sued for their immigration crimes the States of Illinois and New York as well as AG James and DMV head Mark Schroeder. “We sued Illinois. New York did not listen, now you’re [NY] next. This is a new DOJ, and we are taking steps to protect Americans,” Bondi told reporters. “New York has chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens.” As an example, Bondi pointed to New York’s Green Light Law that prohibits the state’s sheriff’s department and other agencies from sharing motor vehicle data with federal authorities for purposes of immigration enforcement. “They have a ‘tip-off’ provision that requires New York’s DMV commissioner to promptly inform any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested their information,” Bondi added. “It’s tipping off an illegal alien. And it’s unconstitutional, and that’s why we filed this lawsuit.”

Not only has Bondi expressed her determination to end the practice of harboring criminal illegal aliens, but border czar Tom Homan has strongly stated that governors and mayors who obstruct ICE in its mission or any other party that interferes could be prosecuted. Neither Bondi nor Homan could have imagined that, after her forceful and specific memos, FBI agents would have leaked information that allowed Tren de Aragua gang members to avoid capture. Allowing personal political views to interfere with federal law enforcement is punishable by, at a minimum, dismissal. Last week, Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that the FBI leaked information about when and where the raids would occur. “Some of the information we are receiving tends to lead toward the FBI,” Homan said in a nationally televised interview wherein he also vowed to recommend to the Justice Department that the leakers be prosecuted.

Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, strongly pro-law enforcement, promised Homan that not only will these persons lose their jobs and pensions, but they will also go to jail, adding that the leaks about ICE raids targeting Venezuelan TdA members are “giving the bad guys a heads-up so they can escape apprehension.”

Once Noem and Homan identify the traitorous agents, the soon-to-be appointed new FBI director Kash Patel can start to root out the abundant rot.

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

Pam Bondi Onslaught Righting Old Wrongs

US Workers Lost Ground to Immigrants In January

By Joe Guzzardi

As always, the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report requires scrutiny to uncover the nuances that obscure the truth. On February 7, the BLS released the January 2025 economic report. Throughout former President Biden’s four-year term, analysts cast a skeptical eye on what they claimed were inflated job creation totals. Last Labor Day, the BLS confirmed a significant error, and confessed to overstating job creation numbers from March 2023 to March 2024 by at least 818,000, the largest miscalculation in 15 years.

In January, total non-farm payroll employment rose by 143,000, with job gains concentrated in low-paying sectors including health care, retail trade, and social assistance. Conversely, employment declined in higher-paying industries such as mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction.

Immigration experts have long speculated about how the Biden administration’s border policies would manifest in monthly BLS data. During Biden’s presidency, millions of illegal aliens crossed the border, most requiring employment to support themselves. The CBP-One mobile phone app—an illegal Biden maneuver—was officially announced in 2023 but actually had begun in 2021, providing a means for illegal aliens to fly to their preferred U.S. city. The administration unconstitutionally granted them parole, an immigration status that includes employment authorization. The impact of these newly admitted millions on the workforce was inevitable, though it was unlikely to be highlighted during Biden’s tenure. Immigration, typically a taboo subject for Biden and his staff, was rarely discussed except in positive terms.

The Center for Immigration Studies’ (CIS) Director of Research, Steven Camarota, analyzed the January 2025 Household Survey, which finally accounted for the substantial legal and illegal immigration surge since 2020. The significant population increase predictably influenced the labor market. The new BLS data revealed that since January 2020—the period just before COVID and the immigration surge—88 percent of all employment growth has gone to legal and illegal immigrants, often referred to as foreign-born. Immigrant-dominated employment occurred simultaneously with a near-record share, 22.1 percent, of working-age U.S.-born men detached from the labor force.

As CIS previously noted, earlier surveys’ failure to fully account for the illegal immigration flow resulted in an underestimation of the total U.S. population. Good news for American workers appears on the horizon. President Trump’s commitment to securing the border and his immediate cancellation of the CBP-One app have dampened prospective illegal aliens’ enthusiasm for entering the U.S. unlawfully. In January, the U.S. manufacturing sector expanded for the first time after 26 months of contraction, as the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)—an indicator of prevailing economic trends in manufacturing and service sectors—registered 50.9 percent, 1.7 percentage points higher than the seasonally adjusted 49.2 percent reported in December.

Of the subindexes that directly factor into PMI, new orders, production, employment, and supplier deliveries were in expansion territory compared to only two subindexes showing improvement in December, the last full month of the Biden administration. PMI has surged since President Trump’s November election, as manufacturers and buyers anticipate more business-friendly policies.

The remainder of the first calendar quarter will reveal whether Trump’s presidency truly represents an America-first agenda or if his current popularity is merely a temporary blip on the four-year political radar.

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