Category: Guest Authors

 100th Anniversary Of The Great Independence Day Pitching Duel

By Joe Guzzardi

On Independence Day 100 years ago—July 4, 1925—50,000 baseball bugs flocked to Yankee Stadium to watch the traditional holiday double-dip between two teams that had fallen from their American League pinnacles.

The Philadelphia Athletics, led by manager/owner Connie Mack—”Mr. Mack” to the baseball world—were between two dynasties. Mack had led his A’s to pennants from 1910-1914, and with his $100,000 Infield and pitchers Eddie Plank, Albert “Chief” Bender, and Rube Waddell, won three World Series during that period. But when the nascent Federal League raided MLB teams, Mack chose not to engage in bidding wars for his players. Instead, he sold or traded his superstars and rebuilt a second dynasty that included Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, one of baseball’s best hitting catchers, and Jimmy Foxx, who hit 30 or more home runs in 12 consecutive seasons and drove in 100 or more runs in 13 straight campaigns.

The Yankees had also plunged from American League royalty. In 1925, the Yankees would finish in seventh place with a 69-85 record, 30 games behind the pennant-winning Washington Senators. The team’s biggest concern in 1925 was Babe Ruth’s illness, also referred to as the “Bellyache Heard Around the World.” Ruth had persistent high fevers during spring training, and after an early-season game, he fainted at an Asheville, North Carolina train station. Upon arrival in New York, the Yankees rushed Ruth to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where surgeons operated. Some reports claimed it was influenza, but this wasn’t the consensus opinion. Whispers circulated that he might never play again and that “the true nature of his illness was being kept secret”—an inference that the culprit was, at best, excessive hot dog consumption or too much bootleg whiskey, or at worst, venereal disease. Concerns about Ruth’s fate spread worldwide. Sportswriter W.O. McGeehan penned the lasting story that Ruth’s ailment resulted from eating a dozen hot dogs, and a legend was born. The Dundee (Scotland) Daily Telegraph headline read: “BASEBALL FANS GET SHOCK: IDOL OF THE CROWDS REPORTED DEAD!”

A few days after Ruth’s release from St. Vincent’s, on June 1, Ruth made his 1925 debut. Independence Day fans harbored modest expectations from the great Bambino. In 1925, Ruth suffered through his worst season. For most players, batting .290 with 25 home runs in half a season would be outstanding, but not for the Sultan of Swat.

Although fan hopes may have been modest, in Game One they witnessed one of the greatest all-time pitching duels  between two Hall of Fame left-handers: the Yankees’ Herb Pennock and the A’s Robert “Lefty” Grove. The hurlers had dramatically different personalities and pitching styles. Pennock was a laid-back, humble Pennsylvania Quaker who placed soft curves on the corners; Grove was a short-tempered flame-thrower. Baseball historians rate Grove as one of the three best left-handed pitchers ever, along with Warren Spahn and Sandy Koufax. Grove’s nine ERA titles, seven strikeout crowns, and his .680 winning percentage (300-141) represent the highest among 300-game winners and sixth-best overall in the modern era.

When Pennock took the mound, fans settled back to watch the crafty lefty set down batters one-two-three. A big zero went up on the scoreboard for the A’s. More zeros followed through 15 innings. Pennock’s challenge was Grove, who matched the crafty Kennett Square hurler goose egg for goose egg until the bottom of the 15th, when Yankees catcher Steve O’Neill knocked in the winning run with a sacrifice fly.

Pennock faced 47 batters—two over the minimum—surrendered four hits, struck out five, and didn’t walk a batter. After the game, Grove said, “I was breaking my back trying to knock bats out of their hands, and Pennock was just lobbing the ball up there.” Pennock had once been on the A’s roster, and Mack always regretted the day he released him. In World Series play, Pennock amassed a 5-0 career win-loss record with three saves, becoming the second pitcher to win five World Series games, after another A’s ace, Jack Coombs. Pennock was part of seven World Series championship teams —1913, 1915, 1916, 1923, 1927, 1928, and 1932—, though he played on four World Series winning teams as an active member.

Although not as spectacular as Pennock in World Series play, Grove posted a 4-2 record with a 1.75 ERA. After Grove retired from the Boston Red Sox in 1941, he mellowed, coached youth baseball, and operated his bowling alleys. He passed away at age 75. Pennock, on the other hand, remained baseball-active in his post-playing career. He coached in the Red Sox farm system, then moved up to become the Red Sox pitching and first-base coach. Pennock later became the Philadelphia Phillies’ general manager. In 1948, in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel lobby, Pennock, age 53, collapsed and died from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Pennock and Grove were among baseball’s best, but their accomplishments are, sadly, fading from fans’ memories.

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

Dodgers’ Dicey Relationship With Immigration Law

By Joe Guzzardi

For an organization that the Federal Bureau of Investigation once probed for possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations regarding their involvement with human traffickers and document forgers, the Los Angeles Dodgers have adopted high-and-mighty airs. Since no legal avenue exists to travel from communist Cuba to the United States, the Department of Justice wondered how, in 2012, the Dodgers managed to get outfielder Yasiel Puig to Los Angeles.

Sports Illustrated, in a weekly magazine article titled “Inside the Underbelly,” wrote that it obtained a large dossier of information that was originally provided to the FBI. The dossier included videotapes, photographs, confidential legal briefs, receipts, copies of player visas and passport documents, internal emails, and private communications among franchise executives. The evidence pointed to how smugglers access underground pipelines to ferry prospects from Cuba to Haiti or Mexico—waystations to MLB riches. The Dodgers, with their extensive scouting operations throughout the Caribbean, were prominently featured in the FBI dossier, which described efforts to circumvent federal and MLB laws. Puig, for example, paid Florida businessman Gilberto Suarez $2.5 million from his $42 million Dodgers bonus to help him travel from Mexico, where he had been holed up in a cheap seedy motel, to Los Angeles. The DOJ found evidence of shredded documents and large-scale forgeries. The criminal activity reached its peak when Cuban Jose Abreu testified under oath before a grand jury that, prior to his arrival in Miami from another smuggler’s route through Haiti, he ate his fake passport and washed it down with a Heineken. “I knew I could not arrive in the U.S. with a false passport,” Abreu said before signing his $68 million contract with the Chicago White Sox.

The recent dust-up outside of Dodger Stadium consisted of a relatively small group of malcontents, unemployed agitators, and immigration activists. The gathering was responding to an NBC News report that quoted Eunisses Hernandez, a Los Angeles City Council member, who alleged that she received calls early in the morning stating that “federal agents were staging here at the entrance of Dodger Stadium. We got pictures of dozens of vehicles and dozens of agents.”

The Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to deny that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had plans to take removal action in or around Dodger Stadium. DHS replied via X: “This had nothing to do with the Dodgers. CBP vehicles were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement.” In the meantime, the Dodgers boasted that they blocked ICE from entering their grounds.

Prohibiting federal law enforcement from entering and conducting lawful business constitutes a federal crime; “The current policy allows ICE agents to enter public areas without permission.”  Independent journalist Ali Bradley provided the backstory, reporting: “CBP teams went to Hollywood Home Depot to make apprehensions. They did, and we’re going to transfer the illegal aliens to transport vans off Sunset Boulevard, but when things escalated outside of Home Depot, they went to an open parking lot at Dodger Stadium to make the consolidated transfer. Agents say no one came over and told them to leave.”

In his book “Baseball Cop: The Dark Side of America’s National Pastime,” Eduardo Dominguez, a decorated Boston police officer, a FBI agent and then a MLB Department of Investigations task force member documented his ongoing efforts to alert MLB executives to the trafficking crimes that brought Cuban players to their teams. Aiding and abetting and human trafficking are federal crimes, and cases could potentially be made against major league teams that sign Cuban players. MLB ignored Dominguez’s warnings but instead attempted to suppress his well-received book’s publication. MLB desperately sought to prevent public access to the book and hired law firm Clare Locke to threaten Dominguez and his publisher with defamation lawsuits if the book were published. Later fired, Dominguez said that he could not understand how MLB was so dismissive of a federal investigation’s findings.

The Dodgers are more than just a baseball team—they are a politically progressive, DEI-focused multibillion-dollar business that acts in what it perceives as its best interests, including misrepresenting what occurred with ICE. MLB operates as a collective $79 billion industry, with the Dodgers representing a $6.9 billion segment of that market. In a word salad announcement,  the Dodgers pledged $1 million—an infinitesimal fraction of the team’s value—to assist illegal immigrant families who claim to be adversely affected by ICE operations. The Dodgers and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred maintain in-house legal counsel and have immediate phone call access to the nation’s most experienced outside attorneys. They should rely on that legal expertise to assess the validity of DHS immigration removal operations when they occur.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ fan base should recognize the reality of their team’s transformation. The Dodgers are no longer the romanticized “Boys of Summer“–they are multimillion-dollar athletes employed by billionaire corporate executives who show criminal disregard for federal immigration laws.

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

The Reality Of The Housing Crisis

By Joe Guzzardi

For stumping political candidates, vowing to build affordable housing remains one of their biggest rallying cries. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised three million new housing units over four years, along with tax incentives and $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time buyers. Harris also proposed a whopping $40 billion innovation fund that would empower local governments to fund and support community solutions for housing construction.

When she made her campaign promise, Harris had been hearing about affordable housing from her Democratic peers for more than 20 years. In 2002, then-California Governor Gray Davis signed a package of bills designed to address the state’s housing crisis. Davis promised that the package would provide “new, affordable housing being built all across the state. More families will have the American dream of home ownership within their grasp.” Two decades later, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a 56-bill package that he said would “incentivize and reduce barriers to housing and support the development of more affordable homes.” As of April 30, 2025, Newsom’s vision for the California home market remained deeply flawed, with a median sale price of $910,000 for houses on that date.

Governors Janet Mills of Maine, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Maura Healey of Massachusetts have all bemoaned home shortages and signed multi-million-dollar bills they hope will solve the problem of high housing demand and limited supply. Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act, which authorized $5.2 billion to be spent on housing over the next five years and established 50 policy initiatives to counter rising prices. Fifty policy initiatives may be overkill—too many cooks spoil the broth. As Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, noted, it’s “much, much harder” for the government to pass “supply-side proposals” compared with efforts that generate demand by making home-buying easier for consumers. Pinto concluded that Harris’s plan was worse than doing nothing.

Then-candidate and former President Donald Trump also discussed ways to increase housing supply as part of his presidential campaign proposals. “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction,” Trump said in an August 15 press conference. “We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”

Since President Trump’s election, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans to identify federal lands where affordable housing could be built. Turner and Burgum will launch the Joint Task Force on Federal Land for Housing to find underutilized lands for residential development and to streamline the process of transferring lands for housing use.

In their Wall Street Journal op-ed, they promoted the plans as a way to increase housing supply and lower costs for Americans. They wrote:

    “Working together, our agencies can take inventory of underused federal properties, transfer or lease them to states or localities to address housing needs, and support the infrastructure required to make development viable—all while ensuring affordability remains at the core of the mission.”

The Interior Department oversees more than 500 million acres of federal land, and the department contends that much of it is suitable for residential use. However, implementation would likely take decades, if it happens at all. Most of the developable land is in western states like California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado, said Bureau of Land Management Director Jon Raby. The lands vary widely, ranging from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests. Moreover, most of the federal government’s land—whether west or east—lacks the required water and sewage infrastructure to support new communities. Environmental groups are concerned that development will adversely affect wildlife habitat. As BLM’s Raby noted, “People love their public lands. Every acre is important to somebody.”

Nowhere in HUD or DOI’s planning is a commitment to scrutinize sustainability. The constant factor in affordable housing is population growth. With more than one million legal immigrants admitted annually and chain migration—which allows each immigrant to petition for an average of three non-nuclear family members who can eventually petition their own families—housing developments, even those built in remote areas, will eventually be overwhelmed. Reducing the number of people competing for existing affordable housing would automatically create more of this elusive commodity.

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

The Reality Of The Housing Crisis

Assessing Katie Hobbs

By Joe Guzzardi

Of the 1,287,891 Arizonans who cast their 2022 gubernatorial votes for Democrat Katie Hobbs to replace termed-out Republican Doug Ducey, at least 25% would likely want to take their votes back. Hobbs has proven to be, at best, ineffective and, at worst, a viable threat to national security.

Hobbs’ latest gubernatorial action, consistent with her apparent indifference to Arizonans’ well-being, was to veto Republican-backed Senate Bill 1109. The bill’s objective was to prevent nationals from the People’s Republic of China from purchasing Arizona property. The measure sought to add Arizona to the growing list of states that, because of national security concerns, ban the communist nation from acquiring U.S. land.

In her veto message, Hobbs stated that while protecting infrastructure is important, the bill is “ineffective at counterespionage and does not directly protect our military assets.” Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp, who sponsored SB 1109, slammed Hobbs for the veto and called out the governor for threatening state and national security. Shamp pointed to China’s recent effort to lease property near Luke Air Force Base in the west Phoenix suburb of Glendale. Luke serves as a primary training base for F-35 stealth fighter pilots from the U.S. and several allies.

The bill also applied to Chinese citizens unless they are permanent U.S. residents. The only exception was for homes on less than two acres located at least 50 miles from a military base or 25 miles from a military practice range—meaning not in Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma, Flagstaff, or Sierra Vista.

The “Veto Queen”

Around Arizona, Hobbs has earned the nickname “Veto Queen.” She has already smashed the Arizona veto record during her first two years as governor, killing 216 bills: 143 in 2023 and 73 in 2024. Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano previously held the record with 181 bills vetoed from 2003-09. Hobbs is running up her winning margin, with 138 vetoes so far this year including SB 1109, as she approaches surpassing her 2023 record.

In defiance of the Department of Homeland Security, Hobbs has vetoed multiple Republican-backed bills that would have forced cooperation with federal immigration and deportation efforts, including three border-related bills on May 12. The Democratic governor’s vetoes demonstrate that she will not embrace federal immigration law, even as the Republican-majority Legislature advances the Trump administration’s priorities on enforcement and deportation. Hobbs frequently states that Arizonans will determine Arizona’s future, not the federal government—a position that could put her on the Department of Justice’s list of states that defy the Supremacy Clause.

Questionable Campaign and Early Actions

Hobbs’ 2022 candidacy raised ethical questions. As the then-Secretary of State, Hobbs was responsible for certifying the gubernatorial election results—a clear conflict of interest since she was in a tight race against Kari Lake. Once she won the nomination, Hobbs ran a Biden-like campaign: she refused to debate Lake and avoided reporters and their questions. Immediately after Hobbs’ paper-thin victory, inquiries arose about Maricopa County’s malfunctioning electronic voting machines and mail-in ballot validity. Maricopa is Arizona’s largest county and leans Republican.

From the start, Hobbs proved herself an open-borders advocate. In her 2023 inaugural address, she promised to extend the Arizona Promise Scholarship Program to illegal aliens attending state universities and colleges. Before Title 42 ended, Hobbs established five new bus routes from border communities to Tucson, overwhelming the city to accommodate undocumented immigrants.

Ongoing Legal and Financial Issues

The governor’s problems are ongoing. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that Hobbs violated state law when she appointed 13 de facto state agency heads to sidestep the Senate confirmation process. This judicial rebuke represents only the tip of the iceberg regarding Hobbs’ legal troubles.

Her $2 million taxpayer-funded Super Bowl LVII celebration included open-bar parties, 70 hotel rooms at the high-end Arizona Biltmore, sponsorships, and free tickets valued at between $4,000 and $40,000 for teachers, staffers, and political allies. This extravagance drew criticism in a state struggling to provide essential services like helping the homeless and funding responses to the growing illegal alien immigrant presence at Arizona’s southern border.

Pay-for-Play Allegations

The most serious charge against Hobbs involves alleged pay-for-play schemes. Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Thomas Shope demanded an investigation after reports emerged that Sunshine Residential Homes, which donated $400,000 to Hobbs, received an exclusive daily care rate increase from Hobbs’ Department of Child Safety (DCS). The reports alleged that Sunshine’s daily rate increased from $149 to $195 per child while DCS denied rate increases to similar service providers. The Democratic Attorney General has acknowledged that her office has begun an investigation.

Political Future in Question

Hobbs often boasts that she has never lost an election. However, with border politics likely to be at the forefront of voters’ minds and state issues close behind in her now-long-shot reelection bid next year, the question more commonly heard around Arizona is: “How can she win?”

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

Assessing Katie Hobbs