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As Democrats’ prospects in the 2022 mid-term elections dim, the party needs to revive itself with what was once a reliable constituency – Hispanic voters.

A Wall Street Journal poll taken in December found Hispanic voters split 37 percent to 37 percent “if the election were held today.” The Journal poll also showed that Hispanic voters mirror the overall voter pool. When asked how Biden is handling his responsibilities, 42 percent approved of the president’s job performance, and 54 percent disapproved – in line with the 41 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval among the broader voting public.

Since the Journal published its results, conditions in the country have worsened, more bad news for the flailing administration. As of late May, only divine intervention can save Democrats from electoral calamity when November rolls around.

A clarifying note: the term Hispanic voter should be interpreted broadly. The Census Bureau includes as Hispanic any person who, when asked, identifies as Hispanic. Included are Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, South Americans and other mostly Spanish-language speakers.

Continued erosion in the Hispanic vote would leave Democrats’ chances of maintaining its slim margin in Congress at nil. Equis Labs, which studied the Latino electorate, found that in 2020 swings toward the GOP of 20 points occurred in parts of Florida’s Miami-Dade County, 12 points in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and double-digit swings in parts of the Northeast. In South Florida, the move was large enough to flip two congressional seats from Democrat to Republican.

Mark Zandi, Moody Analytics chief economist, wrote that, despite a booming jobs market, today’s political environment is among the toughest for incumbents that he’s ever surveyed. The consensus among political analysts like Zandi is that voters are out to punish incumbents with their Republican vote. If conventional wisdom is correct and if Hispanics continue to abandon Democrats, they’ll be the minority in the upcoming 118th Congress.

Hispanic voters’ shifting allegiance took the establishment media by surprise, but not other impartial, national scene observers. First, Hispanic voters have the same goals as other citizens – a stable economy, educational opportunities for their children and a good quality of life.

Second, and less noted by mainstream journalists, mass immigration, a hallmark of Democratic administrations that Biden has taken to record levels, harms Hispanics and other minorities more than any demographic. The immigrant who arrives today makes yesterday’s immigrants’ efforts to become established more challenging, particularly in his job search or for his school age children who will enroll in ever-more crowded classrooms. The report that Department of Homeland Security tracking has identified as many as 50,000 migrants from Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Haiti, Peru and the Northern Triangle countries waiting in make-shift tents along the Southwest border’s Mexican side is terrible news for recently arrived migrants.

The most important factors among Hispanics who are fleeing Democrats began during President Obama’s two terms, and both of which Biden is pursuing to the extreme. One is a refusal to vigorously carry out interior enforcement, including at the workplace. Weeding out illegal aliens from the job site would make more blue-collar jobs available to minority populations. Second, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services data obtained through a Freedom of Information request revealed that, from 2009 to 2014, the agency issued 5.5 million new work permits to immigrants, beyond the 1.1 million legal immigrants and 700,000 guest workers admitted to the U.S. each year. Moreover, Biden has begun to give the arriving migrants, as well as Ukrainian refugees and Afghan evacuees, work authorization.

Voters who identify as Hispanic will decide if they want to continue with unprecedented record immigration under Democratic leadership that will adversely affect most every aspect of their lives, or if they wish to support sustainable immigration levels that include border and interior enforcement.

For now, multiple polls indicate that voters will support candidates that promise to reduce immigration and increase immigration enforcement, a welcome change from Biden and his lieutenants’ sovereignty-ending agenda.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and a former third baseman who played for the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants, 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.

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.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

The grisly discovery of human remains at the bottom of Lake Mead is a grim reminder of the Southwest’s growing drought crisis.

In early May, a family on a boating outing in Lake Mead National Recreation Area found a four-decades-old skeleton of a man, a suspected homicide, stuffed into a rotted-out barrel partially buried in the lake’s muddy banks. Skeletal remains were also discovered in May at nearby Callville Bay.

Asked if the victim might have been a mob hit, Geoff Schumacher, the vice president of exhibits and programs at Las Vegas’ Mob Museum, said: “I have a feeling that as this water continues to recede, we’re going to be finding more interesting things at the bottom of Lake Mead.” Schumacher may have been referring to the B-29 Superfortress wreckage found in 2015 in Lake Mead’s 130 feet of water; in 1948, when the bomber crashed, Lake Mead’s depth was 260 feet.

While Schumacher isn’t a climatologist, he like other Far West residents is aware of the inevitable and irreconcilable clash between too many people and dwindling natural resources, primarily water. Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the United States and part of a system that supplies water to at least 40 million people across seven states and northern Mexico. Today, it’s dropped to its lowest level since the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era.

As of August 22, 2021, Lake Mead was filled to just 35 percent of its capacity, and now is at 30 percent. The low water level comes at a time when 95 percent of nine Western states’ land is affected by some level of drought; 64 percent is considered extreme or worse. Shrinking capacity continues a 22-year megadrought that some experts consider the worst in 1,200 years. Megadroughts are defined as droughts that last two decades or longer, but they are not measured by their intensity.

Snowfall in the Rocky Mountains is Lake Mead’s primary water source. But Audubon Southwest’s policy director Haley Paul said, “Even when the Rocky Mountains get to near-normal levels of snowfall and overall precipitation, what we’ve seen in the last few years is below average river runoff.” Paul explained that drought and heat mean thirstier soils and plants that soak up more water before the precious commodity ever reaches rivers – a compounding domino effect that, because the West is on year 22 of an extended megadrought, will take 22 wet winters to climb out of the hole.

An underreported variable in Lake Mead’s water levels is population explosion. In 1950, the population of Arizona, California and Nevada were, respectively, 750,000, 10 million and 158,000. Today, Arizona, California and Nevada have 7.6 million, 39.7 million and 3.2 million residents, respectively. Over the same 70-year period, Phoenix has grown from 221,000 to 4.7 million people, Los Angeles from 2 million to 12.5 million people, and Las Vegas from 35,000 to 2.8 million people.

Taken alone, the three states in the aggregate have about 40 million more people since 1950 bathing in, cooking with and drinking water. Housing complexes, luxury hotels, golf courses and mega-mansions are major water devourers.

No end is in sight to irresponsible water usage. The best California Gov. Gavin Newsom has come up with is a tepid, ignored suggestion that his constituents voluntarily limit everyday water consumption. The State Water Resources Conservation Board said that per-capita urban water usage rose 7 percent in March compared to last year, and rose 18.9 percent when compared to March 2020.

Although political correctness forbids identifying immigration as population growth’s major driver, Census Bureau facts confirm the reality. In their Center for Immigration Studies analysis that drew exclusively from Census Bureau data, Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler predicted that, by 2060, immigration will add 75 million people to the U.S. population. In 2017, the U.S. had 35.8 million legal and illegal immigrants. Those immigrants had 16.9 million U.S.-born children and grandchildren.

In sum, immigration added 52.7 million people to the U.S. population between 1982 and 2017, accounting for a little over 56 percent of overall population growth. A related Camarota-Zeigler study, which also drew from Current Population Survey’s monthly data, found that in November 2021, 46.2 million legal and illegal immigrants lived in the U.S., the largest number of immigrants ever recorded in a federal government survey or census dating back to 1850.

No one controls rainfall, but the federal government can help alleviate the worsening water crisis by managing immigration to levels consistent with the available natural resources. If officials continue to shirk their responsibility, then an increasing number of West Coast communities will eventually run dry, and civil disruption over water’s absence will likely ensue.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

For immigration lawyers, these are heady times!

Since January 2021, when the Biden regime moved into the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has, by Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ own shameless admission, released 836,000 illegal aliens into the interior. The staggering total includes 398,861 let go since October 1, the fiscal year’s start, and also counts 80,116 admitted in March alone.

Excluded from those totals are the got-aways; estimates vary, but several hundred thousand fall into that category. This astounding admissions’ total exceeds the population of each of the cities of San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Boston and Washington, D.C., and each of the states of Wyoming and Vermont.

Imagine the eager anticipation the immigration lawyer community must have when thinking of the fees those aliens might generate! At some firms, $1,000 an hour buys only a preliminary consultation. And the good times will keep on rolling! Once Biden removes Title 42, as he’s determined to do, an estimated 18,000 aliens are likely to cross into the United States daily, most in need of legal counsel.

Enterprising immigration lawyers could make a handsome living from Haitian alien applicants alone. Most Haitians, like others eagerly awaiting their post-Title 42 admissions, will apply for asylum. But a considerable percentage of Haitians who will file claims have already been granted asylum from South American nations like Chile, and have been long-time residents of those countries.

But for the Haitians /Chileans, Biden’s lure to foreign nationals to live in America is irresistible. On their trip north, after reaching the bridge at Del Rio, Texas, they ditch their asylum documents into the river. The low-risk, but nevertheless fraudulent effort to eliminate any clue that they had already been granted asylum by a democratic, stable country may pay off one day with U.S. citizenship.

Unbeknownst to the general public, asylum fraud is one of the biggest hoaxes in a U.S. immigration system where almost anything goes. The simple words “credible fear” spoken to an immigration official can be the first step to life in the U.S. Few, however, are fleeing true persecution or life-threatening violence. They’ve been coached, often by the smugglers to whom they’ve paid thousands of dollars, to say the magic words that will bring them, figuratively speaking, the keys to the U.S. kingdom.

The harsh reality is that among the thousands assembled at the border, and the thousands more on the way, few legally qualify for asylum. They are economic migrants seeking to improve their lives, and not as the Refugee Act of 1980 spelled out, persons with a well-established fear of persecution “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

Under the current administration, as voters head to the mid-term polling places, knowing the difference between refugees and legitimate asylum seekers is important. Refugees are – or were until Biden allowed admissions to mostly unscreened Afghans and Ukrainians – screened indepth before coming to the U.S. If found wanting, they can be denied refugee status before they step foot into this country.

On the other hand, aliens who enter illegally and falsely claim “credible fear” have not been vetted or have been only superficially screened before physically entering the U.S. The current process is easily vulnerable to fraud and abuse. Fraudulent asylum cases, in addition to generous benefits given to those who may not deserve them, undermine and delay processing legitimate appeals from individuals who truly have credible fear.

The soaring numbers of migrants, whether they’ve legally or illegally entered the country, is a preliminary total. Once inside the U.S., chain migration – immigration’s major source – will increase the number by at least a factor of three.

In 2018, The New York Times published a remarkable, but unexaggerated, story about one-single Indian immigrant who arrived in 1968 at age 23, and 50 years later, counts 90 family members who have joined him. Consider too that many of the resettled migrants will either add to their existing families or begin new ones.

Since citizens fund every penny of the migrants’ multiple and costly resettlement expenses, Americans justifiably wonder why, assuming border enforcement, they’re forced to underwrite their gradual but inevitable displacement.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Showing complete indifference to his party’s fate, President Joe Biden is doing all he can to damage Democrats’ chances for election in the upcoming mid-terms and his re-election in 2024.

Biden’s resolute determination to harm the Democrats may be explained several ways. At age 79, Biden has achieved his lifelong goal of becoming president. After at least two failed efforts in 1988 and 2008, and possibly a third failure, depending on how the facts are interpreted from 1984, Biden is finally in the White House.

Another possible explanation is that Biden knows Democratic leadership considers him, at best, inconsequential, and that Barack Obama is still embraced as the party’s hero. Biden has no reason to care about his fellow Democrats’ fate if they’re indifferent to him. At a White House event to celebrate Obamacare’s 12th anniversary, Biden wandered alone and aimlessly as his apathetic Democratic colleagues flocked giddily around Obama.

Maybe the most obvious reason explains everything. At age 79, Biden is too old to care about his 2024 political future. He’s climbed the White House Mountain; no taller summit remains to conquer.

Perhaps the best indicator of Biden’s reelection disinterest is his refusal to heed his personal, confidential polling firm’s advice on the key issues that concern the nation, specifically immigration and inflation. A New York Times article, “Biden Received Early Warnings that Inflation and Immigration Could Erode his Support,” shows the president has recklessly and lawlessly pressed ahead on open borders and illegal immigration.

Early on in his presidency, according to the article, Biden enjoyed strong national support, but his favorability quickly eroded as the border crisis intensified. The John Anzalone-headed research team found that because voters feel that Biden and his deputies are clueless when it comes to designing a plan to combat the festering border crisis, immigration represents an intensifying vulnerability for the president.

Biden’s failure to slow migration is, the pollsters concluded, “starting to take a toll.” As early as last spring, when trafficked unaccompanied minors strained Health and Human Services capacities, pollsters warned that “immigration is the only issue where the president’s ratings are worse with our targets than with voters overall.” And on July 9, “President Biden continues to hold weaker, negative ratings on two hot-button issues [immigration and crime] that have been recently bubbling up.”

Despite his pollster’s immigration red flags, and the unanimous national consensus that Vice President Kamala Harris’ discover-the-root-causes solution to migration is a bad joke played on U.S. citizens, on May 23, Biden intends to lift Title 42, which has been an important tool in turning away illegal border crossers for health reasons. A Louisiana federal judge’s temporary restraining order that the administration has agreed to honor may delay Title 42’s removal, but if it’s shelved, DHS officials anticipate 18,000 illegal immigrants a day will flood the border.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced what he optimistically labeled as a plan to cope with the historic surge. The costly concept includes spending more taxpayer money on medical support, and more funding for air and ground transportation to release the migrants into the interior from the border. As a footnote to its plan, DHS added that it will use Expedited Removal more frequently. Border agents scoff at the mere suggestion it will be a useful tool. Once aliens claim fear of persecution if returned home, an Expedited Removal converts to a notice to appear which migrants rarely honor. Migrants are spreading the word among each other that the keys to getting U.S. residency are the words, “Fear of Persecution.”

The Times story misses the point, perhaps purposely, about Biden and his cronies. The administration didn’t need to pay taxpayer funds to a professional pollster to advise it that Americans are unhappy. Biden et al don’t care. The arrival of mostly poor, unskilled, limited English-speaking aliens from 150 nations through mass immigration is a fundamental elitist goal.

While the 2022 mid-terms and congressional control may be at risk in the short-term, the long-term picture that will erase the middle-class and end American sovereignty looks rosy to the Biden administration.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Rosalie Mercurio DiMaggio, a Sicilian immigrant, bore nine children, three of whom became Major League center fielders.

Since the boys’ father, San Francisco fisherman Giuseppe, considered baseball a “a bum’s game,” Rosalie covered for the Vince, Dominic and Joe Jr. so they could practice with other local boys. Then and now, the Bay Area was a hotbed of baseball talent that included Barry Bonds, Billy Martin, Keith Hernandez, Gil McDougald, seven-time All-Star Joe Cronin, and four-time AL batting champion Harry Heilmann.

Around San Francisco, scouts determined that, of the three brothers, Joe had the best bat; Dom, the best arm; and Vince, who wanted to become an opera singer, the best voice. Joe’s baseball achievements are legendary – his 56-game hitting streak, three MVP awards and his nine World Series championship rings. During the streak, the nation was obsessed with whether “Joltin’ Joe” had gotten a hit that day. An Army Air Force veteran, Joe soon became the talk of Hollywood and the national gossip sheets when he married screen starlet Marilyn Monroe.

For years after his Yankee career ended, DiMaggio remained an icon. Paul Simon’s 1968 hit song, “Mrs. Robinson,” contained this lyric which suggested that the nation yearned for the simpler America that DiMaggio represented: “Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio; a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.” DiMaggio’s reaction to the song: “What the hell does it mean?”

Dom, too, is well-known in the baseball world. For a decade, he ably flanked Ted Williams in the Boston Red Sox outfield, and hit with the best of them. An effective lead-off hitter, the “Little Professor,” so called because he was 5’9”, 160 lbs. and wore rimless spectacles, batted .300 four times, led the AL in runs twice and in triples and stolen bases once each. Dom also led AL center fielders in assists three times and in putouts and double plays twice each.

Post-baseball, Dom founded several small companies that eventually merged into the Delaware Valley Corporation, a family-owned business still operational today. But despite teammate Ted Williams’ vigorous lobbying, Dom’s career stats haven’t gotten him elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame’s veterans’ wing.

Vince, the oldest brother, had less plate success during his 10-year career, but was more adept with his glove and had a cannon arm. “Joe was a better batter, but I could play rings around him as far as knowledge of the game and plays in the outfield,” he once said, immodestly. “I could smoke those throws. If you put a dime on second base, I could hit it from the outfield.”

In 1946, after splitting the season with the Phillies and Giants, Vince hung up his spikes, and meandered from one unassuming job to another – Fuller Brush salesman, milk truck delivery driver, and waiter at the family restaurant, DiMaggio’s Grotto on Fisherman’s Wharf. At the restaurant, customers urged Vince to sing. Without hesitation, Vince broke out in his tenor voice to sing operatic arias or popular love ballads. During those happy moments when Vince crooned to his customers, he rued his decision to play baseball instead of pursuing opera.

Vince, Joe and Dom were distant brothers, and often spent years-long periods when they rarely spoke. In a late-life interview, Vince said, “When the folks were alive, we were a lot closer.”

Rosalie was the DiMaggio family’s unifying force, always looking out for her children’s best interests. In their youth, Rosalie read Bible stories and set a high standard for moral behavior. At Rosalie’s insistence, the family moved from Martinez, Calif., to San Francisco. A school teacher in Sicily, Rosalie knew that the city had better schools; she wanted her children to have good educations, a benefit she knew would pay dividends throughout their lives.

As Joe’s career was peaking, Rosalie traveled by train to New York to watch the Yankees. Once, she caught reporters off guard when she complained that the city was “boring,” and offered little to do.

The truth was that Rosalie missed hearth and home.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

Between August 1 and August 5, 1945, the Washington Senators played five consecutive double headers. In a normal season, a scheduling burden of that magnitude wouldn’t have mattered much to the lowly Senators. But in 1945, the “first in love, first in war, and last in the American League” Senators were in a neck-and-neck pennant race with the Detroit Tigers.

The Senators won nine of the 10 double header games, losing the August 4 night cap 15-4 to the Boston Red Sox. Motivated by the lopsided score, and unwilling to stretch his exhausted pitching staff further, Senators’ manager Ossie Bluege summoned his lefty Lieutenant Bert Shepard to the mound. In his “Baseball in Wartime” account of Shepard’s heroism, Gary Bedingfield wrote that on his 34th European Theater mission and while his P-38J Lightening was bombing an airfield near Ludwigslust, east of Hamburg, Shepard’s plane was hit by enemy flak. The shells blew Shepard’s foot off and tore through his right leg.

Shepard: “I could feel my foot coming loose at the boot.” The 55th Fighter Group’s pilot’s plane hit the ground at an estimated 380 mph.

Angry German farmers rushed out of their homes, wielding pitchforks, determined to kill Shepard, the American enemy. Luckily for Shepard, First Lieutenant Ladislaus Loidl, a physician in the German Luftwaffe, saw the wreckage’s smoke, and hurried to the site in time to hold off the incensed farmers. Loidl drove the critically injured Shepard to a hospital, but the “terror flyer” wasn’t allowed admittance. Eventually another hospital accepted patient Shepard, and his leg was amputated 11” below his knee.

After recuperating, Shepard spent the next eight months in POW camps where a Canadian medic and fellow prisoner made Shepard a crude artificial leg from scrap iron, wood and rivets.

Slowly, Shepard, who as a youth moved from Indiana to California to play semi-pro baseball, began tossing the bulb around to get back a baseball’s feel. In California, Shepard’s skills were good enough to land contracts first with the Chicago White Sox and then the St. Louis Cardinals. His goal before and after his life-threatening WWII injuries was to pitch major league baseball.

A prisoner exchange returned Shepard to the U.S., and he was helped along the way to achieving his lifelong dream. At Walter Reed Hospital, Shepard met with Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson who asked about his future plans. Without hesitation, Shepard replied “to play baseball.” A skeptical but impressed Patterson contacted his friend and Senators’ owner Clark Griffith who agreed to give Shepard, now fitted with a new prothesis, a look.

As Shepard recalled, “Mr. Griffith did it out of sympathy more than anything.” But pitching in exhibition games, Shepard impressed – “got ‘em out each time,” he said. On the strength of his outstanding spring training, the Senators offered Shepard a contract with the promise that once he mastered his control, he’d be given a roster spot.

On August 4, Shepard’s big moment arrived. With the Senators getting hammered in game two 14-2 in the fourth inning and with the bases loaded, manager Bluege signaled for Shepard who promptly struck out George Metkovich for the last out. The 13,000 assembled fans, who had followed Shepard’s progress through the nonstop media coverage of the war hero’s progress, rose to their feet to applaud. Over the next five innings, Shepard surrendered only one run on three hits, and fielded his position flawlessly.

In a perfect world, Shepard’s saga would have continued to include his promotion to the starting rotation where he would have helped carry the Senators past the Tigers to win the AL pennant, and then defeat the Chicago Cubs in the October Classic. But the world is imperfect, and 5-1/3 innings with a 1.69 ERA were Shepard’s career MLB totals.

April is Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness month, and the Amputee Coalition is an organization that would celebrate Shepard’s rewarding life that included the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Metal awards. Before he died in 2008 at age 87, Shepard worked as a Hughes Aircraft safety engineer and an IBM typewriter salesman, played in golf tournaments with his buddy, New York Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto, and walked 18-hole golf courses. He flew his own plane to visit amputees across the nation. Part of Shepard’s visits included encouraging demonstrations like effortlessly running the 60-yard dash and dribbling a basketball. In his later years, Shepard advocated for amputee workers’ rights and designed an artificial ankle that allowed those with severe leg injuries like his more mobility.

Shepard’s remarkable story of perseverance and achievement has a heart-warming footnote. For years, Shepard wondered about the German physician who saved his life in Germany, “Who carried me from the wreck? Who saved my life?” In May 1993, a third party arranged a meeting between Dr. Loidl and Shepard. After they met, an emotionally overwhelmed Shepard said: “I prayed for this. And after half a century, my dream has incredibly come true.”

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

The hour is late to save America from the White House-sanctioned, sovereignty-busting illegal immigrant invasion. To draw a baseball parallel, patriotic citizens are in the bottom of the eighth inning, getting a 6-0 shellacking from the America-last Biden administration.

Still, citizens have two at bats – six outs – remaining, time enough to battle back and overcome, assuming their rally starts immediately.

Some observers wonder how things at the border went so wrong, so fast. The explanation is simple: Cheating and lying from Biden, Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Vice President Kamala Harris and the administration’s inner circle of unelected cronies – U.S. Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, Obama Foundation interim president Valerie Jarrett and Michelle and Barack Obama, who have managed to amass $70 million in wealth since their days in the White House. They threw spit balls and stole signs, and no one holds them accountable.

Biden’s cheating at a criminal, unconstitutional level is indisputable. For his presidency’s entirety, Biden has knowingly, willingly and flagrantly broken numerous immigration laws. The president has defied the entire Immigration and Nationality Act, legislation that defines who can immigrate to the U.S., spells out the procedure for applying for a visa and from where the applications must be submitted, and specifies the rules that new immigrants are legally obligated to follow. These have been dismissed without conferring with Congress. King Biden rules by decree. Shamelessly, even when the courts rule against him, Biden’s brazen rejection of immigration law enforcement proceeds unabated.

In early March, the U.S. District Court of North Texas enjoined the Biden administration’s policy of excepting unaccompanied alien minors from Title 42, and it largely denied the administration’s efforts to dismiss the lawsuit that Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton filed. The court’s final order found that the Biden administration’s actions are: “arbitrary, capricious … or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Biden ignored the court’s injunction. Instead, the administration continued to resettle significant numbers of minors into the U.S. – 122,000 unaccompanied migrant children were put in shelters in 2021 – which has led to the largest wave of criminal child smuggling in human history. The flood of resettled illegal alien teens and minors will drain public school resources, overcrowd hospitals and provide a pipeline for Northern Triangle gangs like MS-13.

In another announcement that will add to taxpayers’ burdens, Biden’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas proposed a new rule that would allow migrants to use public welfare benefits like SNAP, CHIP and Medicaid while their Green Card applications are under review. Mayorkas’ proposal violates the public charge principal which states that newly arrived immigrants must be self-sufficient and not dependent on taxpayer subsidies.

Biden isn’t the least bit hesitant to publicly lie about his immigration agenda. In his State of the Union address, with 38 million television viewers tuned in, Biden said: “We need to secure our border, and fix the immigration system” – the chaotic “system” he and Mayorkas created. Since Biden’s speech, the border crisis has intensified, and will get worse in late May once Title 42 ends.

A healthy part of the blame for the border mess lies with voters who always get the government they vote for. Biden’s campaign commitments included halting illegal immigrant deportations for 100 days, ending the border wall construction and granting amnesty to unlawfully present aliens. Biden chose as his running mate Calif. Sen. Kamala Harris, whose Senate voting record was among the most liberal.

Before being elected to the Senate, and speaking as California’s Attorney General, Harris said “an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” Since her appointment as faux border czar, Harris has shown that she, like her boss, can lie, too. Said Harris: “While we are clear that people should not come to the border now, we also understand that we will enforce the law and that we also – because we can chew gum and walk at the same time – must address root causes…”

Identifying migration’s root causes, Harris concluded, will end illegal immigration. But migration’s root causes turned out to be the unprecedented, uninterrupted immigration lawbreaking of Biden and Harris.

What happens between now and the November 2022 mid-term election, a date that might mark a turning point for enforcement, depends once again on voters. Democrats have at least four vulnerable open borders incumbents on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and New Mexico, more than enough seats to flip the 50-50 deadlocked Upper Chamber, an important step in stabilizing the border invasion. At this historic low point in border enforcement, stabilization would represent a triumph.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected].

In 1866, Lipman Pike became the first great professional Jewish baseball player when he signed a $20-a-week contract to hold down the hot corner for the Philadelphia Athletics.

Lip, as Pike was known, was a dominant power hitter whose numerous home runs soared beyond outfielders’ reach. When the popular Pike passed away prematurely at age 48, The Sporting News, baseball’s Bible, published a tribute that include these glowing comments: “Pike…was one of the few sons of Israel who ever drifted to the business of ball playing. He was a handsome fellow when he was here, and the way he used to hit that ball was responsible for many a scene of enthusiasm at the old avenue grounds.”

Since Pike, many more Jewish superstars have excelled on the diamond. Most famous among them is Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame lefty who was the first pitcher to win three Cy Young Awards, and the only pitcher to capture the award when it was given to just one major leaguer. Koufax won pitching’s Triple Crown – wins, strike outs and ERA, in 1963, 1965 and 1966, and hurled four no-hitters, one of them a perfect game.

Hank Greenberg is another Jewish baseball standout, and a World War II hero. Greenberg’s power statistics are on a par with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Jimmie Foxx. After enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Greenberg rose to First Lieutenant, and was active in the China-Burma-India Theater.

Al Rosen, a four-year World War II Navy vet and Cleveland Indians third baseman, is the only player to win both the Most Valuable Player, and the MLB Executive of the Year awards. Rosen, a successful amateur boxer with a vicious right upper cut who described himself as “one tough Jew,” unanimously won his MVP in 1953, and for his front office efforts that guided the San Francisco Giants’ from first to last place in 1987, he was elected Executive of the Year.

In baseball circles, Koufax, Greenberg and Rosen are well-known. But the compelling 1923 tale about Mose Solomon, the “Rabbi of Swat,” blends the long-gone Class C low minor Southwestern League’s Hutchinson Wheat Shockers with early 1900s Jewish immigration to New York, the World Champion Giants, its manager John J. McGraw and his desperate but ultimately futile search for a slugger who could match Babe Ruth’s home run power, thereby siphoning off Ruth-crazed bugs from the hated Yankees.

In his book, “The League of Outsider Baseball,” Gary Cieradkowski wrote that when word reached McGraw that by September 1923 Solomon had blasted a then-professional record 49 homers, was hitting .421, leading the league in doubles, hits and runs scored, the Giants manager was convinced that the “Jewish Babe Ruth” would spearhead the Jints to financial success.

Within the blink of an eye, the Giants paid the Wheat Shockers $4,500 for Solomon’s contract, and soon thereafter “The Rabbi of Swat” was riding the rail toward New York. But McGraw soon realized he had no place in the lineup for Kansas’ home run phenom. The Giants’ first base position and its outfield were populated by future HOFers George “High Pockets” Kelly, Casey Stengel, Ross Youngs and Hack Wilson. While Solomon rode the pine, the very vocal cranks demanded that the Jewish Babe Ruth be put into a game.

McGraw gave in, and on the season’s last home tilt Solomon hit a game-winning double against the Philadelphia Phillies. Solomon got into one more game in 1923, and ended his season – and his major league career – with three hits in eight at bats, a .375 batting average. The Rabbi’s problem was, as scouts said, “He could poke’em, but he couldn’t pick’em,” a reference to Solomon’s 31 errors in 108 games in Kansas. Solomon was promptly dispatched back to the minors where he resumed his lusty batting prowess – seven seasons of .300 or higher.

When Mose realized his baseball days were behind him, he took up semi-pro football, and played effectively until injuries sidelined him for good – a lucky break for the Rabbi as things turned out. Solomon and his wife moved to Miami where he started a long, lucrative real estate business until his peaceful 1965 death.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].

To the delight of diehard baseball fans, Opening Day is here. But MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the players union have agreed to so many preposterous rule changes that fans might have trouble recognizing the game they once revered as the national pastime.

The designated hitter, an American League abomination since 1973, will now be utilized in National League. The ghost runner, so-called even though he’s clearly visible to all, will begin the 10th inning on second base. Post-season playoffs will be expanded to include 12 teams instead of 10, with the top two seeds getting a first-round bye. And most laughable of all, special rules have been approved for individual players, like Angels pitcher/catcher Shohei Ohtani.

Madison Bumgarner, San Francisco Giants 2014 World Series Most Valuable Player now pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks, best summed up the latest baseball nonsense. Said Bumgarner: “I don’t know, I’m sure we’ll have a different rule in three months, maybe the next year after that. We’ll just make it up as we go. We’ll see whatever they like, the flavor of the week.… Maybe we’ll start playing with a wiffle ball or something.”

None of the 2022 changes are surprising. The players, despite their average $4.5 million annual salaries, want to get off the field and to their awaiting post-game buffets ASAP. Expanded playoffs mean more money for the players and owners, and the Ohtani rule helps keeps baseball’s biggest draw on the field longer.

Pity the beleaguered Cleveland cranks who must put up with MLB nonsense and their team’s woke new nickname, the Guardians. The Indians are gone, and their 100-plus year history down the memory hole where they’ll co-exist with their old mascot, Chief Wahoo. Indian fans can take comfort, however, in their rich past. Fire-balling 21-year-old Bob Feller, a World War II hero, started seven Opening Days, and in the 1940 game, he pitched a no-hitter. On the road in Chicago and at the White Sox Comiskey Park, Feller, in 40-degree weather, fired a 1-0 no hitter, the first of three in his career, along with 12 one-hitters.

More to the point about the former Indians. In 1939, Feller got the nod to open the season, this time at home in Cleveland Stadium against the Detroit Tigers. The Cleveland weather was so frigid that only about 24,000 fans showed up in a ball park that accommodated 80,000 to watch Feller dominate the Tigers 5-1, and shut down future Hall of Famers Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg, although the pair did draw their team’s only two walks. In his compete game win, Feller struck out 10, and allowed three hits.

Those fans that braved the cold got a special treat. Judy Garland, only 16 but already an MGM contract player, sang the National Anthem. Garland had completed filming on “The Wizard of Oz,” but the movie had not yet been released. In Cleveland for a two-week performance at the old State Theater, Garland got her manager’s permission to attend the senior prom at the University School, a local prep school. Since young Judy’s schedule didn’t allow much time for socializing, her manager okayed the prom.

On game day, despite the bitter, wet weather, Garland willingly posed for photos with Indians’ manager Oscar Vitt and the Tigers’ pilot Del Baker. And – get this – she also posed in a magnificent full-feathered Indian headdress.

Although both superstars in their respective professions, the lives of Feller and Garland took different directions. From an early age, relentless overwork that studio bosses forced upon her, despite her tender age, eventually led to Garland’s drug and alcohol abuse. Garland had financial trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for nonpayment of back taxes, and eventually died in London from a drug overdose at age 47.

Feller, a teen standout like Garland, was so popular at such a young age that NBC broadcast his high school graduation to a national audience. “Rapid Robert,” as Feller was called, went on to a Hall of Fame career, and served as a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer during World War II where he earned six campaign ribbons and eight battle stars. Ironically, because he was attending to his cancer-stricken, dying father, the patriotic Feller had a military deferment, but nevertheless enlisted only days after Pearl Harbor.

After Feller’s death at age 91, Mike Hegan, then-Indians’ broadcaster and son of former Feller battery mate Jim Hegan, said that the Indians of the 40s and 50s were the face of Cleveland, and Bob was the face of the Indians. Hegan continued: “But, Bob transcended more than that era. In this day of free agency and switching teams, Bob Feller remained loyal to the city and the team for over 70 years. You will likely not see that kind of mutual loyalty and admiration ever again.”

The Guardians’ woke ownership, the meddling, menacing Manfred and the selfish players union have little concept of loyalty or of honoring baseball’s rich tradition. As Bummy said, “It is what it is,” like it or lump it.

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Copyright 2022 Joe Guzzardi, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers’ Association member. Contact him at [email protected].