Cagle World

A Chinese spy scandal is rocking Capitol Hill.

The sordid tale is the stuff of thrillers: a possible sex-for-secrets swap that involved U.S. Representative and House Intelligence Committee member Eric Swalwell (D-Calif) and Chinese national, honey trap spy Fang Fang who entered the U.S. on a student visa in 2011 to attend California State University East Bay. Fang immediately became a political activist, and served as president of the school’s Chinese Student Association and Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs.

Swalwell may have been over his head with Fang, a skilled seductress who, according to Axios, the FBI had captured on surveillance tapes having trysts with “at least” two Midwestern city’s mayors over a three-year period. Fang was a proficient Swalwell fundraiser, aided him in his successful 2014 re-election, and helped place an intern on his congressional staff. A senior U.S. intelligence officer told Axios that Fang “was just one of lots of [Chinese] agents.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called for Swalwell’s resignation, but Speaker Pelosi has “full confidence” in her fellow California Democrat. Swalwell hasn’t seen Fang since 2015 when, aware that the FBI had her on its radar, she abruptly fled.

Breaking at the same time as the Swalwell-Fang scandal came news that the U.S. Attorney’s Delaware office is investigating Hunter Biden’s taxes, which will probe his China dealings and inevitably uncover the lucrative deals which the president-elect’s son benefited from.

Evidence of China’s growing infiltration into U.S. national affairs has been obvious since at least 2000, when intelligence officers learned that a staffer in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco office was reporting directly to China’s Ministry of State Affairs. The mole, Russell Lowe, worked with Feinstein for almost 20 years, drove her around in San Francisco and “served as gofer in her San Francisco office and as a liaison to the Asian American community, even attending Chinese Consulate functions for the senator.” No charges were brought against Lowe.

When the FBI advised Feinstein of Lowe’s China ties, she fired him. But since Feinstein is a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member, concerns abound about what information Lowe may have gained, and how the senator could have been so easily duped. Since diplomatic relations were opened in 1979, few have profited more from their extensive business dealings with China than Feinstein, and her husband Richard Blum. Feinstein’s net worth is estimated at $58 million; Blum, $1 billion.

China is determined to destroy the U.S.’s values, and the Senate is happy to ease its path. Led by Utah Senator Mike Lee and before a near-empty chamber, through unanimous consent, the Senate approved S. 386/ HR 1044, the so-called Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. The bills will remove the country cap quota, expedite permanent legal status green cards for Chinese and Indian national H-1B visa holders, and continue to displace experienced U.S. tech workers. The legislation will also make it easier for wealthy Chinese nationals to acquire EB-5 citizenship-for-sale visas of which they already receive the majority.

Heroically, Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced an amendment that would bar Chinese nationals with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese Military to apply for green cards. Democrats, and specifically immigration lawyer Zoe Lofgren who represents the California district that includes Silicon Valley, objects to reasonable limits on Chinese access. Lofgren intends to include her original version and ram it through as part of a must-pass omnibus spending bill. In light of recent news about China’s easy access to congressional representatives, Americans should demand to know what the rush is to expand Chinese presence in American society. Chinese already represent the largest foreign-born enrollment in U.S. universities.

Big Tech lobbied intensively for these horrible immigration bills, but no public debates or hearings were held. The GOP continues to reward Silicon Valley with endless cheap labor supply even though the Justice Department sued Facebook for anti-American employee discrimination.

Congress should slow down Chinese immigration until a failsafe migration method can be established. Strict national security against an avowed U.S. enemy like China serves all Americans.
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Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]

On a frigid Chicago evening in January 1912, baseball potentates Charles Comiskey and John J. McGraw met at “Smiley” Mark Corbett’s East Side saloon.

Over whiskey poured neat, the two drafted an ambitious, but successful plan to take Major League Baseball on a worldwide tour.

Comiskey had been an above average 19th century player, but by 1912, he had become the founding, vastly wealthy owner of the Chicago White Sox. McGraw was widely acknowledged as the feisty genius who guided the New York Giants to ten National League pennants and three World Series triumphs. Less well-known is that McGraw, once a Baltimore Orioles and Giants third baseman, has a career on base percentage that ranks a solid third behind Ted Williams and Babe Ruth but ahead of Ty Cobb and Lou Gehrig.

Author James Elfers, in his book “The Tour to End All Tours,” provides the full, fascinating story that began when Comiskey and McGraw, “after an all-night bender,” announced their grand design to the baseball world. Satirist Ring Lardner joked about the tour’s two-fold purpose. First, to further enrich the already wealthy Comiskey and McGraw who during the offseason, earned the then-princely sum of $3,000 weekly telling baseball yarns on Broadway. And second, “to prove that baseball is better than cricket, roulette, hopscotch, baccarat, Parcheesi, or any of the other sports in vogue abroad.”

The rosters were stocked with the era’s superstars, most notably Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, and honeymooning Jim Thorpe. Although only a bench warmer during his brief Giants career, the Native American Thorpe returned from the 1912 Stockholm Olympics after winning Gold Medals in the decathlon and pentathlon, and was universally hailed a hero.

Upon his return home, Thorpe dined with former President Theodore Roosevelt and was honored with a Broadway ticker tape parade. But the U.S. Olympic Committee discovered that Thorpe had played professional minor league baseball during the 1909 and 1910 summers. For earning $30 a month pittance, the USOC declared that Thorpe didn’t qualify as an amateur, and demanded that he return his gold medals, a decision that sparked worldwide outrage.

Ironically, Thorpe had played baseball in the 1912 Olympics, a demonstration sport that year. Later, in 1951, Thorpe’s legend was memorialized in the Burt Lancaster film, “Jim Thorpe – All American.”

The tour got off to a damp start on October 18 in Cincinnati, and the second game was played in cold, snowy Comiskey Park. Then the players proceeded to the La Salle Street station where a rousing crowd bid them a fond farewell. Three weeks later, via Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas, the road weary players reached California, where the red carpet awaited them.

During the tour, Hans Lopert, speedier than Thorpe, raced a jockey-mounted horse around the basepaths. Leading as he rounded third, Lopert claimed that the horse knocked him off stride, and he “lost by a nose.” When the team arrived in Oxnard, Lopert recalled that ten stagecoaches met the team, and the cowboys hosted a roasted ox, fried onions and beer breakfast. Said Lopert: “Roasted ox and beer for breakfast sure puts hair on your chest!”

Shortly after teams boarded the Empress of Japan on November 19 to sail to the Orient and travel 30,000 miles by sea and by rail, they encountered heavy seas. A typhoon that tossed 60-foot waves knocked the big ship 200 miles off course; seasickness overwhelmed the passengers. One wired home: “All well except the players.” A 125-pound fruitcake gifted to the players before they boarded went untouched.

Once back on land in early December, the players eventually met Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea magnate, rode camels and donkeys to the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids before attending a luncheon with Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the last khedive of Egypt. They also had an audience with Pope Pius X, and in England played their last game in front of 30,000 delighted fans including King George V. The King called the game one of his most exciting sporting experiences.

On March 3, 1914 the players departed Liverpool on the Lusitania, and returned to New York on March 7 where baseball dignitaries await them. But for the travel and baseball-exhausted players, there would be no rest. The teams headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas to begin spring training on March 10.

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

All eyes are on Georgia, and the January 5 special U.S. Senate election.

On Saturday, President Trump will travel to Georgia to campaign for GOP incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler who are facing off against, respectively, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

President Trump will be flying into the maelstrom that is Georgia politics. Rumors abound about dirty voter rolls, ballot harvesting, rigged Dominion Voting Systems servers and illegal alien voters during the November presidential race that gave the edge to former Vice President Joe Biden.

In Georgia and other major cities indifferent to election integrity, election fraud is easy to pull off. Georgia Department of Driver’s Services issues licenses and official ID cards to unlawfully present aliens that are similar to the ones given citizens, and are often presented as evidence of voting eligibility. Many in the Republican Party anticipate more of the same illegal interference in the special election.

With the future of Senate control at stake, Georgia could be decided by the four candidates’ immigration stances. Since Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appointed businesswoman Loeffler to the Senate to replace retiring Johnny Isakson, she has aligned herself with President Trump on immigration. Loeffler’s Senate voting record is solidly America First, especially on bills that would reduce illegal immigrants’ presence in the labor market, of key importance to Georgia’s unemployed and underemployed citizens. Warnock supports higher immigration levels and less enforcement.

Although Perdue cosponsored the 2017 RAISE Act that would mandate E-Verify and slowly reduce legal immigration, he’s since drifted away from his America First commitment. Ossoff wants to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, as well as weaken Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security. Warnock supports cashless bail that would put potentially violent criminals back on the street. The platforms of Ossoff and Warnock are bad news for concerned Georgians who should, for public safety reasons if no other, prefer Perdue.

Since 1992, Democrats have lost all eight runoffs, including two for U.S. Senate seats. But, in part because of lax immigration enforcement, Georgia has drifted from red to purple to blue. Migration Policy Institute research found that Georgia is home to more illegal immigrants than lawful permanent residents.

As alarming evidence of Georgia’s leftward shift, Republicans lost two sheriff jobs to Democrats who have vowed to end cooperative agreements with ICE. The new sheriffs know, but don’t care, that federal law requires the removal of illegal aliens.

In his Washington Times op-ed, Georgia immigration law enforcement advocate and Dustin Inman Society founder D.A. King wrote that Cobb and Gwinnett were once solidly Republican, but demographics have turned the counties blue. Gwinnett’s demographic change is reflected in its previous voting patterns. Today, 25 percent of its residents are foreign-born; in 1980 less than 2 percent were foreign nationals. Mitt Romney won Gwinnett by almost 10 points in 2012. But just four years later in 2016, the shift began. Hillary Clinton won Gwinnett, and Democrat Stacey Abrams trounced Brian Kemp in Gwinnett in the 2018 gubernatorial election by a walloping 14-point margin.

TargetSmart, a Democratic-managed voter analysis firm, found that between 2016 and 2020, Georgia’s Hispanic voters in the presidential election increased 72 percent, while traditional voter involvement decreased. Contemplating the two runoffs, a representative from the Abrams-founded New Georgia Project said, “Demographics is the fire,” a grim assessment that Perdue confirmed to CNN. Perdue projected that, because of Georgia’s Democratic influx, he’ll need to win “twice the number of votes” than he did previously to win re-election. “The demographic moves against us,” Perdue said, “but we can still win this if we get out and make sure that all of our voters vote.”

Kemp is a complete immigration flame out. His 2018 campaign promised to get tough on illegal immigration, but he’s done little. Under his watch, Kemp has seen Georgia’s illegal immigrant population reach nearly 400,000, climb to seventh nationwide, and surpass Arizona’s total.
Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: the runoff results will determine the fate of Georgia, the Senate and the nation for decades. Warnock and Ossoff victories would give the Democrats Senate control which in turn would mean amnesty, defunded police departments and huge tax increases.

January 5 is the last call for Georgians to stand up against the powerful America Last agenda that Warnock and Ossoff represent.

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

Into the already roiling Capitol Hill atmosphere comes another powder keg.

The Hill, a Washington, D.C. news site, reported that President Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. As a 2016 presidential candidate, Trump promised to prioritize birthright citizenship changes, but he has since waffled. Several bills under both Republican and Democratic administrations to restrictively recast birthright citizenship never generated enough support to get to the floor of Congress for a final vote.

Currently, children born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully present are given citizenship. For decades, critics have urged Congress to pass an amendment that would grant citizenship only to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent resident aliens or aliens performing active service in the U.S. Armed Forces. Those skeptics further argue that the “under the jurisdiction of” wording in the 14th Amendment excludes foreign nationals who are citizens of their native countries. Immigration expansionists insist that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship.

To date, the expansionists have prevailed.

The Pew Research Center estimated that, according to recent data for a one-year period, about 250,000 babies were born to illegal immigrants. Birth tourism, a citizenship abuse that’s exploded and led to chain migration increases, has doubtlessly added to Pew’s total.

The Supreme Court has never been called on to issue a definitive “under the jurisdiction of” interpretation. If President Trump acts, the Biden administration would immediately challenge the order. But a Biden intervention could ultimately involve the Supreme Court, an outcome which both sides should welcome. The contentious back and forth about who is citizen-eligible has lingered long enough.

Many Beltway insiders will point to a birthright citizenship Executive Order as more evidence that President Trump is doing his best to subvert the incoming administration, mostly through actions that may be cumbersome to undo. Among them: withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, securing oil drilling leases in Alaska, punishing China, thwarting plans former Vice President Biden might have to reestablish the Iran nuclear deal, reforming H-1B visa guidelines, filling vacancies on scientific panels, pushing to weaken environmental standards, nominating judges and rushing their confirmations through the Senate, and eliminating long-standing health care regulations.

Labeling President Trump “vindictive,” The Washington Post warned that the sitting president might use his considerable influence as the GOP’s titular head to push Republican legislators to “scuttle Biden’s priorities.” The Post, like virtually every mainstream media outlet, is encouraging Americans to move on and, in the spirit of unity, go forward.

Remember that the Post, exactly 19 minutes after President Trump’s inauguration, published a story titled “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump has Begun,” an effort that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed countless times during the following four years. Fifty-three Democrats boycotted President Trump’s January 20 inauguration in 2017.

The unprecedented attempt to discredit President Trump began when the Obama administration, of which Biden was a prominent member, authorized campaign spying, and eventually included the baseless Russia investigation and a doomed-to-fail impeachment attempt. Between day one and today, President Trump has battled Democrats, many Republicans, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the media, academia, the judiciary, evangelicals and assorted other powerful deep-state, never-Trumpers. Given that duly-elected President Trump’s White House journey has been uphill all the way and without even a passing acknowledgement of his economic successes, vindication may be his appropriate, going-away sentiment.

With a little less than two months remaining until Inauguration Day 2021, loose ends related to President Trump’s pending Executive Orders and his election lawsuits must be tied up before predictions about his legacy can be made. Using brutal invective, Pelosi says the president is a “psychopathic nut” and a nasty, horrible person. But, if his legal challenges fail, nearly 74 million Americans – more than 10 million voted for him than in 2016 – will remember President Trump as an unbending America-first advocate who went down swinging.

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

On the rare occasions that Joe Biden emerged from his basement into the daylight in the run-up to the election, he touted his Scranton roots. Biden’s tone was along the lines of, “Hey, it’s me, plain old Blue-Collar Joe, a guy from working-class Scranton who will make American workers’ concerns my administration’s priority.”

Biden chided President Trump for playing golf with his wealthy pals, disingenuously inferring that that the president’s friendships with the elite meant that he’s incapable of defending everyday Americans.

But even a cursory analysis of Biden’s immigration agenda shows that his goals represent the most radically anti-U.S. worker agenda in presidential history. Especially harmed will be residents in cities like Scranton, where people are struggling to stay afloat. The last thing needed by small-town citizens looking for employment or hoping to hold onto their jobs is competition from millions of newly work-authorized immigrants.

Biden has repeatedly vowed – “we owe them [the illegal immigrants]” – to grant amnesty to the existing illegal immigrant population, at least 11 million people, but possibly as many as 20 million. Also included in Biden’s wish list is increasing refugee resettlement from President Trump’s 15,000 to 125,000 annually, more generous asylum guidelines, quasi-open borders, freezing deportations during his first 100 days, and a restructured – read watered down – Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In addition, Biden’s priorities include reviewing with an intention to expand foreign nationals who qualify for Temporary Protected Status, reinstating deferred action for childhood arrivals – DACA – and reversing President Trump’s travel ban on 13 nations that affected mostly Muslim countries.

Under Biden, legal immigration would soar. Biden nonchalantly claimed that the U.S. could “in a heartbeat” absorb another 2 million legal immigrants per year which would put the annual permanent lawful residents intake to more than 3 million.

Biden’s appointment of Ron Klain as his chief of staff ensures more employment-based visas. Klain has lobbied on behalf of Silicon Valley for an endless inflow of H-1B visas that displace U.S. tech workers or deny recently graduated science, technology, engineering and math university students opportunities to vie for IT jobs. About 650,000 H-1B visa workers are in the domestic labor market at any one moment, which put more than 85,000 U.S. tech jobs at risk annually.

While calculating the precise number of new lifetime valid work permits that would be issued under a four-year Biden administration, the total could easily reach or surpass 35 million, an outcome that would be bad news for Scranton residents and others who live in similar lower middle-class cities.

The most recent Census Bureau data shows that 85 percent of Scranton residents don’t have college diplomas, and only 56 percent of the working age population are employed. In 2018, the median Scranton household income was $39,000, the per capita income $22,000 and the percent of individuals living in poverty, 24 percent.

Nevertheless, Scranton voted overwhelmingly for Biden because, wrote The Philadelphia Inquirer, he connected with Northeastern Pennsylvania’s working-class people in places like Northeastern Pennsylvania by touting his Scranton upbringing. The Biden family left Scranton nearly 70 years ago when manufacturing, mining and railroading were thriving. In his lifetime, Biden has never held a job outside of politics, and has had three failed presidential campaigns.

Like Biden, Scranton’s U.S. Representative, Democrat Matt Cartwright, is no friend to local workers. Although his website states that his “number one priority is to bring good-paying, family-sustaining jobs to Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Cartwright has consistently voted in favor of amnesty enticements, more employment visas and less border enforcement.

The simple and indisputable conclusion is that more immigration, which Biden, Cartwright and others on both sides of the congressional aisle enthusiastically endorse, harms working Americans. Especially hurt are those with less than a college education and minorities, a fact that eluded Scranton voters and millions of others who cast 2020 ballots.

The takeaway going forward is that pro-America candidates must do more effective messaging – address the readily available Census and Department of Homeland Security information to connect higher immigration levels to more work-authorization documents.

Pro-American isn’t anti-immigrant. Being a native son, like Pennsylvania-born Biden is, shouldn’t be the deciding factor that elevates a candidate who puts American interests last into the White House. But wily candidates like Biden capitalize on under-informed voters.

As the old truism in political circles goes, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.”

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

To some Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems invulnerable. This year, two Pelosi events that would shame average Americans, and cost them their jobs, were like water off a duck’s back.

First, Pelosi foolishly and brazenly ripped up President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, which some asserted broke the Federal Records Act. Second, Pelosi was caught mask-less at a San Francisco hair salon. In-person hairstyling violates San Francisco’s COVID-19 safety policy, a crime.

Nevertheless, the 80-year-old Pelosi kept her $223,000 a year job, buttressed by her bulging stock portfolio, that contributes to her $114 million net worth, all while the salon’s near-bankrupt owner closed her doors after 15 successful years.

The two incidents represent unprofessional, haughty bad messaging from Pelosi, and are part of the reason so many Democrats are quixotically plotting to remove her as Speaker, a position she’s held twice during nonconsecutive terms from 2007 to 2011, and again from 2019 to today.

After the Election Day smoke cleared, Pelosi, who had boasted that the House would gain a least 20 seats, witnessed instead lost representation. Pelosi, say many critics, is solely to blame.

Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor, said that House Democrats who lost their seats wondered why Pelosi, with the November 3 election just days away, wouldn’t compromise with President Trump on a COVID-19 relief bill. Baker pointed out that even though a compromise would appear to give President Trump a victory, an imperfect bill that the representatives could have taken back to their constituents would have been better than nothing.

As events unfolded, Pelosi’s defiance and bad karma – at least outside of San Francisco and other ultra-progressive hubs – resulted in the loss of seven incumbent seats to Republicans, with potentially more to come when the final tally is in. To Pelosi’s detractors, the gap between a projected 20-seat win and the real world seven seats lost to Republicans is unacceptable.

But the harsh reality is that Pelosi isn’t going anywhere. Pelosi is a prolific fundraiser for her Democratic allies. After nearly two decades in leadership, Pelosi is on target to raise about $1 billion for her party – an eye-popping sum. This election cycle Pelosi raised $227.9 million for Democrats – most of it for the House campaign arm – but she also redirected $4 million for Biden from an August event and sent nearly $5 million to the state parties.

If nothing else, Pelosi is a savvy political operator who has built her three-decade long House career around correctly reading the tea leaves. In the November 3 election Pelosi, as she always does, crushed with nearly 80 percent of the total votes cast for her over House opponent and fellow Democrat, Shahid Buttar. Pelosi’s election campaign strategy is, to say the least, unorthodox. Since her first 1987 campaign Pelosi, a virtual shoo-in, has steadfastly refused to debate Republicans, Green Party members and progressives like Buttar. Not only won’t Pelosi face opposition candidates, but her staff refuse to answer questions about why the speaker won’t engage.

Should the Democratic House caucus vote to remove Pelosi, and many insiders think she can’t garner the necessary support, the leading candidate to replace her is, say those purportedly in the know, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries, House Democratic Caucus chair.

From the perspective of Americans who oppose amnesty, open borders, entitlements to illegal immigrants, fewer employment-based visas, sensible refugee and asylee programs, Jeffries has the identical nation-busting vision as Pelosi. Since 2013 when Jeffries was first elected, in his 77 immigration-related votes, he came down in favor of more immigration and more affirmative benefits to illegal immigrants 99 percent of the time.

As strange as it sounds, pro-enforcement Americans, which polls show are in the majority, might be better off with the polarizing Pelosi. While Jeffries is obscure, the mere mention of Pelosi’s name raises the hackles of moderate Democrats, and could lead in 2022 to the GOP regaining the House majority.

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

World War I hero and one of baseball’s best-ever pitchers, Grover Cleveland Alexander led a bittersweet life.

Alexander won the pitching triple crown three times – wins, ERA, and strike outs – and won 30 or more games three times in three consecutive years, feats that in this five-inning starts era will never be matched. And in the 1926 World Series, Alexander’s performance almost single-handily won the title for the St. Louis Cardinals.

But the Great War left Alexander shell-shocked, near-deaf, alcoholic and seizure-prone, conditions that eventually left him destitute.

More commonly referred to in baseball circles as “Old Pete,” the young Alexander grew up in tiny Elba, Nebraska, one of 13 children – just six of whom reached adulthood. Society for American Baseball Research historian and Union College English professor Jan Finkel wrote that Alexander’s cornshucking skills helped him develop a strong right wrist that he used to spin his deadly curve ball. Alexander perfected his pinpoint control by throwing stones at clothespins or if the evening supper pot was empty, launching rocks at chickens.

Known around Elba as “Dode,” Alexander’s pitching prowess soon became well-known in the old Illinois-Missouri League. In 1909, Alexander signed with the Class D Galesburg Hornets, and by 1911 he had worked his way up to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he recorded 28 wins, arguably baseball history’s best rookie performance. By 1918, Alexander wore a Chicago Cubs uniform, and was off to a fast start.
But the Army drafted Alexander, and by late July, his 89th Division and the 342nd Field Artillery unit was on the front, where he spent seven weeks under non-stop enemy attack.

After rejoining the Cubs in 1919, Alexander slowly worked his way back to become close-to, but not quite, the stellar pitcher he had been before his military service. Alexander’s alcohol dependency, however, troubled Cubs’ senior management, and in 1926 the team dumped the 39-year-old pitcher off to St. Louis, where he would star in the legendary New York Yankees-Cardinals World Series.

Alexander notched wins in games two and six. In the pivotal, seventh game, Old Pete came in from the bullpen in the seventh with the bases loaded, and preserved the Cards 3-2 lead. Years later, Ruth wrote that the very sight of Alexander chewing his tobacco, and “pitching baseballs as easy as pitching hay is enough to take the heart out of a fellow.” Alexander’s summed up his pitching philosophy as doing in one pitch what others do in three.

Traded to the Phillies in 1930, Alexander couldn’t maintain his excellence, and after an unsuccessful minor league stint, he retired. A prolonged period of personal decline followed.

Unable to find a coaching job or to overcome his alcohol dependency, Alexander worked odd jobs, performed in flea circuses, lived in flop houses, and was in and out of several sanitariums. Alexander’s downward cycle, which included hocking his World Series ring for meal money, was briefly interrupted by his Hall of Fame induction in 1938.

In his acceptance speech, and with the approving roars of the crowd that knew about his war heroism and subsequent struggles, Pete said that his day at Cooperstown was “a mighty proud moment in my life.” Years later, however, a penniless Alexander admitted that while being in the Hall was an honor, fame didn’t put meat and potatoes on his table.

Alexander’s final years were one physical challenge after another. In 1946, Old Pete suffered a heart attack, and the following year, he developed cancer in his war-injured ear that required amputation. In 1950, alone in a St. Paul hotel room, Alexander died.

Two years later, Warner Brothers released “The Winning Team,” a biographical film that starred future president Ronald Reagan as Alexander and Doris Day as the pitcher’s wife, Aimee.

Alexander’s name and his remarkable pitching performances have faded from the memories of all but the most dedicated Dead Ball Era historians. But on Armistice Day 2020, Sergeant Grover Cleveland “Dode” Alexander along with the other 320,000 Americans wounded or killed during World War I deserves to be honored.

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

The 2020 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers won’t be going to the White House to celebrate. COVID-19, the great kill joy, ensured that no invitation would be extended.

Baseball teams first visited the White House in 1865 during Andrew Johnson’s administration. Like Abraham Lincoln before him, Johnson, who labeled baseball the “nation’s game,” was a true fan who once gave the entire federal bureaucracy a day off to watch a three-team round robin played behind the White House.

In June 1869, when the Cincinnati Red Stockings traveled to Ulysses S. Grant’s White House, journalists couldn’t decide which was more popular – the undefeated Cincinnati powerhouse, or the recently elected Civil War hero. As one scribe wrote, “This season, the whole country seems to have baseball on the brain.”

Legend has it that Grant would sometimes join in games young boys played near the White House. In the 1868 presidential campaign, teams that supported Grant and his challenger, former New York governor Horatio Seymour, once played a game against each other. The results are unknown.

The Red Stockings were baseball’s first professional team, and the ballclub took the nation by storm. Anchored by captain and team manager Harry Wright and his 22-year old shortstop brother George, the Red Stockings made the most of their $10,000 budget to attract baseball talent across America. In 1869, George, considered the original Babe Ruth, hit .630, and 49 home runs. The Wright brothers are in baseball’s Hall of Fame.

By the time the Red Stockings were puffing stogies with the cigar-loving Grant, the team was 25-0, on its way to a 57-0 season, and an eventual 81-game winning streak that spanned two seasons. When the team returned from the White House to Cincinnati’s Union Station, 4,000 delirious fans awaited.

On Opening Day, when it hammered its Cincinnati Picked Nine opponents 24-15 and the next day administered a 50-7 drubbing, the Red Stockings served notice to the baseball world that it was a force. The Red Stockings scored runs in abundance, and averaged 42 scores each game. Once, the Cincinnati nine tallied an amazing 103 runs in a single game. As the Red Stockings racked up win after win, America fell in love with the team. Celebrated in newspaper stories and in song, “The Red Stockings’ March,” fans couldn’t get enough. The Red Stockings helped Cincinnati emerge from a destitute post-Civil War slaughterhouse capital to an emerging cosmopolitan metropolis to rival New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Even though ticket prices doubled to .50 cents, fans continued to flock to the yard. In Chicago, an overload of Red Stockings baseball bugs, as fans were called in the game’s early days, caused the bleachers to collapse. During September 1869, seven years before the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Red Stockings embarked on a wild and woolly train journey to the west coast. As the train zig-zagged along the rough rails, inhospitable Native Americans roamed the plains. One correspondent wrote that standing up straight while the train was in motion or jumping the tracks was impossible. Once in California, however, the Red Stockings obliterated Sacramento and San Francisco teams. They had accomplished their mission to introduce eastern style baseball to westerners.

The Red Stockings good fortune continued in 1870 when the team peeled off 27 more straight wins. Then, on June 14, the Red Stockings lost an 11-inning, 8-7 road thriller to the Brooklyn Athletics; the streak ended. The first defeat in more than 100 games cost the Red Stockings its fickle fan base, and its sponsors. The team moved to Boston where it became known as the Bean Eaters, and then the Braves.

More than a century later, baseball historians dubbed the Red Stockings as the “First Boys of Summer” and properly credited the team with making baseball famous coast-to-coast. Some dismiss the Red Stockings’ achievements as insignificant, ancient history. But the 1869 Red Stockings were trailblazers, adhered to the 19th century’s rules, took on all comers, and traveled through hostile territory to crush California’s teams.

In the process, they won all their games, a feat no other professional baseball teams can claim.

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

South of the border between the United States and Mexico, the presidential race is being watched with keen interest.

In Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, local newspapers are tracking two major headline stories: the coronavirus and President Donald Trump versus his challenger, Joe Biden. La Prensa Libre, Guatemala’s leading daily, is reporting on U.S. immigration topics as part of a series titled “La Crisis Migratoria en Centroamerica.”
Because the two candidates’ immigration positions are well-known south of the border, thousands have decided that now is the time to go north. Getting into the U.S. interior before Biden takes office in 2021, assuming that’s the way the November election plays out, may represent their best chance of being included in the amnesty the former Vice President has often vowed to grant. On his website, Biden promises to send Congress, “on day one,” legislation that will grant amnesty to 11 million unlawfully present aliens.

Polling that shows challenger Biden comfortably ahead of Trump has already encouraged a new migrant wave headed toward the Southwest border. Department of Homeland Security September data shows that Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended nearly 55,000 migrants, the highest total this fiscal year. Acting CBP commissioner Mark Morgan warned that, in addition to the amnesty lure, the Western Hemisphere’s worsening economic conditions and COVID-19 spikes add another pull factor. “Get ready,” Morgan alerted border state residents, “We’re already seeing the (migrant) numbers increase.”

Although far from perfect, Trump’s achievements in transforming U.S. immigration policy into a system that benefits Americans are significant. William H. Frey, a Brookings Institute analyst, found that some of the president’s immigration initiatives have contributed to slower U.S. population growth. Newly released Census Bureau projections showed that natural population increases – births minus deaths – declined to the lowest level “in decades.” Since the Census Bureau identified immigration and births to immigrants as the leading U.S. population growth driver, by extension then, fewer immigrant arrivals will mean slower population growth.

Title 42 is another variable in the Trump White House’s approach to enforcing immigration law, and has fallen mostly beneath the establishment media’s radar. The Public Health and Welfare regulation allows the federal government to immediately transport Mexican nationals caught attempting to cross into the U.S. unlawfully to the nearest international bridge where they will be walked back, or to use CBP’s word, expelled.

But it has resulted in an unintended consequence that helps explain the recent surge in border traffic. The returned migrants, knowing they’re unlikely to face consequences for re-entry, return to the U.S., often several times. But at a minimum, the approach to deterring asylum seekers and others hoping to illegally enter the U.S. interior sends the message that immigration enforcement is a Trump administration priority, one that could vanish under a Biden presidency.

Trump’s accomplishments have fulfilled, at least partially, average Americans’ immigration vision. Immigration should continue, but at levels that are consistent with helping working U.S. citizens. The historic average annual immigration intake, 250,000, has been replaced by an unsustainable million-plus lawful permanent residents per year, which has become the new norm for more than two decades.

Biden’s views are in sync with the elite – Beltway lobbyists, academia, Silicon Valley and Congress’ donor-dependent class. But Main Street America wants less skilled and unskilled job competition from abroad.

For many Americans, the days leading up to November 3 have been an endlessly contentious, undignified campaign. Before long, Americans will speak at the ballot box, and assuming a clear-cut winner emerges, the pre-election dust-up between the two candidates and their parties should settle down – at least for a few weeks.

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

The Los Angeles Angels have endured a long drought in their quest to reach baseball’s post-season. The Halos last appeared in a World Series run in 2014, and this year was the futile Angels’ fifth consecutive losing season.

Fans wonder if the time has come to revive the Angels’ old battle cry: “Win one for the cowboy,” a reference to former team owner Gene Autry. Long before 1960, the year Autry bought the Angels, he was America’s most beloved singing cowboy, a rodeo performer who parlayed his talents and popularity into a multimillion-dollar empire.

Autry recorded 640 songs, including the classics, “Back in the Saddle Again,” and his biggest hit, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In all, Autry’s recordings sold more than 100 million copies, and earned him gold and platinum records. Among Autry’s admirers were his singing peers, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, but also, improbably, Ringo Starr and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Autry seamlessly transitioned from yodeling into becoming a major film star alongside his trusty horse, Champion, and his faithful sidekick, Pat Buttram.

Eventually, Autry expanded into ranching, oil wells, real estate and radio station acquisition, all of which contributed to a fortune so vast that he appeared for ten consecutive years on Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans. As Buttram told a Desert Sun newspaper reporter: “Gene Autry used to ride off into the sunset. Now he owns it.”

But as the Angels’ owner, Autry was never able to match his cowboy successes. As a youth, Autry played semi-pro baseball, claimed that the St. Louis Cardinals invited him to a tryout and organized pick-up games at spring training camps. Despite his willingness to pay big salaries to the superstars of the era – future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, Joe Rudi, Don Baylor and Bobby Grich – the Angels consistently finished out of the money.

Finally, in 1979 after adding seven-time batting champion Rod Carew to the lineup, the Angels won the American League West crown. By then, fans and players hoped to spur the Angels on to baseball’s greatest peak with their lament, “Win one for the cowboy.”

Autry had a strong bond with fans, players and his managers. In a Society for American Baseball Research article, Warren Corbett wrote that Autry mingled freely with his fans and took pains to learn the names of his players, managers and their kids. One player recalled that in his pre-game rounds through the club house, Autry would ask, “Anything you need?” And Nolan Ryan, who pitched four of his seven career no-hitters for the Angels, said, “I can honestly say he is among the greatest men I have ever had the pleasure to know.”

As Autry aged, he turned management responsibility over to his wife, Jackie. But the cowboy lived long enough to see his Angels repeat as Western Division title holders in 1982 and 1986. Each year, they lost the league championship, by one game in 1982, and one strike in 1986. Sadly, cancer took Autry in 1998. The cowboy missed seeing his Angels beat their intra-state rival, the San Francisco Giants, in 2002 to finally win the World Series. By then, however, Jackie had sold her Angels’ shares to Disney, giving the conglomerate full control.

In 1947, Autry, who served during World War II as a U.S. Army Air Forces Flight Officer, wrote the “Cowboy Code,” his recommendations for living a rewarding life. The code is worth rereading today. Autry wrote that people should always tell the truth, and be gentle with children, the elderly and animals. He advised to help people in distress, respect women and parents, work hard, disavow radical ideas and obey the nation’s laws.

Finally, Autry’s 10th commandment, “the cowboy must be a patriot,” deserves special attention. Nearly 75 years after Autry wrote his code, Americans now more than ever should embrace and practice Autry’s wise words.

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