Northern California pals, catch a short film about women and baseball next Friday March 6 at the San Jose Museum of Art, 110 South Market Street, then stay for refreshments and a fun discussion about the film featuring Yours Truly and other distinguished panelists. sjmusart.org/event/first-...

Baseball is my comfort food today😢 I'm sharing it here with anyone else who needs nutrition for the soul.

Even little league volunteer umpires receive intensive training and constant evals before they ever take the field, yet they still wind up being cursed at & disrespected by unappreciative coaches and parents who feel entitled to abuse them. BE NICE TO UMPIRES! www.littleleague.org/news/a-full-...

Josh Naylor, changing the world for the better one at-bat at a time 😋🌈

Some people are more outraged at our Olympic athletes expressing conflicted feelings about representing the United States than they are about why the athletes feel that way. This is one reason why. I feel sick thinking this is what "USA" represents to the rest of the world now: cruelty and horror.

Happy birthday to one of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Something about her bohemian lifestyle and unique education and upbringing has always fascinated me, and her poems touch my soul in a profound way I can't quite explain. Here's one of them, "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed."

The first truthful thing he’s said so far: “In the first year of my second term… I took prescription drugs”

Tracking technology with a higher purpose

Wisdom

The noisy background of current events has muted the news of Bill Mazeroski's recent death. He enjoyed a solid career as a gold glove infielder who was seldom spectacular but always stellar, and what he did in the 1960WS secured his place in the baseball firmament. baseballhall.org/discover/rem...

A lot of blood, sweat, time, and tears made this possible. Viewers, sponsors, and WNBA fans, give yourselves a huge pat on the back! WOMEN'S SPORTS DRAW LOYAL AUDIENCES. WOMEN'S SPORTS GENERATE MONEY!!!

A huge mob gathered in Central Park - to throw snowballs at each other. Subways kept running, schools wisely closed, dedicated building personnel of local 32B kept sidewalks safe & salted. My beautiful New York is functioning on all cylinders through this latest bomb cyclone of a winter wonderland❤️

What's wrong with this @telegraph.co.uk headline? "CIVIL SERVANT forced... women to WET THEMSELVES" humanizes the perp and infantilizes the victims. It's also misleading and calculatedly male-exculpatory. "Predator Poisons Hundreds of Unsuspecting Women With Powerful Diuretic." Fixed it. Easy.

Zorro Ranch needs to be searched by cadaver dogs. Guaranteed there are bodies buried there, waiting to be exhumed and identified. Don Huffines has a few things to answer for too, also guaranteed. www.texastribune.org/2026/02/13/d...

Turtle suicide was not on my 2026 bingo card of things to care about, but too many aspects of this extinction event are resonating after reading this for me not to www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/s...

Is there anything more despicable than preying on the decency of people in order to commit indecent acts upon them? A pathocracy has infiltrated & infected our government. Sociopaths with zero empathy are running the show, demanding that the rest of us rid ourselves of the burden of our consciences

ICE using the same ruse that Ted Bundy used to kidnap people should tell you something.

"First ever"? What took so long?

No one creates and curates a vast network of blackmail victims, trafficked children, and financial incubi without enablers, and for decades, Deutsche Bank has been at the center of both Epstein's AND Donald Trump's financial "growth." "Growth," like a cancer. Deutsche Bank is a financial cancer.

So Florida legislators are finally growing a spine and rebuking the governor's disgusting fetish for feeding Brown people to the alligators. Progress!

When you do something ethical knowing it will cost you dearly, but you do it anyway, that's courage. Slava Ukraini!

A lovely encomium to the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School, which provided me with the training that has allowed me to distinguish myself as an umpire over the last 46 years, and fostered hundreds of close friendships I now have with other umpires all over the world. www.nytimes.com/athletic/704...

In honor of #nationalguitarday, my cherished 1953 Martin 00-18, cracks and all. It's been played by Steve Goodman, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, & Paul Simon; they all said it has the sweetest sound they'd ever heard. Also shown: me, playing it at a Goodman tribute show, and my cat Lucie posing near it

Books by or about baseball umpires are my favorites!

@craigcalcaterra.bsky.social's newsletter alerted me to the weak-kneed but predictable abandonment of Latin players by @mlb.com & @mlbpa.bsky.social as the horrifying possibility of ICE raids at spring training camps now looms menacingly over what should be a glorious time of year for baseball fans.

This is not good

His thought was not to take advantage of the situation and enrich himself by extorting the families of the disappeared, but to help both them and his city at no cost. Respect to Juan Leon of Leo's Tow in Minneapolis! A link to the company's Facebook page: www.facebook.com/profile.php?...

Happy Birthday, B-R! One of my go-to websites for just about everything except maybe gynecological advice

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! We are proud to count Jen Pawol among the trailblazers who call Northern New Jersey home. Check out the story about her, written by @umpireplb.bsky.social, that ran in our Fall 2025 newsletter.

To repeat, Cruelty is Big Business. It's making lots of money for a few people, but standing up to it and saying "NOT HERE, NOT TODAY, ICE," is making a big difference

At the Last Class of the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School, students are divided into groups named in honor of past umpires. My crew was "Rennert," after the great and memorable Dutch, who was a good friend and mentor for years after I graduated from school in 1982. Respect to my Rennert crewmates!

The last week of the Last Class of the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School is upon us, and the record-breaking 16 women in attendance and a few more online are celebrating and mourning at the same time: celebrating the friendships we've formed here, and mourning the end of an era. Time marches on!

Children over politics! What a concept.

Trying to keep it positive here, but I mean, how dare we. HOW DARE WE.

Every new year is a reminder of Clemente's generosity and regard for his fellow humans, the ones who suffered, the ones he would never know, not they, him, but whose lives he touched because that was who he was, a life-toucher, a game-changer, a man who didn't want to be a hero but was one anyway.

Mets v. Braves too

"Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside" is Melissa Ludtke's eyewitness account of the turbulent times during which she opened the doors to the locker room to ALL reporters. Reading it will help you understand the context and the incredible intrepidity it took for her to do what she did.

New York City is a treacherous, slushy mess today, with more snow and dipping temps on the way, which will turn already slippery sidewalks into sheets of ice - but the dedicated building employees of Local 32BJ are hard at work salting and shoveling. Those good union jobs help keep New Yorkers safe!

A nice profile today at Ball Nine on Leslie Heaphy, one of the foremost scholars of Negro Leagues baseball (and one of my favorite people on the planet): ballnine.com/2025/12/26/d...

Don't stop believing! youtu.be/dbUDSxJFsDA?...

We can't all be Curt Flood, but we can all sure as hell be outspoken and brave - and right now, we all NEED to be.

The landscape of professional umpiring has been a barren plain for too long, but Harry's Last Class - the final session of the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School, which is shutting its doors in January 2026 after almost 50 years of promoting umpires into pro ball - will be changing that in a BIG way!

I never really thought of Adam Smith as anything other than an economist because of his landmark tract, "The Wealth of Nations," but it turns out he was quite the soulful philosopher too. This quotation from his other book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," supports my conclusion.

Who among us can't use a pep talk to reset our emotionally frothing feelings before we do something we might regret? Thank you, PepToc Hotline (love the name!)

Sickening and infuriating. A Black woman is silenced so Karoline Leavitt can lie through her teeth about "unanimity," and the Trump name can be slapped on another building, defiling its history and purpose.

Women in baseball are hurting at the devastating loss of Rob Reiner, adoptive dad of Tracy, who's been a friend to all of us via her role as Betty Spaghetti in her mom Penny Marshall's classic "A League of Their Own," her support of @iwbc4me.bsky.social, & all of us in the women's baseball universe💔

Jen Pawol is Baseball America's 2025 Trailblazer of the Year, and she deserves all the accolades. Thanks to JJ Cooper and @baseballamerica.com for connecting Jen's journey to the majors with my dream project sponsoring 20 women at umpire school next month. www.baseballamerica.com/stories/mlb-...

Life in Kyiv continues as brave Ukranians carry on and the world bears witness. In a few months it will be four long years since the monster Putin made his move to steal what was not his. Why can't we end the war and preserve the beauty that remains, like this awe-inspiring cathedral and grounds?