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Submitted for your approval today, an issue of News and Views.

NEWS: The Artemis mission is set to blast off on April Fool’s Day for a trip around the moon.

VIEWS: The crew includes a black man and a white woman, which NASA previously had trumpeted as a DEI initiative, writing in a statement the commitment to land “the first woman and first person of color on the moon.” This is not a moon landing mission, but the arrival of President Trump and his aversion to DEI as governmental policy, has seen NASA scrub the DEI language. These crew members seem to have credentials. I hope that is the case.

NEWS: Major League Baseball has gone to automated ball-strike (ABS) challenges and early in the season the New York Yankees are 10-of-11 on challenges overall, including going 5-for-5 Monday night.

VIEWS: You’d need to be blind to think umpires were not missing a lot of ball-strike calls through the years. The arrogant umpires each had “their” strike zone, never mind what the rule book says. The strike zone also had differed from National League to American League, at least in the eyes of the umpires. I just wish Eric Gregg was still with us and calling a strike zone so wide the 400-pound umpire could have slept in it. During Game 5 of the 1997 National League Championship Series, Gregg helped Florida pitcher Livan Hernandez to a career-high 15 strikeouts with a strike zone Atlanta’s Chipper Jones labeled “ a travesty.” If ABS had been around back then, Atlanta might have gone 60-for-60 on challenges – and won the game!

NEWS: Duke blew a 19-point lead to UConn and lost an NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament game Saturday that is being hailed as one of the greatest chokes in tournament history.

VIEWS: I called it during the game. I was watching the broadcast with a friend and when Duke came out sloppy and lethargic to start the second half, I told him Duke was going to blow the game. I didn’t necessarily see the ultimate choke details, when Duke had the ball and the lead with 10 seconds to play, threw away the ball and allowed a three-pointer for the win. But, I did anticipate the final result. Through 35-years as a sports writer, and a lifetime spent viewing this stuff, I have come to learn more games are lost through inept play, than won due to superior play. And, you can’t take the human element out of the equation. Teams ahead tend to get overconfident and lose momentum, frequently being unable to recapture said momentum. My pick to win it all on my bracket was and is Arizona. I think I will stick with the Wildcats.

NEWS: An amalgamation of deranged leftists – celebrities, communists, socialists, Democrats and the mentally impaired – ginned up another of those No Kings protests Saturday, aided by about $3 billion in seed money from the usual suspects who preferred to lurk in the shadows and make the metaphorical bullets for others to fire.

VIEWS: The highlight for me was seeing Robert De Niro doing an unintentional Clueless Joe Biden impression by looking repeatedly at notes while stumbling and bumbling through a statement as cameras rolled. He had to stop at least once and start over. Pathetic. Fox’s Jesse Watters sent Johnny to interact with No Kings protesters in New York City and found the usual assortment of people long on emotion and short on facts. Interestingly, European nations that actually have kings, modified their pre-printed signs to “No Dictators,” or “No Tyrants.”

NEWS: The Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey Monday for conduct detrimental to the team.

VIEWS: What was that conduct? Glad you asked. Ivey posted videos on social media disagreeing with the NBA’s Gay Pride promotion, his sentiment rooted in his religious beliefs. A story on ESPN, quoting unnamed sources, of course, described Ivey as too “preachy” around the locker room. Imagine if Ivey were Muslim, not Christian, would he have been waived for expressing similar thoughts? Doubtful.

Beware the man who can’t throw a baseball.

This epiphany struck me while I watched Sunday morning as Fox Business News gave a promo for an upcoming segment on an American manufacturer of baseball gloves.

Outdoors, we had weather guy Adam Klotz and news guy Griff Jenkins looking like they were shooting basketballs, heaving the baseball with their palms and an upward thrust of the arm. Predictably, Jenkins whiffed on a catch.

Someone must have given the guys some quick lessons during one of those interminable commercial breaks because when we returned to them, throwing the baseball on an outdoor concrete surface, they almost looked like they knew what they were doing, successfully completing a series of throws with better arm action, and catching said throws.

Growing up, every guy in our neighborhood engaged in pickup baseball games. Most of us played Little League baseball as well. There was a huge skill gap, but even the worst sad sack exhibited proper form throwing the baseball.

This once common proficiency frequently is a no-show these days, a metaphor illustrating the real-world gap between the elites who lecture us and the hoi polloi who actually know how to do things.

I think of all the smug, self-appointed types laid blare by the ceremonial act of throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.

But, let us begin with a success story. George W. Bush used to bleat about Islam being the religion of peace, but he did have some redeeming values, including knowing how to throw a baseball.

About a month after the 911 attacks, Bush went to the mound before a World Series game at Yankee Stadium and, despite wearing a bulletproof vest under his jacket, fired a strike. The crowd cheered and chanted USA.

Others, including comedian Jerry Seinfeld have looked good on such first-pitch moments.

Then there are the likes of Barack Hussein Obama, who took the mound prior to the 2009 All-Star Game, to a mixture of cheers and boos. Predictably a left-hander, Obama lobbed a ball that came up well short of home plate. Give him a pass, what with that Kenya background and all that.

Hussein Obama looked like a Major Leaguer compared to rapper Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, a left-hander who tossed a first-pitch attempt before a Mets game about 30 feet to the left of the plate, prompting the team’s announcers to observe that obviously he never had to choose between being a rapper, or playing for the Mets.

Michael Jordan, near the top of most lists of the greatest basketball players of all time, should have tried shooting a basketball for his first-pitch attempt before a Cubs game. Instead, Jordan used a baseball and lobbed it over the head of where a right-handed hitter would have been standing, nearly hitting the wall behind home plate.

Arguably, the all-time worst such first pitch attempt was authored by petty dictator Dr. Anthony Fauci, who kept you away from friends and family during COVID, helped shut down the economy, and generally pontificated from on high about measures such as wearing masks that were proved to have virtually no effectiveness, sort of like those rushed vaccines.

The puny Fauci strode toward the mound, windmilling his right arm once before a Nationals opener in 2020. He first went near the pitching rubber and then advanced a few steps before uncorking a throw that will live in infamy.

It’s charitable to call it a pitch. The ball veered hard left out of Fauci’s hand, quickly lost altitude and plunked the infield grass short of the first-base line, maybe 15 feet up the line from home plate.

Yes, Fauci was wearing a mask. No, it wasn’t over his eyes.

It turns out Fauci was about as good at throwing a baseball as he was dealing with COVID. I’ve come to realize this sort of linkage is not altogether irrelevant.

I took a day to attempt to digest the Pirates opening day debacle vs. the New York Mets. It didn’t help.

What a curious thing that Thursday afternoon game was, along with the personal trappings of my experience attempting to watch it.

When a friend advised me the night before that it was going to be on NBC, it was a bonus since I get my TV service from DISH and they refuse to pay the ridiculous rights fee of SportsNet Pittsburgh and its predecessor AT&T Sports, or something like that. This means I get precious few Pirates games – only those that are national broadcasts and, let’s face it, the Pirates haven’t exactly been marquee material for a decade or so.

The guy who had given me the heads-up Wednesday night, called at game time Thursday to see if I was watching. Well, I was trying. But, another aspect of DISH satellite TV is signal loss. Heavy snow, heavy rain, severe winds, you name it, all play havoc with the signal, leading to pixelization so as to make viewing impossible, usually followed shortly by the dreaded blue complete signal loss box.

When I flipped to Channel 6 Thursday, with the sun shining and birds singing, the picture was a series of colored lines. Perhaps some butterflies in the Amazon were flapping their wings too hard.

I put the broadcast on pause and went to the front porch to talk to the guy because my wife had some friends over to chat.

He asked during the course of our conversation if I wanted to know what was happening. I did not. But, I could tell from his tone it was bizarre.

Eventually, I came back inside (the signal can only be paused for an hour) and fast-forwarded through some bad signal time. There was a brief moment of clarity, when I saw the Pirates jump up 2-0 on a Brandon Lowe homer in the top of the first, then the picture again became a collage of colored lines, before devolving into a black screen.

While attempting to fast-forward some more, my controller unilaterally decided to change channels, thereby eliminating all that paused video.

I changed back to NBC and the signal was clear. What was not clear was how the Pirates could be losing, 5-2.

Say what? Paul Skenes pitching, has at least a 2-0 lead before he takes the mound, and an inning later, the Pirates are trailing 5-2. Unbelievable.

Though the magic of these times, I was able to find a video of the entire bottom of the first inning on YouTube.

Skenes was unrecognizable with poor control. He still might have gotten out of it all virtually unscathed had former shortstop Oneil Cruz not looked like, well, a shortstop playing center field.

First, Cruz looked like every bad Little League outfielder you’ve ever seen when he came in on a ball hit at him and allowed it to go over his head for a bases-clearing “triple.”

Next up, another fly to center, this time misplayed by Cruz, who lost it in the sun. Where were his sunglasses? Good question.

It was so good that today, again on YouTube, I found a postgame interview with Pirates manager Don Kelly being asked about that.

Kelly assured he had a word with Cruz. Yet, I definitely recall later in that same game, played on a sunny afternoon in the Big Apple, Cruz was playing the field sans sunglasses.

And, yes, Cruz had looked bad at the plate, too. But, he sure ran hard on that one groundout, Kelly noted.

This opening day loss was theater of the absurd. Imagine before the game someone had told you Skenes would take the mound with a 2-0 lead, the Pirates would hit three home runs and score seven runs overall.

You’d have bet the house on the Pirates, right? And you’d be homeless today in the wake of an 11-7 Mets win.

At this point, we are obliged to note it was just one of 162 games. The season is a marathon, not a sprint. Every team loses 60 and every team wins 60, it’s what you do in the other 42 games that makes the difference.

Consider those points conceded.

But, this was just too familiar when it comes to the Pirates. Again, we had a player apparently ignoring the manager.

We had poor defensive play. We had an inexplicable pitching performance. We saw a team prepared to find a way to lose, as Pirates teams so often do.

The Pirates didn’t exactly have a monopoly on strange plays in this game. On the Cruz gaffe that cleared the bases, the second runner to cross home plate for the Mets slid, even as the third runner close on his heels, crossed standing up. His proximity to the previous runner was due to the uncertainty of whether Cruz actually was going to misplay the ball entirely.

That much is understood. But, customarily the on-deck batter signals his team’s baserunners whether to slide or stay up on close plays at home. If the second runner didn’t get the word, but the third did, it raises some serious questions about Mets communication.

This strange event was lost in the win, just as any offensive positives for the Pirates were obscured by the defensive lapses and pitching failures.

It’s really disappointing because some national media types actually are picking the Pirates to be one of the season’s surprise teams and contend for postseason play.

Forgive my doubts. I’ve seen this movie too many times.

How can you tell the difference between Iranian leadership and our domestic Democrats? I’m not sure how to answer that one.

I guess one might note that not all our Democrats wear towels on their heads – yet. But, beyond that, it struck me this morning how similar the rhetoric and actions are among Iran’s zealots and our similarly crazed Democrats.

At the base of it is a willingness, even an eagerness, to flat-out lie.

Iran insists it is winning this military engagement with the United States, despite ample evidence to the contrary. And the Democrats and their lapdog propagandists in the LameStream media are right there to agree with them about this “endless” war, which just passed three weeks in length.

Democrat Patron Saint Barack Hussein Obama once chided the Republicans that elections have consequences, meaning that when you lose in them, you can’t expect to get your way.

This does not seem to apply to Democrats, who lost the Senate, House of Representatives and the presidency, yet still insist on getting their way like so many petulant children.

Begin with the ongoing vilification of ICE. Democrats hate ICE because it threatens their political power strategy. I have almost completed an incredible book on the subject titled “The Invisible Coup.”

In this book, author Peter Schweizer lays out in painstaking detail how, beginning with Bubba Clinton, Democrat presidents have looked to weaken immigration laws and procedures, thinking the grateful illegals that flooded into this country as a result would vote in eternity (albeit often illegally) for Democrats.

Clueless Joe Biden took this strategy to a ridiculous extreme and now President Trump and ICE are trying to clean up the mess.

Just as Democrats were looking to defund police in order to enable radicals and criminals (often the same people), now it has turned to hamstringing ICE to keep the flow of illegal immigrants and presumably Democrat voters flowing.

By the way, governments, from Mexico and its reconquista effort to infiltrate and take over operations in California, Texas, etc., to China looking to establish spy networks, to drug types from various jurisdictions looking to expand their operations here, all have welcomed the Democrat strategy for how it aids their nefarious causes.

Since killing ICE hasn’t worked, Democrats have turned their defund attack on airport TSA workers, not to mention various others such as members of the Coast Guard and assorted operations that fall under the homeland security umbrella.

Always a problem solver, Trump has sent ICE agents to airports to help buoy the TSA force, which is shrinking due to calloffs over not getting paid, or outright resignations.

Lying Democrats, such as Da Nang Dick and Hakeem The Nightmare, curiously used exactly the same word “brutalizing,” as in ICE types would be brutalizing airport travelers, in their screeds. This indicates that these fools can’t even think on their own and read from carefully prepared talking points.

Hakeem even anticipated ICE agents killing passengers. If that has happened, I’ve missed the breathless reporting from leftist media stooges. Instead, I’ve seen videos of ICE agents passing out bottles of water to people standing in huge lines to be cleared to board planes.

Democrats scream that ICE agents aren’t trained for this security screening, ignoring that ICE will not actually be screening and instead is doing guard duty on doors and the the like to free up TSA agents to do their work.

Oh, how the Democrats scream about two protester deaths — seemingly deserved — at the hands of ICE. They are silent on the dozens of people killed recently by illegal immigrants, crazed trans types or aggrieved Muslims.

When President Trump said Iran had reached out and talks were underway to end the conflict, Democrats and LameStream media called him a liar. Projection in its classic sense. Some of those propaganda outlets have been forced to admit their lies. Prominent Democrats have not.

As those talks have progressed, the Iranians have borrowed a page from the Democrat playbook, that being to profess to be willing to make a deal, then backing out and issuing last-minute demands. It’s called moving the goal posts and Democrats have elevated this to an art form, led by Crying Chuck Schumer, a pathetic sort desperately trying to cling to power even as an increasingly large element of his leftist party can’t stomach a Jew in a position of such power, minority leader of the Senate.

Amidst all this, Trump has realized the only way to save this country from corruption and appropriation by foreign interests, is the aptly named SAVE America Act.

Absurd Schumer says no one wants voter ID. A Gallup poll released today has 84 percent of Americans disagreeing. They favor voter ID and 83 percent think proof of citizenship should be required to vote for the first time. Democrat voters even approve of this, at a rate of 67 and 66 percent, respectively.

Don’t tell Chuckie, who refuses to let the facts get in the way of a good harangue.

Schumer and his ilk are no better than latter-day Baghdad Bobs. We can only hope they experience similar falls.

Readers will recall I’m a bit of a stickler for customer service.

In recent days, I’ve experienced the very good and the very bad of it all on that front.

First, the good. My wife had a new prescription and the good folks at the Goucher Street Giant Eagle pharmacy texted her when it was filled. It was going to be $600 or so. She was upstairs at the time, but I heard the scream from my living room perch.

My wife balked at the price. I was willing to pay because it was necessary, because some things (such as one’s health) you don’t cheap out on, and, frankly, because $600 is a mere fraction of what I gave back in the past week’s precious metals collapse.

I’m no high roller, but even after the carnage of last week, I can afford to dole out $600 on short notice without a panic attack.

But, my wife was adamant about not getting the prescription due to cost. She did some research and dispatched me to look into some things on the computer.

Bottom line, it seemed Good Rx could knock a couple of hundred bucks off that. She had some text response from somewhere else that might help.

I checked on the drug company site, called their toll-free number and waded through the phone tree before getting the message, sorry, no one is on-duty so try again some other time.

My wife and I are on Medicare and we each have prescription drug plans. But, based on our history of low-tier, generic drug usage, and because plans that cover everything without huge deductibles cost a king’s ransom monthly, I went with the lower plans.

Now, she had a need for a Tier 3 drug. But, I’m still not sure a better plan would have proved cost effective considering those monstrous premiums.

I resolved to head to Giant Eagle early Sunday and check out the options, pulling out the old credit card and forking over $600 if required.

I apologized upfront to the first young woman to wait on me, explaining I had a complicated case. She was pleasant and, when she hit a roadblock, called over an older woman.

Eventually, I was told to give them 15 or 20 minutes and come back.

This I did and when I rolled up to the counter, the younger woman waved the prescription package at me and the other woman walked over to explain there was a manufacturer card attached I could activate and save money on a refill down the line.

Great, I told her. Now, how much for this prescription fill?

Nothing, was her reply. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Even though I did get a health insurance license after retiring from writing for newspapers, and tend to know more about this than the average guy, the opaque world of prescription drugs remains largely a mystery.

If these women had told me sorry, it’s $600, I’d have paid without thinking they had let me down.

But, they both went the extra mile and found some sort of solution. That, my friends, is customer service.

On the other hand was my experience at the Burger King drive-through in Westwood.

Said Burger King has been tough in terms of customer service in the past, but of late has done much better. In particular, there have been previous times when they would not accept multiple coupons on the same visit. But, that has changed and when I noted it to a woman a few months back, she was astonished that anyone ever had given me crap over such a thing.

Even so, I make it a point to announce each time even now when I plan on using coupons for different parts of the order. And this time, the female voice on the other end of the communication gave me a large sigh of disgust when I said I had two coupons. It was so loud and long-lasting, I felt moved to comment.

“Is there a problem?” I asked. “Can you handle this, or do I need to talk to someone else?”

No, she replied, she would handle it. I gave the order and thanked her. No response.

I moved up a window and the visual of the person spoke volumes, what with the ring in the nose and other trappings of the counterculture. I paid, again thanked her (it?) and again no reply.

It must have been my lucky day because the stop at the next window to collect the food produced the same offended worker. Again, I thanked that worker and again it ignored me.

Without doing the exact math, I’d say the two coupons saved me less than $20 and it bothered the Burger King worker to no end that I’d made her push a few more buttons.

Meanwhile, the two Giant Eagle pharmacy workers had saved me $600 and did it with smiles and pleasant conversation.

Vive la difference.

It is a staple of lazy electronic journalism, when gasoline prices are high, to rush to gas stations around holidays and shove a microphone into the face of people refueling their vehicles.

All too often, these people are women, driving alone in an SUV the size of a semi-truck, and that cost $70,000 or more to purchase. Almost across the board, they whine about higher gas prices. These whiners aren’t really going to be bankrupt if they are forced to go into their pockets for an extra $50, but oh, do they complain.

Forget baseball. Whining and victimhood have become our national pastimes. Now there’s a World Classic we wouldn’t lose, like we keep doing in baseball.

I’ve written in the past debunking the griping about gasoline prices and holiday travel using the math of the average length of drive for these holiday visits, the average MPG of the vehicles and median income. Simply put, it’s not that much of an economic hardship for most people.

These days, opportunists in the oil market are pricing in a doomsday scenario due to the air attacks on Iran. They have ratcheted up the price of oil and, by extension gasoline, to reflect that.

And the leftist media can always find someone screaming like a cat with its tail caught in the screen door regarding rising gasoline prices.

Are these people righteous? Mostly no.

Consider, the average driver in these United States puts about 13,662 miles on his or her vehicles each year according to 2025 data from the Federal Highway Administration. That’s a tick under 263 miles a week.

The average miles per gallon figures, again domestically, are 24.4 MPG for cars and 17.8 for light trucks, vans, SUVs.

To make the math easy, let’s say the average personal-use vehicle gets 20 MPG. Divide that into the average weekly mileage and you get just over 13 gallons of gasoline used to cover that distance.

Now, again to make the math easy, say gasoline prices have increased $1 a gallon. That’s an extra $13 a week, $52 a month and, should this thing endure for an entire year, $676.

That worst-case scenario is not a bill that comes due up front, but is paid $13 a week.

Cut out a couple of overpriced coffees per week and you’ve made up for that extra $13.

If you are living so close to the bone that an extra $13 a week in expense cripples your budget, you have been and presumably are doing a lot of things wrong.

I wish this Iran adventure were costing me just $13 a week. But, it’s thrown a wrench into the precious metals markets and mining stocks. There were days last week when I lost many multiples of $13 a minute while the markets were open.

Not complaining, mind you, just sharing facts. I’m still for President Trump’s actions regarding Iran, even if it is negatively impacting my net worth in extreme ways.

I’m looking at the long view on this – short-term pain for long-term gain. I just wish I had more company in that school of thought.

It is inarguable that the Democrats have an overabundance of simpletons and generally questionable types on the national scene.

AOC, Crock Of It, Crying Chuck, Swellballs, OhMar, Tllllllllaib, Pimp Guy, Cackling Kamala, Greasy Hair Guy, Clueless Joe, Barack Hussein and on and on and on.

But, Republicans have their share of disingenuous boobs, too. Obstructionists, rebels without a cause, all of them possessing the intestinal fortitude of craven cowards, these Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) are a stain on the party and not exactly the type of folks you’d want to share a foxhole with, what with their propensity to fold like tents in hurricanes.

I propose a Republican Hall of Shame for these Quislings.

Begin with Rand Paul, once a respected maverick, but now a petty type who will say or do anything for a little more time in the spotlight. He’s become an opportunist who never lets the good of the country get in the way of his fragile ego.

Most recently, Paul, as chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, tried to torpedo Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to head homeland security by voting against him.

Paul had a sore butt because Mullin once described him as a snake, which I would say is an insult to the reptiles. Also, Mullin has noted that having seen Paul in action, he understands why a neighbor beat the crap out of him in the past.

Randy Rand saw a chance for revenge against Mullin. Of course, instead of inviting Mullin out into the parking lot to decide things, Paul sought to take advantage of his position on the committee to torpedo Mullin.

Fortunately, Democrat John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted for Mullin and he advanced to consideration before the full Senate by a razor-thin 8-7 margin.

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t vote for Fetterman, but I wish I had. Also, I didn’t vote for Dr. Oz, the carpetbagger that Republicans ran against Fetterman. As I recall, I voted for myself in protest of Republicans failing to provide a viable candidate.

But, Fetterman increasingly is notable as a voice of reason in the Democrat Party and, now that Democrats are out to get rid of him for that grievous offense, I will be voting Fetterman in the future.

While Rand Paul is in the spotlight currently, he is just one of many disappointing Republicans.

Let’s also nominate for the Hall of Shame Thom Tillis (yeah, the pompous guy is a Thomas but won’t settle for Tom). He’s headed out the door after this term and is taking advantage of not running for re-election to be a major obstructionist. If Trump and the administration is for it, Thom is against it. That applies to Federal Reserve matters, the SAVE act, you name it.

Most likely, mouthy Thom realized he’d made a powerful enemy in Trump, who would have endorsed anyone running against him in a primary and old Thom was likely to lose, so he just decided to leave.

You can’t fire me, I quit.

If Thom would just leave, no problem. But, he’s trying to make a mess of things before that, and that speaks to the idiocy of Republicans rebels.

Give Democrats their due, they don’t hamstring Democrat policies. They stick together and when they have a majority, they wield it like a club. Republicans, unfortunately, never get that memo.

Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are distaff Rand Pauls. Type the words “Collins and Murkowski” into the Bing search engine and the first result is a Newsweek story about Democrats relying on the two to block Republican plans.

Like Rand, they just love being in the spotlight, courted for their votes any time a huge issue is on the docket. Often they succeed in throwing sand in the gears. Why don’t they just follow Thom out the door?

Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned from the House of Representatives, amid a flurry of what could be described as unhinged criticisms, suggesting she’s having some of what Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent have been smoking.

Before we leave, posthumous recognition for the Hall of Shame is deserved for John McCain and Dick Cheney, two egomaniacs who failed to recognize and appreciate how Trump had remade the moribund Republican Party into a national force once again.

Trump’s success wounded these two geriatric types and, in their dotage, they became favorites of the leftist media because they were all too willing to attack Trump anytime someone stuffed a microphone up their noses.

This is quite a Republican Hall of Shame cast we’ve proposed, but admittedly not an all-inclusive one. The Republicans have a deep bench of petty backstabbers.

The pitch was not a strike, the last toss of Sunday night’s World Baseball Classic epic between the United States and the Dominican Republic.

But, the umpire called it a strike, ending the game with a strikeout looking that preserved a 2-1 U.S. victory. The result sends the hosts into the championship game and the losers to the sidelines.

A story on ESPN.com observed that the bad call was an aberration from umpire Cory Blaser, noting he “otherwise called a consistent and strong game behind home plate.”

I’d agree with half of that, he was consistent. Where many Major League umpires have a strike zone roughly the size of a mail slot, Blaser’s zone was consistently the size of a mail truck.

He called pitches out of the zone left and right, up and down, strikes. This helps account for two gifted offensive teams totaling just three runs. The Dominican Republic, by way of background, had averaged 10 runs a game previously.

Give players and management from the Dominican Republic credit for dismissing the gaffe call as just part of the game.

That is correct. When an umpire is calling a large strike zone, you have to take that into account by the ninth inning.

And both teams had chances to score more runs earlier, including each inexplicably failing to push in a tally with runners on second and third, just one out, and prolific hitters Fernando Tatis Jr. for the Dominican Republic and Aaron Judge for the Americans at the plate.

Tatis would have gotten another chance if that pitch been called a ball and resulted in a walk. If.

Ironically, Major League Baseball will have automated ball-strike challenges this year. You can bet the next World Baseball Classic will, too.

There was a strong Pittsburgh feel to this game. Pirates ace Paul Skenes lived up to expectations, allowing just one run in 4 1/3 innings. You wonder what he could accomplish if the Pirates ever gave him a supporting cast.

David Bednar, who pitched a scoreless seventh inning, is a Pittsburgh native who attended Mars High School. He also pitched for the Pirates from 2021-2025.

Mason Miller, who protected that 2-1 lead in then ninth, also is a Pittsburgh native, and attended Bethel Park High school.

Bednar alluded to Pittsburgh grit from Miller and him during a postgame TV interview.

At least Bednar now gets to go back to the New York Yankees and Miller returns to the San Diego Padres, two franchises looking to spend money and compete for titles.

Skenes, unfortunately for him, is stuck with the Pirates.

Hockey fans will recall the Detroit Red Wings and Penguins facing each other in consecutive Stanley Cup Finals (2008 and 2009), with each team winning once.

Fast-forward to 2026 and the fortunes of these once-proud franchises have taken a dive, with both contesting near the bottom of the chase just to make these Cup playoffs.

If those playoff began tomorrow, both would be in the field, which would break a nine-season absence for the Red Wings and a more modest three-year run on the outside for the Penguins.

The prediction site moneypuck.com gives the Penguins a 76 percent chance of making the field, but only 35.8 percent to survive the first round.

The Red Wings are a 63.8 percent pick to make it, and only 27.4 to make it past the first round.

To borrow from the movie “ Dumb and Dumber,” so, you’re telling me there’s a chance.

If I were betting on such a thing, I’d suspect the Penguins will slip in, but the Red Wings will not.

The Penguins currently sit second in the Metropolitan Division with 81 points. The New York Islanders are third with 81 points, but have played one more game, so that’s the tiebreaker for now.

The Red Wings, with 80 points, are in the second wild-card spot, behind Boston, which also has 80 points, but has played one fewer game. Close behind Boston and the Red Wings are the Columbus Blue Jackets with 79 points and the Ottawa Senators with 75. Of note, the Senators have played two fewer games than the Red Wings and one less than each Boston and Columbus.

The Penguins fortunes have been hampered by the injury-related absence of Sidney Crosby, a malady suffered in the Olympics at the hands of serial offender Radko Gudas, who currently is serving a five-game suspension for a knee-on-knee hit that ended the season of Toronto’s Auston Matthews.

Speaking of suspensions, the Penguins also have been playing without Evgeni Malkin, who got hit with a five-game penalty for mistaking the head of Rasmus Dahlin for a pinata and hitting it with his stick.

Malkin can return Monday, when the Penguins play at Colorado, generally considered the best team in the league. Crosby initially was expected back sometime this month.

Despite the absences of high-profile players, the Penguins have shown some guts, including rallying from a 2-0 deficit to win Saturday night vs. Utah to get a win. That, and a monster comeback win against Boston last week, have given the Penguins four points that have kept them in a playoff position.

The Red Wings also have some key injuries, including to center Dylan Larkin, who was a member of the U.S. gold medal winning team in Olympic hockey. But, even before losing Larkin, the team has looked to be about to go on another March collapse, for the third straight season.

Detroit led the Atlantic Division as of Jan. 24 and now is almost out of the playoff field. It’s a familiar scene to frustrated Red Wings fans as their team cannot finish out games, even when leading late or playing inferior competition.

The good news Saturday was the Red Wings erased a two-goal deficit in the third period vs. a strong Dallas team, The bad news is the Red Wings found a way to lose in overtime.

Circle March 31 on your calendar. The Red Wings play at Pittsburgh that evening, by which time the Red Wings likely will have played themselves out of playoff position.

The Penguins might need the two points desperately themselves by then as they will be coming off a stretch in which they will have played Colorado and Carolina twice each, as well as one game each with Dallas, Ottawa, the New York Islanders and Winnipeg.

Getting a gift two points could be just what the Penguins need. Think of it as another Red Wings-Penguins game that means something, at least for one side.

Last week, on the same day no less, a guy named Mohamed and another named Mohammad attacked Old Dominion University (Mohamed) and a Jewish center in Michigan (Mohammad), looking to do harm.

The Old Dominion Mohamed, according to numerous reports, barged into an ROTC class, confirmed it was, indeed, ROTC, yelled “Allahu akbar,” and began shooting. He killed the instructor, a decorated military veteran, and wounded at least two others before some class members sent Mohamed to his 72-virgin reward for martyrdom in the cause.

These heroic students reportedly used a knife or knives, what with Old Dominion being a gun-free campus. I guess Mohamed missed the signs prohibiting guns. And I wonder whether the students will be punished for possessing a knife or knives on campus.

A little background on Mohamed: He’s reported to be a former member of the Army National Guard (yes, ours) who pleaded guilty in 2016 to a felony charge of aiding the Islamic State (ISIS) group. Mohamed got out of prison early (in 2024), because, well, no one really knows. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone.

Authorities are said to be “investigating” whether this Old Dominion attack was an act of terrorism.

Move on to Michigan Mohammad, who plowed his truck into the Reform synagogue and preschool, but didn’t manage to harm anyone, other than himself. When security guards began shooting at him, Mohammad is reported to have accelerated the process by shooting himself.

Born in Lebanon, he had come to the U.S. on a visa given to him because he’d married an American citizen. Eventually, he became a citizen, too.

Ah, but there are reports he recently lost two brothers, members of the Hezbollah terrorist group operating in Lebanon. These two siblings were said to be working a rocket unit, dangerous duty with the Israeli Air Force frowning on such and willing to do something about it, like the air strike that took out the brothers.

Michigan Mohammad also is reported to have had a niece and nephew killed in Lebanon fighting.

Hey, but rest assured, he was on our government radar as a potential problem due to his family being Hezbollah and all that. But, the bureaucrats charged with keeping us safe felt Michigan Mohammad was not a member himself and therefore not a threat. Wrong. Again.

If he was willing to ram a truck into a Jewish center and try to kill or injure people, does it really matter if he carries a Hezbollah membership card?

This incident has been called antisemitism, but, again, more investigation is said to be needed before we can throw out the T-word, as in terrorism.

This would be laughable if the subject were not so serious.

Each day I awake hoping to find the world returning to sanity, and each day there is yet more disappointment. The way these stories and investigations have been handled is additional evidence of how entrenched the insanity is, among media, bureaucrats and, to a lesser extent, the general public.

God save us.