Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
I don’t have a lot or rules standards for this morning missive of mine, which serves as a combination memoir/brain dump and public service since it is available free of charge and has been since its inception.
I do, however, usually restrict myself to the happenings of the day or what’s on tap for the coming week. Rarely do I opine on days that have already passed. But since yesterday took an unexpected detour so I could unburden myself of my jumble of thoughts post-WHCA shooting, I am giving myself a pass today and writing about what I had PLANNED to focus on 24 hours ago.
That was unnecessarily complicated, sorry.
Baseball season is well underway, and that is something I usually only pay a passing amount of attention to. I find baseball a combination of mind-numbingly boring and unusually tedious. Why so many innings? Why so many statistics? But when politics and baseball intersect, I notice.
Until the Mets mercifully managed to break their 12-game losing streak, easing the minds of long-suffering fans, there was a brief dust-up over the so-called “Curse of the Mambino”, in which the tabloids blamed the team’s poor performance on Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
This had something to do with Mamdani’s meeting with and hugging of the team’s mascots, Mr. and Mrs. Met, and spoke to the deep-seated tradition of baseball fan superstitions, which also extends to some players. The Curse of the Bambino is perhaps the longest-running sports superstition, spanning a whopping 86 years (1918 to 2004), and I realized while reading coverage of Mets’ Mamdani woes, that while I had heard of the original curse, I knew nothing about its origin.
Google to the rescue!
First let’s start with the fact that “The Bambino” (Italian for “baby”) was Babe Ruth, who was nicknamed “babe” when he was signed at the age of 19 to the Baltimore Orioles by then-owned Jack Dunn. That morphed into “Bambino”, compliments of the sports media, after he joined the New York Yankees in 1920 and settled into his baseball superstardom.
Ruth left the minor league Orioles when he was sold to the Boston Red Sox in 1914 for a song – reportedly somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000 – making his Major League debut as a pitcher.
Just a few years later, in 1919, Boston Red Sox owner and theatrical producer Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 and a $300,000 loan secured by the mortgage on Fenway Park so he could finance Broadway plays. Frazee reportedly not only needed cash to keep his theatrical endeavors alive, but also was not thrilled with the Babe’s diva behavior and increasing demands for a higher salary to match his star power.
Though the sale might have brought Frazee, who memorably called the Babe “more spectacular than useful,” some peace of mind, it was not at all good for the Red Sox, marking the start of an 86-year World Series drought for the team. Hence, the Curse of the Bambino.
The Curse of the Bambino was finally broken on October 27, 2004, when the Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series by sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals, before which they had overcome a 3–0 deficit against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, winning four straight games.
Yesterday was Babe Ruth Day, established in 1947 by then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler while the Babe was battling throat cancer. More than 58,000 fans turned out on the first Babe Ruth Day to hear the Sultan of Swat speak. He died just over a year later, on Aug. 16, 1948, at the age of 53.
It will be a hair less warm today, with high temperatures hovering just around 70 degrees. Skies will be mostly cloudy.
In the headlines…
A California man who the authorities say ran through a security perimeter and fired a gun outside a packed black-tie gala in Washington on Saturday was charged yesterday with trying to assassinate President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors said the man, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., came to the nation’s capitol with the intention of carrying out a political assassination. He brought a pump-action shotgun, a .38-caliber handgun and three knives, officials said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called for peaceful debate and protest, an end to “the hateful and constant and violent rhetoric against President Trump,” and for Congress to fund the DHS, which has been shut down for two and a half months.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump demanded in separate social media posts that ABC pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel from its airwaves over a bit involving the White House correspondents’ dinner, delivered two days before it occurred.
Oil prices continued to climb today, as peace talks between the United States and Iran appeared at an impasse, with negotiators deadlocked over proposals to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic and restrict Iran’s nuclear program.
A trade group representing low-cost airlines said that it was asking the Trump administration for $2.5 billion to offset some of the cost of fuel, which has surged because of the war with Iran.
The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions to abandon plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month.
When King Charles III and Queen Camilla of Britain arrived at the White House for a state visit, President Trump pointed to a large hole where the East Wing used to be before taking his guests inside for tea and a private audience with the White House beehive.
King Charles will acknowledge today that his country has had its differences with the United States, but he plans to tell a joint session of Congress that the “two countries have always found ways to come together,” according to a preview of his remarks.
A growing group of Senate Republicans are losing confidence in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department, and some GOP lawmakers would like to see him “move on,” though they say it’s President Trump’s call.
New York State lawmakers passed another budget extender yesterday afternoon – the seventh one since the budget deadline of April 1.
The extender runs through Thursday and funds state operations including payroll and public health programs. Lawmakers are expected to pass another extender this week.
Gov. Kathy Hochul claims the state’s “excess profits” law will prevent auto insurance companies from pocketing the savings from her proposals to erode crash victims’ rights to sue for damages, but that law is a “joke” that has never been used, lawmakers said.
The state Democratic Party is kicking off a seven-figure “The Cost of Bruce Blakeman” statewide tour to highlight the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s collaboration with federal immigration agents, his public safety record and loyalty to President Trump.
Blakeman and his wife reported earning $673,476 in 2025, with a substantial chunk coming from investments and relatively small amount from rental income, according to records the executive made available.
Blakeman signed a new law that places strict limits on tying up dogs and bans outdoor tethering after 11 p.m. — and bad owners could face fines and even jail time.
Environmental activist groups that sued to force Hochul to ram through the state’s controversial green laws are rolling in greenbacks — with several reporting revenues of over $100 million.
A labor-funded super PAC is ready to spend seven figures to support state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli as he fends off his first Democratic primary challenge since assuming his position.
After days of headlines about exorbitant costs to get to the World Cup, Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a series of free watch parties in each borough.
“These events were not initially set to be free, but the world’s game should belong to the world, and so we made the decision together for fans to be able to watch that together without having to spend a dollar,” Mamdani said.
Three months after Hochul scrapped an expansion of Metro-North Railroad to Albany, a group of state senators are pressing her to revive it, saying the effort would provide a potential cheaper and more reliable alternative than what Amtrak provides.
Eighteen state senators signed a letter to Hochul calling for the governor to back the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North service beyond its Hudson Line’s northernmost stop in Poughkeepsie.
A new statewide policy detailing when utilities can stop service for unpaid bills during heat waves has resulted in weaker rules for New York City.
A new front has opened in New York’s battle to regulate prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, pitting the state against the federal government.
Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin are set to announce an agreement today to extend the city’s executive budget deadline while jointly calling for more aid from Albany.
The City Council, which released its own budget last month with no taxes, will still have to vote to allow Mamdani to miss his May 1 deadline. That vote is slated for Thursday.
The Mamdani administration is rolling out bike lanes in Queens that fuming Bravest say flagrantly ignore safety concerns and put residents in danger.
The Mamdani administration has tapped a former top executive at Transportation Alternatives to spearhead the mayor’s effort to speed up the slowest buses in the nation and, eventually, make them free of fares.
In a major reversal, the Mamdani administration has pulled controversial plans to open an artificial intelligence-focused high school and close or relocate middle schools on the Upper West Side.
All four proposals were scheduled for a vote Wednesday in front of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP. Withdrawing the proposals makes it nearly impossible for them to take effect next school year.
Mamdani left the door open to delivering the city’s executive budget proposal late, as the state budget talks drag on in Albany nearly a month past the deadline.
The first big political test for Mamdani—in the context of an election, anyway—is happening today, as a nonpartisan special election is being held in Manhattan to replace former City Councilman Erik Bottcher, who is now in the state Senate.
That City Council special election saw a last minute surge of outside spending from a super PAC tied to allies of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo meant to defeat Lindsey Boylan, a former aide who was the first to publicly accuse him of sexual harassment.
City Council candidate Carl Wilson, one of four candidates vying for the District 3 seat, is the only one who says he would vote to override Mamdani’s veto of the education buffer zones bill.
If nobody gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round of ranked choice voting today, results of the special election might not be clear until May 5th.
A city commission that costs taxpayers $5 million a year solely to study racial inequity has contracted out one of its main jobs — researching potential slavery reparations.
A top Co-Op City official warned that residents could pay four times more in monthly maintenance charges if New York State’s controversial green-energy laws aren’t peeled back.
More than a quarter of Airbnb hosts are flouting the city’s strict short-term rental laws — including one Brooklyn landlord who allegedly advertised spaces with phony profiles of glamorous-looking young women.
MTA fare-checkers have been taking to the system’s local buses in recent weeks, a fare-enforcement effort enabled by this year’s full phase-in of the OMNY tap-to-ride payment system.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t want to meet the press. The progressive lawmaker has sat for just three interviews with national media this year — a fraction of what other potential 2028 candidates for president have done.
A judge sentenced the convicted killer of NYPD Det. Jonathan Diller from Long Island to spend the rest of his life in prison after the victim’s widow said her life and that of her young son had been torn apart by her husband’s death.
Another man has pleaded guilty more than two decades after the murder of Jason Mizell, known as Jam Master Jay, the DJ behind the Queens-based hip-hop group Run-DMC, authorities said.
The United Parcel Service will not deliver inside two buildings on Staten Island where its drivers were assaulted decades ago. Residents are suing.
Ralph Ambrosio, a state trooper who became an assistant general counsel for State Police and also worked as an assistant district attorney, has stepped forward to challenge Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko for New York’s 20th Congressional District.
State park officials are weighing whether to allow bow and crossbow hunting in Saratoga Spa State Park to reduce the white-tailed deer population.
A more-than-century-old church whose crumbling condition closed part of the Village of Corinth’s Main Street this month is now set to be demolished, village officials announced.
An Albany County jury recently awarded $1.06 million to a longtime state Department of Labor employee after the panel concluded that she had been passed over for three promotions due to her status as a mother with young children.
The City of Albany is confronting a multimillion-dollar budget deficit and that could jump to tens of millions of dollars by the end of the year. It remains to be seen how City Hall will address the crisis.
A man wielding a machete attacked and hospitalized two troopers in Oswego County, State Police said.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
