Commentary

NASCAR fire suits resemble patchwork quilts. Golfers wear them on their jerseys and caps. Umpires sport a few, as do minor league baseball uniforms. And now, under a new agreement, so will Major League Baseball uniforms be stitched with patches advertising teams’ sponsors and underwriters, kind of like moving billboards promoting a range of companies and products that appeal to sports fans. It’s all about the revenue stream, and it’s part of a deal that Major League Baseball team owners reached with players’ negotiators after threatening the season’s start. Everybody gets money.

Horrific scenes of mass murder on the outskirts of Kyiv should appall everybody and surprise nobody. The brutalization of civilians has been the Putin regime’s calling card since its inception — from the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999, where the weight of circumstantial evidence points the finger at Vladimir Putin and his security service henchmen, to the murders of Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Magnitsky and Boris Nemtsov to Russia’s atrocities in Grozny, eastern Ukraine, Aleppo and now Bucha.

Near the geographic center of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, a narrow creek winds through a small rural Pennsylvania valley. Here, in the early 1700s, settlers built a dam that unwittingly damaged one of nature’s best water pollution filters — valley bottom wetlands — ushering in an era of water quality decline throughout the region. The 20-foot dam powered a grist mill and formed a pond extending more than a mile upstream, large and deep enough (as much as 20 feet) for people to boat, fish, skate or swim.

Michael Razzi shared his story during this year’s General Assembly session about how he began to experience memory problems at age 58. A battery of cognitive tests did not provide a definitive answer, and by his own admission, the St. Mary’s County resident “was in a pretty dark place.” He was later diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, finding help and hope through counseling and a community support group. Michael now tells his story publicly, knowing — over time — he will lose the ability to respond to his environment, to carry on a conversation and, eventually, to control movement.

On Monday in Baltimore, the Orioles will host the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2022 home opener. With any luck, some 40,000 to 50,000 fans will head downtown to take in the festivities; starting in and around the hotels, restaurants and bars near Camden Yards. Many will eventually file into our city’s beautiful baseball stadium, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. And not a moment too soon. For one afternoon, toward the end (we hope) of a global pandemic and in a city that can use a boost of positive energy, here’s hoping the day will serve as a wonderful throwback to what once was, and what can be again.

Job vacancies are bedeviling countless industries, not least health care, where employers are at wits’ end trying to fill nursing and other critical jobs. State lawmakers can help alleviate that problem by waiving citizenship as a requirement for licensure, a needless encumbrance. Yet even as hospitals and other facilities plead for relief, they face an uphill battle in many states, particularly ones dominated by Republicans determined to impede opportunities for undocumented immigrants, no matter how badly their skills are needed.

After all else failed — the naked partisan trickery; the cartographical sleight of hand; the threats of months of litigation — Maryland’s political tribes finally agreed on a redrawn congressional map. What a waste of time. Gov. Larry Hogan (R) had pressed for years for redistricting reform that could have ended the decennial brawls in Annapolis over electoral-district line-drawing by turning it over to a bipartisan commission. That might not have been a panacea, but it would have rated as an improvement, because almost anything would have. Democrats who rule the legislature refused, repeatedly.

As we start another baseball season, it’s time to confront a painful reality: The Orioles have a terrible cap. “Which cap,” you ask? The goofy cartoon bird? The “ornithologically correct” one from the ‘90s? The various folk-art birds from the ‘50s and ‘60s? The one that says “O’s?” The one with the “B?” This is the heart of the problem: The Orioles lack a definitive cap.