Pedro Martinez is an iconic former professional baseball pitcher who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1992 to 2009. He was one of the most dominant pitchers of his era, winning Cy Young Awards in 1997, 1999, and 2000.
Born and raised in Manoguayabo, Dominican Republic, a suburb of Santo Domingo, the island nation’s capital, Martinez the first pitcher to earn the award in both the American and National Leagues. He won his first and only World Series title with the Boston Red Sox in 2004. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015.
The Amsterdam News spoke exclusively with Martinez at the Sports Emmys last week at Jazz at Lincoln Center about his time playing for the New York Mets from 2005 to 2008, memorable battles against the New York Yankees throughout his career, and the pitchers he enjoys watching the most in today’s game.
“Just the fans, the atmosphere,” Martinez, who had a career record of 219-100, said of his time playing at Shea Stadium, former home of the Mets. “I remember the fans not really being all that demanding. Not really expecting all that much, even though we went really far. But I remember just how happy everybody was just to see us on the field, just to see each one of us.
“Believe it or not, I really enjoyed my time in Queens. I really enjoyed the atmosphere with the fans and the back and forth. The kids (were) always fielding balls in the outfield. I used to love flipping balls all over the bleachers just to see the kids catch (them). I love the way they behave over there in Queens.”
Martinez, who is now a baseball analyst for Turner Sports, also looked back on facing the Yankees nearly two decades ago.
“I had the saddest moment in my career at Yankee Stadium in (2003) and also the happiest moment in (2004), when we were able to come back from 0-3 and beat them in their own stadium,” Martinez said. “That was like it for me. The biggest highlight of my career is always going to be being able to beat the Yankees after being (down) 0-3 (in the American League Championship Series) and doing it in the old Yankee Stadium before they tore it down.”
As MLB has evolved and rules were implemented to increase the pace of the game, including a pitch clock, which limits the time pitchers can take between pitches, the eight-time MLB All-Star discussed some of the men who command the mound in the current era whom he finds compelling.
“Right now, I’m really getting to enjoy Tyler Glasnow,” Martinez said of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher. “I believe Tyler Glasgow brings back some memories because he’s a bully. I love Gerrit Cole, (Justin) Verlander, all those guys. Jacob deGrom—I love deGrom. I don’t get enough of deGrom, but he needs to be healthy. Right now, I’m really intrigued about Tyler Glasnow finishing the entire season and seeing what he’s capable of doing.”
LAS VEGAS — They operate in places like an airport, a resort, and a distribution center, tucked away from the public eye but close enough for easy access. They often emit laughter — and the sound of tumbling blocks, bouncing balls, and meandering tricycles.
They’re child care centers based at workplaces. And in the fraught American child care landscape, they are popping up more frequently.
Skyrocketing child care costs and staffing shortages have complicated arrangements for working parents. Some have left jobs after struggling to find quality care. Employers, in turn, view their entry into the child care realm as both a competitive advantage and a workplace morale booster.
“In the absence of government intervention and investment, a lot of businesses have been stepping up to make sure that their employees can access affordable child care,” says Samantha Melvin, an assistant research professor at the Erikson Institute, an independent graduate school for early childhood education.
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This series on how the child care crisis affects working parents—with a focus on solutions—is produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, including the Hechinger Report, AL.com, the Associated Press, the Christian Science Monitor, the Dallas Morning News, Idaho Education News, the Post & Courier, and the Seattle Times.
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Parents benefiting from child care at their work sites praise its convenience and affordability.
Frances Ortiz, who works in accounting at the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, can’t imagine a better option. She says her 3-year-old daughter has gained independence and language skills—with mom not far away—at the property’s on-site child care center for employees.
“She runs in here,” Ortiz says. “She grabs my badge. She has to open the door for herself.”
In September, the Pittsburgh International Airport added on-site child care. The center serves children of Allegheny County Airport Authority employees, as well as those of select airport workers, such as food and beverage workers, ground handlers, and wheelchair attendants.
Airport officials say the idea stemmed from wanting to bring more women and people of color into the aviation workforce. Plus, the airport sits 17 miles outside of downtown Pittsburgh, making child care logistics challenging for employees. So far, it’s operating at about half capacity.
“It’s certainly an important proof point to our team that we mean it when we say that we’re invested in them and in what they need,” says Christina Cassotis, CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which operates the airport.
Child care costs can eclipse rent or mortgages, if parents can access care in the first place. Many find themselves on waitlists.
Experts caution against an overreliance on businesses filling the void. Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, says doing so could undercut efforts to recognize child care as a public good.
“There’s a lot of well-intentioned people who are thinking this is a really good idea, and for those who would benefit from it, it could be,” he says. “Again, there are lots of downsides even in the short term.”
One of those potential pitfalls, he says, is instability if a parent suddenly loses their job and then has to find new child care and a new job.
The assistance offered by public and private employers runs the gamut. Some run their own centers. Others outsource the operations and management.
The financial arrangements also differ. Many companies and organizations don’t disclose the exact discounts offered to employees.
Walmart, for instance, recently opened an on-site child care center at its massive Bentonville, Arkansas, campus. The Little Squiggles Children’s Enrichment Center charges a monthly rate of $1,117 to $1,258 based on the child’s age, which company officials tell the Monitor in an email is “at market rate or below regional levels for comparable care.”
Another method gaining steam: employers providing subsidies for families to use toward child care options within their own communities.
KinderCare, a large child care operator with locations nationally, partners with more than 600 businesses and organizations to provide employee-sponsored child care, up from 400 in 2019, says Dan Figurski, president of KinderCare for Employers and Champions. Those employers represent the technology, medical, banking, academic, and public service industries, among others.
In Nevada, the Venetian Resort’s child care center, run by KinderCare, sits in a back-of-house hallway steps away from Las Vegas Boulevard.
All employees can enroll their children, as long as space allows, at a cost that’s generally 35% to 40% lower than KinderCare’s normal rate, says Matt Krystofiak, the Venetian’s chief human resources officer. The company also offers subsidies for employees who want to enroll their children in an off-site KinderCare closer to their homes.
“We’re doing this because this is what our team members want,” Krystofiak says. “This is what our team members need.”
Some businesses view investments in child care as a reflection of their company culture.
Patagonia’s foray into child care began in 1983 when some of the company’s original employees started having children. As the clothing retailer grew, so did its child care footprint. Nowadays, it operates three child care centers—two in southern California and one in Reno, Nevada—serving roughly 200 children.
The company charges employees in each location what leaders describe as an “average market rate.” Subsidies are available based on household income, says Sheryl Shushan, Patagonia’s director of global family services. The child care teachers are employed by Patagonia, so they receive corporate benefits as well.
At the outdoor classroom at Patagonia’s distribution center in Reno, children spend hours digging in sand, riding bikes, playing with water, or climbing natural and human-made objects. Patagonia leaders say the benefits on their end are stronger employee retention, a can-do spirit in the workplace, and a greater sense of community. For Alyssa Oldham, a classroom manager in Reno, the job and child care benefit meant rethinking her family size. She and her husband originally envisioned being a one-child family, given child care costs.
Now she comes to work with her 4-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
“Working here, I was like, ‘We could have another child,’” she says.
As of May 25, 2024, we were 164 days away from the general elections on November 5. Yet, it is already the “silly season,” and immigrants are once again being used as political pawns in a landscape where the American voter’s choices are limited to two elderly white men—who arguably should have retired long ago, considering America’s own retirement age.
On one side of the political field is Joe Biden, who leveraged the immigrant vote in 2020 by promising to overturn Donald Trump’s xenophobic policies. To date, we are still waiting for that promise to be fully realized. Biden has adopted a stance on immigration that mirrors Trump’s, including the deportation of Haitians back to Haiti—a country the U.S. has deemed unsafe for travel since July 2023, even airlifting out all non-essential embassy staff in March.
Three years into his administration, Biden’s actions indicate a commitment to continuing harmful and ineffective immigration policies rather than supporting and welcoming immigrants as he pledged during his 2020 campaign. His administration continued to enforce Title 42, a Trump-era policy ostensibly aimed at protecting public health but primarily intended to limit immigrant entry. It was ended by the courts, not Biden.
The White House is also considering executive action to restrict migrants’ ability to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border if they crossed illegally—a maneuver reminiscent of controversial action in the Trump era. Biden also endorsed a bipartisan Senate border bill that includes funding for the Trump border wall, which he previously vowed not to finance.
On the opposing side is the former president, the Xenophobe-in-Chief, who continues to rally his base with divisive, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric. His inflammatory statements, such as claiming immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” cater to his followers’ racist inclinations. He has promised to implement unprecedented measures against both legal and unauthorized immigrants, including a massive deportation blitz.
The indicted former president and front-runner for the Republican nomination is relying on the same hard-line immigration tactics he used in his 2016 campaign. He has pledged to build more miles of border wall and impose strict limits on asylum, including reviving a program that required migrants to await their asylum hearings in Mexico.
Trump has also vowed to execute the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history, modeled after the Eisenhower administration’s infamous Operation Wetback in 1954, which deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants and American citizens. To facilitate these mass deportations, he plans to authorize the National Guard and state officials to arrest and deport immigrants living in the U.S. in an undocumented capacity, a move that would challenge long-standing legal limits on the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement.
Trump has also pledged to invoke the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to deport suspected migrant gang members, a law cited during World War II to justify the surveillance and detention of Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants.
While Trumpy is barking away like a fat Chihuahua, it is funny to note that Barack Obama deported more immigrants than Trumpeto, despite the latter’s policies of caged children and Muslim bans.
And so the political theater continues unabated. Who will emerge victorious in this match-up remains to be seen. For now, immigrants will continue to be scapegoats and political footballs, with the justice system being their only potential safeguard. Who can immigrant voters trust in this fraught political landscape come November 5? That remains the billion-dollar question.
Felicia J. Persaud is the publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, a daily news outlet focusing on Black immigrant issues.
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