Idaho Conversation League

Thank you Jodi Zarkos, for writing about racism in sports . Racism and hidden personal prejudices are among our worst weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, for many reasons it is one of our most challenging subjects to address. According to research from the University of Texas at Austin , “Umpires for Major League Baseball are more likely to call strikes in favor of pitchers who share their race or ethnicity.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070813091112.htm One of the longtime MLB rules states that an umpire should not make a call to ‘even things up’ from an earlier bad call. This regulation is one of the most ignored rules on the books and it sounds like the Pocatello umpire disregarded the “even things up” rule. In a second related story, last week the Idaho Statesman picked up an article about sportsmanship from Ogden Utah ’s Standard-Examiner called, 'They say it starts with a prayer and ends with a fight' http://www.idahostatesman.com/localnews/story/34...

From Huck Finn: Say, gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye?" I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down in the wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble. After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them scoundrels, here it was all come to nothing, everything all busted up and ruined, because they could have the heart to serve Jim such a trick as that, and make him - 282 - a slave again all his life, and amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars. Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to be a slave, and so I'd better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell h...