Mitch Powitz @powitz

The burning of the Royal Navy schooner Gaspee on June 9, 1772 by a group of angry Rhode Islanders who had enough of their ships boarded and searched for contraband and/or seized, concerned the other colonies. On one hand, they believed the burning was justified. On the other, they feared that it would lead to the Crown punishing Rhode Islanders similar to the punishments Massachusetts had received due to rebellion. Samuel Adams created the first Committee of Correspondence a week before the burning and with Joseph Warren and others, proliferated the idea to the other colonies. The burning of the Gaspee was one factor that led colonies to agree to form Committees of Correspondence to communicate with one another regarding Parliament’s violation of their rights and liberties.

@DickieV HBD!!

Happy 48th Birthday to Dire Strait self-titled debut album, out 9 June 1978. Timeless masterpiece❤️🎵 Favorite track from this classic? Down to the Waterline Water of Love Setting Me Up Six Blade Knife Southbound Again Sultans of Swing In the Gallery Wild West End Lions

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Barnegat softball upsets Arthur Johnson to reaches NJSIAA Group II state final @bengalpride67 @CoachPalmieri pressofatlanticcity.com/sports/high-sc… via @ThePressofAC

Dire Straits 🎼Telegraph Road (Alchemy Live)🎸💙 Lets end this beautiful night with a 12 minute long masterpiece which is often called the "Rembrandt of Music”🎵

Yesterday was Prince’s birthday. It was an honor to rock “PURPLE RAIN” with @springsteen & the E Street Band in Minneapolis in his memory on the opening night of the LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS TOUR.

Happy Birthday Dad! You truly are “The King Of Cool” I love you and miss you very much. Deana

Fun Fact: 🎸 Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” was inspired by the Mark Twain character… but that’s not the full story. Neil Peart wrote the lyrics after reading a poem called “Tom Sawyer” by his friend Pye Dubois (from Max Webster). He then reimagined it as a modern-day rebel — “a modern-day warrior, mean, mean stride.” The result? One of the most iconic rock songs ever, with that legendary bass line and drum fill that still gives chills. Who else thinks this is peak Rush? 🤘

Monday Chill. "Within You Without You" - Beatles

Let’s go down the Shore for DAY 158 of #capaday 2026 and this cap from the greatest miniature golf course anywhere on the globe. Flamingo Golf, ⛳️ it’s legendary! And so is this 1997 hole-in-one trophy! It’s a major award! #LBI

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BOSS up and Fight the Power ✊🏾 @springsteen

When I was with the St. Louis Cardinals, I saw Matt Carpenter do one of the strangest things. He always had a bat in his hand. Before the game. In the clubhouse. In the tunnel. Walking around the stadium. And he was constantly taking swings. No baseball. No tee. No pitcher. Just swing after swing after swing. We call them dry hacks or dry swings. One day I finally asked him about it. I said, "Carp, why do you take so many dry swings?" His answer surprised me. He said: "I'm visualizing success." That was it. I remember standing there thinking about that for a second. Because I had always viewed dry hacks as physical work. Matt viewed them differently. Every swing was a confidence rep. He wasn't just moving a bat. He was seeing himself drive a fastball into the gap. He was seeing himself stay on an off-speed pitch. He was seeing himself compete and succeed before the game ever started. That's when a light bulb went off for me. Think about it. Every player wants confidence. But most players wait for a hit before they allow themselves to feel confident. Matt was doing the opposite. He was building confidence before he ever stepped into the batter's box. By the time the game started... He had already seen himself succeed hundreds of times. So I decided to try it myself. When nobody was around, I'd grab a bat and take dry hacks. But this time, I wasn't just swinging. I was visualizing. I saw myself driving balls into the gaps. I saw myself competing with two strikes. I saw myself getting big hits in big situations. And over time, I noticed something. I felt different on the field. More confident. More relaxed. More prepared. And the results started improving too. Not because I magically became a better hitter overnight. But because I stopped waiting for confidence to show up. I started building it before the game ever started. So if youre struggling with confidence... Here's my "Confidence Booster Plan" I'd Do Tonight: 1. Dry Hacks (10 Swings) Visualize yourself driving a line drive into the gap. 2. Dry Hacks (10 Swings) Visualize yourself battling with two strikes and winning the at-bat. 3. Dry Hacks (10 Swings) Visualize your next game. See yourself stepping into the box confident, aggressive, and ready to compete. 30 swings. 30 confidence reps. One thing I've learned from Matt Carpenter: Most players practice their swing. Elite players practice confidence. Thank you for reading, Jermaine Curtis P.S. - If you enjoyed this and thought it was helpful, please share it. (When you share it, it tells me you want more content like this.)

"I Wanna Live" - Ramones. I saw them in December of 89. Joey's intro to the song was "It's a great time to be alive. The Berlin Wall . . . gone. I wanna live!" Possibly his longest intro

This Day In 1985: Ferris Bueller, Cameron Frye and Sloane Peterson attend Cubs-Braves game at Wrigley. Ferris catches a foul ball hit by Claudell Washington.

@kershaw_alex God bless Bud Lomell and the Rangers!

Happy Friday! "Some Kinda Hate" - Misfits. With the weird little Franché Coma guitar solo...

Yorktown should not have been at Midway at all. A month earlier at Coral Sea, a Japanese bomb had torn through her decks, and the estimate to fix her ran to 90 days. Japan crossed her off as sunk. Admiral Nimitz gave Pearl Harbor's shipyard 72 hours. Some 1,400 workers swarmed her around the clock, welders still aboard as she steamed out to the ambush. Her presence at Midway was itself a kind of resurrection. She would need two more. On the morning of June 4, her air group earned its keep: her dive bombers destroyed Soryu, and her torpedo squadron's sacrifice helped pull the Japanese fighters out of position for the killing blow. But by midday, one Japanese carrier was left alive. Hiryu, under the ferocious Admiral Yamaguchi, found Yorktown first. The first strike came around noon: dive bombers, eighteen launched, most shot down on the way in, but three bombs got through. One burst near the island, one went down the smokestack and knocked out five of her nine boilers, one punched through the flight deck. Dead in the water and burning, she should have been finished. She wasn't. Her damage control crews patched the deck with timbers and steel plate, relit the boilers, and within two hours she was making 19 knots and refueling fighters. The repair was so complete that when Hiryu's second strike arrived, the Japanese pilots reported attacking a different, undamaged carrier. Japan would end the battle believing it had knocked out two American carriers. It had hit the same unkillable ship twice. That second strike was led by Lt. Joichi Tomonaga, whose plane's left fuel tank had been shot through that morning over Midway and could not be refilled. He led the mission anyway, knowing it was one way. His torpedo bombers bored in through everything Yorktown's escorts could throw at them, and two torpedoes slammed into her port side, jamming the rudder and cutting all power. Tomonaga did not return. Yorktown rolled into a 26-degree list, and with capsizing looking imminent, Captain Elliott Buckmaster gave the order no captain wants to give. The crew went over the side in good order. American doctrine, unlike the Japanese tradition that kept captains on burning bridges, expected Buckmaster to live; he left the ship last, sliding down a line into the sea. And still she floated. All night, all the next day, the list never worsened. So on June 6 Buckmaster came back with a hand-picked salvage crew, the destroyer Hammann lashed alongside providing power, and they began to win: fires out, the list reducing, a tow rigged. Yorktown was coming home a third time. Then, that afternoon, the Japanese submarine I-168, having slipped through the destroyer screen after a patient day-long approach, fired four torpedoes from inside the escort ring. One broke Hammann in half; she sank in four minutes, and as she went down her own depth charges detonated, killing men in the water. About 80 of her crew died. Two more torpedoes hit Yorktown. Even then she refused to go quickly. She lingered through the night, and at dawn on June 7 the men on the surrounding destroyers stood at attention, ships' flags at half mast, as she rolled onto her port side and sank into three miles of water. The battle had ended days of fighting with a strange symmetry: four Japanese carriers and one American, all on the same patch of ocean floor. In May 1998, Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic, found her: upright, intact, her guns still trained skyward, her hull number still visible, three miles down and almost untouched by time.

In 1964, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Hank Stram held a tryout for Wilt Chamberlain and was so impressed by his athletic abilities that he offered him a contract to play as a wide receiver. At 7'1" and 290 lbs, Wilt took off his shoes, stood on the grass in his slacks and silk pants, and ran a 4.6-second 40-yard dash barefoot. He did it in about 5 steps. Then he told Stram, "I'm a little overweight. I usually do it in 4.4 when I'm in shape.”

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One of the biggest misconceptions in high school sports is that coaching is primarily about practices, games, and wins. The reality is that coaching has become one of the most challenging roles in education because coaches are expected to wear dozens of hats while being evaluated from every direction. Every parent, player, administrator, and community member often has a different expectation of success. One family wants college recruiting to be the priority. Another wants playing time. Another wants winning. Another wants player development. Another wants discipline. Another simply wants their child to enjoy the experience. The challenge is that those goals frequently conflict, and coaches are often expected to satisfy all of them simultaneously. Most coaches are balancing far more than what happens between the lines. They manage team culture, player conflicts, parent concerns, academics, transportation, fundraising, budgets, equipment, scheduling, eligibility, social media issues, and the emotional needs of teenagers. At the same time, every roster includes athletes with different abilities, goals, motivations, and commitment levels. Some dream of college athletics. Some are trying to make varsity. Some simply want to belong. Building one program that serves all of them is incredibly difficult. Perhaps the greatest challenge is decision-making. Who starts? Who plays? Who sits? Who travels? Who gets moved up? Who gets cut? Every decision creates opportunity for one athlete and disappointment for another. Even well-intentioned decisions can be viewed as favoritism or politics when seen through the lens of an individual family. Recruiting adds another layer of complexity. Coaches are expected to help athletes pursue college opportunities while also managing the needs of an entire team. Supporting one athlete can sometimes raise questions from another family about their child’s opportunities. Social media has amplified many of these challenges. One lineup decision, one difficult conversation, or one emotional moment can quickly become public discussion, often without the full context. There are also pressures many people never see. Pressure from administrators to represent the school well. Pressure from parents to provide opportunities. Pressure from athletes to help them achieve their goals. Pressure from communities that often measure success by wins and losses. Pressure to retain athletes in an era of increasing transfers and movement. And all of this occurs while coaches are trying to develop young people, not just athletes. What makes coaching difficult is not that people don’t care. It’s that everyone cares deeply, but often about different things. Parents focus on their child. Players focus on their opportunities. Administrators focus on the school. Communities focus on results. Coaches must somehow balance all of those interests while making decisions they believe are best for the team. As a former college coach, athletic director, and high school administrator, I’ve learned that most coaches are not trying to hold athletes back, play favorites, or make life difficult for families. Most are simply navigating competing priorities, limited resources, and difficult decisions while trying to do what’s best for kids. Because at its core, coaching has never really been about managing games. It’s about managing people. And that’s what makes it both incredibly challenging and incredibly important

Today in Rock History June 5, 1986 The iconic “Twist and Shout” parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was set on June 5th and filmed during Chicago’s real Von Steuben Day parade. Director John Hughes cleverly integrated the scene into the actual annual German-American parade, using real participants and spectators. Matthew Broderick performed on a float while thousands joined in singing and dancing. The sequence remains one of the most joyful and memorable moments in 1980s cinema.