General

You can attract police attention for practicing journalism in either place.

I went to Cuba in 2014. Among the things I did there was to attend three baseball games - two in Bayamo, and one in Havana - and write stories about them. I needed some pictures to accompany the stories, so at the first one, in Bayamo, I asked one of the assistant coaches of one of the teams if I could go onto the field and shoot some pictures of his players during the pre-game warmup. He said it was OK, so onto the field I went.

Unfortunately, I caught the attention of an inmigración policeman. His job was to keep an eye on tourists, and since Bayamo doesn't get a lot of them, he had plenty of time on his hands. He disapproved of me communicating with the coaches and players; perhaps he thought I was a scout for the Mariners. He escorted me to a room under the bleachers, and, after consulting with his superior, demanded that I sign a statement acknowledging that I was in Cuba on a tourist visa, not a journalist one, and I was not to practice journalism in Cuba. (I didn't know about this distinction at the time, but had I applied for a journalist visa, it's unlikely they would have given it to me.) I had to repress the desire to tell this cop to take a long walk off of a short pier, but the reality was, had I been arrested for shooting pictures at a baseball game, no cavalry would be coming to rescue me.

There's a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. The sad thing about this incident was, my intention was to promote baseball tourism in Cuba, and then as now, Cuba is in desperate need of tourism revenue.

There's another old saying that history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. A classic example of this happened to me on May 26, 2025, Memorial Day. Not in Cuba, but in Lewiston, Idaho.

The occasion was the NAIA Baseball National Championship tournament, an annual competition of small colleges that takes place in a ballpark on the campus of Lewis-Clark State College. I started attending these and writing stories about them sometime around 2004. I did so because NAIA baseball is high quality and worthy of more attention from baseball fans, and because there were stories that deserve to be told. I have been publishing the stories on a variety of platforms over the years. The current one is the Pacific Northwest College Baseball Report, https://pnwcbr.com

This year, I arrived in Lewiston on Friday, May 23, and posted stories about one game that day, and four more the next day. (My local team, U. of British Columbia, lost on both days, eliminating them from the tournament.) Sunday was a day off for the tournament. I went to the ballpark Monday morning, and watched the first of three games scheduled for that day. When it was over, I went to the beer garden to find some shade, which was in short supply that day, and took an empty table, typed up a story about that first game, and posted it. (You can read it here.)

I then returned to the bleachers to watch the next game, between Georgia Gwinnett (Lawrenceville) and Tennessee Wesleyan (Athens). It was already in the second or third inning. I mentioned shade; I'm elderly, and the direct sunlight was a problem for me. It was around 3:30 in the afternoon, and there were no unoccupied seats with shade at all. And I should mention that I did not actually have an assigned seat, although there were some seats just below the press box, in direct sunlight, that were considered media seats. Anyway, there was an empty seat on the first-base side that was less exposed to the sun, and the people sitting in that row, who were season ticket holders, did not object to me sitting there.

Maybe ten minutes later, along came two Lewiston Campus Security officers. They told me to come with them. I asked why, and the answer was, I was being removed from the premises. As I walked out, one of them accompanied me, and he radioed the other one, who was waiting outside the entrance, to tell him that we were headed his way. When we got there, the "entrance" officer, Dustin Guenthner, the head of Lewiston Campus Security, told me that I was being kicked out of the ballpark. Of course, I asked why. He said that my removal was ordered by the Lewis-Clark State Athletic Department, because I was causing "nothing but problems." I asked what those "problems" were. He only gave me one; I was sitting in a seat that belonged to someone else. He asked me to give him my press pass, which I did. He then told me that my banishment was permanent, and that if I tried to return, I would be arrested. He even had a police officer follow me to the parking lot, to make sure that I left.

Now, let's unpack all this. The bleachers in the ballpark hold about 1,800 people, and the box score for the game says that the attendance was 1,165, so it's not as though seats were in short supply. As I said, I didn't have a specific assigned seat, and could have easily moved to another one, had I been asked to do so. And this qualifies as "nothing but problems"? The best word I can think of for this is ¨ridiculous".

And why is removing a 75-year old man from a ballpark a police matter? And why were these police officers acting on orders from the Lewis-Clark State Athletic Department, when no law-breaking activity took place? Was I really that threatening to them? And if they felt that my press pass was being misused, why didn't they just tell me that I could pay to get in like everybody else, instead of threatening me with arrest?

If I get answers to any of these questions, I'll post them in this space (see below). I will, however, report a theory that I heard from a couple of people. Two weeks earlier, Lewis-Clark State fired their coach. I was tipped off about it, so I made a few social media posts about the firing and the forthcoming hiring of a replacement. When the new coach was hired, I posted a story about it, which was actually very positive. You can read it here. The way the theory goes is, there was anal retentiveness on the part of the Lewis-Clark State Athletic Department over not being in total control of the narrative.

So, what should you take away from this story? If you or a friend or relative of yours is a high school senior or a junior college student looking for a place to continue your education, Lewis-Clark State College might not be a good choice. The average SAT score is 980. And if you're a player or coach for a team in the Cascade Collegiate conference in any sport that Lewis-Clark State competes in (which includes basketball, volleyball, tennis, golf, and track and field), you should be concerned that you might get arrested for looking at someone the wrong way (which is pretty much what is being documented here). To reiterate, the activities of the Lewiston Campus Security police are not restricted to law-breaking.

I'll conclude by bringing up "no good deed goes unpunished" again. As I said, my purpose in writing about NAIA baseball is to spread the idea that it's something worth paying attention to (major league scouts certainly think so) and there are stories that deserve to be told. The Baseball National Championship tournament is only part of that picture; the larger picture is baseball played at Oregon Tech, British Columbia, Bushnell (in Springfield, OR) and the other teams of the Cascade Collegiate Conference. But, I've probably put around $8,000 (inflation-adjusted) into the economies of Lewiston and Clarkston, WA on the other side of the river in covering the championship tournament, and this is the thanks I've gotten.

Update on June 6, 2025: I received an incident report from Lewiston Campus Security. You can read it for yourself here.

This report contains several lies.

• I was not agressive/hostile.

• The only time I was inside the Activity Center (referred to as the AAC) was to use the toilet; it is a public toilet, and the only one available within the ballpark. I did use the ATM outside the building, and bought a hot dog from the snack bar (using a window on the side of the building), not long before the arrest.

• I did not go into the umpire area.

• I did not refuse to move when asked to do so. There was a case on Saturday when a security guard (referred to here as Best Security) asked me to move slightly because I was blocking the view of some people. I complied immediately.

• "Generally causing a ruckus"? Uh, no.

Update on June 1, 2025: The original version of this article incorrectly identified the arresting officers as Lewiston Police. You’ll have to ask Lewiston Campus Security why their organization has that name instead of Lewis-Clark State College Campus Security.