EVANSVILLE, Ind. – The Evansville Otters have signed 2016 Frontier League Champion, pitcher Tyler Vail.
Vail, a native of Easton, PA, returns to Evansville for his sixth season in an Otters jersey. Vail is the franchise’s all-time leader in strikeouts with 347. Most recently, he had a limited season in 2021 due to injury. During that year, Vail struck out 16 batters in four starts and 20.1 innings pitched.
In 2019, he began in the bullpen before transitioning to the starting rotation. Vail went 5-5 with a 2.78 ERA and 84 strikeouts in 81 innings pitched and 18 appearances. In 2019, Vail became the Otters’ franchise career leader in strikeouts at 331. Vail came back to the Otters in 2018 after playing previously for Evansville in 2015-2016. Vail went 15-8 with a 4.06 ERA in 35 appearances. He pitched in 206 innings while striking out 160 batters.
In 2017, the Arizona Diamondbacks signed Vail before the start of the season and he split time between Hillsboro and Missoula, where he made 14 total starts. He was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 5th round of the 2010 MLB June Amateur Draft from Notre Dame High School in Easton, Pennsylvania.
The 2023 season is right around the corner. For information on season tickets, call 812-435-8686. Group and single-game tickets will go on sale in the coming weeks.
The Evansville Otters are the 2006 and 2016 Frontier League champions.
The Otters play all home games at historic Bosse Field, located at 23 Don Mattingly Way in Evansville, Ind. Stay up-to-date with the Evansville Otters by visiting evansvilleotters.com, or follow the Otters on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Southern Indiana Baseball had control early, but could not hold off Southern Illinois University, 16-9, Wednesday afternoon at the USI Baseball Field. USI watched its record go to 7-10, while SIU goes to 8-10.  The Screaming Eagles flew out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning and extended the margin to as many as 6-1 after the first three frames. SIU rallied to tie the score, 6-6, in the seventh, before the Eagles regain the lead, 9-6, with a three run seventh.  The Salukis maintained the momentum, closing the gap to one, 9-8, with a pair of unearned tallies in the eighth before exploding for eight in the ninth for the 16-9 victory.  Offensively at the plate, senior second baseman Lucas McNew (Floyds Knobs, Indiana), junior first baseman Tucker Ebest (Austin, Texas), junior designated hitter Jack Ellis (Jeffersonville, Indiana), and junior leftfielder Drew Taylor (Jeffersonville, Indiana) led the way with two RBIs each.  USI sophomore right-hander Riley Harris (Calvert City, Kentucky) took the loss for the Eagles, allowing three runs without getting an out in the ninth. Harris (0-1) was one of nine USI hurlers to throw in the game and one of three pitchers in the ninth.  Up Next for the Eagles:   USI returns to the road this weekend when it travels to Murray State University for a three-game series in Murray, Kentucky. Game times are 3 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Saturday; and 1 p.m. Sunday.  Murray State leads the series with USI, 6-3-1, since the first meeting in 1981. The Racers also have won the last four meetings, including the latest matchup in 2003, 3-1, at Murray. USI’s last wins over Murray came 1994 when the Eagles swept the season series, 7-3 and 10-9.  The Racers are 7-10 overall in 2023 and have won three of the last four, including a 9-6 win over the University of North Alabama this week. Â
Hydraulic Supply Company (HSC), a division of Motion, is seeking a Production Manager. The Production Manager is responsible for the overall direction and…
The expertise found in our diverse group of engineers and products specialists includes all areas of automation technologies, including robotics, motion control…
Under direct supervision, the Sustainability Specialist will support Motion’s sustainability. Serves as the primary point of contact, business liaison, and…
Under close supervision, the Material Handler performs physical and administrative tasks related to material handling such as shipping, receiving, order…
This fabricator largely preps materials, performs production processes and finishes custom fabricated products. Clean and coat base belts and materials.
They provide the highest levels of customer service by delivering products timely and treating customers with respect. Ensure timely deliveries to customers.
Under limited supervision, ensures customer expectations are accurately determined and. Develop and broaden relationships within customer organization to fully.
Motion is looking for a Repair Specialist with the knowledge and skills to grow our repair business throughout Indiana and Kentucky. High School Diploma or GED.
The Inventory Project Manager develops new programs, enhances programs, conducts. Inventory analysis, improves processes, and develops and facilitates training…
The University of Southern Indiana Multicultural Center will honor the 2023 Class of Phenomenal Women of USI and the Community at a recognition ceremony at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 21 in Carter Hall, located in University Center West. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and hors d’oeuvres will be served at 5:45 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at USI.edu/mcc.Â
Dr. Leigh Anne Howard, Professor of Communication Studies, will deliver a keynote speech at the recognition ceremony. Howard began her career at USI as Program Director of Communication Studies and went on to serve as the Graduate Director for the Master of Arts in Communication program before becoming Chair of the Communication and Media Department in 2020.Â
Howard’s passion for service-learning and community-based pedagogy has been evident throughout her career, and her interactive teaching style encourages community engagement, promotes social awareness and fosters personal growth among her students. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of performance, culture, personal and social identity and critical performance pedagogy. Her research has been published in numerous national and international publications, including Text and Performance Quarterly and Communication Education.Â
Howard’s dedication to teaching, research and service has earned her numerous accolades, including the John I. Sisco Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Performance Scholar Award by the Southern States Communication Association. She is also a recipient of the 2005 Class of Phenomenal Women of USI and the Community.Â
The members of the Phenomenal Women Class of 2023 are:Â Â
Undergraduate Student Â
Adrianna GarciaÂ
Graduate StudentÂ
Katelyn VinciÂ
AlumnaÂ
Jaimie ShethÂ
Support StaffÂ
Michele BarnettÂ
Administrative Staff Â
Dr. Jennifer HammatÂ
Faculty Â
Dr. Tori ColsonÂ
Community-At-LargeÂ
Melissa CookÂ
Barbara LucasÂ
Krista WilsonÂ
Phenomenal Women honors and celebrates women who have made contributions to diversity at USI and in the community at large. Through honor and recognition, the program hopes to inspire others to embrace and promote diversity within their own lives and the lives of others around them. Â
DAILY ACTIVITY REPORTFOOTNOTE: Â EPD DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT Â information was provided by the EPD and posted by the City-County-County Observer without opinion, bias, or editing.
The former vice president of the United States and onetime Indiana governor took aim at the man who had been his boss for four years, Donald Trump, during a speech at the Gridiron Dinner in Washington, D.C.
Pence’s aim was true.
“History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,†Pence told those gathered at one of the great gatherings of America’s power structure. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Trump was wrong. His reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.â€
His words sent shock waves through the nation’s political firmament. Not since the days of John Nance Garner and Franklin D. Roosevelt had a vice president broken so significantly with his erstwhile commander-in-chief.
But Pence was right to do so.
Pence is mulling over a run for the presidency in 2024. Trump already is a declared candidate for the office.
That means the two men will be rivals, not allies. Pence will have to make a case for his candidacy.
He could do what other potential Republican contenders—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis comes to mind—and say he would be a president like Trump, only less so. DeSantis’ argument for his contemplated candidacy can be boiled down to a single sentence: “I will govern the way Donald Trump did, only without the mean tweets and the outlandish behavior.â€
In other words, DeSantis would provide a more civil form of authoritarianism.
That never has been Pence’s style.
His political philosophy always has been libertarian until his libertarian impulses come into conflict with his religious faith. Then, he veers hard toward theocracy.
He is not, contrary to what his critics think, a man without a backbone. He will take a firm, unpopular stand when a sense of justice animates him.
Years ago, when I was the executive director of what is now the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, I invited Pence, then a member of Congress, to speak at a youth conference.
Pence surprised everyone by taking issue with a portion of the Patriot Act, which had been rushed into law by Congress and President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. Pence said he opposed the noxious “sneak-and-peak†provisions of the bill that allowed for warrantless searches.
It was a brave stand for a junior House member.
There were no votes in that room for him that day. Many of those attending—high school students—weren’t old enough to cast a ballot. The adults who were there, devoted ACLU members, likely were so put off by Pence’s positions on reproductive rights and equal status for LGBTQ citizens that they never would pull a lever for him.
He said what he said because he thought government had overreached and President Bush—a president of his own party—was wrong.
He was right to criticize his own party’s president then.
And he’s right to do so now.
This time, though, his criticism also makes sense politically.
The Republican presidential candidates who think they have a shot at reaching the White House by presenting themselves as paler versions of Trump are making a fundamental miscalculation. Trump’s base won’t settle for an imitation as long as the real thing is a viable option.
The only path to the Oval Office for a Republican runs through Donald Trump, not behind or beside him.
That means someone in the GOP is going to have to demonstrate that his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection makes Trump unfit to serve as president again.
That’s what Pence is doing.
In doing so, he’s showing his fellow Republicans the only route they have back to power. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 by increasing margins and likely will fall even shorter next time, should he be the GOP nominee.
Republican candidates in Senate and gubernatorial candidates in typically GOP-friendly states such as Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania who carried the Trump brand came up short. Even Republicans who followed his lead while running in gerrymandered congressional districts, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert, managed to turn what should have been strolling into dogfights.
Mike Pence hasn’t just consulted his conscience. He’s also run the numbers.
And that’s helped him figure things out.
FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
Whenever Indiana’s attorney general digs himself into a hole, his response is to just keep scooping.
It’s hard to know whether short-sightedness or some compulsion toward self-destructiveness drives this tendency of Rokita’s, but it does seem to be a pattern—one he cannot seem to control.
If there is a way to make an unforced error, he will find it.
We have seen that with the campaign of persecution he has waged against Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped. Bernard did the abortion with the permission of the girl and her parents, notified all appropriate authorities in both Ohio and Indiana of the procedure and cooperated with law enforcement in Ohio as they worked to arrest and prosecute the rapist.
Heedless of that, Rokita sprinted to appear on Fox News and accuse Bernard of transgressions so outrageous that Fox—which is far from scrupulous when it comes to questions of fact and truth—backed away from them almost immediately.
That might have been a cue for Rokita to do the same.
Instead, the Hoosier attorney general doubled down.
Even after the facts had been made clear, Rokita attacked the good doctor for committing acts of malfeasance so absurd that no rational person could believe his charges.
As a result, Indiana’s top law enforcement official now finds himself fighting to overturn a judge’s ruling in a case that he won because the judge acknowledged the attorney general violated the law even while deciding in Rokita’s favor. Rokita continues to waste—er, spend—Indiana taxpayer funds paying an expensive Washington, D.C., law firm on attempts to get that uncomfortable assessment of his conduct erased from the record.
Rokita also is the subject of an investigation by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission for his actions regarding Bernard. Rokita’s predecessor as attorney general, Curtis Hill, had his license to practice law suspended for a month for violating Indiana law and legal ethical standards in ways that were as egregious but were less flamboyant than Rokita’s.
If the disciplinary commission and the Supreme Court decide to make a statement that they are tired of Indiana attorneys general treating state law, professional ethical standards and common decency with the same respect a dog shows for a fire hydrant, Rokita could precipitate a genuine governmental crisis.
All this could have been easily avoided.
If Rokita had stepped back after the Fox debacle, acknowledged that the facts showed Bernard had done no wrong and said, in effect, that it was his job to make sure no laws had been broken, the whole thing likely would have blown over.
Instead, he kept digging the hole.
We Hoosiers know about Rokita’s persistent acts of self-immolation in the Bernard case because of superb reporting by The Indiana Citizen’s Marilyn Odendahl. (Disclosure: The Indiana Citizen and TheStatehouseFile.com have a partnership.)
Odendahl now has a story detailing Rokita’s attempts to keep the public from seeing an opinion he solicited from the Indiana inspector general about whether he could turn the job of attorney general into a part-time gig.
Before he was elected, Rokita held a lucrative position with Apex Benefits. Once in office, he explored whether he could keep that job while serving as attorney general.
After taking office and while still working for Apex, he asked the inspector general for an opinion. Rokita claimed the subsequent report cleared him of wrongdoing.
The attorney general, though, has resisted all requests from the public—and particularly from good-government advocates—that he show them the report.
One of those good-government advocates took Rokita to court over the matter. Rokita used his taxpayer-funded deputies to represent him.
A judge ruled at the end of February that the attorney general had to make the report public, but that he could redact just about anything he wanted.
Again, a smarter man would have seen the opportunity for a graceful exit from an embarrassing mess. He would have taken a magic marker to the report, left one or two words untouched and then handed it over, putting his opponents in the difficult position of suing to get something they’d already won.
But that’s not Todd Rokita.
He plans to keep digging, wasting time, energy and money on yet another stupid legal fight.
The shovel salespeople must be beating a trail to his doo
FOOTNOTE:  John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
