Spring flowers are everywhere now, and with them come “Eliza and the Flower Fairies,” first in Megan McDonald’s new series of chapter books about a girl whose love for magic and fairy folk takes her on enchanting adventures in the Fairy Door Diaries series.

McDonald, who lives in California, is the beloved author of the popular Judy Moody & Stink series for older readers, the Judy Moody and Friends series for beginning readers, and the first chapter book “Bunny and Clyde.”

In “Eliza and the Flower Fairies” (Candlewick Press), there is a low door in Eliza’s bedroom that leads to the Land of the UnderStair, a secret hideout festooned with twinkling lights where Eliza keeps her favorite book, her collections of precious items, and her new diary. Best of all, the space transports her to a world of flower fairies perched on every bloom. But when Eliza tries to pick one especially beautiful flower, things go awry. Can Eliza’s friend Poppy rescue Eliza before the Demon Wind steals all the flowers? In this gentle plot, McDonald brings her flair for wordplay to villains like the witches Wolfsbane and Belladonna. It’s all enhanced by Lenny Wen’s richly colored artwork.

McDonald will introduce Eliza and her fairy friends at 1 p.m. Saturday at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. The program is free but registration is appreciated at redballoonbookshop.com/event.

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Today is Sunday, June 1, the 152nd day of 2025. There are 213 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On June 1, 2008, a fire at Universal Studios Hollywood destroyed 3 acres of the studio’s property, including a vault that held as many as 175,000 irreplaceable master audio recordings from hundreds of musicians including Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Elton John and Nirvana.

Also on this date:

In 1813, the mortally wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, Capt. James Lawrence, gave the order, “Don’t give up the ship,” during a losing battle with the British frigate HMS Shannon during the War of 1812.

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In 1916, the Senate voted 47-22 to confirm Louis Brandeis as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the first Jewish American to serve on the nation’s highest bench.

In 1943, a civilian flight from Portugal to England was shot down by German bombers during World War II, killing all 17 people aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.

In 1957, Don Bowden, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, became the first American to break the four-minute mile during a meet in Stockton, California, with a time of 3:58.7.

In 1962, former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was executed after being found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his actions during World War II.

In 1980, Cable News Network, the first 24-hour television news channel, made its debut.

In 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed an agreement to stop producing and reduce existing stockpiles of chemical weapons held by the two Cold War superpowers.

In 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shot and killed nine members of the Nepalese royal family, including his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, before mortally wounding himself.

In 2009, General Motors filed for Chapter 11 reorganization, becoming the largest U.S. industrial company to enter bankruptcy protection.

In 2020, police violently broke up a protest by thousands of people in Lafayette Park across from the White House, using chemical agents, clubs and punches to send protesters fleeing; the protesters had gathered following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier. Later that day, President Donald Trump, after declaring himself “the president of law and order” and threatening to deploy the U.S. military in a speech, walked across the empty park to be photographed holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, which had been damaged a night earlier.

Today’s Birthdays:

Singer Pat Boone is 91.
Actor Morgan Freeman is 88.
Actor Brian Cox is 79.
Actor Jonathan Pryce is 78.
Rock musician Ronnie Wood (The Rolling Stones) is 78.
Country singer-songwriter Ronnie Dunn is 72.
Actor Lisa Hartman Black is 69.
Actor Teri Polo is 56.
Model-TV personality Heidi Klum is 52.
Singer Alanis Morissette is 51.
Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile is 44.
Actor-comedian Amy Schumer is 44.
Tennis Hall of Famer Justine Henin is 43.
Comedian Nikki Glaser is 41.
Actor Zazie Beetz is 34.
Actor Tom Holland is 29.
Actor Willow Shields is 25.

SEATTLE — After what was almost assuredly their best win of the season on Friday, the Twins followed it up on Saturday with what was almost assuredly their strangest game of the season.

If a fire alarm blaring and flashing lights throughout the ballpark delaying the game for 10 minutes wasn’t enough, how about this? Star shortstop Carlos Correa was ejected for the first time in his career — and it happened from the on-deck circle.

The Twins saw their lead slip away late when J.P. Crawford blasted a two-run home run off reliever Jorge Alcala in the seventh inning but came back, again, with Trevor Larnach tying the game up in the ninth inning for the second consecutive day. Ultimately, though, after Griffin Jax stranded the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and Jhoan Duran left a runner on third in the 10th, the Twin ended up falling 5-4 to the Seattle Mariners when a run scored on a Cole Young fielder’s choice in the 11th in a game that was filled with drama on Saturday at T-Mobile Park.

The Mariners’ walk-off came after Kody Clemens fought through an 11-pitch at-bat to deliver a single into center in the top of the 10th, but automatic runner Matt Wallner — fresh off the injured list from a hamstring strain — was thrown out trying to score from second on a bullet from center fielder Julio Rodríguez. Harrison Bader then grounded into an inning-ending double play to end the top of the 10th and the Twins were unable to convert in the 11th, too, despite plenty of good at-bats throughout.

“We did about everything in the book besides score,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You probably couldn’t try to do what we did and find a way to not put a run on the board.”

Both Baldelli and Correa were not around to see the end of it after home plate umpire Austin Jones, working in just his ninth game this season, tossed the shortstop during the middle of a Brooks Lee at-bat in the seventh inning. Jones had made a questionable strike call in Correa’s previous at-bat, Clemens was rung up on a low strike in the sixth and Larnach the same in the seventh.

And so, after the second straight borderline call of Lee’s seventh-inning at-bat, Correa said something that caught Jones’s attention.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to get them up. You’ve got to make an adjustment. You can’t call that all day,’” Correa recounted. “And then he threw me out.”

Correa was surprised by the decision because he felt he did not say anything that warranted an ejection. Crew chief Bill Miller told a pool reporter that Correa “was warned twice to stop,” but continued.

“He didn’t say anything bad,” Lee said. “Just let an umpire know that he’s doing a bad job.”

As an animated Correa moved closer to home plate, Baldelli sprung out of the dugout, wedging himself between the player and umpire. Three other members of the coaching staff came out to restrain Correa as Baldelli continued on with his argument, eventually throwing his hat in anger.

“There’s a reason why he’s only had one. He’s a pretty respectful guy,” Baldelli said. “I think it was a premature ejection, but it’s not my job to make those decisions, obviously. It’s the umpire’s job. He didn’t say anything personal.”

The seventh inning went from bad to worse for the Twins (31-26), who lost their star and then their lead.

Crawford got ahold of an Alcala fastball, sending it off the scoreboard ribbon in right field and erasing a lead that the Twins had been protecting since the second inning when Wallner, in his first major league at-bat since April 15, smacked a two-run home run. They added one more run in the inning when Willi Castro, who hit two home runs on Friday and had three hits on Saturday, drove in the Twins’ third run of the game.

Minnesota held onto that lead for much of the game, though the Mariners (31-26) chipped away an inning later when Cal Raleigh hit a two-run home run on a high fastball from Bailey Ober that was above the strike zone.

“He’s just on one right now,” Ober said of Raleigh, who hit two home runs a day earlier. “It’s hard to expect him to get a barrel to it, but he did.”

Ober’s start ended in the fifth inning at 97 pitches after he had allowed the first two batters of the inning to reach. Ober, who said he was “fighting some mechanical stuff,” in his start was bailed out of that jam, though, as Louie Varland stepped up, striking out Raleigh and Rodríguez before getting Randy Arozarena to fly out.

Arozarena would make a big play later in the game, catching a Clemens fly ball and then doubling Wallner off of second base, helping squelch a potential Twins’ rally in the eighth inning. But just like a night earlier, there was some more late-inning magic for the Twins in the ninth.

Byron Buxton, making things happen with his legs, wound up on third base when reliever Carlos Vargas threw away a chopper that he should have eaten. Larnach, with the infield drawn in, then tied the game up, poking a single past a diving second baseman into right field. But though they came back again, they couldn’t quite pull it off for the second straight night, finding themselves not rewarded for some good at-bats.

“We put a bunch of runs on the board yesterday. And our at-bats might have been somewhere in the same category today as they were yesterday, and we couldn’t find a way to score,” Baldelli said. “That’s life. I was really pleased. We hit the ball well. We made pretty good decisions at the plate. If we play like that tomorrow, offensively, we’re going to score a ton of runs.”

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MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred recently removed Pete Rose’s permanent ban from baseball, which will make him eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame. Manfred reinstated 17 other banned players as well, including members of the infamous 1919 Chicago White Sox who threw the World Series, including the team’s star “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

This undated file photo shows baseball player player Shoeless Joe Jackson. (AP Photo/File)

The reinstatement was an obvious sop to the gambling industry, an MLB partner, and possibly also to President Donald Trump, who lobbied for Rose’s future election into the Hall of Fame.

Manfred offered a tone-deaf rationale for reinstating this MLB’s rogues’ gallery: “Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game.” Whatever else Manfred learned at Harvard Law School, history’s lessons failed to make the curriculum. Understanding history — human nature, mistakes made and the significance of previous cultures — is essential to cultivating integrity.

The nature of history is that no matter how many accounts we read about an event — whether it’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s Russia campaign, the Titanic sinking or the assassination of John F. Kennedy — we can never know precisely what people were thinking, how they acted and why. But whatever history is ultimately knowable, certain falsehoods and myths can be dispelled. This is where, over 100 years later, Jackson, a central figure in the Series fix, provides a lesson about how subtle the lack of integrity can be.

The story now circulating with ever greater popularity is that Jackson was an innocent bystander in the 1919 World Series fix. Claims of his innocence rest on two facts: He hit .375, including the only home run of the Series, and he was never convicted in a court of law.

The first demonstrates how statistics can mislead. By the accounts of other players, the Sox deliberately lost five games (the World Series was then best of nine), and they probably played honestly in two or three. In the first four games that the Sox lost, Jackson got no RBIs. He raised his average remarkably in the three games they won, but his only home run of the Series, along with a base-clearing double, came in the fixed final game clincher, with the Sox already facing an insurmountable lead, and the Series outcome no longer in doubt.

Jackson’s impressive World Series statistics were the result of his poor performance in four fixed games, three games he tried to win and one game in which his contribution didn’t matter in a rigged blowout loss to Cincinnati.

Although Jackson committed no errors, his fielding was likewise suspect. A granular analysis of Jackson’s performance by baseball blogger Dan Holmes reveals his “lackluster efforts in the field, critically in both Games One and Two.” The presiding judge in a subsequent civil suit recalled that Jackson had told him that “he had made no misplays that could be noticed by the ordinary person, but that he did not play his best.”

Regarding his courtroom exoneration and that of the other Black Sox, they were found not guilty of conspiracy, which is different from innocent, primarily because the charges were nebulous — they were charged with conspiracy because fixing baseball games was not a crime — and the Chicago jurors loved their hometown heroes. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis summarily banned the players permanently, restoring honesty to the game and saving baseball, along with the help of superstar Babe Ruth’s popularity.

Bill Lamb, a longtime state and county prosecutor in New Jersey, an authority on the scandal and author of “Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation,” has analyzed the legal machinations. He points out Jackson originally admitted in grand jury testimony to being involved in the fix. Then, in a later civil trial against the team, he recanted his sworn testimony, essentially committing perjury.

Lamb poses other questions including why the other fixers would all implicate Jackson if he were innocent, and why Jackson, who claimed he wanted to return the $5,000 he received (he was promised $20,000), eventually deposited it in a Georgia bank near his home.

Lamb concludes: “That Joe Jackson was a likable fellow and persistent in his claims of innocence does not change the historical record. On the evidence, the call is not a close one,” Lamb wrote in 2019 for the Society for American Baseball Research.

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“As he admitted under oath after first being confronted, Jackson was a knowing, if perhaps unenthusiastic, participant in the plot to fix the 1919 World Series. And damningly, Jackson was just as persistent in his demands to be paid his promised fix payoff money as the Series progressed as he would later be in his disavowals of fix involvement. In the final analysis, Shoeless Joe Jackson, banished from playing the game that he loved while still in the prime of his career, is a sad figure. But hardly an innocent one.”

Manfred may not realize that baseball culture has always reflected the larger societal culture. His reinstatement of Rose and Jackson is no exception: History has become an irrelevant triviality — ignored or, even better, forgotten. Ethics are now a bore since unethical behavior can always be papered over with tricks such as deceptive statistics and abstruse legal arguments.

Nothing good can come of this.

Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.