Calling balls and strikes on Joe Biden

Even the president's fans should be relieved that fact-checkers -- the umpires of politics -- had some gripes about his first primetime address.

Maybe it was the snap of late-winter warmth Upstate last week that brought to mind baseball, and the story of three umpires arguing about how they made calls.

“I calls ’em as I sees ’em,” one umpire said.

“I calls ’em as they are,” said the second.

“They ain’t nothin’ till I calls ’em,” the third umpire concluded.

No matter: When the calls go against the home team, the fans in our local minor-league ballpark here in Upstate New York, like hometown fans everywhere, get grouchy. Umpires are like journalists: We need them to tell us what happened, but we’re indignant when their view doesn’t match ours from the stands.

So it’s unsurprising that there was some pushback in the blue state where I now live after journalistic fact-checkers called some fouls in President Joe Biden’s first primetime White House address, where he touted the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill he pushed through Congress. (Senators from the red states where I used to live, like all the Republicans in Congress, voted against it.)