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By GARRETT COTE

The beat goes on for the Belchertown Post 239 Senior American Legion baseball team, as a trio of runs in the first inning were just enough to get it past previously undefeated East Springfield Post 420, 3-2, for consecutive win No. 7 on Wednesday night in a game that was moved to Springfield Central High School due to field conditions.

By GARRETT COTE

HAMPDEN — The grueling third day of competition at GreatHorse is over, and Thursday’s quarterfinals are now set.

By RYAN AMES

MALDEN — Several area high school baseball players captured the silver medal in the 2025 Bay State Games Baseball Showcase tournament at Rotondi Field at Howard Park on Wednesday. The West team fell to Central, 10-1, in the Gold Medal game, which wrapped up competition of the three-day event.

By SAM FERLAND

EASTHAMPTON — Mayor Nicole LaChapelle announced Wednesday she will step down next week after Gov. Maura Healey appointed her commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR).

By GARRETT COTE

BERNARDSTON — The pressure of playing in her first-ever Massachusetts Girls’ Junior Amateur Championship didn’t seem to bother Granby’s Ryley Regan, as the eighth grader who plays on the Hopkins Academy golf team cruised to a 3-up start through five holes.

By ELLA ADAMS

BOSTON — Massachusetts experienced a more than 36% decrease in opioid-related overdose deaths in 2024, the state Substance Addiction Services Bureau reported Wednesday.

There are limits to what any of us can do to help any others of us. In Plato’s “Theaetetus,” Socrates says “I am like the midwife, in that I cannot myself give birth to wisdom”; and he then says, “The many admirable truths which they bring to birth have been discovered by themselves from within.” Our law schools are supposed to base their pedagogy on the Socratic method, whose applicability to real life situations might not always appear very great. That people cannot always argue their way to the establishment of abiding truths may be seen with the great eloquence of speechifying in Congress in the years leading up to our Civil War.

By TOLLEY M. JONES

In 1787, the U.S. Constitution was amended to include the Fugitive Slave Clause. This clause made it illegal for enslaved persons to free themselves through escape, and legally required them to be returned to their enslavers. In enshrining this in the Constitution, it also nullified state laws that protected enslaved persons from being returned to their enslaver if they reached a Northern state that abolished slavery. However, as Southern enslavers were unsatisfied with the resistance they encountered when attempting to retrieve their escaped slaves, the U.S. government attempted to mollify them with a stronger law. In 1793, The Fugitive Slave Law was passed by Congress. This law declared that any escaped enslaved person must be returned to their enslaver, regardless of what state in which they were recaptured, and that anyone assisting in their escape would be fined $500 and given a year in prison.

By JENNIFER CORE and CLAIRE MORENON

Immigration crackdowns, and the resulting protests, have been at the center of the news for the past several weeks — this is a violent, divided moment centering around a highly divisive issue. It is also a sweet season in the Valley — the height of the growing season is just beginning, and farmers’ markets and farm stands are filling up. These might seem like completely unrelated realities, but they are closely connected by one thing: the deeply skilled, and largely invisible, farmworkers who plant, pick, and process the harvest — many of whom are immigrants..

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — The opening of the Lichter & Levin Delicatessen is proof that, in Emily Lichter’s words, “sometimes the silliest ideas become your greatest.”

By JOAN AXELROD-CONTRADA

My big “a-ha” moment came from hearing the Young Rascals song “Lonely Too Long” on New Year’s Day. Ah, how Felix Cavaliere’s soulful voice made kids like me feel seen in 1967! And here I was, decades later, experiencing a wild sense of déjà vu.

By LUKE MACANNUCO

Piti Theatre Co.’s annual DinoFest is evolving into something larger this year: Dino Trail Week.

By SAMUEL GELINAS

HOLYOKE — Building codes in Victorian America were antiquated, but the nationally circulated story of a fire in Holyoke is a large part of the reason why the doors of public buildings, even today, open outward, allowing people to flow out of a building and not get caught behind doors in case of an emergency.

By SAM FERLAND

HOLYOKE — Due to several permitting issues, the city met with the owners of Schermerhorn’s Seafood in Holyoke last week after renovations were temporarily halted due to a stop-work order.

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

A Holyoke man who worked as a corrections officer in Connecticut has pleaded guilty to multiple charges related to his harassment of an FBI special agent in South Carolina on messaging apps over the course of several weeks around the beginning of the year.

By SCOTT MERZBACH

AMHERST — Amherst is moving forward with a process for creating a third local historic district, in the East Amherst village center, where homes, buildings and other structures could receive enhanced protections.

In honor of Disability Pride Month, the Northampton, Easthampton, and Amherst Disability Commissions are hosting free screenings of disability-themed movies in July.

By ERIN-LEIGH HOFFMAN

GREENFIELD — Despite concerns circulating about the future of Baystate Franklin Medical Center after the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cuts roughly $1.1 trillion in health care spending, Baystate Health’s chief financial officer advises the Greenfield hospital is not at risk of closure.

By JIM BRIDGMAN

A vivid oil painting by the late artist from Conway, Lester Stevens, is now on exhibit at the Nonotuck Savings Bank. The painting depicts a covered bridge against the autumn foliage in the New England foothills. Stevens’ wife, Angela, is donating the painting to the Laurel Park Association for the drawing at its annual fair in August. The proceeds will go towards making improvements in the park.

By GARRETT COTE

HAMPDEN — Thirty-six holes weren’t enough to decide which 32 golfers were going to make Wednesday’s match play in the 117th Massachusetts Amateur Championship at GreatHorse. After Monday and Tuesday’s first two rounds, 24 players were safely inside the 6-over par cut line while 10 players were tied at that number.