Mar. 27, 2025

Today is Opening Day for the 2025 Major League Baseball season. If you're into baseball, movies or baseball movies, check out today's podcast episode. We're picking our favorites of all time.

Today's report follows. Thanks for reading,

Ike

Looking for the podcast? Click here or check other options below.

United Launch Alliance, a company with a big investment in North Alabama, is now authorized to fly national security space missions, reports AL.com's John R. Roby.

The authorization is for United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. Blue Origin makes the BE-4 engines that are integrated into Vulcan at United Launch Alliance's Decatur plant.

Until now, only SpaceX had certification to fly the missions, but United States Space Force is expecting to ramp up its national-security launches.

The Vulcan can deliver National Security Space Launch spacecraft directly into geosynchronous orbit.

A Jackson County school is closing after educating students for 120 years, reports AL.com's Heather Gann.

Flat Rock School serves Pre-K through sixth-grade students. The entire school's enrollment was only 64 this year. Superintendent Jason Davidson said they had teachers covering multiple classrooms and as many as five subjects. He also said there's currently no counselor in place.

So the Jackson County School Board unanimously voted this week to close Flat Rock at the end of the school year.

Even with its dwindling numbers, some in the area hoped to save the small community school, even launching an online petition to save it.

Flat Rock School was founded in 1905 by the United Methodist Church Conference, and it was sold to the state in 1929.

There are many, many lists of state rankings on every issue you can imagine that come down the pike.

Most of them we pass by. Some of them we share here. And then there are the rare ones we simply cannot ignore because they speak to us as a people.

The math-and-stats website GIGACalculator has produced a study that ranked Alabama the second-most-likely state in the U.S. to survive an alien invasion, reports AL.com's Mary Colurso.

How would one rank states on such a thing? Well, GIGACalculator examined the number of UFO sightings, access to food and water, numbers of medical professionals and scientists, military presence, population density and places to run and hide.

And just glancing at that criteria, we probably would be in a decent position. And somebody out there still has a toilet-paper stockpile from summer 2020.

Although military and places to run and hide aside, I think we might could win them over with southern hospitality. Take them to a ballgame and a pig picking and they might be ready to invest instead of invade.

Unless they ally with the pigs first.

Braves fans take note: A new vanity license plate showing off your favorite MLB team (and its retro lower-case "a" logo) became available in Alabama this month.

In 1921, 30-year Congressman Tom Bevill of Townley.

If you miss that feeling of sitting down with in-depth, local reporting, consider subscribing to the Huntsville Times, Birmingham News, or Mobile Press-Register.

By subscribing, you’ll get a new daily digital edition in an email link, or you can use an app to download the new edition every day on your smartphone or tablet. You also get exclusive access to stories written for our subscribers.

“Down in Alabama” listeners get your first month free by going to al.com/digitalsubscription/exclusive and enter the promo code DIA24.

We're going deep on baseball movies.

You can find “Down in Alabama” wherever you get your podcasts, including these places:

We appreciate you for taking the time to read today. Hope you're able to check back soon. Meantime, reply to this email with any suggestions you might have.

If you're so inclined, we'd love it if you'd forward to friends who might be interested in reading. (And if you're someone who's been forwarded this newsletter, we encourage you to subscribe and get this in your inbox every day.)