The Yard-Cloud Edition

In the early missives of the Yard, we were distributing our rants via our home computer, the cloud was something that obscured the sun. Our expectations were meager and we lowered the bar as needed during those halcyon early days at the Yard. Our subscriber base over the years has grown dramatically from the original three loyal family members to the hoard of nearly sixty-two today. The technology demands of sustaining this type of subscriber growth could bring more substantial enterprises to their knees. There are few enterprises less substantial than the Yard but it still has been a daunting task. The output of blogs has been stifled by our archaic IT infrastructure or so I was lead to believe at our last budget meeting. After much passionate discussion by our brightest minds and tightest wallets, the Yard is apparently moving to the cloud. It has been promised that it will be transparent. We hope it is or heads will roll. Tony at the Yard is now in a cloud near you. The Yard is trying to plan our annual pilgrimage to the desert for spring training baseball. The weather is always nice, the games are meaningless in an entertaining way. Nice weather and meaningless entertainment always brings out the trim. Back in the day there were $15 ballgame tickets, $6 dollar beers and priceless views. We were having such fun attending this annual event until the Giants won their first World Series Title in 2010. Spring Training was a journey only the most ardent Giant fan made during those years in their desert by the sea. Most fans came to see any games anywhere in the valley. Giant fan only wants to go to Scottsdale and see the Giants and the rest is peripheral damage. Their fervor and the subsequent titles have seen nearly all costs associated with spring training double over the past five years. These Giant fans are coming in droves and paying the freight no matter what it costs. Long time baseball fan is having to move some freight on the side to pay for a seat. It is a robust Bay area bandwagon that will be invading the desert with their shirts, hats and entourages this year. The season of sports blight is upon us. In Los Angeles, the circumstance is more pronounced. The Laker’s season was over on the first night of the season when Julius Randle broke his leg in his first NBA game. The Laker’s season had already ended a few seasons earlier but one can hope. The NBA is on the verge of relevance for 4-6 franchises and none are in Los Angeles. Baseball is trotting out players with jersey numbers above 70 for the next several weeks. The NFL is on their brief sabbatical from the public eye before the draft and March Madness our greatest event is not coming soon enough. So for the next several week’s sports talk will be dominated by two men-Joe Lunardi and Mel Kiper Jr. These are two men who will be referenced and questioned often during the coming weeks. Joe is the preeminent bracketologist for the NCAA basketball tournament. Kiper Jr. is the face of the NFL drafts and mock drafts. Both men are rarely seen any other time of the year except now. They both have mops of hair that Yardlets have found difficult not to get sucked into the vortex of follicles while listening to their diatribes. Lunardi routinely and correctly picks the seedings and brackets for the NCAA tournament before the official results are announced. He is absolutely amazing with his analysis and predictions. He has a thick mop of hair that seems to undulate with his diction. He is accurate and interesting while articulating who is in, who is out all while a beaver rests on his pate. Apparently, Joe’s people got wind of this blog and he is sporting a new look for the 2015 campaign. All the better because he is certainly more entertaining and accurate than Mel Kiper or his hair. Mel Kiper Jr. gets more air time and hair time than Lunardi. He has a fluffed up pompadour that is as alternatively ridiculous as is the stern scowl he maintains across his bespectacled face throughout all interviews. It is a viewing dichotomy. Kiper will conduct his daily mock draft in the months leading up the April 30 draft in NY. His endless promotion of the draft to event status has been a boon for the cash strapped NFL. The NFL draft became a Red Carpet affair in Prime Time. The NFL owes Kiper Junior a tremendous debt for turning the boring player draft into a must see event. Never mind that or that the many mock drafts Kiper conducts he gets few if any of the picks correct. It is great theater just not great prognostication. Overtime: Peyton Manning is a first round NFL Hall of Famer. He has set every record that will be surpassed in the future. Eli Manning may never make the HOF and will never set any records except possibly most career interceptions by a quarterback who has won two Super Bowls. It does not matter because at the end of every Mississippi BBQ at the Manning’s, Eli is the guy who won two Super Bowls. Peyton is the guy who yelled “Omaha” and sang about Nationwide while creating an amazing amount of statistics that produced just a single championship. Peyton will win the endorsement title as well but Eli owns bragging rights. Peyton finally relented and allowed the Broncos to pay him $15 million for one more chance to right this wrong in Oxford. People might say he already has enough money. No one does NOT want $15 million more except Barry Sanders, so far. Peyton, Eli might win another. From the heart: The celebrity social media comments regarding Chris Kyle and American Sniper are deplorable. Kyle did what he was asked to do by the US Military. He completed his task with bone shattering precision. He protected his brethren against extreme odds and saved American lives in a war not of his choosing. Al Qaeda had a bounty on his head. The movie is riveting and by all accounts an accurate depiction of Kyle’s efforts over four tours of duty in Iraq. The impact it had on him and his family as he tries to assimilate back into family life is the story. His exploits were legendary but the impact war has had on all our veterans is unconscionable. Seth Rogen gets to make comedies about assassinating North Korea’s dictator because of the freedoms people like Chris Kyle have fought for since 1776. Michael Moore gets to make movies regaling institutions and governments while accumulating $50 million in wealth from these same liberties afforded by our constitution. Depicting American Sniper as a propaganda film denigrates all of the heroic efforts and the troubling despair our US Veterans have encountered. Film makers, actors and their liberal brethren can castigate the US government for their role in Kyle’s mission but not him. Chris Kyle is an American hero.