Believe in Baseball

 

It is amazing how all of us have become vaccine experts the past few weeks. Which vaccine did you get?  The Moderna two shot?  Do you need a booster?  What are the second shot side effects?” J&J one shot? Did you hear the latest on them? Astrazeneca no thanks. It gives us all something else to talk about other than what we are streaming on our digital devices.  Anti-vaxxers you have your reasons, but do you know anyone who recently recovered from rubella or polio? Polio was a ravenous, contagious virus that could either paralyze or kill those infected.  Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine and there has not been a single case of polio in the US since 1979.  Whatever your personal beliefs, we are all in this together.

Hi everybody and a very pleasant good evening to you wherever you may be.  Dodger baseball is on the air for 2021.  With the championship drought behind them this team is built with dynastic intentions. 2021 could be as remarkable as 2020 without the COVID membrane shroud.  There is a long season ahead and COVID lurks at every concession stand. The raising the 2020 championship flag and passing out the World Series rings was an exciting sight.  It would have been a bucket list to be there.  The Yard has been treated to many Opening Days with lifelong friend T-Dawg Williamson.  The Williamson family has had season Dodger seats since 1958 when the team first came west.  They have had the same four seats at Chavez Ravine since it first opened in 1962.  A Williamson family member has been at Opening Day every season until this season.  COVID protocols are still required, and attendance is truncated at 15,000 until June 2.  With all the celebrities, former players, Scott Boras and Magic Johnson in line ahead of us, we did not stand a chance of being invited to the ceremony.  Unfortunately, they were able to carry on without us.

The Texas Rangers put COVID protocols aside in their on-going dystopian state sponsored dumpster fire.  State officials threw caution into the fast-approaching COVID 4.0 monsoon and allowed 38,000 fans to attend opening day.  Masks were to be required but the televised images showed a different story with this controversial safety strategy.  We were surprised that they did not invite the Donald to make the inaugural first heave.  Trump does not look like he has a first pitch in him, but Cancun Teddy would have cheered him on to make it great again.  Regardless, the Rangers did take a moment of silence to remember the 500,000+ COVID deceased.  It was a somber moment.  The Yard has suggested that they should have taken another moment of silence in the 9^th inning to recognize those that will die following this super spreader event.  Our calls were not returned.

The NCAA tournament was one of the wildest and best in recent memory.  Our opinion is biased on the Bruins racing from First Four to Final Four in an incredible display of tenacity.  They essentially won the championship for Baylor throttling Gonzaga to their limit in the Saturday night national semifinal. The Zags were 14-point favorites, the largest Final Four point spread in 25 years. The Bulldogs were coming off an absolute beat down of the Trojans in the regional final.  USC had beaten UCLA both times during the regular season.  There was no reason to believe UCLA could keep pace with a Gonzaga team that was averaging 90 and beating teams by 20.  But on this night, they did.  They had leads, they made shots, they went toe to toe with the greatest team in the land.  It was the finest game of the entire tournament.  It was the best game of the Final Four and far better than the final. It was a bitter defeat for the Bruins.  Alas, we do not think they would have fared much better against the Baylor Bears in the championship if they had prevailed.  We do know they pierced the Gonzaga bubble and showed their vulnerabilities.  The Bears exploited all of it in their runaway win.  We took the Bruins +14 and the Bears + 4.5 to subsidize our own little victory lap.

The Pac-12 both men’s and women’s basketball programs have been besmirched in recent years.  It was not an inaccurate depiction.  The conference had middling results in the tourney of late. Pac-12 women’s hoops has been more nationally recognized than the men.  The left coast was considered soft and not championship caliber. This year was more of the same rhetoric.  Pac-12 men’s basketball stormed the gate lead by the upstart Oregon State Beavers.  The Beaves were not even to be in the dance. They upset their way into the Sweet 16 with UCLA, USC, and Oregon.  The women made it to the Finals with Stanford and ASU facing off in the championship game.  Yard congrats to Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer on winning her third title for the Stanford Cardinal.  It had been 29 years since her last title.  Yard was conjecturing that they may be the longest stretch between titles for any basketball head coach at the same school.  Geno Auriemma is flashier, more outspoken and has more titles.  VanDerveer is solid, steady and has more wins than any other NCAA women’s basketball coach and is just a tick behind Duke’s coach.

Our hoops for local college athletics got a boost when UNLV did the right thing and promoted Kevin Kruger to head coach for the Running Rebels.  Kruger played at UNLV for his legendary father Lon Kruger.  The last time that the team made it to the Sweet 16 was when Father Lon was head coach.  He was the best coach that UNLV had since the Jerry Tarkanian era.  Since Kruger departed to Oklahoma in 2011, the Rebels have had four different head coaches.  Granted Chris Beard was there for 19 days in 2016 and never coached a game before departing for Texas Tech.  Beard’s departure underscores the ineptitude of the UNLV Athletic department and their hiring decisions.  The AD reached an agreement with Beard and then let him twist in the wind for nearly three weeks before the deal was to be approved.  Texas Tech swooped in and offered him an immediate deal.  He was gone and the Red Raiders were in the championship game in 2019.  UNLV has not been in the tournament since 2013.

The real bonus in hiring Kruger is that Lon Kruger immediately retired from Oklahoma, bought a multi-million home near Gruden, and moved to Las Vegas.  When the Yard relocated to Las Vegas in 2010, Lon was the head coach of the Running Rebels.  The team had competitive talent, made the NCAA playoffs almost every year and filled Thomas and Mack with rabid fans.  UNLV outdrew every school in attendance in the west except Arizona.  And what else is there to do in Tucson? Kevin has never been a head coach, but he has been a highly regarded assistant for the past decade.  Now he has a highly respected assistant coach in his arsenal and not on his payroll.

Monarchy 2.0 Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, has passed.  He was the longest running consort in Windsor history.  The Yard does not find the term “consort” to be that flattering for the man, but he was the man.  He is far and away the most accomplished of those other Royal Nudniks. Randy Andy was running on Fergie before he started to hang on the island with Epstein.  Charles and Camilla are next in line?  Camilla looks older than the Queen and Charles is a stale future king. There is only one bloodline allowed to be Royalty.  You do not get elected; you get born into it.  Phil married into but he was born into Royalty through both his mother’s and father’s lineage.  He fought in WW2 in the British Navy.  He traveled the world and helped shepherd his family into the 21^st century.  Both his senior grandsons said he was great at the BBQ!  Who knew?  We are sure he liked a stiff whiskey neat.  RIP Phil.