Motherless Russia

 It is an anxious melancholy that envelopes  the Yard like a shroud. The Dodgers are off to a nice start with the Giants in early season pursuit. The Lakers had the most monumental flame out in franchise history and certainly the biggest of Lebron’s career. The Raiders have had a tremendous off season. There is much to be excited about for the balance of the 2022 campaign. But with missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities it is hard to be excited about sports. Sports has always been a great elixir for our national unease with world events. Baseball took the symbolic lead only cancelling the 1945 All-Star game during WW2. Over 500 MLB players were drafted or enlisted for the cause most notably Bob Feller and Ted Williams in the prime of their career. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants had over a million fans pass through the turnstiles in the 1945 season. The tragedy of that war was half a world away as it is today.

Today, the tyranny of Vlad Putin has pushed a free nation to the hairy edge. Ukraine has battled heroically against the current day Darth Vader and his imperial forces. Russia may have planned to occupy Ukraine, but they are destroying it. Missiles are not only taking out military targets but also schools, apartments, and hospitals. They are driving civilians from their homes while ensuring they have nothing to come home to except a new regime. The civilians caught in the open have been savagely executed indiscriminately by Russian troops. When the Russian Warship Mokva telegraphed demands for Mariupol to surrender, Ukraine telegraphed back “Go F—yourself, Russia.”  A week later, they sank the Russian ship with two of their own missiles. Putin was none too happy about that. He removed his field general and replaced him with his butcher of Syria. Syria subcontracted out their civil war to the Russians. The Russian contractors brutally crushed the Syrian resistance with the same tactics soon to be unleashed on Ukraine. Vlad’s Russia has always towered over their former states, but ruthless obliteration is not just unprecedented, it is a criminal in the world theater. It is our woebegone mental struggle from afar to process these calamities.

Putin got his Olympic moment with Sochi in 2014. The Russian leader was not the Soviet Union leader, just the Russian leader. Mike Gorbachev had broken up the empire while Putin was in the KGB. Putin always wanted to play another round of Risk with the region. At Sochi on the world stage, VP beamed at Fisht Olympic Stadium for the Opening Ceremonies. A record 88 nations qualified to compete in these games. Putin was pushing for the best results for his uBer nation to show the world. In January 2015, it was uncovered that there had been Russian State sponsored doping schemes for decades leading up the games. Russian scientists were working as hard as their cyber hackers to find masking agents and sleight of hand with tests. Russian test samples were a back alley three card monte with the negative test sample always being the one turned over to the authorities. Russia was banned from competing as a country at future Olympics, but the ROC athletes were allowed to participate. The destruction of Ukraine will change all of that for Russian Athletes for the rest of their lives. They will be a world pariah right beside their Putin.

The Sochi Olympics were February 7-23, 2014. Russia began their annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea on February 27, 2014. Putin has always played the long game through each of his invasions and the five US Presidents he fretted a response. This is not Crimea, Chechnya or Georgia. The world watched and forgot those incursions. Ukraine is a shining democracy in post-Soviet Union history. It has built a national identity and a robust economy. Russia’s actions have solidified the world’s rebuke of Putin. He will not be able to wait this wickedness out. He will be the Kim Jung of Europe.

And now back to our regularly scheduled diatribes.

The Laker season was lamentable. Tapped as an early favorite the Lake show did not even make the playoffs. The HBO original series about Showtime was more interesting than the 2022 team. Anthony Davis has only played seventy-six games since the 2019 bubble championship. The Laker’s are paying AD $32mil a season. That works out to $895K per game or $39,000 per point. The Yard has not filled our sabermetrics position yet, but we do think that those are not sustainable metrics for any franchise. The King did play 101 out of the 153 scheduled games. The Lakers got Karl Malone and Gary Payton old fast. James is getting old, and Davis is playing old. The Lakers owe the failed Russ Westbrook experiment $91 million. The fourth highest payroll in the NBA is watching the playoffs from their expensive home entertainment systems. The Lakers are the oldest team in the NBA and with all of Rob Pelinka’s shrewd trades the Lakers are left with no draft picks in the 2022 draft. With no draft picks or cap space, the Lakers are a legacy platform that needs a hard reboot. Firing Frank Vogel was a start, but the Lakers will not be a championship threat with this troupe regardless of the conductor.

After a slow start in Colorado, the Dodgers are starting to hit as forecasted. Cody Bellinger is batting 7^th or 8^th depending on the pitcher. This stout batting order has the 2019 MVP in the bottom three. The pitching flamed out last year with key starter Dustin May needing Tommy John surgery. Kershaw and Scherzer ran out of gas while Trevor Bauer self-destructed. An all-star pitching rotation was nullified, and last season ended prematurely. Clayton came back on a one-year deal and pitched a perfect seven in Colorado. 21 Rockies up and 21 Rockies down with thirteen Ks of the 21 outs. People were shocked with Robert’s pulling him on a potentially historic night. There are only 23 perfect games in MLB history. Kershaw may or may not have gotten to that finish line. He had eighty pitches in his first start with hopefully another thirty-one starts for 2022. Roberts made the right call at the right time.

The NFL draft comes to Las Vegas for the first time. The NFL had great disdain for all things LV for decades but now embraces the fervor of a fan base with scratch on a player or an outcome. Las Vegas knows how to put on a show and the 2022 draft will be legendary. There are NFL fan venues being created all over the resort corridor. The main stage is being built on the Bellagio fountains. Several LV acts including “O” will be performing throughout the three-day event. It can be hard to get excited about any draft but this one should be lively.

Yard Boost:  Baseball has been able to lift the spirits of a nation as well as an individual fan for over a century. Babe Ruth famously promised a sick Johnny Sylvester during a hospital visit that he would hit a homerun that day in 1926. The Babe did not disappoint. Last week, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Brett Phillips extended an invitation to cancer patient 8-year-old Chloe Grimes. Chloe was fighting her second battle with cancer. Phillips is her favorite player and he provided her with a make a wish game moment. He brought her down on the field before the game. She gave him a signed softball and a fight for Chloe bracelet which he wore during the game. When Phillips was coming to bat in the third inning, Bally sports was interviewing Chole live to discuss her special day. In the middle of the interview, Phillips smashed a homerun. Chloe was distracted by the interview and missed the shot but not the moment. She is a superstar.

Baseball and the Azaleas

 The Oakland A’s management has been visiting Las Vegas with a player’s card regularity these past several months. The A’s have been fighting for a new stadium since moving from Kansas City to Oakland in 1968. They have never gotten any traction on building  a new stadium and they play in the worst facility of any major sports franchise. The Giants have blocked all their efforts building anything in Norcal outside of Oakland. The Giants claiming sovereign markets. No surprise, they claim LV on my MLB App for local blackouts. The Pumpkin squad did arrive a decade earlier, but the A’s have had more success than their Silicon Valley elitists from across the first bay bridge. Oakland is trying to hang onto the A’s with a $3 billion pipe dream development including a ballpark as the anchor tenant. They are facing stiff opposition from all fronts for the massive spend with other pressing social needs. Defending the complexity of the situation, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said “It is going to be more complicated, and you have got to be much more environmentally focused when you are developing on the precious California coastline than in the gross desert of Las Vegas. So, yes, it is more complicated, and it is totally worth it.”  There was immediate backlash from Las Vegas for the gross mischaracterization. Yard staff has been searching Google Earth to see where the precious California coastline interacts with Oakland. We have checked our social media contacts, and no one is bragging about their beach house in Oakland. Las Vegas is not certain we want the rebuilding A’s either but we have seen some gross street scenes in Oakland so please no stones, Libby.

What a glorious April day when the first round of the Masters and the MLB Opener occur on the same day. Two of the Yards most treasured pursuits baseball and The Masters all at once. The Masters happens every year on this weekend, but baseball had to orchestrate a 99-day labor strike to get the timing right. We wondered why 99 days? Baseball is driven by stats and a hundred days seemed more statistically relevant. Transcending all of it is Tiger Woods making his triumphant return to Augusta. El Tigre might have never walked again after wrapping his corporate sponsored Genesis SUV around a Palos Verdes Estate pine tree.

Woods is not only walking Augusta he is +1 after two rounds of his first competition in over five hundred days. It is magnificent to see the GOAT back on the grass. Woods has never missed the cut at the Masters as a pro. He will be playing this weekend. The Masters is Tiger’s home track. He has played in over 25 Masters in his career carding five green jackets. Tiger has more Masters moments than any golfer in history. It is a Ken Burns ten-part series. CBS certainly hopes he is in his red Nike best on Sunday afternoon.

Augusta is perfect for Woods’ return besides its lack of diversity. The Masters is the only Major that is played on the same course every year. The greens crew has moved sand traps and tricked up the Azaleas for the tournament, but it is the same 1930 Georgia real estate. Tiger knows every nook, cranny, and whoop dee do around Amen corner through Rae’s Creek. He will be formidable if still in contention Sunday afternoon. His 46-year-old body may not let him get there but it is thrilling to see him playing again with today’s best.

That baseball is almost opening on time is an extraordinary accomplishment. With completion of the 2021 World Series, the owners immediately locked the players out when their Collective Bargaining Agreement expired. Rather than risk a mid-season work stoppage, they were not going to let the season start at all without a new CBA. Mid-season strikes are still painful reminders for many fans. In 1994, the Montreal Expos were on their way to the World Series. The New York Yankees were tracking towards their first title since 1981. San Francisco Giants slugger Matt Williams’ had forty-three home runs and Seattle Mariners star Ken Griffey Jr. had 40. Both had a chance to break Roger Maris' then-season record for home runs of sixty-one. This was before Barriod and McCreatine smashed 70+. San Diego Padres star Tony Gwynn had a .394 batting average and a chance to become the first player since Ted Williams in 1941 to bat .400 or higher. On August 12, 1994, baseball stopped and then wiped out the 1994 WS. The Expos might still be in Montreal if they had made the WS that season. Much more than games were lost that year, fans and history disappeared with them.

Public opinion on Major League baseball is divided regarding the current relevance of our national pastime. The NFL dominates the sports landscape even outside of their season. The NBA has some of the biggest individual stars on the planet in any sport. Hockey is exploding across the US and baseball is well the national pastime. The Yard has heard it before and often. There are too many games, they take too long, the hot dogs and beer are too expensive. All are valid points and baseball has tried to address some of them. Yard staff doubts there will ever be a reduction in the number of games or the price of beer and hot dogs. We do believe the pace of play can change with tweaks. We like the Ghost runner starting on second base in extra innings. It is not a fun start for the close to start with a runner on base. But on a Tuesday night with the beer shut down three innings earlier, let’s get it done. It is a school night. The NL DH will cut down on pitching changes and put another bat in the lineup. We love the history, the nuances, and the Dodgers.

Back at the Club: If you grew up in LA during the Magic Johnson Laker era, Winning Time on HBO is a fun ride. John C. Reilly as Jerry Bush is brilliant. The swashbuckler outdueled Jack Kent Cooke for ownership of the team and a legacy that far surpasses him. The personalities and the stories are brought to life by Adam Mackay with his original cadence. It is based on the book Showtime, but HBO could not live with that title.

Breaking News: Shout out to Stuart at the Payroll for breaking the Steve Lavin hire at University of San Diego. The Yard got caught up in the second season of Emily in Paris and missed the notification. Former Bruin coach Lavin was the first UCLA coach ever to lose to USD, so it is fitting that they have now hired him. USD Alum Stuart is our point person for that market. Go Toreros!