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.