The Souls of the Children

The Yard has staff that monitor all the major news outlets to bring stories to the production team.  Some days it is a tough slog but lately it has been a surreal one.  With Russian tanks still obliterating Ukraine towns and villages, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are stealing all the headlines. Ukraine is fighting a real terror in Russia but has been relegated to page six.  Depp and Heard are fighting a self-inflicted race to the bottom that neither will win.  There is a malevolent baby formula shortage that is layering more anxiety on already stressed families.  The Supreme court leakage on Roe versus Wade being overturned lit the protest on both sides of the divide.  The lack of formula and the abortion ruling are being hotly debated in the Senate and in public.  The protests have been warlike from both camps.  Strange bedfellows those two prescient issues. Stranger bedfellows are the ancient predominantly male judges who are deciding what a woman can do with her biology.  Most Americans, besides the religious right, believe in a woman’s right to choose.

 

The furtive debate about Roe versus Wade has been ongoing since its original passage. Why fifty years later this “abomination” needs to be overturned is unclear. There is precedent in maintaining a law that has been effective for women ‘s rights for five decades.  Why now?  So, parents can raise their children and send them off to school to be killed by a deranged eighteen-year-old gunman with an assault rifle.  There has been rabid debate about abortion since the Supreme Court leak, but 19 children got killed in Texas last week, but no productive debate on gun laws.  Bearded lizard Ted Cruz denounced the shooting but yelled that nothing the Dems were proposing would have stopped that shooting! Ted did not indicate what he is proposing besides dropping out of a keynote address at the NRA national convention in Houston.  Ted does not have any fresh ideas, but he knows how to avoid bad optics.  Why are we as a nation so eager to force women to have unwanted children but unwilling to create an environment where children can survive attending school?  When Yard was raising the Yardlets, school survival was never in question. We wanted our children to thrive!

 

The US diplomats take China to task on a regular basis over human rights abuses.  The Uyghurs and other Chinese Muslims are systemically having their human rights denied.   The Yard is not involved in this discussion, but we have never heard of a mass shooting anywhere in China.  The Chinese have denounced the US hypocrisy because our children are killed in their classrooms and minorities are harassed by police.  They have a point.  We throw stones at them half a world away and we cannot protect our children in our neighborhoods.  We are a country that allows an 18-year-old to buy an assault rifle on May 17, 375 rounds of ammo on May 18 and then kill nineteen children on May 25.  We cannot figure out a way to break that chain of events. Other countries have had mass shootings that lead to significant gun law changes and have had few if any future incidents.  New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia all dealt with their shooting crisis with swift government actions.  In the US, there have already been 213 mass shootings in 2022 in 148 days. There were 698 in 2021. We do not believe anyone finds this acceptable. How is the US a World Leader when we allow our children to be murdered in their classrooms in startling manner and numbers! We are the world leader in deaths in the classroom.  Our politicians cannot figure out how to feed our children before they are sent off to war in the classroom.

 

One of the loudest voices of outrage was NBA coach Steve Kerr.  He was more outraged than Ted Cruz or most other politicians.  Kerr is in the NBA Finals for the sixth time in eight years.  He has a lot going on, but he is also a father of three.  Gun violence ripped Kerr’s life apart when his father was assassinated by Jihadists while serving as President of American University in Beirut.  Malcom Kerr had done nothing wrong except to be an American target in a dangerous land.  It was not innocent children being killed but a 52-year-old father ripped from his family. Kerr was an 18-year-old freshman at University of Arizona when he lost his father to two shots to the back of his head.  Coach Kerr realizes that there are far more important things than the NBA Finals.  No child in Uvalde did anything wrong, either. The soul of our nation is under siege.

 

Mocking the Draft

 The NFL draft came to Las Vegas last week with the commotion befitting a Super Bowl. Blue Men, Ice Cube, Wayne Newton, and Marcus Allen all graced the stage with Roger. The most dominant performance was the Make a Wish youth for the New York Giants. He brought the house down and just may be the secret sauce the Giants have needed for decades. The Yard staff was all in for the first three picks and then Ms. Yard was like WTF is this? It was hard to defend because it is just a sports draft. With the Outlander season finale queued in the DVR or the prospects of watching Roger Goodell come to the stage 32 times? No brainer. We went for Jamie and Claire in hopes of gratuitous sex while being pursued by the British army in 18^th century North Carolina. Those two never disappoint. Goodell often disappoints.

The Mock draft industry is back to the fringe. Mel Kuyper Jr. will not be seen again for 6-8 months. Yard summer interns have not compared actual results with mock forecasts, but the correct guesses are very few. There are NFL draft discussions from the day after the Super Bowl until now ad nauseum but, everyone always gets it wrong. Mock drafts are more like tele psychics. The draft usually gets blown up with a positive test for weed or bong gas masks on Instagram or other lapses in judgement. The Patriots pulling second round prospect Cole Strange into the first round was strange. No pundit saw that one coming except Bill Belichick. The controversy came before the draft when Cleveland traded for Deshaun Watson. Watson signed a massive new  contract while 20+ lawsuits over his alleged sexual misconduct with multiple female massage therapists are pending. Houston PD did not pursue legal action against Watson, but class action size civil action is still pending. Gloria Allred is in hot pursuit of his assets. The much-maligned QB should have enough money to pay and still maintain his car collection. The NFL will suspend but not Bauer. NFL owner Robert Kraft has enjoyed the services of certain massage therapists and he still is beloved by Patriot nation. Baker Mayfield was not the franchise changing quarterback that Cleveland hoped when they invested the first pick with him. The Bake show was not bad, just not great. He did have a new coach and offensive coordinator every season. Those machinations do not help a young QB develop to his highest level. Mayfield did get multiple commercial endorsements and a viral feud with OBJ and his father. OBJ has a ring and Baker does not know where he is playing next year. He never had legal issues or massage issues.

In other related sexual miscreant news, Trevor Bauer has been suspended for two years for the medieval notoriety he brought to the MLB last year. The Pasadena PD refused to prosecute the case. Bauer felt this was akin to exoneration but that is not how Commissioner Manfred saw it. TB’s action might not have been illegal, but baseball is the most family-oriented sport of any of the majors. Baseball fans make generational passage of their fandom and folklore to their familial community. My first sporting event was watching rookie Don Sutton pitch a 2-hit shutout of the Red’s during the summer of 1966. Daddio got the company seats down the first base line. Sutton would go on to an HOF career while I imagined the Yard. Baseball fans do not need to explain to their young fans what Trevor Bauer was doing with another consenting adult in his home. He would be booed everywhere, every  time he pitched for the next two years. Bauer creeps in the ugly, dark recesses of human behavior and would soil anything he touches. A UFC athlete might still find fan support but not an MLB pitcher. The Dodgers are thrilled he is suspended. They paid him over $30 million last year for six starts before the self-immolation. They are now off the hook for $70 million with his suspension. At his best, Bauer was a difficult teammate with exceptional skills. We learned he is something far worse.

This past weekend, the New York Mets pitched the second no-hitter in team history. It was a team effort that required five pitchers throwing 159 pitches to get the no-no. The Mets have had majestic pitching in their history. Tom Seaver was the leader in the clubhouse, but he never got a no hitter as a Met. Nolan Ryan pitched seven no hitters but none with New York. Doc Gooden and Jacob deGrom could not get it done. The only other Met no-hitter was Johan Santana in 2012. Santana pitched his way into New York sports history with the first no-hitter in Met history. Manager Bobby Valentine fretted with each pitch. Not just for the no-hitter but Santana’s pitch count was climbing. In the end Johan got his gem with 134 pitches. The Mets and Santana nailed it and Santana’s career effectively ended that night. He floated around on his legend earning $3 million/year until 2015. Johan never pitched in the majors again after the 2012 season. In 2022, the Met starter had eighty-eight pitches when Bucky pulled him. It was the right thing to do in May. As was Dave Roberts pulling Clayton after 88 pitches while pitching a perfecto a few weeks back. The Dodgers did not need a perfect game to win that one, but they do need Kersh in October.

Winning Time: We have commented in recent Yard posts how entertaining “Winning Time” the HBO series on the Laker dynasty in the 1980’s. The executive producer Adam McKay writes and produces entertaining movies working for years with Will Ferrell. Winning Time is a fun ride, but it is not a documentary. Kareem comes across as stoic and difficult. We did not know Kareem that well, but we remember altercations with the public and his bitterness at the time. We did not know Magic and they showed him getting lots of Tookie before settling down with Cookie. He did say that he contracted HIV through having lots of sex. Magic and Kareem objected to their depiction in the series but it was in a chunk of the shaded area of reality's concentric circles. The most outspoken has been the logo – Jerry West. Jerry is characterized as an anxious depressed a-hole. He is never happy, and he battles with new owner Jerry Buss about everything. Back in the day West did resign abruptly before Magic’s first season. West was not all onboard for drafting a 6’9” point guard. Buss kept paying him as a consultant and relied on West for counsel but there was no mutual admiration. Buss was a swashbuckling winner who rose from poverty to amass a real estate fortune. Jerry was a humble West Virginia boy who became the NBA logo. West led the Lakers to the NBA finals nine times in 14-year career. The Lakers lost eight of those finals and West never got over it from all accounts. West claims he is sleepless over the series. He is threatening legal action. Kind of sounds like the Jerry they are depicting, right?