After dark, with adrenaline coursing through his veins, Maksim lay with a clutch of fellow Ukrainian volunteers in a shallow trench, waiting for the Russian armored convoy as it lumbered through wintry sleet east of Mykolaiv.

When the lead Russian vehicle was nearly upon them, the Ukrainians launched a barrage of flaming Molotov cocktails, lighting up the armored personnel carrier so it could be directly targeted with a rocket-propelled grenade.

The tactic worked, recalls Maksim, a welder with a taste for dragon tattoos, from his hospital bed days after the attack. His team had stopped the four armored vehicles, and captured or killed their Russian occupants.

Indeed, in the past 12 days, Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers have fended off multiple Russian attacks in and around Mykolaiv, a strategic port city of 500,000 seen as the gateway to Odessa, on the Black Sea.

Maksim was so close that shrapnel from the first RPG round struck the back of his skull. His head is now bandaged, framing blue eyes and a round face with a boyish beard.

“The Russians are nothing; they don’t have any experience,” says Maksim, echoing an increasingly confident assessment shared by Ukrainian commanders and officials here alike.

The 22-year-old, who declined to give a last name, laughs when reminded of his own lack of military experience – he signed up just days before, with seven childhood buddies, to defend Ukraine from what has become a brutal Russian assault that began Feb. 24.

“I went through all levels of Call of Duty!” says Maksim with a smirk, referring to the realistic combat video game.

His fight near Snihurivka village, some 40 miles east of Mykolaiv, was one tiny fragment, on one battlefield, of the response to a multipronged Russian offensive against Ukraine that involves 190,000 troops and is entering its third week.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

But any Russian expectations of swiftly toppling the pro-Western government in Kyiv or of overrunning Ukraine’s military defenses have now devolved into siege tactics, heavy shelling, and missile strikes against cities, from the suburbs of the capital, Kyiv, to Mariupol, near the Crimean Peninsula.

Ukrainian optimism

Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers who have directly fought the Russians on the front lines around Mykolaiv illustrate the growing challenges faced by the Russian advance, and some reasons for nascent optimism on the Ukrainian side.

Ultimately, Russian firepower and manpower far outweigh Ukrainian resources. But those Ukrainians who have taken to the battlefield here describe how the Russian military is much more effective firing at long range than in close combat.

They say Ukrainian artillery has wiped out entire Russian armored units, and especially targeted fuel trucks to stop advances in their tracks.

And after talking to captured Russian soldiers – who are often conscripts, with little understanding of their mission in a foreign country – they say Russian soldiers’ morale is low, with shortages of food and fuel in an unfamiliar and frozen landscape. 

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A family passes an entryway pocked by shrapnel from an earlier rocket strike, on their way to a basement bomb shelter as an air raid siren sounds in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. The city has been under frequent bombardment by Russian forces trying to advance along the Black Sea coast.

They contrast that with Ukrainians who are motivated to defend their own land, know the terrain intimately, and have swiftly escalated defensive preparations.

“Ukrainian troops’ performance is 10 marks out of five,” says Maj. Gen. Dmitry Marchenko, commander of Ukrainian forces defending Mykolaiv.

“Russians don’t know our territory, and their tactics are based on tactics from 1941. Modern warfare is very different from those tactics,” he says. “Luckily, Ukraine chose a European direction; we had a lot of mutual training and instructors from Europe. This gives us an advantage.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Frontline trench positions used by Ukrainian army troops to repel Russian attacks, east of the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 10, 2022. Ukrainian forces have fended off several concerted ground attacks, and officers and officials say they are optimistic that they can continue to stop the Russian advance along the Black Sea coast.

Access to American satellite imagery enables the Ukrainian armed forces to “see even those who go to the toilet,” the general told journalists here Wednesday. Captured Russians said their orders since Monday had been to enter Mykoliav “at any price,” he said.

“Those who give up are guaranteed to be left alive,” said Major General Marchenko. “There are so many of them that we don’t know where to put them.”

Vitalii Kim, the governor of Mykolaiv region, strikes a similarly defiant note, bordering on bravado. On Monday and Tuesday alone, he said, Ukrainian forces had captured 37 Russian soldiers. They were ill-equipped, and “dirty, naked, hungry, asking for food and water,” he told journalists Wednesday.

“If the city is blockaded, we can hold out for two months and we will fight back, because they are weak,” said Mr. Kim. “We are following the overall Ukrainian defensive strategy. If it was up to us, we would show our strength already” and counterattack, he added.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Tires and Molotov cocktails are piled at intersections to thwart any possible Russian advance into the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 10, 2022.

Barricades and checkpoints

Every corner of each intersection in Mykolaiv is piled with used tires and a few Molotov cocktails, whose smoke, when they burn, will block the view of oncoming Russian soldiers in the case of urban combat.

Checkpoints made of concrete blocks, anti-tank barriers, and sandbags have been moved into place. Soldiers along the front lines are armed with anti-tank weapons – some partly visible under tarpaulins – and have dug and reinforced trenches.

Among the soldiers is Artur, who last Sunday single-handedly stopped a Russian Tigr fighting vehicle that had lost its way, and forced four Russian soldiers to give up. The 25-year-old reservist, a trained economist with a slight build, has in the past fought Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region.

Standing beside the burnt remains of the vehicle, his face covered with a black wrap against the cold, Artur describes how he recognized the “Z” symbol on the vehicle, which is used by Russian forces to identify themselves.

He ordered them to surrender, he says, cursing at them when they cracked open the armored door. The Russians, shocked to find a Ukrainian soldier, slammed the door shut and tried to back away. Artur emptied four magazines of bullets – 120 rounds – at them from his AK-47 assault rifle.

“I started shooting, shot at their tires, threw a grenade into it, and the car started burning after that, so they had to get out and give up,” recalls Artur, who didn’t give a last name.

He says he tried not to communicate with the Russians, but says they are generally “too afraid” to engage in close combat. “We won't stop until we fight them off our land,” he says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A Ukrainian soldier who gave the name Artur stands beside the burned-out Russian Tigr fighting vehicle that his unit says he first attacked some days before, leading to the capture of four Russian soldiers, at a frontline position east of the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 10, 2022.

A deadly barrage

Vitalii Nortsov, a junior surgeon in the Ukrainian navy, who was guarding a checkpoint north of Mykolaiv that came under sudden attack, also found his Russian enemies fearful.

The Russians “can only act from a long distance, with tanks and artillery,” he says. “But when they are close, they are weak and they can’t fight. They give up easily.”

Mr. Nortsov says he was knocked off his feet by the first tank round that hit near his checkpoint. Subsequent rounds “were very precise,” killing five of his comrades and wounding him and 10 others.

He is now recovering in the hospital, a bandage over a swollen cheek where shrapnel cut through to his teeth. His thick black beard frames a tanned face, but his forehead is pale from constantly wearing a helmet.

On the sandbags outside the hospital are painted words from a song sung by Ukrainian soccer fans, which during the war has become a common Ukrainian slogan denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin with a vulgarity.

“It was really hard for them to take that checkpoint; that’s why they were shelling it,” says the heavyset tattooed sailor, who has been in the navy since 2015.

“They have a different strategy,” says Mr. Nortsov. “They are not on their land; they are freezing. ... They just shoot and try to demolish everything.”

That’s one reason Ukrainian soldiers say they remain committed to the fight.

“I hope this is over by the time I leave” the hospital, says Mr. Nortsov. “If not, I will go back to the fight.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Donations are delivered to a humanitarian aid center in anticipation of further Russian attacks, in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 9, 2022.

Helping doctors cope

That is the spirit that doctors at the hospital say they encounter in wounded civilians and fighters alike – high morale that Russian troops far from home can’t match.

Dr. Fiodorova Valentina, who, like other staff here, has stayed at the hospital for the last 15 days, says wounded Ukrainian soldiers “are very anxious that they are here ... and not able to go back” into combat.

“Doctors are crying, and the soldiers say, ‘Don’t worry, we will win,’” says Dr. Valentina. “The soldiers are helping us to cope.”

That optimism comes from what Ukrainians on the battlefield are learning about a behemoth of an adversary so far unable to turn its numerical, hardware, and ordnance superiority into victory.

“Our artillery guys are killing Russians each week, each day, each hour,” says the deputy commander of a National Guard battalion, a captain who gave only his first name, Nikolai.

Wrapped against the cold, the young man’s face shows the wear of years of fighting in the Donbass region, where he says he “protected” Ukrainian citizens in what was largely deemed enemy territory.

“It makes sense today to do what we can, anything, to stop this Russian aggression.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian troops search for the still-missing remains of one of five soldiers killed days earlier in a Russian cruise missile strike on the headquarters of the Ukrainian army's 79th Brigade, in the strategic port city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, March 10, 2022.

His guardsmen supported the army unit that was forced in the first days of the war to retreat from Kherson, a city 45 miles southeast of here that remains the only major population center that Russian troops have captured.

Now tasked with protecting key installations in Mykolaiv, he shows awareness of the wider battlefield. Early Thursday morning, south of the city, for example, Ukrainian troops frustrated a Russian attempt to insert troops and captured the chopper’s pilot, Captain Nikolai says.

And Ukrainian shellfire stopped a Russian convoy that had been seen 13 miles north of the city, says the officer, in an apparent bid to surround Mykolaiv, according to open-source geolocation data that was posted on social media. The town’s residents heard outgoing artillery fire multiple times on Wednesday night.

“They have no time to sleep,” says Captain Nikolai.

“I guess this is the place where we will stop the Russians for all time, and make Ukrainian citizens in the south free,” he says of the importance of Mykolaiv. “That is my opinion.”

As the excruciating videos streamed in from Ukraine this week – crying mothers cradling their babies after the Russian destruction of a maternity hospital among them – calls intensified for a no-fly zone over the country to protect civilians. 

It’s a moral imperative, petitioners said. 

“If you do not do this, you will have to share the responsibility for the lives and suffering of the civilian population of Ukraine who are being killed by rocket attacks from Russian planes,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the NATO alliance. 

Yet war is an arena where moral imperatives run headlong into moral complexity. Enforcing a no-fly zone could escalate the conflict and risk even greater human suffering. That’s a key reason that NATO leaders and outside experts on military conflict have opposed the idea, opting instead for other ways of aiding Ukraine.

“In my judgment a no-fly zone would be the equivalent of luring NATO or the U.S. into a war with Russia,” says Richard Kohn, former chief historian for the United States Air Force and now professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

It would also help Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify what he’s doing, he adds. “He would be able to say, ‘Look, NATO is killing our boys.’ It would provide a propaganda victory and help Putin combat opposition in Russia. That’s not something you want to do.”

So, although calls for the use of Western air power to help Ukraine are rooted in dreadful anticipation and understandable outrage, U.S. and NATO military leaders have been batting them down with what some see as stony pragmatism. 

“We are not part of this conflict,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week after the alliance denied Ukraine’s no-fly zone request. 

On this, there has been rare U.S. bipartisan agreement. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida called no-fly zones a “catchphrase” that could lead to “basically the beginning of World War III.” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said they are “a bad idea,” and tweeted that “shooting down Russian planes would require a declaration of war from Congress – which isn’t happening.”

That said, there are plenty of ways the alliance has been willing to help Ukraine, including by sending in machine guns, ammunition, rocket launchers, and, as one U.S. military official put it, “enough Javelins [missiles] to counter every Russian tank.” 

The Ukrainians have used these weapons to great effect, defense officials note. But Russia, “to make up for their lack of ground movement and the lack of air superiority,” is stepping up its missile strikes and “dumb bombs,” a senior U.S. defense official said this week. Because of their lack of precision guidance, these arms are more likely to hit civilian targets.  

Roman Koksarov/AP

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg greets Slovakia's troops during his visit to Adazi military base in Kadaga, Latvia, on March 8, 2022. Denying Ukraine's request for a no-fly zone, he explained that the aim is to avoid “something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe involving many more countries and much more suffering.”

This in turn raises the likelihood of yet more heart-rending footage of human misery in the weeks to come. Yet amid calls to “do something,” leaders will be sure to attend to another goal – avoiding scenarios that risk drawing nuclear weapons into the conflict.  

Mr. Stoltenberg of NATO alluded to the dilemma. “We understand the desperation” in Ukraine, he said. But the aim is to avoid “something that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe involving many more countries and much more suffering.”

“So hard to watch”

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe from 2014 to 2017, was one of a number of signatories to a widely publicized letter this week calling for a limited no-fly zone for Ukraine. Its authors ran the spectrum from former senior Pentagon officials to a former supreme allied commander of NATO. 

“I signed a letter endorsing the idea partly because it’s so hard to watch video every day of civilians being targeted,” says Mr. Hodges, in Frankfurt, Germany. 

But in the days since, he has reflected on whether it’s actually the best way forward. “I’ve endorsed it, but as I keep thinking about it, I don’t think it’s going to be the solution.” 

Today, he believes the best bet for countering Russia is “caution, calmness, and keeping the alliance together,” says Mr. Hodges, who is now Pershing Chair at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis. “I’m not against a no-fly zone, but I am against doing it without the alliance agreeing to it.” 

The alliance is against a no-fly zone in large part because it is not the simple endeavor that the phrase seems to suggest: Namely, it requires shooting down aircraft and destroying air defense systems based in Russia. 

“When the FAA issues a ‘no-fly’ order, everybody stops flying,” says retired Col. Mark Cancian, senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “In a military situation, adversaries will ignore it and so you have to enforce it.”

And that “would mean someone would have to then go and fight against Russian air forces,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained last week during a press briefing in Latvia. 

This is why Mr. Putin can justifiably warn that those who take part in a no-fly zone would be “participating in the armed conflict.” 

What no-fly zones can and can’t do

In the past the U.S. and NATO have imposed no-fly zones only when their air power is so overwhelming that it can be done without much – but still some – combat. This was largely the case in Iraq in 1992, when a no-fly zone was established to shield the Kurds from attack by Saddam Hussein, as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993, to protect the new country from air attacks by Bosnian Serb forces. It was also true in Libya in 2011, when NATO established a no-fly zone amid fears that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi would commit war crimes. 

In Ukraine, NATO would not only have to contend with Russian aircraft in its skies, but also with the Russian surface-to-air missiles that blanket nearly all of the country. 

What’s more, the vast majority of the harm that Russia is inflicting is coming from artillery and missiles, not bombs dropped by aircraft. 

Of the more than 710 missiles that Russia has launched against Ukraine, half are coming from inside Russia, according to the Pentagon. The rest are coming from Russian systems inside Ukraine, with a handful coming from Belarus and Russian ships in the Black Sea. 

To help Ukraine defend against this onslaught, NATO and even formerly neutral nations like Sweden and Finland are rushing weapons into Ukraine, including machine guns, rockets, and even Stinger surface-to-air missiles, to help them defend against Russian aircraft and tanks. 

Indeed, within a week of President Joe Biden’s approval, most of the $350 million in a new package of U.S. military aid had already landed in Ukraine, “which is an unbelievable level of speed,” a senior defense official noted in a press briefing Tuesday. 

Time is of the essence as the Russian military works to encircle and isolate Ukraine’s major cities.

In the meantime, the great powers continue to test their deconfliction phone line, with about a dozen calls since the war began. “We want to keep making sure it’s working,” the senior defense official said this week. “We make the phone call, see if somebody’s picking up, then acknowledge each other’s presence and hang up.”

It’s an acknowledgment, too, that averting any misunderstandings that could ultimately lead to nuclear war is NATO’s overarching moral imperative – and the greatest challenge the alliance must weigh.

Last week, Guto Pasko, a documentary filmmaker, invited relatives in Ukraine who are suffering from Russia’s invasion to seek shelter in his home.

The relatives are distant – both in the sense that Mr. Pasko lives more than 6,500 miles away in Brazil, and in that his great-grandparents were the last in his immediate family to have lived in Ukraine, emigrating in the late 1890s.

But Mr. Pasko isn’t the only Brazilian witnessing the attack on Ukraine from afar who is stepping up to help. With 600,000 citizens of Ukrainian descent, Brazil is home to the third-largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world outside Russia, behind Canada and the United States.

The heart of “Ukrainian Brazil” is in the municipality of Prudentópolis. There, vibrant pysanky eggs are painted at Easter, parades take over the streets on religious holidays, a folk-dance troupe houses a vast collection of traditionally embroidered garments, and Ukrainian is an official language, even taught in public schools.

It is these cultural activities – dance, art, language, and religion – that have helped Ukrainian Brazilians hold on tight to their roots. And the fortitude that has surprised the international community as Ukrainians face Russian air and ground attacks is in the blood of Ukrainians everywhere, Mr. Pasko says.

“[President Vladimir] Putin may be kicking us off of our land and trying to kill us, but you only have to look at our history to see you can’t kill the Ukrainian spirit,” he says.

“Yes, I’m Brazilian; we’re in Brazil. But we have the heart and soul and blood of Ukraine.”

Diego Vara/Reuters

A Brazilian girl of Ukrainian descent lights candles during a Mass at a Ukrainian Orthodox church, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Canoas, Brazil, March 3, 2022.

You don’t have to be Ukrainian

Ukrainians came to Brazil in three waves, says Henrique Schlumberger Vitchmichen, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Ukrainian Brazilian communities.

The first immigrants, at the turn of the last century, came in response to advertisements seeking farmers to work the land and enjoy Brazil’s riches. Instead they found hunger and disease, but they settled nonetheless, building simple wooden homes reminiscent of structures still common in western Ukraine.

Today, the mostly rural municipality of Prudentópolis is dotted with the rounded domes of some three dozen Byzantine-style churches, where congregants still gather wearing traditionally embroidered clothes.  

More Ukrainians made the journey following World Wars I and II, fleeing oppression, violence, and the confiscation of their land by outside governments.

The Ukrainian spoken in Prudentópolis is a relic. Locals who have traveled to Ukraine are told they speak like people’s great-grandparents.

“They could understand me, but my Ukrainian was from another time,” recalls Mr. Pasko, who will release his fifth documentary film about Ukraine and Brazil this year. 

An estimated 75% of Prudentópolis’ 52,000 inhabitants are of Ukrainian ancestry, and their culture has seduced even their non-Ukrainian neighbors. The head of the Vesselka folkloric dance group, for example, Fernando Demenech, has no Ukrainian blood, but he presides each August over a sit-down dinner for 1,000 guests when troupe members sing and dance, the women wearing traditional skirts and intricate flower wreaths in their hair, and the men clad in embroidered vests.

Carla Carniel/Reuters

Brazilian descendants of Ukrainian immigrants sing during a Mass at Paróquia Imaculada Conceição, a Ukrainian Catholic church in São Paulo, after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Most of Vesselka’s dancers are under age 30, an unusual crowd in a small town that is accustomed to seeing its youth fleeing to bigger cities. And many of them “are here because their parents or grandparents were part of the group,” says Mr. Demenech. “This is passed from generation to generation. It’s what keeps the group alive.”

Mr. Demenech was returning from rehearsal when he heard the news of Russia’s invasion. “It was a day when we were paralyzed here, only watching the news.”

But it wasn’t long before the Ukrainian Brazilian community jumped into action.

Reaching out

Organizations like Frente BrazUcra sent volunteers to help refugees in Poland; it has raised more than $31,000 so far to fund such work and gained over 1,000 new members since the war began. Churches are organizing fundraisers, and many individuals are offering their homes to refugees. Mr. Pasko’s relatives have not confirmed if they’ll take him up on his offer.

The attack on Ukraine triggered an enormous response in Brazil, says Nadir Vozivoda, the Prudentópolis culture secretary and representative in the national Humanitas Brazil-Ukraine committee, which was formed last week to bring aid to Ukrainians in Europe and receive refugees in Brazil.

The Brazilian government has announced it will grant humanitarian visas to Ukrainians. State governments in São Paulo and Paraná, home to Prudentópolis, are preparing to welcome a possible fourth wave of Ukrainian immigrants.

“It’s in our culture to preserve traditions and to feel connected,” says Vitorio Sorotiuk, president of the national Ukrainian-Brazilian Central Representation. “If you look at our festivals and celebrations, [Ukrainians] dedicate so much to our ancestors.”

That rings true for Vanessa Jerba, whose grandparents left Ukraine after World War I. She joined a Ukrainian dance group as a teen, and “automatically connected to the part ... that worked with the embroidery of costumes,” she says. She started researching the history and taking craft tutorials online. Now she owns a Ukrainian crafts business.

Recently, she joined artists of Ukrainian descent worldwide to make motanky rag dolls incorporating aesthetics from each artist’s country. She used the green and gold colors of the Brazilian flag and embroidered native birds on her doll’s apron.

Last year, the dolls were exhibited in a number of Ukrainian cities. Today they are in the port of Mykolaiv, but not on show: The town has come under heavy attack by Russian troops, and “I received news that all the dolls are boxed up in a basement,” says Ms. Jerba.

Like the Ukrainian diaspora in Brazil, these dolls from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, she says, are preserving tradition. They’re united with Ukraine, and “waiting in solidarity” for peace.

Reuters

Children throw baseballs in Culver City, California, March 10.

A month after declaring war on Japan and Germany in 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a letter urging him to preserve the coming season. The game is “a definite recreational asset to at least 20,000,000 of the fellow citizens,” the president wrote, “and that in my judgment is thoroughly worthwhile.”

Baseball mattered, just as it did on that July day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Future Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry launched his first major league home run that day – as if to say to the astronauts, “Here you go, boys. Here’s a little piece of home.”

For any given date since the 1880s, there’s a baseball footnote. The game was always there to draw people together – to dazzle, to commemorate, or to salve. It was there through the pandemic, because baseball mattered, just as it had been after the Boston Marathon bombing. The rallying cry of a wounded city, “Boston Strong!,” was coined at Fenway Park.

For 99 days this winter, the pro baseball season was in doubt. The major league’s first labor dispute in a generation threatened a spring without its most enduring national symbol of hope. There were no offseason trades to parse, no February workouts to watch. Opening day was postponed once, and then – almost – once more. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 60% of fans said they had lost interest in the season due to the player lockout.

But the woes of the major league did not spell the end of the game. Sales of balls, bats, and gloves have been growing. The market reaches right around the globe, from New York to Nigeria. The minor league season is already underway. So are college ball, Little League, and softball leagues. In the sandlots where dreams are spoken out loud, younger versions of Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. taunt each other until called home for supper. Because baseball matters.

And because baseball matters, the players and owners of the major league reached a five-year deal on labor conditions March 10 and saved the season. There are even hopeful signs that the dispute did some good. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the deal with a note of contrition. “One of the things that I’m supposed to do is promote a good relationship with our players,” he said. “I think that I have not been successful in that. ... It’s going to be a priority of mine moving forward.”

Older players went to bat for the guys at the margins. “It’s not about me,” said Max Scherzer, the veteran pitcher who helped negotiate better salaries for young and aspiring players. Minor league players make as little as $8,000 a year. Clubs often hold back even their brightest young prospects to prolong the day when they can demand bigger paychecks. “I’ve seen what happens to the other guys,” Mr. Scherzer told The New York Times. “Players in my position understand that there’s players in the minor leagues grinding through.”

The dispute is settled. Spring training camps are open. Fans can stop fretting over the collective  bargaining agreement, whatever that is, and get back to the issues that really matter – like that iffy checked swing call that ended last year’s playoff series between the Dodgers and Giants in the bottom of the ninth of Game 5. C’mon ump, you gotta be kidding.

Spring is coming. And baseball, for all that it’s up against, still brings it home.