debacle

If Wednesday’s game proves to be the last one in a Dodgers uniform for Clayton Kershaw, it will do little to tarnish his legacy, said teammate Mookie Betts.

“He’s gonna have a statue, so we have to kind of keep that in mind,” Betts said. “In the grand scheme of things, Kershaw is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best pitchers to ever do it.

“So if you let two innings kind of ruin that, then you don’t know baseball.”

But, Betts confessed, Kershaw’s relief appearance in Game 3 of the National League Division Series was hard to watch. In those two innings he gave up six hits, five runs, walked three and did not strike out a hitter, turning a tight game into an 8-2 rout for the Philadelphia Phillies, who staved off elimination and extended the best-of-five series to a fourth game Thursday.

“He just didn’t have a great slider tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Clayton pitches off his slider. He was working behind, too. The command wasn’t there tonight.”

Clayton Kershaw bends over during a tough eighth inning.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Kershaw, who went 11-2 as a starter during the regular season, was left off the roster for the wild-card series and hadn’t pitched in nine days when he started warming up in the sixth inning Wednesday. He hadn’t gone that long between appearances all year.

“I did everything I could in between,” he said. “It’s been a while but, you know, I threw [off] flat ground as best I could. It wasn’t there tonight.”

That was obvious from the first batter he faced. Kershaw, who walked a batter every 3.2 innings during the regular season, threw three straight balls to Trea Turner before giving up a single. He would give up two more walks, one intentional, in the inning but escaped harm thanks to a poor baserunning decision by the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and a nice catch by right fielder Teoscar Hernández.

But with Tanner Scott unavailable for personal reasons and Alex Vesia having already pitched twice in the series, Roberts had few other good options against the left-handed-heavy Phillies. So he sent Kershaw out for the eighth and that’s when things really got out of hand.

J.T. Realmuto led off the inning and drove Kershaw’s second pitch — a slider — over the wall in left-center. The Phillies would send eight more men to the plate in the inning, scoring four more times, with two of those runs coming on Schwarber’s second homer of the night.

Kershaw threw first-pitch strikes to just four of the 14 batters he faced and missed the zone with 26 of the 48 pitches he threw overall. That won’t stop the Dodgers from building a statue of him when he retires this fall but it didn’t move him any closer to a second straight World Series ring either.

“I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to pitch behind in the count,” he said.

Kershaw said he felt fine physically but added, “I just wasn’t finding it.”

That wasn’t a problem for the top of the Philadelphia lineup, which found little success in the first two games of the series. The Phillies’ first four hitters — Turner, Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Alex Bohm combined for just three hits, all singles — in 27 at-bats, striking out 12 times. They matched that hit total against Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the span of 11 fourth-inning pitches Wednesday, with Schwarber homering off the roof of the right-field pavilion and Harper and Bohm following with singles.

They finished the night nine for 16 with five runs scored and five RBIs, with Schwarber’s two homers traveling a combined 863 feet.

“We just had a little quick meeting. Nothing crazy, but just focus on the game, win today,” Turner said. “We all know we were kind of pressing as a group in the first two games and wanting to win so bad.”

If Turner and the Phillies win again Thursday, the series returns to Philadelphia and raucous Citizens Bank Park — where the Phillies had the best home record in baseball — for a decisive Game 5 on Saturday. If the Dodgers win, they move on to the NL Championship Series, where Kershaw could get a chance to end his career on a more sonorous note than the clunker he played Wednesday.

“That’s the great thing about baseball,” he said. “You get a new game every day.”

On a tense, chaotic night, with the eyes of the nation trained on the Iowa caucuses, that state’s Democratic Party was counting on a new smartphone app to make everything go smoothly.

In 2016, for the first time, precinct chairs used a smartphone app built by Microsoft to relay results to party headquarters, enabling faster reporting than communicating via telephone hotline. This year, with the state party promising to disclose more granular data than in the past, the job of coding the app went to a fledgling tech firm run by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

It turned out to be a crushing failure.

Throughout the long night, precinct chairs found themselves unable to get the app to work. Many never figured out how to download or install it in the first place. Those who tried to report their results via a backup phone line wound up on hold, sometimes for more than an hour.

After blaming the delay on “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” it wasn’t until well into Tuesday afternoon that the Iowa Democratic Party was confident enough in the accuracy of its figures to begin releasing partial results, drawing complaints that the process had been rendered unfair — the front-running candidates robbed of their rightful momentum, the underperformers able to hide their weakness. And all because of an app that disrupted what it was meant to streamline.

The firm behind the app, Shadow Inc., took responsibility in a series of tweets Tuesday.

“We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers,” the company said, adding that “the underlying data and collection process via Shadow’s mobile caucus app was sound and accurate, but our process to transmit that caucus results data generated via the app to the [Iowa Democratic Party] was not.”

“We feel really terrible,” Shadow Chief Executive Gerard Niemira told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday. He blamed the breakdown on a bug in the app’s code, which he said had been discovered and fixed by 10 p.m. But by then, the damage was done.

Shadow started out as Groundbase, a tech developer co-founded by Niemira and Krista Davis, who worked for the tech team on Clinton’s campaign for the 2016 Democratic nomination. In January 2019, it was acquired by ACRONYM, a Democratic nonprofit founded in 2017 “to educate, inspire, register, and mobilize voters,” according to its website. ACRONYM’s founder and CEO is Tara McGowan, a former journalist and digital producer with President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Niemira had previously worked at kiva.org, a San Francisco nonprofit that makes loans to entrepreneurs and others in the developing world, and Davis had spent eight years as an engineer at Google. Shadow’s chief operating officer, James Hickey, also worked in engineering for Clinton’s campaign.

“When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion,” its website says. “We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side ‘Shadow’ of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”

The company’s main products, according to its website, are a peer-to-peer messaging tool that helps campaigns send text messages to potential voters and a campaign data integration tool. Among Shadow’s larger clients is Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, which paid $42,500 to the firm in July 2019 for “software rights and subscriptions,” according to public disclosures. A Buttigieg representative said that fee was for the text-messaging tool.

Federal Election Commission records also show payments to Shadow from the Texas Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Kirsten Gillibrand’s short-lived presidential campaign also paid the company for unspecified software and fundraising consulting.

In the days leading up to caucus night, Shadow’s app was seen as “a potential target for early election interference,” according to the Des Moines Register.

Those fears didn’t materialize, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. “This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion,” communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night. “The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

But other warning signs before the caucus hinted at the problems ahead, said John Grennan, co-chairman of Iowa’s Poweshiek County Democratic Party. The lack of opportunities to train on the app in advance did not bode well, he said.

“We were supposed to be getting invitations to use it. The invites would never arrive,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t even load the app because it’s such a pain.”

When the big night came, Grennan, who was running the caucus site at Grinnell College, said he couldn’t tell whether the results he input transmitted properly.

“I kept getting kicked off,” Grennan said. He said he called the party’s hotline with a question, but gave up after nearly half an hour on hold. “I’m 90% sure it went through [on the app]. I’ll have to work under the assumption that if it’s not there, they’re going to call me.”

Ultimately, only one-quarter of precinct chairs were able to upload results successfully via the app, Bloomberg reported.

Shadow and its co-founders did not reply to emails seeking comment. ACRONYM appeared to distance itself from the company, describing itself late Monday as a hands-off investor and scrubbing mentions of the January acquisition and launch from its site.

The Iowa Democratic Party did not respond to questions about why it chose Shadow to build the caucus-reporting app.

Nevada’s Democratic Party planned to use Shadow’s app for its upcoming Feb. 22 caucus, but Chair William McCurdy II said Tuesday that his organization “will not be employing the same app or vendor used in the Iowa caucus. We had already developed a series of backups and redundant reporting systems, and are currently evaluating the best path forward.”

Shadow was reportedly cobbled together in two months, with the Iowa and Nevada state Democratic parties each paying around $60,000, a fee several civic tech experts called low.

It was not evaluated by the Department of Homeland Security, which offers free assistance to state and local election officials and authorities to help improve the cyber security of their election systems through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was established in 2018.

Rodrigo Bijou, a security researcher at Sensent, said a two-month development timeframe “sounds kind of insane, especially considering that user testing and a well-planned rollout would be critical for the app to succeed in a caucus format.”

This is not the first snafu the Iowa Democratic Party has run into this election cycle. The party planned to roll out for the first time “virtual caucuses” — a tool for voters who could not attend in person. The plan was dropped in August after the Democratic National Committee raised security concerns.

For a lower price, the party could have staffed phone banks instead of commissioning a mobile system, which is a “security nightmare,” said Douglas Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa, who has studied election security and also served as co-chair of a precinct in the Iowa caucuses four years ago. Telephoning in results works fine, he said, even if it’s slightly slower.

“It was low-tech but it was reliable” he said “[The app] doesn’t sound like it was cost-effective. I can buy a lot of temp workers and phone lines for $60,000.”

Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization, pointed to a decidedly low-tech choice made in Iowa that might prove vital: tallying votes on paper as well.

“The chairs have the actual results recorded. They’re preserved and can be aggregated from those records. That’s a good thing,” Schneider said. “It’s OK that we take the time to get it right.”

Times staff writers Melanie Mason, Matt Pearce, Melissa Gomez and Sam Dean contributed to this report.

The Candace Curse struck early.

On a day the Sparks retired the jersey of the superstar whose departure has coincided with their five-year funk, Candace Parker nearly missed her pregame news conference.

With a room full of media types eager to write that rare positive Sparks story, Parker got caught in convention traffic and was so late that the game was starting and she took just five minutes’ worth of questions.

The Candace Curse struck late.

In the fourth quarter against the Chicago Sky at Crypto.com Arena, in front of a crowd waving yellow Candace Parker T-shirts, the Sparks did something they’ve been doing in bunches since Parker skipped town after the 2020 season.

They lost.

A dreary Sky team missing star Kamilla Cardoso still managed to beat a Sparks team filled with Parker inspiration, winning 92-85 with a fourth-quarter rally and turning what should have been the best day of the year into the worst loss of the season.

“It’s tough,” said the Sparks’ Emma Cannon.

Tough to play, tougher to watch, this being the Sparks’ 12th loss in 17 games as they spiral toward their familiar spot in the bottom of the WNBA standings.

This was once a special franchise, as the classy halftime jersey retirement ceremony for Parker reminded everyone, with Lisa Leslie introducing and Parker embracing and the standing crowd a little teary.

This is now a blight of a franchise, as the surrounding 40 minutes of basketball reminded everyone, the Sparks playing hard but sorely lacking in talent, direction and any sort of playoff future.

In the final five of Parker’s 13 seasons here, the team went 108-50 and reached the Finals twice while winning their third championship.

In the five years since then, they are 55-110 and haven’t reached the playoffs.

If that’s not a curse, it’s a mighty powerful coincidence.

History shows that it could have been, and should have been, so much different.

Parker, a two-time MVP and seven-time All-Star, should have played her entire career here. She never should have left as a free agent. Like Leslie, she should have been a Spark forever.

“No idea how they let her get away,” said Leslie to The Times’ Anthony De Leon.

The jersey of former Sparks player Candace Parker is displayed during her jersey retirement ceremony.

(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)

She left because of problems with then-coach Derek Fisher, because of the Penny Toler postgame-tirade controversy, because the organization had already begun its downward spiral.

If the Mark Walter-led ownership group had been paying attention, she would have stayed a Spark. If the owners put the same effort they put into running the Dodgers, the issues would have been handled and Parker would have been prioritized. She was not, and then she was gone.

“The culture was toxic…I was part of that culture and had been absorbed in that toxicity,” Parker wrote in her book, “The Can-do Mindset.”

She also left because she wanted to play near her Chicago-area hometown, and she later bolted there for Las Vegas, and won titles in both places when she should have been winning them here. Here’s guessing she would have rather won them here, as Sunday she acknowledged Los Angeles had become her home.

“L.A. isn’t just about ball,” she told the crowd during the halftime ceremony. “For me anymore, it’s now where we call home and we will forever call home. So thank you so much, I love you all, I’m so appreciative, and I can’t believe it. Thank you all. Thank you.”

One can’t blame her if she no longer recognizes her former team. The Sparks no longer have a superstar, a deep bench, a championship hope in hell.

Full disclosure: I am a Sparks honk. I’m such a fan that my daughter MC and I have partial season tickets.

Also full disclosure: When picking our seats for this season, we had a choice to sit behind either bench, so we took the ones behind the visiting bench. The visitors always have more stars, the visitors are always more fun.

Certainly, these Sparks have some shining moments. Kelsey Plum works as hard as any star in any local sport, Azurá Stevens is one of the league’s underrated forces and Dearica Hamby is solid.

But a series of lousy draft picks and a lack of an attractive infrastructure — that imaginary permanent practice facility is being built any day now! — have kept them from acquiring the sort of superstars that carry teams in crunch time, the kind of difference-makers this town deserves.

“I feel like we’re right there,” Plum told me before Sunday’s game. “We’re young, we lack depth and cohesion, those things take time, I have faith that throughout the season we’ll continue to build.”

Plum has been an outstanding addition since coming here last winter in a trade, she works harder in pregame warmups than some players during the entire game, but what she’s saying, we’ve heard before.

Candace Parker was a two-time MVP, rookie of the year and led the Sparks to the 2016 title in her 13 seasons with the team.

(Associated Press)

The latest spin is that the Sparks’ No. 2 overall draft pick Cameron Brink will make a big difference when she returns from knee surgery later this summer. But she didn’t make a huge difference early last season when she played. Their other top draft pick from last season, Rickea Jackson, scored six points Sunday and has basically been a bust.

Barring the signing of a major free agent — who wants to play on a team with no permanent home? — there’s not much help coming next year because they’ve traded their first-round pick.

So their motto should be…Waiting for JuJu?

It’s all so depressing, especially on a day that should have been so uplifting.

Before the game, new coach Lynne Roberts — her honeymoon is already over — called this a “must-win.”

Since the Candace Curse, that has meant, “About to lose.”