I don't know how many tennis fans there are among the readership, but it is worth noting in any case the truly epic fraud being perpetrated in elevating so-called "Russian" Maria Sharapova to the number one "Sony-Ericsson" ranking on the women's tour. Not only is Sharapova the farthest thing in the world from a number one "tennisistka" she is not even a real Russian. Sharapova has not reached a single grand slam final this year, much less won one, and in fact she has won only one tournament in the last seven months, that being Birmingham where she "triumphed" over the world's number 20-ranked player in the in finals. In her six other tournaments since April, she has been eliminated each time by a player not even ranked in the world top ten and reached the finals only once. If that's the record of a "number one" player, I'll eat my furry hat!

Actually, there are two different rankings systems in tennis, one for the calendar year (the Porsche) and one for the preceding 12 months (the Sony-Ericsson). On the calendar-year rankings, Sharapova only ranks third (Belgian Kim Clijsters, who won the U.S. Open series and has won more tournaments than any other player this year, is the new number one on the Porsche list, but since she was sidelined by injury for part of last year she does not top the Sony-Ericsson). One is tempted to call Sharapova a "real" Russian in that she is attempting to dupe the unwitting in much the same way that President Putin has duped his way into G-8 membership. But I placed "Russian" in quotes earlier because Sharapova is a resident of Bradenton, Florida, and spends virtually no time at all in Russia, a point which has been emphasized with justifiable disdain by several of the true Russian players, such as Anastasia Myskina, who live in Russia full-time and give back much to their impoverished communities. Sharapova has never played for the Russian national team. Myskina and Sharapova are identical in that each has one career grand slam victory, but Sharapova gets far more attention because of her looks, ordinary by model standards but impressive by tennis standards -- this is damning proof of how warped certain aspects of our society have become and how much struggle the women's rights movement still has before it.

A better sports story involving genuine Russian achievement I note in a published letter to the editor in today's edition of the Moscow Times: Though it hardly seems to have been noticed, Russia won the Europe-Africa-Middle-East Little League championships in dominating fashion and moved on to play in the Little League World Series now underway in Williamsport, PA. Though Russia lost all three of its pool games in Pennsylvania, it finished with an excellent pitcher's duel against Canada which it lost by only one run, giving much hope that Russia can soon become competitive even at this very high level of international youth baseball despite its players having much less opportunity to play and study the game compared to their North American and Asian counterparts. It also points out a great basis of commonality between Americans and Russians. I can only speculate that virulent Russian nationalism prevents many Russians from wanting to claim credit for their achievement's in "America's" sport. For America's part, two of Russia's three games were televised nationally by the ESPN network, and I understand that the American announcers were quite complimentary to the Russian squad, something I bet virtually no Russian is aware of; ironcially, none of then were shown on Russian TV.

Another part of the baseball story is the fact that, as I understand it, the U.S. for reasons I cannot imagine, denied visas to the the families of the Russian players, and their family box in the grandstands therefore stood empty throughout their games. Luckily, they were "adopted" by a local church group who looked out for them and treated them to a picnic and a minor-league baseball game. There ought to be more attention paid to issues of this kind, since obvious chances for meaningful diplomacy are growth in relations are being missed.