Mike Vaccaro Dodgers’ Tarik Skubal trade shows baseball is broken — and two vicious battles stand in way of fixing it By Mike Vaccaro Published Aug. 2, 2026, 4:34 p.m. ET Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Tarik Skubal (29) walks off the mound against the Baltimore Orioles at Comerica Park in Detroit on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect I admit, I still get a little freaked out whenever I stumble across the end of “The Planet of the Apes,” the original one, from 1968, with Charlton Heston. You know the scene I mean. Astronaut George Taylor and his companion, Nova, are riding on horseback in what they believe to be the Forbidden Zone of a distant planet. Then they happen upon quite a surprise.
It’s the Statue of Liberty, half-buried in the surf.
And suddenly it occurs to Taylor: His adventures the previous two hours weren’t conducted in some distant solar system but on Earth, he and his colleagues having been hurtled many, many years into the future. In an instant, he understands why the zone has been off-limits, and what the evidence tells him about the fate of New York Harbor, and everywhere else.
“You maniacs!” he wails. “You blew it up! Aaahh, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
