When the Dodgers hired Vladimir Shpunt, a Russian mystic, to send positive vibes
Vladimir Shpunt entered the makeshift office in his suburban Boston home. The functional room contained a bed, a computer, a television and a chair. Shpunt, a reclusive physicist-turned-mystic-faith-healer, parked himself in front of the screen and flicked habitually to Fox Sports West. There, in the fluorescent glow of another summer night, sprang the latest game of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who, in the mid-2000s, employed the septuagenarian wizard to ‘think blue’ and send positive energy to their players, often stationed 3,000 miles away. (1)
Introverted and ineffable, Shpunt knew ‘next to nothing’ about baseball, but an unlikely series of events led to his payrolled position powering one of the sport’s most prestigious teams. And so, Vladimir bunkered down in his study on a nightly basis, paid – quite remarkably – to stare at the television and attempt to convey transformative vibes from coast to coast. In five years on the job, Shpunt attended just one Dodgers game in-person. For every other contest, he peered at the screen, occasionally closing his eyes meditatively, in a bizarre endeavour that routinely spiked his blood pressure above 200. (1)
Born in 1939 to a family of self-proclaimed faith healers, Shpunt lived most of his life in Russia. A scientist with three degrees, Shpunt later worked with so-called ‘gap junctions’ between cells, claiming heat could travel through them and heal maladies via energy transfer alone. Shpunt felt his hands generated more energy than mere mortals, and he claimed to have healed patients – including one girl of leukaemia and another of hip pain following a leg amputation – around the world. (1) (2)
That mysterious reputation led, inadvertently, to Shpunt’s unlikely involvement with the Dodgers. In 2004, Vladimir was introduced to Jamie McCourt – the team’s vice chairwoman and wife of franchise owner Frank – as she sought alternative treatment for a serious eye infection. Barry Cohen, an executive leadership consultant entrusted by the McCourts, made the referral, and Jamie was overjoyed by the result of Shpunt’s work, to which she at least partly credited her swift convalescence. (1) (3)
From there, Jamie proselytising the power of Shpunt’s signature ‘V Energy.’ Somewhere along the way, Frank also became enamoured of the enigmatic Russian, whose absorption into the Dodgers’ orbit became somewhat inevitable, despite his unfamiliarity with America’s national pastime. After all, when the owners believe your spiel, nothing else matters – especially when V Energy proclaimed to provide a 10-15% boost to the team’s win probability. (1)
Hence a hermetic sorcerer receiving a stipend from the Dodgers and six-figure bonuses whenever the team advanced in the playoffs. (1)
Hence a house-bound pensionable mage paid like a prized rookie to sit and burst a blood vessel in pursuit of karmic advantages.
Hence the most esoteric collaboration in the history of professional sports.
Even nearby Hollywood thought it absurd.
***
In reality, little was known about Vladimir Shpunt before Bill Shaikin penned a foundational feature on the Dodgers’ secret weapon for the Los Angeles Times. Shaikin met Shpunt and his wife at their New England home and published the first cornerstones of a sparse biography. (1)
As relayed by Shaikin, Shpunt worked at the same St Petersburg scientific academy as Zhores Alferov, a future Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Alferov even supported Shpunt’s application to emigrate to the US in 1998, vouching that Vladimir was an ‘eminent scientist’ and an ‘outstanding inventor.’ (1)
On the contrary, though, others told Shaikin that Shpunt’s work only ever appeared in ‘second-tier Russian journals,’ while tales of scientific ineptitude were not difficult to find. “At one point, as Shpunt’s research team studied how medical devices transmit electrical current through the human body, the devices malfunctioned,” Shaikin wrote. “Yet energy was measurably transmitted, and Shpunt concluded he must have been the source.” (1)
Duly encouraged, the whole ‘energetic healer’ schtick gradually became a profitable sideline for Shpunt. And with each subsequent ‘success story’ – the leukaemia patient, the amputee, Jamie McCourt – that sideline became Shpunt’s primary vocation and income-generator. The scientist became a shaman, and the Los Angeles Dodgers became his biggest client.
More pointedly, certain team honchos believed the magic, astoundingly. At least one of the McCourts credited Shpunt with ‘powering’ Steve Finley’s famous walk-off grand slam to clinch the 2004 National League West title. “The miracle finish,” wrote Cohen in an email to Jamie, “was the result of V energy. Frank was privileged to actually feel the energy.” (1) (4)
Shpunt’s involvement with the team got even more bizarre, however. When top prospect Jayson Werth sustained wrist ligament damage during spring training in 2005, two sessions with Shpunt were facilitated. Those consultations were seemingly unsuccessful, as Werth’s rehabilitation timeline received no enchanted boost. Indeed, years later, while emerging as a solid big league contributor in Philadelphia, Werth accused Dodger doctors of misdiagnosing and mistreating the injury – although he did not mention Shpunt by name. (1)
Unperturbed, Shpunt felt his 2005 work averted the Dodgers’ first 100-loss season in 97 years. Without him, the team’s dismal 71-91 record would have been saddled with 15 additional losses, Shpunt told Cohen, who relayed such an estimation to the Dodger higher-ups. (1) Shpunt also ‘diagnosed the disconnects’ between field manager Jim Tracy and general manager Paul DePodesta, Cohen reported. (1) While perhaps coincidental, the McCourts seemingly weighed Shpunt’s assessments disproportionately, as Tracy and DePodesta were both fired in October 2005. For all the talk of ‘Google Boy’ destroying the Dodgers with algorithms, then, maybe a spooky shaman actually held the keys.
That said, uncertainty and impropriety shrouded the Dodgers’ entire modus operandi under the McCourts. Executives and coaches often worked in silos, deferring to the whims of an enigmatic owner, while ill-defined vibes trumped organically replicable processes as grist for daily progress. Few Dodger employees knew of Shpunt’s existence, for example, while others actively hid his involvement. Initially, the McCourts considered adding Shpunt to their formal training staff, but settled for a long-distance arrangement instead – perhaps through fear of on-site pushback from freaked-out employees. (1)
Regardless, ownership’s belief in V Energy sustained throughout Shpunt’s five-year association with the Dodgers. When Los Angeles clinched another NL West crown in 2008, for instance, Frank McCourt emailed Cohen – a convenient conduit to the elusive Shpunt – to thank the duo. “Congratulations and thanks to you and [sic] vlad,” wrote McCourt in an email. “Also, pass along a special ‘thank you’ to Vlad for all his hard work.” (1)
His ego duly tickled, Shpunt began working with other professional and amateur athletes, apparently convinced of his own supernatural abilities. Jamie McCourt remained enamoured of her healer, too, and asked Shpunt to take on additional work for her in a private setting, baseball aside, following the 2008 season. Jamie’s proposition involved Shpunt relocating to the west coast, enabling more face-to-face sessions, but Vladimir demurred, and that rejection may have damaged the relationship somewhat. Regardless, Shpunt’s connection to the Dodgers lapsed after that 2008 campaign – just before the shit hit the fan. (1)
***
In October 2009, alas, Jamie McCourt filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Ruled by a cult of personality, the Dodgers’ dirty laundry was aired in the resultant legal battle, which provoked embarrassing disclosure. Chiefly, Frank and Jamie blamed each other for hiring Shpunt, who became a character of comical relief in high-profile proceedings scrutinised by celebrity gossip hounds and Tinseltown muckrakers alike. One guy even turned up at a divorce hearing wearing a Vladimir Shpunt Dodgers jersey, encapsulating the craziness. (5) (6)
To wit, Shpunt became symbolic of the chaos and dysfunction – the largesse and gluttony – that marred the McCourt Era, which ultimately bankrupted the Dodgers in 2011. For all the unhinged exuberance wrought by the impetuous owners – the kitchen shipped cross-country; the private jets; the $10,000-per-month hairdresser (7) – Vladimir Shpunt, the arcane faith healer, became the definitive totem of a broken Dodger age.
Perhaps there was a more sincere undercurrent to the entire episode, though. Jamie McCourt came close to losing her eyesight, according to most accounts, so her gratitude to Shpunt – whatever his contribution to her recovery – was eminently defensible. (1) Maybe the McCourts really believed in Shpunt and innocently spread his gospel. And from Vladimir’s perspective, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to watch baseball games from the comfort of one’s abode was a pretty sweet gig, so the collaboration just sorta happened. Malice may not have been intended.
Still, most authoritative sources consider V Energy to be worthless pseudoscience. Believing that someone can alter the outcome of baseball games by transferring psychic energy over a 3,000-mile radius is, well, questionable at best. And even if he could perform such miracles, Shpunt’s sitting in front of a television, watching the games, seems utterly superfluous. V Energy was strong enough to stretch from coast to coast, we were led to believe, but not strong enough to do so without a soundtrack of Vin Scully narrating Andre Ethier at-bats deep into the Massachusetts night. Go figure.
Ultimately, there are redeeming features to the Vladimir Shpunt story, however. Realistically, we do not actually know very much about the guy – the actual fleshy human being – and his name is all too easily dropped into filler pieces as a catch-all for a disastrous Dodger epoch. Per Shaikin, Shpunt mourned the loss of his anonymity and hated to be caricatured. (1) That his legacy is hewn almost entirely in caricature, then, is its own distinct sadness. There was probably far more to the man than ever made it to print, and perhaps we should be a little kinder in our reminiscence.
***
To that end, I went in search of the real Vladimir Shpunt recently, chasing tenuous leads and turning over stones untouched for decades. I never managed to establish contact with Shpunt – ironically – but followed enough breadcrumbs to paint a representative picture of his post-baseball exploits.
In 2013, Shpunt was ranked as the tenth-best psychic in the world in a dubious publication entitled The United States and the World’s Best Psychics, Mediums, Healers, Astrologers, Palmists, Witches and Tarot Readers. Shpunt slipped to 21st in the 2014 rankings, but I abandoned that particular rabbit hole before my search history alerted the good folks in Langley, Virginia. (8)
Elsewhere, I found a dentist in Winnipeg, Manitoba named Vladimir Shpunt, and a Michigan State University student with the same moniker. I found several parody X accounts offering half-baked satirical commentary on real-life Dodger machinations. And I even discovered a healer called Jenna Vlasova, whose website boasts that ‘her father Vladimir Shpunt [was] one of the most extraordinary energy practitioners of the modern era.’ Unfortunately, my email to Vlasova bounced faster than a Frank McCourt check. (9)
Connecting the dots, however, I did manage to triangulate a rough – and feasible – approximation of Shpunt’s current status. Public property records show he was still active, making real estate transactions in Massachusetts, as recently as 2022. Moreover, he is still alive, judging by accessible documents and the lack of any online obituary, but updates on his day-to-day life are harder to find than dwindling traces of his forgotten work.
We do know that Vladimir Shpunt is now 87 years old and far removed from the Major League Baseball coalface. Meanwhile, the Dodgers, his one-time obsession, have been transformed in the post-McCourt oasis, with Guggenheim Baseball Management re-establishing the marquee franchise by entrusting brilliant minds to make optimal decisions unimpeded by financial constraints or cherished traditions.
En route to winning three World Series titles in six years, the Dodgers have hired scores of mental skills coaches, biomechanics experts and quantitative analysts, including Melissa Hooke and Samuel Fleischer, literal rocket scientists plucked from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. Nerds, heretics and iconoclasts have orchestrated the Dodgers’ renaissance, thinking way outside the box. And somewhere, Vladimir Shpunt smiles, because in at least one alternative universe, the kooky Russian physicist fits right in.
Sources
1. Shaikin, Bill. Los Angeles Times. [Online] June 10, 2010. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jun-10-la-sp-dodgers-psychic-20100610-story.html.
2. Seely, Hart. The Juju Rules. 2012.
3. Schlossman, Dennis. Think Blue Planning Committee. [Online] March 28, 2021. https://thinkbluepc.com/2021/03/28/does-anyone-remember-vladimir-shpunt/.
4. Prospectus, Baseball. Baseball Prospectus: The Essential Guide to the 2011 Baseball Season. 2011.
5. Petras, Kathryn and Petras, Ross. The Stupidest Sports Book of All Time: Hilarious Blunders, Bloopers, Oddities, Quotes and More from the World of Sports. 2017.
6. Maddaus, Gene. LA Weekly. [Online] September 3, 2010. https://www.laweekly.com/mccourt-divorce-trial-lunch-update-the-return-of-vladimir-shpunt/?__cf_chl_f_tk=0VrX5Hzb7AjEY02pCgt4hSl84hb1AzR7hu9.p1rsdDQ-1782828848-1.0.1.1-r64RZGlIs2kKjwqAlNnt9BuVzvMKXWvl11Lzfj4zt5k.
7. Grigoriadis, Vanessa. Vanity Fair. [Online] August 2011. https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2011/8/a-major-league-divorce.
8. Lafayette, Maximillien de. The United Sates and the World's Best Psychics, Mediums, Healers, Astrolgers, Palmists, Witches and Tarot Readers, 2013-2014. 2014.
9. Instant Energy. [Online] instantenergies.com.