I freelanced a story for the Deseret News (of Salt Lake City) out of Game 2 of the Lakers-Jazz series on Wednesday night. I’ve written for other newspapers hundreds of times. No exaggeration. But this might have been the first time that I wrote about a team that was playing against a hometown team. It […]

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It can’t be this easy, can it? Lakers up 2-0 vs. Utah, and NBA history indicates something like 94 percent of all teams that take a 2-0 lead go on to win a best-of-seven series. It’s not over, but it’s close. They defeated the Utah Jazz 120-110 tonight, and it never really felt in doubt, […]

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Dan Hawkins was as bright as anyone I ever worked with. As witty and amusing, too. A guy ready to laugh, someone who was conversant in a myriad of subjects and expert in more than a few. He was the resident NASA expert, even when he was working in sports, and when the space shuttle […]

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A bit further down on this blog I suggested that horse racing is headed for extinction. Mostly because humans seem increasingly unwilling to countenance any activity that puts animals in danger. Any sport in which animals can get hurt is becoming less popular by the minute. That includes hunting and fishing, certainly. Horse racing fills […]

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I’m trying to keep my mind blank here. As the Bill Murray character (Dr. Peter Venkman) in “Ghostbusters” instructed the crew to do near the climax of the silly, 1984 movie. But “not thinking” is a thought. Making your mind go blank is an exercise in itself, thus unachievable. So, before I can go any […]

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I love this story. It says something about kids as fans, and it says a lot about the grip Brett Favre had on the public’s imagintion. A kid from Connecticut wore his Brett Favre No.4 Packers jersey for 1,581 consecutive days. Right up to his 12th birthday when, apparently, he outgrew it — and just […]

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Anyone who has run a sports department knows the importance of clerks. Better to lose a beat writer than your ace agate clerk. Who may be all of 19 years old. You can put out a section with a wire baseball story. You can find a dozen competent people eager to cover baseball. But you […]

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Looking into the crystal ball, here, and I see a lot of clouds around horse racing’s future. I can see this sport being marginalized, like greyhound racing. Perhaps even criminalized, like cock-fighting. Any sport that involves animals that haven’t signed a legal waiver or given verbal consent before an attorney … is in big trouble. […]

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It appears that while trying to keep track of all the titled players in the San Bernardino Sun/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin upheaval … I really could have used a program. Someone with knowledge of the situation wrote to correct some of the information on the blog item directly below this one. The overall concept is […]

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I had heard rumblings about continued upheaval in the offices of the San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Two papers led by Steve Lambert, the guy who fired me two months ago. But I haven’t seen either paper with any regularity since then, and my contact with survivors of those two papers has […]

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