The Angels defeated the Seattle Mariners 5-0 tonight, and when Texas got six in the ninth to defeat Oakland 6-1. the LAAA (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) had clinched the American League West. Which should also mean that Mike Trout has clinched the AL Most Valuable Player award. The turning point of their season would […]

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Came across this yesterday, while looking at the Mike Trout wiki page. ” … nicknamed The Millville Meteor”. What? The Millville Meteor? Mike Trout? Has anyone ever actually called him that? Has any sports writer used it in a game story?  “And then the Millville Meteor laced a three-bagger …” If this were a century […]

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The Los Angeles Kings tonight wrapped up their second Stanley Cup championship in three years. And though I, like most native southern Californians, am not a hockey fan, we must concede this: Los Angeles would be confronting a potential championship drought, about now, if the Kings had not had not turned into world beaters.

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Since moving to Abu Dhabi, nearly four years ago, I have returned to the U.S. on three occasions. Each of those three times … I saw a baseball game within a few days of clearing customs at LAX. In this case, the Angels and Red Sox, at Anaheim Stadium. As usual, I found it a […]

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This is an awful time to be a Los Angeles-area sports fan. It has been mostly dreary since I left the region to live and work in Abu Dhabi, in 2009, but it seems to be bottoming out, the past four or five months. Aside from hockey, which has no significant hold on Southern California […]

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In August, I spent most of two days traveling from Abu Dhabi to Southern California, and on my third night there I went to Angel Stadium — specifically to see Mike Trout play baseball. Four of us went to the game. The other three were there because I wanted to see Mike Trout; they would […]

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A person leaves town … switches states .. crosses an ocean … and eventually his sports preferences morph. It’s one of those things that you don’t realize until you do a sort of internal check. “Which teams’ results do I follow? Which have I stopped tracking? Which teams can make me feel a little better […]

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Sort of a classic conundrum coming up here, at the end of the American League season. One guy won the Triple Crown. The first man to do so since 1967. The other, however, had a better season. A significantly better season according to stat wonks. So, how will this turn out?

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Have I written this before? Probably. But I am thinking of it now and will restate it. I love losing streaks. In life. But especially in sports. It gives us something to talk about. Something to focus on. A running subplot. Sometimes the plot. We lost some great losing streaks in the past decade. Four […]

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If you want to criticize the Angels for, apparently, failing to make the playoffs when they seem to have the talent to do so … well, feel free. And a good place to start is in left field, where Vernon Wells — far too often — can be found. If I were in Mike Scioscia’s […]

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