A nine-player deal, the Dodgers taking on hundreds of millions in salary commitments, including those of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett. And the takeaway? Los Angeles has just rediscovered it is a major sports market.

[Read more →]

The long journey back to the Gulf begins at 12:15 p.m. tomorrow. So, what does a person do on the final day of a once-a-year visit to Southern California?

[Read more →]

Upon entry at the Los Angeles Angels home game on Thursday, each ticket-holder was handed a plastic red “Angels pitcher”, and inside were four white plastic Angels cups. The cups had the names of four members of the Angels’ starting rotation, and their numbers: “Santana 54” … “Weaver 36” … “Wilson 33” … “Haren 24”. […]

[Read more →]

Third night visiting in SoCal, and I was at the yard. That’s what you do when you’re an American expatriate and get home for any length of time. You go to the yard. Angels Stadium, in this case. To bask in the baseball atmosphere, which is a very specific sports sensation — a sort of […]

[Read more →]

I covered the UAE Olympic team’s friendly with a group of Hungary kids last night, and the second half was remarkable, to us desert dwellers, for one aspect: It rained throughout. Sometimes it poured. A fact to keep in mind:

[Read more →]

The Angels fired hitting coach Mickey Hatcher yesterday. Lots of “oh, what a great guy” stuff out there, particularly from those in the sports journalism community. And I say … bosh!

[Read more →]

Huge day for sports in greater Los Angeles. The Angels signed Albert Pujols to the second-biggest contract in baseball history and the Lakers traded for Chris Paul — only to see the NBA commissioner kill the deal. But being “big news” doesn’t mean also mean it is “good news.” One of these stories is bad […]

[Read more →]

*-Update:  Arte Moreno apparently noticed the season Mike Napoli had. On September 30, the Angels dismissed general manager Tony Reagins. While in Baltimore and Tampa and Atlanta and Houston some astonishingly riveting last-day-of-the-season stuff was going down, involving the Red Sox and Rays, Braves and Cardinals … the 2011 Angels went quietly, meekly into history. […]

[Read more →]

I can’t remember the last time I saw a televised baseball game from start to finish. Sometime in 2009, I guess it would be. I’ve seen stretches of playoff games, while in Abu Dhabi, but the time differences are so weird that I inevitably miss the start of a game or its finish. So I […]

[Read more →]

I wish I could be an Angels fan. It’s not like the club won’t allow it. But you can’t really have an emotional connection with a team three decades into a lifetime of following baseball. I remember when the idea that the Angels might be the best team in the Los Angeles market, or all […]

[Read more →]