This was so lame, we even heard about it in Italy. Well, thanks to espn.com … but if it hadn’t been so spectacularly lame, it wouldn’t have gotten enough exposure for me to see it and read about it. When you’re spending your days walking on the beach in Italy and napping and trying to […]

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I was a Dodgers fan for nearly half a century. One of my earliest memories is lying on the floor in the living room of the family home in Long Beach and listening to Vin Scully call a game, through those enormous speakers my father rigged up. I was, maybe, 7. I have been a […]

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One of the vanities of expatriates in the Electronic Age … is that we’re sure we know what’s going on back home. At least in the subjects we care about. Hey, we have wifi in the apartment! We know what’s going on! Sometimes, that isn’t quite true. Take, for example, Major League Baseball.

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My friend and former colleague Steve Dilbeck now blogs about the Dodgers for the Los Angeles Times. I would like to read Steve’s blog. I would also like to read a blog about the Dodgers. The trouble? None of the latimes.com blogs will load. Zero. Sports, politics, news. None can be called up. The people […]

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It was a more eventful decade than my initial thoughts indicated. “Wow. I have to come up with 10 good sports events from the 0-somethings? I’m not sure I can do that.” Turns out, a few minutes of cross-referencing years and sports, and it’s no problem finding 10. The trick is limiting it to that […]

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Mostly, I just wanted to see how many “categories” I could have at the top of this item. Now let’s see if I actually mention something about all of them. Some interesting topics playing out in U.S. sports right now and, really, I’m aware of them. Not everyone back home seems to remember we do, […]

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What was that about? The Angels played badly in Game 1, committing three errors and allowing a pop fly to drop for a hit, and all of that, in concert, led to three runs in a 4-1 defeat … and those of us who have watched this sure and steady franchise over the past decade […]

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It was hard to follow American sports, in Hong Kong. In Abu Dhabi, it is nearly impossible. Via television, anyway. And that apparently isn’t a bad thing, when it comes to the baseball playoffs.

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Why are the most important games in baseball also the most tedious? Isn’t the idea to attract new fans to the playoffs? And what do fans like? My belief is that fans like crisp games, modest running times, contests that end before 11 p.m. … and minimum images of players spitting or fans mugging for […]

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I’ve made clear I grew up a Dodgers fan. I’m old enough to remember a time when the Angels didn’t even exist, and anyone over the age of 40 remembers when the Angels routinely were awful. Actually, they were worse than awful. They were irrelevant. They didn’t matter. Only the Dodgers did. The Angels were […]

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