I certainly want to say, “yes, of course he is.” Particularly among the position players. But the competition is a bit stiffer than one might think. One source I stumbled across lists the “top five” busts for a 10-year period going back from 2007. That list includes three pitchers, however, and pitchers are notoriously difficult […]

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Francisco Rodriguez, aka “K-Rod,” has vowed to test his value in the free-agency market at the end of the season. I know this concept agitates some Angels fans. “How can we go forward without our star closer?” Well, they can do it quite easily: By letting someone else sign him to a long and extremely […]

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Abby Wambach is to U.S. women’s soccer what Mick Jagger is to the Rolling Stones: Take them out of the mix, and it’s hardly a functioning unit. Wambach means more to her team than any athlete on any significant sports franchise anywhere. She is that good, and the rest of her teammates are that ordinary. […]

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First thing to know about Albert Bui: He named himself. If Albert wasn’t born in South Vietnam, his parents certainly hadn’t been in SoCal long when he appeared in this world. As he related the story, Young Albert liked watching the Bill Cosby cartoon show, and was amused by one particular character: Fat Albert. So […]

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People who live in New York City love to call it “the greatest city in the world.” But most everyone who doesn’t live there considers it, at best, an interesting place to visit and, at worst, a place to see once and never return to. Besides being crowded, dirty and polluted, it’s just jammed with […]

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I’m a National League fan. Baseball is like that. You have a strong preference for one league or the other. If you are any kind of fan at all. So I was pulling for the National League to win an All-Star Game for the first time since 1996 (!) tonight. For most of the night […]

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Matt McHale was a near contemporary of mine. We got into sports journalism about the same time, and we left it within a week of each other, each laid off* by the L.A. News Group earlier this year. Matt died today in Connecticut. He had fallen ill in late May, three months or so after […]

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A Dodgers team some predicted would play for the World Series has some work to do. The Dodgers are 46-49 at the All-Star break, and now we have four days off to figure out why. Not that the players need time off to explain their fitful first half. Top 10 Dodgers excuses for being 46-49:

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One of the odder things I have discovered since moving to downtown Long Beach … is the clear popularity of skateboarding among non-white teens and pre-teens. Latino and, especially, black kids are riding skateboards all over the place. This is interesting. Curious.  Because I had never thought of skateboarding as anything but a white-kid — […]

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I was in Chavez Ravine last night to see the Dodgers play the Marlins. Florida won, 5-4 in 11 innings, when Hanley Ramirez capped an impressive performance by driving a bullet into the left side of the right-field pavilion. Ramirez, the Marlins’ shortstop, went 5-for-6 with a double in addition to his homer. Bringing his […]

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