I was 180 degrees from this opinion, two months ago. I insisted the Dodgers shouldn’t trade for Manny Ramirez. Then, when it happened, I suggested the Manny trade would be the last desperate and foolish act on Ned Colletti’s resume. A day later, I rounded up the commentary from Boston, where angry/enraged columnists accused Manny […]

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I’m by no means the only one who has noticed that a five-game series is too short to decide something as important (at least in the baseball world) as who gets to the league championship series. Dodgers manager Joe Torre, whose team was on the lucky side of a short series against a superior team, […]

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Maybe an American expat can buy some sort of cable package, here in Hong Kong, that gets you all the sports TV you might be able to see back at home. I haven’t found it yet. But I’m not totally disconnected from the goings on, via television. I saw two L.A. teams in action today, […]

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*-Or How I Went Behind Closed Doors and Saw, in Three Sweaty Days, Much of Eastern Hong Kong Island Up Close — and the Perfectly Awful Local Living Conditions Deemed Acceptable, Even Desirable by the Locals. This is not going well, and not for lack of trying. We got off the plane at about 7:30 […]

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So, here we are, a few days into the baseball playoffs, and the best team in the regular season is nine innings from elimination, and the worst team in the regular season is nine innings from advancing. Those would be the Angels and Dodgers, respectively, and their experiences so far — and likely short-term futures […]

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Of all the journalist hangouts in all the world … this one perhaps is the most famous and revered. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, in Hong Kong. This is a place that figures in plot lines of all sorts of novels, including “The Honourable Schoolboy,” written by John Le Carre (of “Spy Who Came in from […]

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I am back on the other side of the Pacific. In Hong Kong, former British crown colony and current Special Administrative Region of China. Didn’t see that one coming, barely a month ago. After doing the Beijing Olympics on a freelance basis, my first and (presumably) last journey to China, and returning to Long Beach […]

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And it just ended. Already I’m feeling it. Even with four rounds of playoffs going on. I like baseball’s long season. As a fan. Not as a reporter or sports editor. Several upsides to it.

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The Associated Press has found a school in Maine that offers three units for a history class about baseball. About Boston Red Sox baseball, in particular, but I could stand that. Name of the Bates College class: Red Sox Nation: Baseball and American Culture.” Where was this class when I was going to school?

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