We knew this even before the Olympics were over. Beijing built far too many big and exotic venues. Stadiums and arenas anyone with the slightest knowledge of Chinese sports interest … knew would be useless as soon as the Summer Games circus struck the tents and left town. Now, we have the Los Angeles Times […]

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The Auto Club 500 is going off this weekend at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, and it doesn’t look like it will be a commercial success. Not that failing to sell tickets is a new phenomenon here; the last sellout was in 2003, the final year that Fontana had only one Sprint Cup race. […]

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I was born a bit of a cynic. Even as a child it seems as if I thought it unhealthy to be too enamored of any sports team or individual athlete. But I made some exceptions. Particularly when it came to football. Brad Van Pelt was one of those guys. And now he’s dead at […]

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The Los Angeles Galaxy, making news in February. That’s a fairly neat trick, considering it 1) is soccer 2) in America and involves 3) Major League Soccer during 4) its preseason. But there you are. Not only is the club playing in something called the Pan-Pacific Championship at the Home Depot Center this week (tonight […]

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If I could go back to the height of steroids abuse in baseball … and maybe 2002, 2003 would be it … I am convinced I could pick out the users, most of them, just by looking at them. I now believe I can spot the reckless or unsophisticated user — and that was most […]

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I may need to get my blood sugar tested after reading one sickly sweet “Shaq and Kobe kiss and make up” story after another out of the NBA All-Star weekend. It’s nice that they’re no longer glowering at each other. But several of the assumptions made by reporters , over the past few days — […]

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Oh, my. This was rough. In any way you care to think of it. The crowd. The setting. The talent. The material. A friend of mine, who aspires to be a professional comedian, was to perform at a hotel in Norwalk. His impression was that the winner of an eight-comic competition would get a gig […]

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This isn’t sports, journalism or sports journalism, and generally I’ve tried to stick with one of those three. I don’t expect anyone to care what specific programming brands I follow avidly,  as of Feb. 14, 2009. But that’s where I’m going today. Starting with “30 Rock.”

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CSI without William Petersen. College basketball. I anticipated the former. I am a bit surprised by the latter.

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During my four months with the International Herald Tribune, in Hong Kong, I was reintroduced to Rob Hughes, the IHT’s soccer writer. I believe Hughes is one of the leading assets of the IHT. He writers at least three times per week for the IHT during the European soccer season. He has scads of experience, […]

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