It’s liberating, really. After four-plus decades of fandom only partially damaged by journalistic interaction with snotty and dopey players (and Tommy Lasorda), I swore off the Dodgers a year ago. To me, they’re just another team. It’s Frank McCourt. As long as he or his ex-wife are running the franchise, I want no part of […]

[Read more →]

Fellow employees at Abu Dhabi Media watching the India-Pakistan match on the sports department’s TV. A huge day in sports for this part of the world. India vs. Pakistan in the semifinals of the Cricket World Cup. What? Arabs are interested in cricket? Well, no, they’re not. No more than Americans are. But the UAE, […]

[Read more →]

Yes, this is about fantasy baseball. Feel free to tune it out immediately. I don’t write about any of this often. Fantasy ball is like fantasies of all sorts; probably we should keep them to ourselves. But if you have the slightest interest in which players this 29-year-old league considers the most valuable … read […]

[Read more →]

Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever done a one-on-one interview with a soccer player who was not a member of the U.S. national team. What American journalists don’t entirely understand is the high degree of access we have to professional athletes in the U.S. and Canada — especially by comparison […]

[Read more →]

The UAE didn’t exist 40 years ago. It was hardly heard of 20 years ago. Now, the country has some name recognition, and particularly the name “Dubai”. Almost all Europeans seem to be aware of it — to the point that when the Brits I work with go home on vacation they typically are asked […]

[Read more →]

The city of Dubai likes to build themed construction zones. Dubai Motor City, Dubai Studio City, Dubai Media City, Dubai Internet City … you get the drift. The idea is to centralize industries and create, I suppose, synergy. Dubai also has a Knowledge Village, but the name is something of a misnomer if this video […]

[Read more →]

The professional soccer league here in the United Arab Emirates should send video of tonight’s match between Al Wahda and Al Jazira to the other 10 teams in the Pro League. This is how it should be done. Not a huge crowd, at 9,463, but it filled more than half the stadium, and it was […]

[Read more →]

I’ve talked about this with sports journalism colleagues over two or three decades. What is the best sports assignment in print? Because I spent three decades in American journalism, the answers sometimes would be “covering baseball home and road” … or “being a major metro’s NFL writer” … and somesuch. Maybe “international sports reporter” which […]

[Read more →]

I’ve resisted it. This blog seemed enough, certainly when we consider how much time is involved. But everyone is doing the Twitter thing, tweeting their hearts out, and as this has mushroomed it has struck me, more than once, that I bump into a lot of little stuff, while working in a newsroom, that might […]

[Read more →]

One of the original members of the sports department here at The National had a farewell event at a local hotel the other night. Small, quiet and informal, some liquid refreshment out on the patio. I used my time there to try to find out a bit more about the history of the department, which […]

[Read more →]