This is a country where “going to the mall” not only scratches that national itch to shop … but provides a significant fraction of the “out of the house” entertainment for natives and many expats. We were reintroduced to this tonight, on a trip over to Khalidiya Mall (above), one of the four downtown malls […]

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I’ve gone all in on the Women’s World Cup the past two days. Yesterday I cajoled my cricket-loving British co-workers into tuning the big-screen TV from the England-Sri Lanka series-deciding cricket match … to the England-France women’s quarter-final … and then watched Japan shock Germany, after I was done for the night. Then I wrote […]

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Fabio Cannavaro isn’t leaving us just yet. As we decided a week ago, when the Dubai club Al Ahli filled its foreigner allotment, Cannavaro won’t be playing for Ahli. But rather than pay him off to go away, the club prefers to have him stick around for three years as a coach/adviser. It makes sense, […]

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A day after the awful story of a 39-year-old father falling to his death while trying to catch a ball thrown to him by Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers … baseball reminded us of one of the big reasons why we follow the game. Or sports in general. Because it takes our minds off […]

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When you go out on assignment, in sports, in the UAE, a concept you don’t really consider, at first, is this: About 90 percent of the Gulf Arabs you will encounter … will all be wearing kandouras. OK, sure. So what’s the problem?

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The Dodgers are in trouble. We’ve known it for a couple of years. If we suspected trouble before the McCourt divorce, we knew it once the tawdry facts around those two spendthrifts became public. And now the club is in a spiral. Frank McCourt has a death grip on the franchise, and while he hangs […]

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Sean Burroughs was the most remarkable kid ballplayer I ever saw. When he was 12 years old he had about a 50-50 chance of hitting a home run every time he came to bat, and this was against the best kiddie competition around. He also was a very, very good pitcher. He was the main […]

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It perhaps come as no surprise that the Fourth of July is not a big holiday outside the United States. And especially not on in the UAE, where Yanks are thin on the ground. Not that we didn’t try to do a little something to commemorate the day. But the Fourth here was … Monday, […]

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The heavyweight title fight between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye was a big deal, on this side of the Atlantic. I’m sure it was not nearly as big an event on the American side of the ocean — which is a major problem for global boxing. After years of wrangling to set up the fight, […]

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I was walking down the street to the tiny apartment hard by Airport Road, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and a thought popped into my head about high school. Happens, sometimes. People tell me I have a good memory. Or maybe I just remember remembering, and I tell them stories about themselves that I […]

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