I hate sandstorms. It might be the biggest drawback to living in the UAE. Even worse than the six months of brutal heat. I am in my third winter in Abu Dhabi, and I was duly impressed by my first sandstorm experience, back in 2010. Winter is sandstorm season.  Sounds counter-intuitive, but we get […]

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Wow. This seems to be over in the blink of an eye. Landon Donovan’s last game with Everton, during his second two-month loan spell to England’s Premier League, will come in an FA Cup game with Blackpool today. And he may not play because he has been ill, David Moyes, the Everton coach, said on […]

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I was looking at the website of the Gulf Times, the main English-language newspaper in Qatar, the UAE’s neighbor to the north and west. And while searching out some information on the women’s tennis tournament going on there, I happened upon a “lede” I just have to share. Not because it’s good. But because it […]

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I cannot remember the last time I was paying such close attention to the NBA. And not just the Lakers. The whole league. (And yes, I am the same guy who three months ago wrote on this blog that the locked-out NBA could take the season off, for all I cared.) I am more interested, […]

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I was still a little hazy about this, before I got to the UAE. Because in the United States, the idea of one sports league competing for at least three championships in one season … is ridiculous. One league, one champion, right? Simple. But that is not how they roll in nearly every serious soccer […]

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I was in Tommy Lasorda’s office at Dodger Stadium for the infamous “Kingman’s performance?!?” rant of May 14, 1978. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was not the Dodgers beat writer, and I can imagine I was covering the game only because we were giving a day off to our regular guy. Anyway, Dave […]

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I own a couple of 8.5-x-11-size paperback books, each containing 200 “Sunday” crossword puzzles from the New York Times. I am working on one of the puzzles at all times, here in the UAE. Just as I did back in California. I have reached two conclusions about the Sunday NYT puzzles. The important one will […]

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I’m as amazed by Jeremy Lin as anyone else. Coming from pretty much nowhere to ring up five consecutive 20-points-plus games and lead (yes, lead) the New York Knicks to five consecutive victories. His also is a story of multiculturalism, and demonstrates the global reach of the NBA. Thus, I decided to write about Jeremy […]

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No joke. Someone who lived here before we arrived told me about this, and I took a look … and it’s true: To go to the google map of Abu Dhabi, and to hover over the main island of the city, and to blow up the picture … is to be taken aback by how […]

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The things you learn on Twitter. Well, from links posted on Twitter. With 140 characters, you can’t divulge much information on the site. In this case, it was a link to a site ranking sports teams globally by the number of their Facebook followers. And guess who was No. 4. (Did the headline tip that, […]

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