So, a young man who works in sports at The National … On Wednesday last he got his UAE drivers license. It’s not a difficult process, for an American to get a UAE drivers license. A little cash, you display your U.S. license, you produce a “no objection” letter from your employer, and you can […]

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If I were not getting paid to give heed, I might suggest Jack Nicklaus was still the king of golf, with this Tiger Woods kid making some nosie. Never been a golf fan, that is. Never watch the game, if I can help it. Neither in person nor on television. So if I know more […]

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Landon Donovan scored a record 57 goals for the U.S. national team. No one else is close, unless you consider Clint Dempsey, trailing by 18, to be close. And given that the U.S. does not play as many friendlies as it did, into the early years of this century, it is hard to imagine someone […]

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Apparently, I am a goldfish in the bowl of life. For weeks now I have been thinking about how this summer in Abu Dhabi (our fifth) has to be the hottest yet. Day after hot and sweaty day. With some days seeming to push the bounds of “this could kill someone out in it too […]

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I didn’t think The End would come so quickly. No, Landon Donovan did not play at the World Cup in Brazil. No, he has not had a particularly productive Major League Soccer season. Yes, he is 32, which is not young for an attacking player in the modern game. Yes, he has been carrying injuries […]

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Clearly, the Mackinaw Peach episode of Seinfeld made an impression on me. I made reference to it in this post, only five months back. But this time we’re actually talking about peaches! Particularly good peaches. And a good peach is something exquisite, indeed.

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We have reached a point in sports history … and perhaps it is a compliment, although of a back-handed sort … that any time an aging or semi-flaky player is thought to be on the move … he invariably is linked to a club in the UAE. Earlier, it was Jorge Valdivia, Chilean midfielder. Now, […]

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Just re-read The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman, published in 1962. It relates the prelude to the First World War, how the major powers of Europe saw where they were headed but couldn’t find the moral courage or the diplomatic skill to head it off … as well as the first month of the […]

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In journalism, stories that seem to come up regularly … stories endemic to your coverage area … sometimes are lumped under the topic of “standing heads”. Coming from the time when newspaper pages were put together using hot metal letters, via linotype machines, and linotype operators kept already prepared certain common topics. Thus, they were […]

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I am not a sabermetrician, the name given to those who spend lots of time and energy breaking down baseball statistics. Called sabermetrics, a back-formation from the acronym Society for Advanced Baseball Research. Or SABR. But I have noticed the decline in scoring in baseball, and I am waiting for someone in the journalism world […]

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