While preparing for our annual fantasy league, the strongest unexpected impression I got, from examining 30 Major League teams … was how bad so many of them are. Baseball has a half-dozen no-hope teams right out of the gate. And probably closer to a dozen. And I am not thinking of 78-84 bad. I’m thinking […]

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The Sun Baseball League is made up of 12 owners who have two things in common: They 1) once worked in the San Bernardino Sun sports department and they 2) love baseball. The first season was played in 1983 and the draft for the 34th season was held over five hours on Wednesday night (or, […]

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The two national soccer teams I follow had successful results today. The UAE got a brilliant goal from Omar Abdulrahman, the best player in the Mideast, as the Emiratis secured a place in the final round of Asia qualifying for the 2018 Russia World Cup with a 1-1 draw versus Saudi Arabia. Abdulrahman not only […]

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Of great interest to me, anyway. And this may be one of the more bizarre pairings among global soccer fans. Two of the three world countries with “United” in its name, and neither is the United Kingdom. –The United Arab Emirates, home to Saudi Arabia. –The United States, home to Guatemala. Both are tomorrow. The […]

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In the suite of British sports, Formula One auto racing is something like the No. 4 competition. Behind soccer, cricket and rugby … but not much else. They don’t seem to mind that the sport is shockingly dull and depressingly predictable, featuring entire races in which the pole-sitter is never headed. One team tends to […]

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Gulf airlines always are looking for new ways to gild the lily. First class? Not good enough, for the mega-rich. Kind of down-market, really. So we have something better for you, at Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways. This is on the mammoth A380 only, for those who like to spend $20,000 on themselves to fly — […]

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The United States plays in the soccer world’s cupcake federation. Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean federation, is guaranteed three berths in the World Cup, and the Americans should earn one of those three berths Every Single Time. After Mexico, the only Concacaf side that can be anticipated to be reasonably competitive is […]

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After six consecutive Easter weeks in Abu Dhabi, the first in 2010, the 2016 Easter season finds me in the south of France, and attending a Maundy Thursday service in a tiny chapel in a village a half-hour drive from where we live. Again, the first big surprise is that the area has any English-language […]

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These next five days are crucial in the history of UAE soccer. What looked like one of the best teams in Asia, a year ago, probably needs to win twice at home — versus Palestine tomorrow and Saudi Arabia on Tuesday — just to make the final round of continental qualifying for the Russia 2018 […]

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The terror attacks in Brussels today killed at least 30 in bombings at the airport and on the metro system. It continues the modern blight of Islamic State-sanctioned attacks around the world, from Syria and Iraq and Turkey to Paris, Belgium, North Africa and California. The first impulse is to cringe. If only we lie […]

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