This falls under the heading of a particularly broad category of human events. To wit: What were they thinking?!? Someone at a BMW dealership and someone at Al Ain FC, the most celebrated soccer club in the UAE, thought it would be a good idea to do a commercial spot. So far so good. However, […]

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U.S. soccer fans have been wondering, for years now, whom the next great American-born attacking soccer player would be … someone to carry the torch Landon Donovan bore for more than a decade. The Next Man may finally be here, and he more properly is a boy rather than a man. That would be, of […]

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We have been in Southern California for nearly two weeks now, and one sports concept is noticeable by its absence: Any apparent enthusiasm for the return of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams.

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This topic occurred to me tonight as I watched video of Draymond Green reciting, in selection order, the 34 players who were taken ahead of him in the 2012 NBA draft. This is significant because the Golden State Warriors, who spent their second-round pick that summer on the Big Ten player of the year … […]

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My default setting when it comes to big-time sports in the U.S., both professionals and major colleges, is to apply my speck of psychic energy to the support of teams from the western United States. Thus, I should be sending negative vibes (however that is done) at the Cleveland Cavaliers, who tonight clinched the Eastern […]

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Only a few weeks after forward-thinking baseball pundits pooh-poohed the likelihood — as well as the wisdom — of calling up “best pitching prospect in ball” Jose Urias … the Dodgers have done just that. The left-hander from Mexico, still only 19, was working on a 27-inning scoreless streak in Triple-A when he got the […]

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Perhaps this is unreasonable, but I expect an American who describes himself or herself as “a history teacher” to know the basic events of the past 100 years. Prominent Western leaders. Scientific breakthroughs. Inventions. Cultural Milestones. Wars. Which is why I was startled … disappointed … semi-appalled … when a history teacher could not pick […]

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Back in 2013 I did a list of 10 Movies I would watch today, tomorrow and next week. May of these films, thankfully, seem to be in heavy rotation among long-haul airways, so you can see them without commercial interruption if you are crossing an ocean. However, I left out one movie that has to […]

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We went for the burritos. We stayed for the NBA. We had been in California for a week without visiting a restaurant serving Mexican food, and that was remedied by a visit to a little place named La Costa, in the Inland Empire city of Redlands. We sat so that we had a good view […]

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For nearly two full NBA seasons, I read a lot about the Golden State Warriors. I saw the occasional clip. But not once in the two seasons in which the Warriors upended the NBA with a rain of three-pointers … did I see as many as five consecutive minutes of any game live. That can […]

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