If Clayton Kershaw tomorrow can throw seven scoreless innings and allow two hits, as he did in his first go-round with the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series … I think it would be time to say “all is forgiven”. All is forgiven for the rocky outings in previous NLCS and postseason appearances. […]

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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … and you know how the rest goes. Today in Paris I went to see Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the second movie based on the Reacher character in Lee Child’s novels, and again starring Tom Cruise as Reacher. And, again, we learned that Cruise may […]

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As Game 4 of the National League Championship Series began, the Chicago Cubs were reeling, after being shut out twice in succession by the Dodgers. Three innings into the game, the Cubs scoreless streak had reached 21 innings, as rookie Dodgers rookie left-hander Julio Urias looked formidable. Urias should have had a lead, but his […]

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I watched the Dodgers’ National League Championship Series game with the Cubs that ended early this morning, and I was struck by two things I saw in the crowd. –Even this late in the season (but not at all that late on a Los Angeles night), Dodgers fans are going to leave early in an […]

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Paris has just about everything … but when it comes to the, OK, less-than-highbrow concept of the sports bar … well, they don’t do it often and often don’t to it well. All these years later, we finally seem to have found a competent sports bar that is a sports bar in a way that […]

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Most Los Angeles Dodgers fans were well aware that the man typically referred to as the greatest pitcher in the game — Clayton Kershaw — had not been able to translate his regular-season successes. Those led to three Cy Young awards (2011, 2013, 2014), given to the man considered the best pitcher in his league. […]

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I had been in Paris barely 10 minutes today when I had my pocket picked. Arrived from the south of the country on the fast train into Gare de Lyon, made my way downstairs to the Metro’s 1 line, got into a jammed car just as the doors were about to close … and then […]

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The Cleveland Indians have been not-winning things for a long time. No World Series championships since 1948. Last appeared in a World Series in 1997 and lost Game 7 in excruciating fashion. But we must thank them for an important something already this October:

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I assumed I would be asleep when the Dodgers and Washington Nationals completed Game 5 — as well as their National Division Series. The game began at 8:08 p.m. (EDT), and three-plus hours had elapsed by the time I woke in France, at about 5:15 a.m. (Friday morning). As I was booting up the laptop […]

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The Dodgers’ victory in Game 4 was semi-clutch. Can’t really call it a clutch performance, because they blew that three-run lead in the seventh inning. (They won on a hit batter, a pinch single and Chase Utley’s ground ball that was a foot out of reach for the second baseman.) And semi-clutch is not enough […]

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