I worked with several Scots while in Abu Dhabi. One day I asked one of them why Scotland is so bad in cricket. He looked at me like I should already have known the answer. “Because we never get enough good weather to finish a match,” he said. The best golfers in the world got […]

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This is odd. When the French take vacations, they nearly always take them in late July and August, and they overwhelmingly take them in their own country. Which means those of us in the south of the country, where the dependable sun is, can expect a major influx of visitors from the north choking the […]

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Things got weird in the U.S. versus El Salvador soccer match in the Gold Cup last night a game won 2-0 by the Americans. Both Jozy Altidore and Omar Gonzalez alleged they were bitten by Salvadoran players and Altidore said he also had his nipple twisted by his biting attacker, Henry Romero. (Embedded at this […]

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It all has seemed strange and magical. Twenty-two games into the 2017 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers were 10-12. They already had injury issues and it looked as if they would have their work cut out for them in a division where the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies looked formidable, even if they were the […]

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I love it when onetime brash young athletes emerge as critics of “kids these days”. Whether it is Charles Barkley going on and on how he and other players back in the day (the 1990s, I suppose) would handle LeBron James … to Jeff Kent being driven to distraction by the antics of a young […]

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Complimenting Roger Federer is as easy as rolling out of bed and hitting the floor. So skilled! So classy! So durable! So clever! So reliable! So eternally youthful — in that he does not seem to have gained or lost a pound since he took over the men’s game in 2003 and still has (nearly […]

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Venus Williams. Hell of a career. Seven major tennis championships. Five Wimbledon championships. Former world No. 1. Playing professionally since age 14, in 1994. And Wimbledon finalist today at the age of 37, with a chance to become the oldest women’s singles champion at the All England Club. She had an opportunity to pull a […]

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I survived some ridiculous road trips as a professional journalist but nearly all of them were my own damn fault. The Saturday night/Sunday morning back-to-back football road games. (Tempe to Minneapolis by way of Dallas; Tuscaloosa to Houston by way of Atlanta.) Doable. Just. The 730-mile early January drive from San Bernardino to Grand Junction, […]

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OK, maybe it has been about homerism. I have a fairly strong recollection of a time when I was more interested in men’s tennis than I am now. A decade-plus ago. Which would coincide with what turned out to be the end of American significance among the world’s elite male tennis players. U.S. men’s tennis […]

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This is the sort of thing that boggles the minds of Californians. Well, actually, just about anyone from America, the land of mediocre $30 bottles of wine, as well as tasting sessions that offer five tiny pours for $15-to-$25. Imagine a local winery that lets visitors taste as many as seven wines. Less than a […]

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