On October 31, 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther posted on a church door a list of 95 issues he thought the Roman Catholic church should address. That act, just short of 500 years ago, led to the Protestant Reformation — an event which changed Europe irrevocably and next month will be observed in […]

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Much can be said for Prague. It is a jewel of a city, small enough that most of the most popular bits of it can be seen in a single day, on foot, by the energetic visitor. It offers castles, museums, dramatic vistas from hilltop perches, a wide river, shopping from one end of the […]

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So, here we are in Prague, and we have no idea what anyone is saying. The locals, in the Czech Republic, speak Czech. Fair enough. It is a Slavic language spoken by about 10 million people, though it probably is closer to 6 million if 5 million speakers of Slovakian (mutually intelligible but not quite […]

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Not much time today in the Czech capital, given that we flew out of the south of France in mid-afternoon, changed planes in Paris and landed in Prague at about 8:30. (Where the airport is perhaps best known for being named after a poet, Vaclav Havel, who was president of the Czech Republic after the […]

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So, the NFL. The pain begins anew, tomorrow, with the New England Patriots and the not annually concussed Tom Brady playing the Kansas City Chiefs. The initial round of maiming for the 2017 iteration of a dead-end sport will be in prime time. Which prompts me to think about the two teams in greater Los […]

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The United States and Syria and their national soccer teams. Concepts never before found in the same paragraph, on this blog. Each hoped today for a victory. Each would be crushed by a defeat. Each will settle for draws, late in the making, draws that keep each team on a road to the Russia 2018 […]

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We like to think sports are above and beyond politics. We know that is not true, has never been true and never will be true. Political imperatives often threaten fair and free sports events, and anti-competitive forces tomorrow have one of the greatest opportunities in modern times to take the narrative in a pre-ordained direction. […]

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UCLA trailed Texas A&M 44-10 late in the third quarter at the Rose Bowl in a season-opening intersectional football game tonight. And won 45-44 with touchdowns in their final five possessions, including the winner with 43 seconds left. It was the second-biggest comeback victory in the history of major-college football. When it was over, UCLA […]

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It seemed too good to be true. It was. The Dodgers had a sensational run from the middle of May through late August, going 69-18 through August 25, a golden, 87-game stretch when they won 79.3 percent of their games. A nearly unprecedented run that had them on pace to win 116 games, tying the […]

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Well, this is alarming. The United States national soccer team played host to Costa Rica tonight at Red Bull Arena in New Jersey in a 2018 World Cup qualifying match. USMNT fans gathered to see what they expected would be a spirited riposte aimed at the Ticos for a 4-0 thrashing they gave the Yanks […]

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