I remember being in second or third grade, at First Lutheran School in Long Beach, California, and Mrs. Bolton, our stern and 50-ish teacher asking, on October 31, “What day is this?” Lots of hands were raised, including mine, no doubt (I loved to be called on) and someone was picked and triumphantly blurted: “Halloween!” […]

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I can’t adequately explain how this happened. A couple of months ago, we finalized a commitment to an 18-day trip to and through Spain and Portugal. Not a crazy idea, considering we are already close to the former, which is attached to the latter. Also, not crazy considering that 1) we have spent little time […]

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I woke at 5 a.m., in Portugal, and instead of the Dodgers and Astros being done for the evening, back there in Central Daylight Time USA, the teams were tied at 12-12 going into the top of the 10th. Perfect timing for my mental energy — explained and celebrated in yesterday’s post — to push […]

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“Juju” is a noun with two definitions, according to Merriam-Webster. 1: a fetish, charm, or amulet of West African peoples 2: the magic attributed to or associated with juju I do not have a fetish, charm or amulet, but like many sports fans, I have a sneaking feeling that I can influence, by my attentions […]

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The Dodgers can’t have expected Yu Darvish to throttle the Houston Astros in Game 3 of the World Series. Well, maybe they did, given his solid performances in his first two outings of the postseason. But Yu has been fairly consistently inconsistent for the past two seasons — or since returning from more than a […]

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As the capital city of Portugal, Lisbon was one of the world’s most important cities in the early days of the Age of Discovery. Portugal was, by almost a century, the first European nation to seek out trade and conquest in areas previously unfamiliar to the rest of Europe. In particular, in sub-Saharan Africa, India […]

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In 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were “saving” baseball by pursuing the 37-year-old record for home runs in a season, set by Roger Maris, the sports apparel company Nike came up with an ad campaign based on one sentence: “Chicks dig the long ball.” (Video of that spot, which actually features pitchers Mike […]

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Baseball and beards have become inseparable. Or so it seems. Somebody on just about every Major League Baseball team sports a Civil War-style beard. Six inches or more of facial hair flapping in the breeze. Perhaps the greatest postseason collision of mega-beards occurred in Game 1 of the 2017 World Series tonight, when Los Angeles […]

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Scott Wolf has been covering USC athletics seemingly forever. He writes for the L.A. Daily News/Los Angeles News Group, and in an era where nearly everyone else lost their jobs, Wolf kept his. Mostly because he generally breaks all significant news coming out of his alma mater’s athletic department. Readers, and editors, have picked up […]

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Portugal seems to be a bit off the grid, among American tourists. Inexpensive, lots of sun — but not a priority. In practice, it is a country Yanks visit only after seeing the leading sights of Europe, led by those in France and Britain. It turns out that Portugal’s second city, Porto, is in itself […]

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