It was madness. A moment of weakness. Impressed by Manchester City’s stampede through the Premier League. League, League Cup, FA Cup. So, on May 12, I had a shout-out, on this blog, for the club and its players, and the owner back in Abu Dhabi. Big mistake, in retrospect, especially with the publication of a […]

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Most NBA fans/observers are probably not interested in this. I am. I want the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA championship, over the Toronto Raptors, and I want them to do it with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green running the show. I want the return of the Big Three that carried the […]

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I was watching the 2011 movie Moneyball in the wee hours last night, and I was struck, anew, by one big question: How did baseball writers evaluate what they were looking at … before the dawn of advanced analytics? How did veteran reporters — including most of them right on through the Baby Boomer demographic […]

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I have been in France for most of the past 40 months, and I not only lack the basics of the language here, I cannot even count to 20, much less 100. Not knowing how to construct simple sentences? That’s my fault. I am not trying hard enough. Aside from my one sentence: “Desolee je […]

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Been donkey’s years, as the Brits would say, since I did a list. It’s time. This one is going to be a little apples-and-oranges. My favorite road trips as a professional sports journalist. Some considerations: –What is more important? The travel? Or the event I was there to cover? –Or will we almost certainly get […]

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In 2008, when Manchester City Football Club was sold to a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, it hardly warranted intense foreign interest, let alone surprise. Man City was a middling-to-lower-middling club in the English Premier League, and foreigners already were buying up English soccer teams. Two of the biggest brands in English soccer, […]

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Nearly every day over the past month, I wake up hoping the new day will be the one when I learn that James Holzhauer has lost on “Jeopardy”. He usually crushes the opposition with monstrous cash totals. In 22 consecutive victories on the greatest quiz show ever invented the man who describes himself as a […]

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I have some history with Jonathan Wilson, going back to when I was in Abu Dhabi working for The National, the emirate’s English-language newspaper. Wilson was one of our European soccer correspondents, contributing a couple of pieces per week. He often took on topics focusing on what he perceived to be significant trends in the […]

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In the United States, a traveling circus is a historical curiosity. The age of the portable “big tops”, which came into U.S. cities and towns, usually by train, often announcing their presence by parading down Main Street … that age is so last millennium. It was two years ago that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum […]

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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