Thank goodness. Dodgers fans aren’t all passive sheep as I feared they might be. Showing up at Chavez Ravine and cheering on the boys in blue without thinking in the slightest about the bigger issues behind the scenes.
A former colleagues, Dennis Pope, has done a question-and-answer piece with a guy named Ben Covette, “creator of […]

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The Dodgers reportedly have put Manny Ramirez on waivers, and the Chicago White Sox are thought to be interested, so the end of Mannywood could be near. Very near.
If so, he goes out with a whimper more than a bang. Or actually, with a “no comment” … which is fine, because Manny stopped being […]

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So, the news … the NFL has fined Chad Ochocinco $25,000 for tweeting on a game day during the time when social-networking is banned by the league.
He is not the first professional athlete to get dunned for posting on his Twitter account. And I can understand why it’s generally not a good idea.
But I believe […]

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A friend sent me the link late last night, Abu Dhabi time.
Vin Scully would “make an announcement” before today’s Dodgers game with the Cincinnati Reds.
And, of course, anytime Vinny makes an announcement, considering that he’s 82 … it freaks out all Vinny-o-philes.

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Almost 11 months ago I did a blog post that generated as much hate mail as anything I’ve written at this address. Vile stuff. Unprintable. I posted eight comments, but another 20-plus I did not. Not because I didn’t like the criticism (I read them all), but because I didn’t feel like redacting the vulgarities.
“Matt […]

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While researching the concept of “great sports venues” in Asia, it was deeply impressed upon me how enormous was the scope of the topic. Daunting, even.
How to know about that grand old place in what is now Kazakhstan? Or the charming race track in Mongolia? Or whatever it is that Nepal, Uzbekistan, Georgia or Armenia […]

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Part 3 of the series in The National about the best sports venues in the world. Broken out by continent.
In Monday’s editions: North America!
Interesting, how the voting went.
I will tell you who won: Augusta National. Even the Brits in the room know about “the course like no other” or whatever it is network TV gets […]

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To celebrate the addition of “cricket” to my categories, I have decided to give you some cricket “game story play-by-play” from this morning’s editions of The National.
Remember, hundreds of millions of people understand this. Completely. And for those of you who don’t get it … go ahead and read. If just for the comedy of […]

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I have watched the Dodgers from afar. Not as the fan I was as a kid (see, “Done Bleeding Dodger Blue” from back in April), but as someone who has followed the Dodgers for half a century. After a few decades, it’s what you do, even if a team has gone badly wrong.
I have seen […]

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A few days ago I noted on this blog how drag racing seems to have followed us over to the Gulf, and to the UAE and Qatar, in particular.
And now we have seen that Little League Baseball, is here, too.
I wrote about Little League for the Tuesday editions of The National, catching up on how […]

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