I was looking at the Dodgers media release tonight, pertaining to the upcoming Vin Scully weekend at Dodger Stadium. And for a moment I was thinking, “What is there left to say or do? Are we pushing this too far? Are the Dodgers taking it too far? Are we going to ruin the health of […]

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I never mind seeing the San Francisco Giants suffer. This is a deep-seated frame of mind, going back to my childhood and the annual Wars of Religion between the Giants and my team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Back to when Juan Marichal took a bat to John Roseboro’s head. Back to when the San Francisco […]

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The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team. The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders […]

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For 26 seasons, the High Desert Mavericks were a constant in a rapidly evolving region of Southern California. Much of the Victor Valley portion of the Mojave Desert went from scrub and ranches to affordable housing tracts during the Mavericks’ tenure in the town of Adelanto, best known for a federal prison … and the […]

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Here is my take on the online fantasy sports sites: People who use them are gamblers, not sports fans. Real fans do not need the lure of winning money by defeating strangers in daily fantasy competitions sponsored by rapacious, apparently-not-quite-ethical companies.

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Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros is the shortest everyday player in Major League Baseball, at 5-foot-6, his “official” height. (Some think he is closer to 5-5.) But one of the great things about baseball is that you don’t have to be unusually tall or wide to succeed, which Altuve has been demonstrating throughout his […]

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Last November, slugger David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox said the 2016 Major League Baseball season would be his last. As the man who was a key contributor to the Decade of the Sox, which includes three World Series championships from 2004 to 2013, Ortiz has been feted repeatedly as he makes his final […]

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It’s time for Americans to do themselves a favor: Take the national anthem out of U.S. sports events. We have plenty of good reasons to do so, and as soon as possible. To wit:

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More than a decade ago, in an attempt to make myself — and perhaps some readers — feel better as Barry Bonds slugged his way into the record books, I suggested that a certain third baseman for the New York Yankees, Alex Rodriguez, would deliver us from evil in a decade or so. I suggested […]

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Rio 2016 is the first Summer Olympics I will not attend since Moscow 1980. Yes, it was a good run. I made it to eight consecutive Summer Games. Beginning with Los Angeles 1984 and continuing with Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The first four with […]

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