Have you ever seen video of kids rioting in some distant corner of the world … and then they start to throw stuff at the authorities? Bricks. Rocks. Tear-gas canisters back in the direction from which they came … And have you ever noticed what horrendous throwing motion most of those those kids have? I […]

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I saw Demetrius Walker play three or four times when he was a freshman and/or a sophomore at Fontana High School, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. I remember thinking “he’s OK, but not great”. He was good around the basket, he could leap, but he was only 6-foot-3 (later reduced to 6-2, in […]

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Which sport do Americans like most? It was the same in 2013 as it was in 1985, and every year since. The National Football League. Duh. We like our danger and violence, and we like our color and strategy and cheerleaders, and tidy three-hour blocs mapped out on Sundays and three nights a week. The […]

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The Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw agreed on a seven-year, $215 million contract this week. And I have been thinking about it, doing a bit of pro-and-conning. And where I have finally landed?

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We don’t talk much about the many and profound difficulties in being a professional athlete. It’s like we rarely get past the “you get paid a lot of money to play games” part of this. It’s all gravy, once you have reached the big league. Of course, it is not easy. Lots of down sides. […]

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So, the Hall of Fame vote came around, and three players — Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Fran Thomas — made the grade, appearing on 75 percent of all ballots cast. Good for those guys. I would have voted for all three. But, again, we have the “what about the druggies?” kerfuffle. Which in part […]

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Check out this news release on the Los Angeles Dodgers website. They are very proud of their prominence in social media. Look at all the numbers! –They had 193,493 new Twitter followers. –Exactly 30,849,622 “likes” on Instagram, 373,072 comments and 309,314 new followers of the @Dodgers account. –An MLB-leading 1,588,291 Twitter retweets from January to […]

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Bizarre story of the day: One of Australia’s top cricket batsmen, flush with success in the ongoing Ashes Test series, is considering taking up baseball. David Warner has pummeled the English in the five-Test series, which Australia already has clinched by winning the first three Tests. It must have been one of those “new worlds […]

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A weird thing about being in Thailand — which is physically closer to the U.S. than is the UAE, and by several thousand miles — is an even bigger sense of disconnect from American sports. It’s the time zones. By 10 a.m. UAE time, just about every sports event “last night” in the U.S. is […]

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I cannot recall if I always loathed all things Boston. Perhaps I did. Being a Lakers fan in the 1960s would have been enough to sour a right-thinking person on Boston. The Celtics: Good, but also really lucky. If I were ambivalent about the Boston Red Sox, the Boston (now New England) Patriots and the […]

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