Interesting day, Monday, on the Los Angeles pro sports scene. —Kobe Bryant sets a Madison Square Garden record by scoring 61 in the Lakers’ victory over the Knicks. —Manny Ramirez turns down the Dodgers and GM Ned Colletti and their offer of $25 million for one season. Turning point days, for the area’s most popular […]

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This is a good day. The Dodgers just got better by invoking the hoary “addition by subtraction” principle … By releasing Andruw Jones. Who is only … the biggest bust in Dodgers history. And this is a club, remember, that has made some whopper mistakes.

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Go ahead and sing that to the famous tune from “The Wizard of Oz.” Good times. The Boston Red Sox aren’t winning anything. Specifically, Boston’s insufferable fans aren’t going to win anything, not this fall, and that’s wonderful. The Red Sox Nation can go back to whining and suffering and all that self-absorbed crap that […]

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Can’t be too upset about this. These Dodgers never were very good. They had a hot two weeks in September to finish a modest 84-78, only the 15th-best record in baseball, but that was enough to win an awful division. Then they ran into a Cubs team that chose that weekend to go into a […]

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I’m watching the Dodgers go down, and out … on ESPN’s international network. Which is being voiced-over by a Cantonese-speaking announcer. It led to this amusing bit, a moment ago.

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My sports viewing day has gone from one extreme to the other. An event in which I was quite interested … to one in which I find myself completely disengaged And both on the same television network. Game 1 was the Dodgers and Phillies in the National League Championship Series. The game that was on […]

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So, it’s Sunday. I got out of bed and went to my cable TV and began trolling for the “random NFL game being televised in Hong Kong” … and found nothing. “Hmm,” I thought. “Maybe it’s because England is playing a World Cup qualifier. … Or maybe they chose the Boston-Tampa Bay ballgame, instead.” Only […]

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My favorite baseball team on the planet right now is the Tampa Bay Rays. Why? Because they are playing the Boston Red Sox. I am sick to death of the Red Sox. And of all sports-things-Boston. Most certainly including the Celtics and Patriots. Well, actually, I don’t loathe the franchises, in particular. Well, OK, I […]

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Tell me you haven’t all done this a time or 50. You’re watching a game, and you know which team you want to win … and they get off to a good start … and you decide that your actions — at home — somehow are responsible. It’s an internalization of the panoply of superstitions […]

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After getting all smug about being able to see the baseball playoffs even over here in Hong Kong … we got to Game 4 of the Angels’ series with the Red Sox and ESPN International crapped out on me. They were showing Chelsea soccer. Against some Romanian team. I think. In one of those interminable […]

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