This is not an exercise in academic rigor. I did not have someone sitting with a note pad writing down literally the first 10 facts I could recall pertaining to sports in 2017. But … it is a fairly accurate recreation of a fairly quick trip through my brain to see what stuck from the […]

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Rich Dauer has made plenty of news during his lifetime in baseball. He was part of NCAA national championship teams at USC in the 1970s and the second baseman for the 1983 World Series-champion Baltimore Orioles. On a local-local, hometown level the Colton native was the oh-so-cool young (35) field manager of the attendance-record-smashing 1987 […]

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If Vin Scully had not followed the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles … Dick Enberg would be the best-known sports broadcaster in the history of Southern California. Rather than “the other really good guy in L.A., after Vinny.” This came to mind today after hearing that Enberg died in La Jolla at age 82.

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OK, yes, I panicked when I saw the headline and first paragraph of this story on ESPN.com tonight. “Dodgers part ways with Adrian Gonzalez in five-player deal with Braves.” “The Atlanta Braves traded outfielder Matt Kemp to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir and Charlie Culberson, the teams announced Saturday.” […]

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The story of Shohei Ohtani just got a bit more fantastical. The 23-year-old Japanese star who seems to be channeling the spirit of Babe Ruth with his demonstrated star quality as both a pitcher and hitter, has signed with a Major League Baseball team. And it is not the New York Yankees or Boston Red […]

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While packing to move to France, I came across an ancient and tiny baseball glove. An American going abroad … can he really leave behind a baseball glove? (Even one that is not his own?) No. He cannot. There’s going away, and then there is leaving behind an essential part of your cultural patrimony. But […]

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  The wind blows sometimes, here in the south of France. In the summer, that can pose problems with slamming doors, because we like to keep the windows open throughout the season, when it can be a bit warm. And gusty. Thus, we prop open the doors with compact and heavy things lying about. An […]

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(Above: A statue to a bullfighter, in Seville.) Passing references have been made on this site to our tour of the Iberian Peninsula. Normally, more of that would have appeared here, as we went along, but the Dodgers were in a seven-game World Series — which vied for attention on this blog — originally intended […]

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Did the usual thing. Asleep around midnight Central European time, “called” to wake up around 4 a.m., and this time around I saw the final innings of Game 7 of the 2017 World Series. Won, sigh, by the Houston Astros. It was the bottom of the eighth when I checked in from a hotel room […]

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I can’t adequately explain how this happened. A couple of months ago, we finalized a commitment to an 18-day trip to and through Spain and Portugal. Not a crazy idea, considering we are already close to the former, which is attached to the latter. Also, not crazy considering that 1) we have spent little time […]

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