I take it, from the other side of the world, that the narrative in Los Angeles remains this: Yasiel Puig is a baseball superstar. Or a star, anyway. Or so we thought. Now, I am not so certain. And maybe this has been noted already, several times, and I have not seen it … but […]

[Read more →]

It had never occurred to me. That Vin Scully’s hair might not be his own. It required a British colleague, at The National, to make me confront this. He had seen a photo of the Dodgers broadcaster on a page proof; I had run a small story on our two-page lighter-side-of-sports package in The National, […]

[Read more →]

On June 21, the Dodgers lost 5-2 to the San Diego Padres to fall to 30-42, last in the National League West and 9.5 games out of first place. Clayton Kershaw had been roughed up a little, and the Dodgers hitters didn’t get much going against the parade of relievers the Padres used that day […]

[Read more →]

Before the Dodgers’ game tonight with the New York Yankees, they had Cristiano Ronaldo of the Real Madrid soccer club throw out the first pitch. As often is the case for non-ballplayers … it did not go well.

[Read more →]

It has been a long, dry spell for the Los Angeles Dodgers. On a couple of levels. The more historical is their inability to win a World Series over the past quarter-century. You have to be at least 30 years old to have even a dim memory of 1988 and Orel Hershiser and “look who’s […]

[Read more →]

Since moving to Abu Dhabi, nearly four years ago, I have returned to the U.S. on three occasions. Each of those three times … I saw a baseball game within a few days of clearing customs at LAX. In this case, the Angels and Red Sox, at Anaheim Stadium. As usual, I found it a […]

[Read more →]

As a Dodgers fan since Vin Scully was a young man and the club was still playing in the Coliseum, I have been paying attention from afar to the first week of Yasiel Puig. My appetite for information on him is whetted by his presence (since March) on my fantasy team … a guy I […]

[Read more →]

This is an awful time to be a Los Angeles-area sports fan. It has been mostly dreary since I left the region to live and work in Abu Dhabi, in 2009, but it seems to be bottoming out, the past four or five months. Aside from hockey, which has no significant hold on Southern California […]

[Read more →]

A person leaves town … switches states .. crosses an ocean … and eventually his sports preferences morph. It’s one of those things that you don’t realize until you do a sort of internal check. “Which teams’ results do I follow? Which have I stopped tracking? Which teams can make me feel a little better […]

[Read more →]

I am more than a bit unsettled by the Dodgers’ spending spree since the new owners took over. The notion that if this acquisition (Carl Crawford) or that one (Adrian Gonzalez) is just an expensive mistake and, oh, well, we have more money where that came from … It creeps me out. Isn’t that the […]

[Read more →]