Been donkey’s years, as the Brits would say, since I did a list. It’s time. This one is going to be a little apples-and-oranges. My favorite road trips as a professional sports journalist. Some considerations: –What is more important? The travel? Or the event I was there to cover? –Or will we almost certainly get […]

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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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Miami Marlins shortstop Dee Gordon, the National League batting champion, last week was suspended 80 games by Major League Baseball for failing a drug test. This came only a few weeks after outfielder Chris Colabello of the Toronto Blue Jays also was hit with an 80-game ban. (And also expressed puzzlement how he failed a […]

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So, giving more thought to the phenomenon that is Vin Scully … The secret to his popularity, I believe, lies in two areas. –His voice. It is a pleasure to hear. Well-modulated, mellifluous. Never shouting, never mumbling, easy to understand, easy on the ear. The voice of a natural storyteller. –His words. Scully uses proper […]

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This was predictable. A UAE team playing in Tehran against an Iranian team in the quarterfinals of the Asian Champions League … No way it was going to come off as a tribute to sportsmanship. But the reality was even uglier than I had expected, mostly (thankfully) in small, petulant ways — jersey-grabbing, shin-kicking, faking, […]

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If you are going to transit through the Gulf, some words of advice. Don’t get drunk in public. Don’t insult anyone based on their religion. The drummer of the German heavy metal band Scorpions, an American named James Kottak, ran afoul of both concepts, and is about to complete spending a month in a Dubai […]

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So, nearly 4.5 years in Abu Dhabi, and not once have we been visited by someone from home. Until today! There came my daughter walking towards us in the Abu Dhabi airport, pulling two purple suitcases. We all have the week off, and we are going to take her to see some of the sights, […]

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Sports fans are trusting sorts. When a prominent athlete (or 10) runs afoul of a drugs test, and a prominent sports official suggests that the malefactors have been caught, and the scourge of performance-enhancing drugs ended … we tend to want to believe it. Recent evidence, however, suggests the PED Era is absolutely not over. […]

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Supply your own punchline. One might be … “or are you just excited to be headed to Dubai?” Another wacky story out of our neck of the woods. And here it is, in the pages of The National: A man was arrested in New Delhi just ahead of boarding a flight headed for the UAE. […]

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Jim Thome hit two home runs in Detroit tonight to reach 600 in his career. He is only the eighth guy to reach six bills in homers. And this pleases me on a couple of levels.

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