I dashed off an item late Monday night, after the Lakers lost Game 1 of their series with Houston. I was determined to catch the 12:07 a.m. Metrolink train back to Long Beach, along with several dozen of my best crazy and drug-addled homeless friends … And, yes, I made it, but only by a […]

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DJ Gallo is espn.com’s resident humorist. Well, actually, I don’t know that he works for them full-time, which is what a “resident” would do, since he also does a sports satire site that goes by the name of sportspickle.com Doesn’t seem like you’d run your own humor Web site if someone else were paying you […]

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I rarely comment on items that have appeared in newspapers. I figure you may already have read it and have your own ideas. But … I was struck, a few days ago, by how the same section (Friday) of the same newspaper (the Los Angeles Times) could have one column so spot-on valuable and fun […]

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I wrote this game story for the North County Times, out of Game 1 of the Lakers’ series with the Houston Rockets, on Monday night. I expected the Lakers to be angrier, after it was over, but the dominant theme seemed to be surprise. With a dollop of frustration. One school of thought: The Lakers […]

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The meltdown in print journalism has produced an unfortunate side-effect: Diminished newsrooms largely populated by timid journalists. They might not be timid with sources. (Though I have to wonder.) What I am fairly certain of is that the print survivors are scared stiff of their managers, and what I believe was the healthy skepticism and […]

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Tony Jackson, Dodgers baseball writer, was laid off Thursday by the L.A. News Group. LANG getting rid of solid, veteran journalists is nothing new. It’s what Dean Singleton’s collection of imploding SoCal suburban newspapers have been doing for more than a year now. The L.A. Daily News, the San Gabriel Tribune, the Long Beach Press […]

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Two guys I spent a fair amount of time with in press boxes/workrooms died in the past few days. Bob Oates, longtime pro football writer for the Los Angeles Times. David Poole, veteran NASCAR writer for the Charlotte Observer. Poole was something of a NASCAR legend. Oates wasn’t far behind, among NFL reporters. I wasn’t […]

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Yes, I ranted about the NFL draft a year ago, and I am just so grateful I don’t have to pay any attention to this thing. That wasn’t the case for the first 17, 18 years of my journalism career, when Los Angeles had at least one NFL franchise (the Rams), and sometimes two (the […]

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Everyone who has seen this movie before, raise your hand. Wow. One hundred percent of you with your arms in the air. We couldn’t get 100 percent agreement that this is Friday. I feel badly for Milton Bradley because I really don’t believe he can control himself. I am convinced he has serious issues with […]

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I was reading David Sedaris in the New Yorker (how’s that for a snooty start to an item on a sports blog?), and he was writing about train travel a quarter-century ago and the cars in which people were allowed to smoke. And it brought to mind a memory I thought I may already have […]

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