Roy Rivenburg does a very amusing ongoing parody of the Los Angeles Times Web site, and he has just added another sports story. This one is about Navy SEALS taking out the Pirates … as in the Pittsburgh Pirates … with sniper fire. Like the Somali pirates, see? Man, the Pirate franchise is a rough […]

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Oscar De La Hoya made official his retirement today. (See that story here.) Which triggers several thoughts. 1. Boxing is in trouble as a spectator sport. And now one of the last great public figures in the sport is done.  I suppose boxing can survive the end of DLH’s career, but it won’t be easy. […]

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I went to Angel Stadium this afternoon to listen to Mike Scioscia, Mike Butcher and two players talk about Nick Adenhart, and to see how the Angels dealt with the issue in the hours leading up to their game with the Boston Red Sox. I covered this for the New York Times, as well. You […]

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Talk about a flashback. Watching the United State national team play El Salvador at Estadio Cuscatlan on Saturday was like going back 20 years. Or more. Imagine, if you will, my fellow sports scribes, past and present, an environment where all of the following are unavailable:

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Great atmosphere. Tremendous energy in the stadium, a packed-out old venue that looks as if it might fall over in the next earthquake. Or hard wind. And a crazy game. U.S. 2, El Salvador 2. The Salvadorans took a 2-0 lead while dominating the first 70-some minutes, but the home team tried to sit on […]

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Part 1 of the Latest Hare-Brained Scheme has worked out well enough. I got to San Salvador alive but groggy, at 5:30 a.m., took five cab rides and two bus rides today, saw a bit of the city, met the vice president of the country, experienced the near-gridlock rush-hour traffic conditions, interviewed three U.S. national […]

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Just because it is logistically possible to make a road trip … doesn’t mean you ought to. A couple of weeks ahead of that theoretically possible trip, I never remember that idea, above. A couple hours before I leave … then I remember, but the money has been spent and I’m committed and, well, here […]

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An update for the item below. Days at tennis tournaments can be so long … that you can’t even buy a beer in the state of California by the time they finish playing. The night session began late. And then top-seeded Dinara Safina and 19-year-old Victoria Azarenka played three sets. The last match, involving top-seeded […]

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Covering tennis is not like anything else in sports journalism. If it is a big tournament, and the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells is a big one, it can make for the longest days in the business. Like, 11 to 11. For more than a week. If you love tennis, then, this is a […]

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A year ago, two, I would have been all over this. The first San Bernardino County high school basketball team to advance to a state championship game. That would be Eisenhower, of Rialto, a basketball power for most of the last 30 years but particularly effective under the guidance of coach Steve Johnson. Eisenhower won […]

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