Let’s get this straight right off: There is no future for competitive eating. It is tacky, gross, wasteful and Just Plain Dangerous, with links not only to chronic medical conditions but also to fatalities. You perhaps have viewed, via television, one of the episodes of professional gluttony. Hot dogs are the preferred edible but other […]

[Read more →]

The moon landing of July 1969 somehow has always seemed fresh, in my mind. Even when we view it in black and white. (It was 1969, after all.) That sense of recall seems a blessing for the aged of the world, given that no one under the age of 55 can hope to recall much […]

[Read more →]

And which World Cup is that? Why, the Cricket World Cup, of course. The Fifa Women’s World Cup, a global soccer event, surely is attracting viewers from more countries, but when it comes to “eyeballs on TV screens”, I am pretty confident the Cricket World Cup is ahead. By millions.

[Read more →]

For a century, it’s been “the special relationship” pretty much nonstop. Great Britain and the United States, the Two Great English-Speaking Allies on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. We helped the Brits avoid German domination in the 20th century. Twice. In return, they threw in with the Yanks on the succession of small wars […]

[Read more →]

And we are living it. Not in the epicenter of “scary hot” but uncomfortably close to it. “Friday will be the worst” was what we had heard for the whole of this preposterously hot week, and leave it to the weather guys to be right about bad news. Heat records have been tumbling this afternoon […]

[Read more →]

I like the Fifa Women’s World Cup. It’s global. It can be exotic. The women attract a more PG-rated crowd than do the men. It provides three weeks or more of running narrative and it fills a bit of a void during the potentially slow soccer summer season. I covered four men’s World Cups, and […]

[Read more →]

One of my least favorite acronyms, one that was a principal actor in professional sports at the turn of the century. Particularly in baseball. I was reminded of this today when it was announced that Major League Baseball has suspended Oakland Athletics pitcher Frankie Montas 80 games for failing a PED (performance-enhancing drugs) test. Let’s […]

[Read more →]

So, that didn’t work out so well. The 2018-19 Lakers, fortified by free-agent signing LeBron James, would aim for a place in the playoffs — and maybe more. But, for sure, the Lakers were back and their games would be destination viewing again. Not so fast. The Lakers started fairly well and were 20-14 on […]

[Read more →]

I suppose this began when I began regularly watching the National Football League, again, for the first time in two decades. Injuries. Injuries everywhere. But now, the ugly injuries are by no means concentrated in the realm of football. They are everywhere. As NBA fans could tell you after Kevin Durant ruptured his Achilles tendon […]

[Read more →]

Two full days in Iceland, as well as one very long evening and one very early morning. Enough to have an opinion on the little island in the upper reaches of the north Atlantic? Of course it is. We all make snap judgments, some snappier than others, given on how long we are around a […]

[Read more →]