Going back to the Abu Dhabi days here.
In the UAE, daily English-language journalism is, 95 percent of the time, not dissimilar from English-language journalism in the U.S. or Britain. Timely, fact-based, well-sourced.
But then there is that 5 percent when things get a bit squirrely, and you didn’t really see what you saw — at least for purposes of publication.
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The TV package I have here in southern France gives me a lot of sports stuff, but Major League Baseball is not part of the menu. Team handball nearly 24/7. Lots of tennis. Every English Premier League match, every Champions League match. (I actually watch some of those.)
No baseball. This is France, after all, and the idea of a stick-and-ball sport does not seem to have occurred to them.
But there is a solution: MLB is offering live game access to all postseason games, including to people living outside the United States … for $25.
With the Dodgers in the playoffs, and my current status as a gentleman of leisure meaning I can watch games at odd hours, I am considering this.
But I am waiting for the Dodgers to do just a bit more than they have so far, which includes a 5-2 defeat in Game 2 in Washington today after No. 2 starter Rich Hill was staked to an early 2-0 lead.
In short, I do not trust the Dodgers to do anything heroic in the postseason — pretty much nothing since 1988 — and I am not going to plunk down that $25 until they give me some hint of being “clutch”.
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I had disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole today, when I came across some videos that might interest sports fans, and baseball fans in particular.
Renditions of the speech from the movie Field of Dreams, a soliloquy sometimes known as “The People Will Come” speech.
I have three versions of it here — one you will recognize, one you may not have known about and one that is just sort of out of the blue.
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That was the result this week of an Asian Football Confederation third-round qualifying match for the 2018 World Cup.
Mahmoud Al Mawas scored in the 54th minute to give Syria the one-goal victory before 37,000 at Shaanxi Province Stadium in China.
The match is unlikely to have a bearing on which four or five Asian teams advance to the tournament in Russia in 2018.
But given that Syria — shattered, war-torn Syria — could defeat anyone in soccer at this moment in history is news.
As is the shock that China, with its 1.4 billion people and the world’s second-biggest economy, could lose at home to a team ranked 114th in the world.
This really should not have happened. But then we take into account the apparent hunger and drive of the Syria side and the ongoing fecklessness of China’s national team …
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I did not plan on making the Chicago Cubs a topic for two days running, but today it struck me anew that I really would prefer they not win a World Series for the first time since 1908 …
Because I love, love, love long championship droughts, and when it comes to North American sports, nobody can match the Cubbies and their 107 seasons since they won the 1908 World Series.
We need to keep our serial fail-ers because we have so few to appreciate and argue about and pay attention to.
See? Here we are, discussing the Cubs, not because they won 103 games, not because we like Wrigley Field — but because they haven’t won since Teddy Roosevelt was president.
A few years ago, we had far more serial losers, and those we have left … are precious to those of us who like a good story — and the long, long attempts by hapless clubs to win a championship are always good for stories.
Consider:
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I woke up convinced the San Francisco Giants had won the National League wild-card playoff game the previous night. This decade, that’s what the Giants do in the postseason. Any game they need to win, they win. Including this one, a 3-0 victory in New York over the Mets, thanks to a three-run home run in the ninth inning by utility infielder Conor Gillaspie and a four-hit shutout by Madison Bumgarner.
The Giants’ ability to win when it really matters has meant three World Series championships — 2010, 2012, 2014 — in five years for a franchise that previously had not won a World Series since 1954, when Willie Mays was a pup.
Now the Giants go to Chicago to take on the best-in-ball Cubs, winners of 103 games in the regular season, a club intent on ending a World Series drought that goes back to 1908.
Yes, 1908.
But if I were a Cubs fan … I would be nervous about getting the Giants, of all teams, right here and right now. The Giants who have won nine consecutive win-or-go-home postseason games. The Giants who have been the National League’s team of the 21st century.
The Giants who have won the past three World Series played in “even” years.
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Gianni Infantino, who grew up one Swiss town away from his infamous predecessor as Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, seems to be equally prone to silly or unworkable ideas.
(We can only hope he does not prove as venal.)
Infantino campaigned for the presidency earlier this year on a platform that called for the World Cup to expand from 32 to 40 teams, and today said he would like to consider 48 teams for the 2026 World Cup, wherever it lands.
One of those ideas is silly, the other is ridiculous, but there is no telling what madness infects a man when he becomes Fifa president.
First, the problem with 40 teams:
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This is big.
Take a deep breath, American soccer fans.
A Yank has taken charge of an English Premier League team … a team in the world’s most popular sports league.
Bob Bradley is the new coach of Swansea City, the Wales-based club that already is at risk of relegation, seven matches into the season.
He not only becomes the first American to coach a Premier League team, he is the first to coach a team in any of Europe’s “big five” leagues — those of Spain, Germany, Italy, France and England.
Bradley, who last spring came within one goal of taking French club Le Havre up to Ligue 1, is by far the best-prepared American to take on this sort of assignment. But much of the football world expects him to fail.
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It was only yesterday — October of 1988 — that the Dodgers won the World Series. They beat the Oakland Athletics in five games, behind Kirk Gibson (a Game 1 homer you may have heard about) and right-hander Orel Hershiser, who was pretty much unhittable in winning twice.
That was the sixth Major League Baseball championship for the club, and its fifth in 31 seasons in Los Angeles, which was a pretty good rate of return for one of the game’s most successful franchises.
Then … 27 seasons without a ring.
It gets worse. The club has not reached the World Series since that 1988 championship, and only in the past few years has it advanced as far as the National League Championship Series — losing 4-1 to the Phillies in 2008 and 2009 and 4-2 to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013.
The Dodgers are back in the playoffs, versus National League East champions Washington, after winning a fourth successive NL West title. They have no problem getting to the playoffs; it’s moving forward in them that is the problem.
Can this team get to the World Series … and even win it?
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A few weeks ago, one of the old-timers in the little French town where we live led a historical tour.
More than 50 people turned out to listen to the town’s wise man, the one who owns 300 globes and a thousand maps, talk about the long history of the little Languedoc town.
“Here is where the first tower was built, about a thousand years ago. … The people lived in the circle of buildings around the tower, 30 or 35 hearths. … The town population peaked at 700 early in the last century. It is now 611.”
Well, not anymore.
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