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The Charge of the Padded Brigade: England in Australia
It’s been one of the strangest cricket series on record. Hurried, frenetic, foolish, haphazard, and, at times, unbecomingly immature. The cricket between England and Australia in this, the 2025-6 Ashes series, was a recreational coke line, a narcotics fix, a dopamine thrill. But was it even cricket? One thinks of those deathless lines from the […]
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Bill Maher Strikes Again
An overwhelming white majority of baseball fans skeptically approached Jackie Robinson’s entrance on their well-kept baseball fields. After watching Jackie’s dazzling performances, the fans begged for tickets and attendance at Brooklyn Dodgers games soared. The racism that barred black baseball players from performing on the national stage subsided, or did it; did black ballplayers mean […]
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Choose-Up Games from the Sandlots of Jamaica, Queens NY
Field of Dreams When I was about seven years old I used to play a “let’s pretend” baseball game in our backyard. I laid out 4 rags I’d gotten from the garage and placed them in a diamond form which represented the bases. The bases were about 20 feet apart. Then I looked at our […]
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The Distasteful Nonsense of Olympism
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta – concluded a treaty permitting the safe passage of all athletes and spectators from the relevant city-states for the duration […]
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US elites fail to sink Chinese swimmers
US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The media […]
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Western Media Ignites War on China in Sports
Western accusations of doping by Chinese swimmers threaten to exacerbate China-US tensions, undermine the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and seriously harm the upcoming Paris Olympics. The controversy was ignited by investigation reports at the New York Times and German TV broadcaster ARD. These media outlets suggest there has been a cover-up of a mass […]
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A Wishful Gamble: Rugby League in Las Vegas
The history of such experiments is not promising. Why would those in the US like the game of rugby league, when an established code of superficial similarity already exists? Fundamental differences, for one thing, abound. The US NFL Superbowl tries to keep blood and violence off the pitch. Force, when exercised, is chivalric, the moves […]
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How the West Robbed and Abused the Best Figure Skater in the World While Provoking the War in Ukraine
In the winter of 2021-2, while figure skaters were competing in North America and Europe and preparing for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the tensions around Ukraine were building. NATO trained Ukrainian troops were intensifying attacks on the border of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk provinces of eastern Ukraine. Russia was building up its forces on […]
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Here Come the Steroid Games
To attribute weighty moral codes to athletes has always been a silly pastime of the judging classes and flesh admiring voyeurs. But sporting bodies, in a manner similar to the clergy, demand something called the level playing field. Fairness and fair play imply that sports people will follow various principles and rules in competition. They […]
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Baseball Owners Blow Off Fans in Favor of Streaming Dollars
Major League Baseball adopted some significant rules changes this past season, the biggest by far being the introduction of a pitch clock—an electronic countdown limiting the time between pitches to 15 seconds with nobody on or 20 seconds with a runner on. The changes were aimed at speeding up the game and boosting attendance, and […]
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