Miami FC faces the challenge of proving that soccer can achieve popularity in this town. Not the level of popularity the sport enjoys in other Latin American capitals, but enough to keep the team in business. Even in Miami, high school students are relocating to qualify geographically for certain school…
The creation of the Boston Red Stockings baseball team in 1871 cost $15,000, roughly the amount today’s Major Leaguers pay for a pair of spikes. In 1916 a new owner paid $500,000 for the organization. The Red Stockings became the Beaneaters (really) and then the Braves, moving to Milwaukee and,…
There are several ways to look for a silver and teal lining in the dark cloud that is the bargain-basement-dwelling Florida Marlins. We get to root for an underdog. Maybe the team will set a record for worst season ever. Perhaps they will begin paying fans to attend games. In…
Pro-wrestling promoter Vince McMahon has announced a match in which he and his son Shane will take on Shawn Michaels and his tag-team partner, God. Which God is not clear, but McMahon is on to something by going metaphysical. There is a primal and entertaining quality to brawling, but unfortunately…
Improv dates back to the Renaissance, and the Harold back to the Sixties. Del Close, a member of the Committee, created the Harold in an effort to heighten the level of improvisational company. It’s a difficult form in which three scenes are created and then advanced over and over. Okay,…
Parochial to the point of arrogance, North Americans think NFL, NBA, and MLB are great and we are the global leader in sports. The rest of the world just smiles and keeps playing football, known around here as “soccer.” Time to catch up — and get in at the beginning…
Shaquille O’Neal pulled up lame a couple of weeks ago, a sure sign the regular season is coming to an end and the real season — known as the playoffs — is about to begin. The Heaters wrap up with a final home game against the Chicago Bulls, followed by…
Florida Marlins season tickets should come with a prescription. Being a Marlins fan will drive you crazy — the team is built up, wins, is deconstructed, and loses. Wild swings are the only constant for this franchise. Sadly this appears to be another down year, considering the limited amount of…
Make no mistake, we love fishing. Love catching even more. But even if we didn’t know a sinker from a sailfish, we’d still be sittin’ — or boppin’, actually — on the docks and the Baywalk around the Miami Beach Marina all weekend. The Yamaha Contender Miami Billfish Tournament (in…
Pat Riley could tell you a few things about pressure. He must negotiate the rightfully large egos of Shaquille O’Neal, Dwyane Wade, Alonzo Mourning, and the rest of a team everyone in Miami expects — no, demands — to win the NBA championship. Now. By firing Stan Van Gundy, Riley…
Three years in, and the mission, as well as almost everything else regarding Iraq, certainly cannot be considered accomplished. The words no one could use three years ago, and no one really wants to use now, are sadly fitting: quagmire, Vietnam in the sand, Mess o’ Potamia. Reps from a…
Homestead roars all weekend with a mixed bag of auto racing offering a variety of action for speed freaks. The rubber burning covers plenty of ground: Daytona prototype sports cars run the road course in the Grand American Road Racing Grand Prix of Miami and IndyCar roadsters like those of…
There is not much reason to feel sorry for a thug team, and face it, the Indiana Pacers, even without Ron Artest, and even with Peja Stojakovic, are a thug team. Yes, the failed career of Artest, along with injuries to a number of key players (Austin Croshere, where you…
Some tennis fans pay critical attention to the whoops, barks, groans, and moans emitted by top players, particularly on service. Check it out in person at the Tennis Center at Crandon Park during the NASDAQ-100 Open. The aural aspect to this technical and challenging sport is especially fitting considering the…
Most of the remaining games for the Miami Heat are against losing teams, sub .500 outfits like the Boston Celtics. But as anyone who watched the Cs pull off a one-point win over Indiana on March 3 knows, the Green Machine, like any other NBA franchise, can surprise. If the…
Too many people like to wordplay around with sex and sax, as in “there’s nothing like good sax,” et cetera. A deeper reason than simple homonymity exists. What Homer Simpson calls the sax-a-mo-phone might be the most sensual of all musical instruments, at least in the right hands, such as…
Burnie, the hilarious, if smelly, mascot. DJ Irie spinning tunes. The smokin’ Heat dancers. The Golden Oldies, a hot senior version of the Heat dancers. The Jr. Jam, a children’s troupe of dancers. The Fireball Express, that 1952 fire truck set up outside the American Airlines Arena on game nights…
How does it happen? The Washington Wizards don’t have any players of note whom they actually drafted. Seven footer Brendan Haywood, one of the NBA’s top rebounders and shot blockers, was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2001 draft; the rights were traded to Orlando almost immediately; the rights…
“It’s been said she knocks ’em dead/When she lands in town…./All those gifts those courters give/To sweet Georgia Brown” — just a sample of the little known lyrics to Louis Armstrong’s “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Most folks don’t know Satchmo wrote the tune or even that it has lyrics. But they…
Boxing is such a hot ticket that fans have to pay real money to watch it — on television. Pugilism is one sport that takes on new dimensions in the live setting: The pop of the gloves hitting bone, the slap sound of leather on skin, the sweat — and…
Three teams (Cleveland, Denver, and Miami) sat pretty in the 2003 draft when LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwyane Wade were entering the NBA. The hype had it that Wade was a clear third choice, but Miamians quickly learned he was actually the most valuable of the triumvirate. Sure bet:…
It’s not plate tectonics or catastrophism or even the limits of human perception. The conspiracy theorists have a strong case that maps of the world have traditionally been drawn inaccurately so as to advance or support political agendas. Cartography provides a surprisingly dynamic way of viewing the world, from Ortelius’s…
