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Golf's homeland laments its decline

William EchiksonNovember 2, 2009 07:58Updated May 30, 2010 13:12
LADYBANK, Scotland — For Bill Miller, the Scottish Golf Union’s Director of Youth Development, it was understandable that the Spaniards would challenge his nation’s golf supremacy. But when golfers from Denmark and Sweden began walloping Scotland’s national team, he knew something had to change.

In Taiwan, pro baseball is all mobbed up

October 31, 2009 09:50Updated May 30, 2010 13:12
TAIPEI, Taiwan — At a sports bar here in late October, Stanley Fu, 25 and Zoe Chang, 23, were glued to the TV screen, watching their beloved Brother Elephants baseball team battle for the league title. They may be enthusiastic fans, but their cynicism became clear after a few questions. Taiwan's pro baseball league has long been plagued by game-fixing scandals, in which players have "thrown" games in collusion with gambling gangsters or crooked politicians.

Bullfighting is still a celebrity sport in Spain

Cristina Mateo-YanguasOctober 30, 2009 11:11
Some argue that bullfighting is on its way out in Spain, especially in Catalonia, where a proposed bullfighting ban may become a reality in the coming months. But a look at the numbers tells a different side of the story.

Micronesia hosts its first outrigger canoe festival

Justin NobelNovember 6, 2009 08:02Updated May 30, 2010 13:12
YAP, Micronesia — A fleet of handcrafted sailing canoes navigated by chanting men in loincloths raced toward Yap’s palm-lined coast. Chief Bruno Tharngan stepped ashore, along with Ali Haleyalur, one of the last master navigators in the Pacific. A crowd that included VIPs from Guam and the president of Palau erupted in cheers. This remote Pacific island’s first-ever outrigger sailing canoe festival, which occurred two weeks ago, had begun, marking the revival of an ancient craft that motor boats nearly eliminated.

Playing “Moneyball” with money

October 30, 2009 10:41Updated May 30, 2010 13:11
BOSTON — Never has the language of Major League Baseball’s championship seemed quite so archaic. How can you have a true World Series without Japan, Korea, Cuba or the Dominican Republic? Does the “Fall Classic” convey the very real possibility of snow cancellations? As for the Series hero, he will have to be “Mr. November,” leaving “Mr. October” to yesteryear’s Bob Gibsons and Reggie Jacksons.

America's Cup in troubled waters

Tom HundleyOctober 27, 2009 06:32Updated May 30, 2010 13:11
[Editor's note: This story was updated late Tuesday after a New York judge ruled out using Ras al-Khaimah as the site for the 2010 America's Cup.] RAS AL-KHAIMAH, U.A.E. — The America’s Cup, yachting’s Holy Grail, has traveled a long way from the days when Wall Street millionaires summering in Newport, R.I. regarded the 158-year-old Victorian ewer as part of the family silver.

Football at Wembley — with a twist

October 22, 2009 18:39Updated May 30, 2010 13:11
BOSTON — Only the hard-core sentimentalists among Baby Boomers cling to the notion that baseball remains at the core of our national sports consciousness or, indeed, anywhere near it.

Will Berlin, and its soccer team, succeed?

Cameron AbadiOctober 17, 2009 10:21Updated May 30, 2010 13:11
BERLIN, Germany — It would be wrong to say that Berlin’s main soccer team, Hertha BSC, has been a total failure this season — it still has a foothold in Germany’s top league, if just barely after a disastrous start.

Belgium stunned by cycling champ’s death

October 14, 2009 19:33
Belgian newspaper tributes to Frank Vandenbroucke could hardly have been more complimentary or more poignant. In the opinion of most sports writers the young man known as VDB could have been the best since Eddy Merckx — the national hero generally judged to be greatest ever cyclist. It was not to be. Vandenbroucke was found dead Monday in a hotel in Senegal. He was 34. The death left fans stunned in a country where cycling rivals soccer as a national obsession. Three days after his body was found Vandenbroucke’s death remains a mystery.

The "little country that could" didn't

October 14, 2009 11:24Updated May 30, 2010 13:10
[Editor's note: This article was updated late Wednesday to note Argentina's 1-0 win over Uruguay in the World Cup qualifier in Montevideo.] BOSTON — If Americans recall the 1950 World Cup at all, it is because of the greatest upset in American soccer history, glorified in the 2005 film “The Game of Their Lives”: United States 1, England 0. But in the wider soccer universe, the ’50 World Cup in Brazil was far more memorable for the dramatic upset in the finals.
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