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P/CLOUDY
NTT DoCoMo Inc., despite being Japan’s biggest mobile phone carrier, has been struggling against tough smartphone competition from KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp., which is leading in that area. But one edge that the cellphone behemoth — it has more than 60 million subscribers ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
If you don’t get into the ring once or twice, then you’re a coward, Geoffrey Ima says as he describes people’s attitudes toward boxing in his hometown in Uganda. Ima has been in the ring hundreds of times and came to love boxing so ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
It must irk major leaguers to no end when a media twerp like MLB-TV’s Bob Costas ? the type who has never worn a protective cup ? makes snarky, disparaging remarks about their playing abilities. The Houston Astros have been getting a lot of ...
After me, the deluge. For some reason, when NBA center Jason Collins recently became the first active player in any of the big four American sports to announce he was gay, that famous line uttered by France’s King Louis XV immediately popped into MAS’ ...
One cool thing about being an old coot like MAS is that when Hollywood cranks out a historic docudrama, you often remember experiencing the event portrayed first-hand. So it is with “42″ — the movie about Jackie Robinson breaking the big league color barrier ...
It’s time once more for NFL personnel honchos to play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” In other words, the pro football draft will be taking place shortly. And much like 8-year olds at a birthday party playing that ageless blindfold game, team mucky-mucks ...
The Dodgers MLB franchise sure has a way of breaking the hearts of towns that love them. First, back in 1957, “Dem Bums” — as they were then-affectionately known — jilted Brooklyn and split for the riches of Los Angeles. To this day, Brooklynites ...
Terry Collins’ second year as skipper of the New York Mets promises to go a lot smoother than his soph season at the helm of the Orix Buffaloes back in 2008. You’ll recall early in that second campaign with the Buffs, Collins resigned abruptly ...
The American media recently made a big to-do over Michael Jordan turning 50. Among noted outlets, Sports Illustrated devoted the greater part of an issue to His Airness. And ESPN the Magazine likewise allocated huge space to the beginning of Mike’s sixth decade on ...
Mike Piazza, the former Los Angeles Dodger and New York Met great, hit more home runs (427) than any other catcher in MLB history. Piazza’s .308 career batting average is third among catchers all-time; his 1,335 RBIs are third-best for any backstop. And Mike ...
Howie Long, NFL analyst on Fox TV, said it best: The second weekend of this season’s playoffs will go down as a landmark in pro football history. It will be remembered as the point in time when the pros were forced to recognize their ...
Back when all the MLB teams could be found east of the Mississippi River and north of Virginia, baseball junkies used to get their offseason fixes by sitting around yakking about downtime big league happenings — recent trades, news items, gossip and the like. ...
To all those who say Manny Pacquiao is finished because of his recent knockout loss, MAS says “Hogwash!” Manny hasn’t lost “it”. What he definitely needs to lose, though, is his humongous, concentration-sapping entourage. Those myriad hangers-on, just as much as the perfect storm ...
MAS felt quite guilty seated on press row at a recent Charlotte-Portland NBA contest, courtesy of the home team Bobcats. You could even say he was on a literal guilt trip that had taken him across three U.S. state lines to North Carolina’s Queen ...