Usually, professional athletes are guarded in interviews, especially the first time you ever speak with them. There have only been a handful of athletes I’ve interviewed in my decade-plus as a journalist who are open, honest and fun to speak to without having ever met me before: Torii Hunter, Nick Swisher and Brandon Inge from my years as a baseball beat writer and Corey Maggette during my one year covering the NBA are the guys that...

During my time as an Angels beat writer, the offseason was a time to a) catch up on sleep, b) catch up on friendships, c) bother a lot of sources with phone calls, and d) become a “glue” guy and cover a lot of different things for the paper. Whether it was high school football, college basketball, filling in for another beat reporter for a USC football game or a Lakers game, I was on call from November through February. Until the...

By Ben Alkaly Kudos to our faithful Throwback Attack blogmaster for having his pulse on everything current in the sports world.  Or rather, on one thing, that was all the rage among teenage boys two decades ago and suddenly thrust back into the spotlight thanks to the brilliant idea of one art curator. A couple weeks back, former Packers’ QB Don Majkowski was featured as our “Random Pro of the Week” and considerable props were given to...

For some reason when I was younger I liked to save newspapers of what I felt were momentous occasions. For whatever reason I felt that having that date of history in my collection meant something. Maybe it was because I visited museums, or watched Ken Burns’ Baseball a lot or had constantly flipped through my mom’s L.A. Times book with 100 of their best front page covers of all time, but I felt a yellowed paper of a sporting event...

Tom Brady has cemented his legacy as one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, but what if the infamous “Tuck Rule” game in 2001 against the Raiders had been ruled correctly and been called a fumble? As you all know, Brady was sacked from behind by Charles Woodson with the Raiders leading late in the fourth quarter and Greg Biekert recovered. From there Oakland would have run out the clock and won the game and headed to the AFC...