On the day the Major League Baseball playoffs begin and the day after all of the awards ballots were turned in, we took a moment to catch up with longtime Southern California baseball writer Joe Haakenson, who was one of two area writers to vote for the American League Most Valuable Player award. Throughout his career, Haakenson has covered nearly 2,000 Major League Baseball games over 15 seasons as an Angels beat writer and three seasons as a...

George Lynch won a national championship at North Carolina, was the No. 12 overall draft pick in the 1993 NBA Draft and played 12 years in the Association. He still ranks third all-time in UNC history in rebounds and second in steals. He took some time out right before heading to the Final Four this weekend, to chat with us in our latest “Throwing It Back With …” segment. Lynch had quite a run in leading UNC to the 1993 NCAA...

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...

Obviously the idea of our site is to remember the past, reminisce about sports and relate current sports events to the best part of our sports memories. And, the idea of “Throwing It Back” is to catch up with a former sports star to catch up and find out what he/she is up to. Sometimes, the broad scope changes. Superstar Kobe Bryant made a surprise visit to UC Santa Barbara on Wednesday and Throwback Attack was there for his visit to...

One thing we are going to be doing here at Throwback Attack is to perform a monthly feature called “Throwing It Back With …” While that might sound like we’re sitting around a campfire getting tanked – maybe we can find a beer sponsor – the idea is to get ahold of players from the past and see what they’re up to these days. Consider it almost like a live version of our “Random Pro of the Week.” Our...

One thing we are going to be doing here at Throwback Attack is to perform a monthly feature called “Throwing It Back With …” While that might sound like we’re sitting around a campfire getting tanked – maybe we can find a beer sponsor – the idea is to get ahold of players from the past and see what they’re up to these days. Consider it almost like a live version of our “Random Pro of the Week.” Our...