We’ll start this section with some musings from Major League Baseball, including a look at the Los Angeles Dodgers’ signing of right fielder Mookie Betts to a 12-year, $365 million contract extension. Betts is now positioned in the No. 2 slot of the highest paid players in MLB starting with …

In a sign of the times, last week Your Natterer did three weeks of laundry, which contained exactly one dress shirt and one pair of socks. Primarily staying at home and writing, apparently doesn’t require an extensive wardrobe… The Chicago Cubs Convention, originally scheduled for Jan. 15-17…

Monday morning I was listening to my favorite podcast, The Tony Kornheiser Show. Kornheiser is one-half of the long-running ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption,” and his PTI Co-host Michael Wilbon is a frequent guest on the podcast. The conversation earlier this week turned to the birthday of…

A graph on the front page of the July 9, 2020, edition of the USA Today Newspaper brought the severity of the current COVID-19 Pandemic into focus. According to Johns Hopkins University, the first one million cases in the United States occurred within 98 days. The second million came within …

It would be fair to say it’s good to be Kansas City Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The 24-year-old signal caller is the reigning NFL MVP, the MVP of Super Bowl LIV, and NFL Champion. Add to all of that, he now is the proud owner of a 12-year contract worth $476.6 million. That breaks do…

The depth of the rift between the Major League Baseball Owners and Players was highlighted in the details of the Major League Baseball Player Association’s 33-5 rejection of the Owners final proposal for the 2020 season on June 22. Rejecting the offer means $25 million in guaranteed playoff …

Several years ago, okay a couple of decades ago, I was in New York City on a business trip. At the same time there was a major event at the United Nations Building, located at 42nd Street and First Avenue, which created absolute traffic gridlock in Manhattan. No vehicles could move in any di…

As noted above, the final decision for Fall sports activities won’t be decided by the CIF until July 20, but fans might like to know what the Islander 2020 Football Schedule would look like if there is positive news emanating from that meeting. The Islanders will compete in the Central Leagu…

Islander Athletic Director Robin Nixon and I had a couple of Email exchanges last week, wherein she reminded me that registration is now open for the Fall sports of Girls Golf, Girls Tennis, Boys Water Polo, Girls Volleyball, Boys and Girls Cross Country and Football. First, go to www.islandersportsfoundation.com and click on the ‘More’ tab in the upper right-hand corner of the home page. Then select ‘Registration Instructions’ from the drop-down menu, and you’re on your way.

Nixon also said the latest information from the CIF, the governing body of high school sports in California, is the final decision regarding when or if fall sports will be played, will be announced July 20, 2020. At this point, apparently all scheduling options are on the table.

Allow me to summarize the current labor strife in Major League Baseball (MLB) in one word, ‘Money.’ A more expansive nine-word summary, ‘Money and how it is going to be distributed.’ The MLB Owners know if games are played with no fans in the stands they will lose money for every regular sea…

For the past several weeks, I have been accumulating articles on College sports and the challenges they face financially in the short term. I worked in Division I athletics for four years, three decades ago, so I have at least a feel for what schools are going through and it’s not good.

Coronado Aquatics Club Water Polo Summer Season registration is now open. We are offering training opportunities for our Junior (middle school age) and Senior (high school age) water polo teams. Due to the regulations in place, we are unable to offer training for our Youth team (Elementary s…

If you’ve been following this column since the beginning of the year, I’ve written a few columns reminiscing about NBA Players and Executives who died recently. As the risk of sounding like a latter day Forrest Gump, I didn’t know everybody in the NBA in the 1980’s and 90’s, but the league w…

This portion of the column is being written Monday, and in a perfect world, it will be outdated by breaking developments in the Major League Baseball Owner-Player negotiations by Wednesday. In fact Monday afternoon, after previously promising they had made their last offer to the Players, th…

This week we’ll take a third look at the Islander Boys Soccer Team in our Retro Natterings Series, which dates back to March 6, 2013. As you can tell from the headline, the program under the direction of Head Coach Brian Hiatt-Aleu was on a roll. The team was solid at virtually every positio…

During the past couple of years, Major League Baseball (MLB) has been downgraded from “America’s Past-time,” to being labeled a sport of regional interest only. As much as I hate to admit it, despite MLB generating $10 billion in revenue in 2019, it has long since fallen behind the National …

Hall of Famer Jerry Sloan died this past week at the age of 78 and most of the articles written about the four-time All-NBA First Team Defensive player allude to his toughness on the court. And believe me it was a characterization that was well-earned. In 1974-75, I was working for the Kansa…

Islander Athletic Director Robin Nixon dropped a line the other day to say the Coronado High School Top Senior Athletes for the 2019-20 school year had been selected. That list includes: Casey Harris-Cross Country and Lacrosse; Crista Izuzquiza-Golf; Elsa Ostermarker-Tennis; Raden Perry-Base…

In honor of the conclusion of the documentary, “The Last Dance,” I have one additional Michael Jordan anecdote. My 12-year career in the NBA included a two-year stop with the Miami Heat, the first two years the organization was in the league. And as an expansion team for the 1988-89 season, …

One of the fun things that has happened to Your Natterer of late, was that for a four-second period of time, I was part of ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” better known as the Michael Jordan documentary. In the fourth hour of the show, 20 minutes in, a disembodied voice introduces Scottie Pippen in his first All-Star Game, which occurred in 1990 at the Miami Arena. That voice was me. In the game itself, Pippen played 12 minutes, scoring just four points. The talent on display in that game was formidable, with the East Team’s starting lineup including Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley. The subs for the East included Robert Parish, Kevin

This week turn the calendar back to November 23, 2011 and look at the coverage of the Islander Boys Water Polo Team as they won the CIF Division III Championship. At this point, the CIF San Diego Section was adding division levels throughout all sports, with the schools assigned to their res…

This is the second half of a ‘Nado Natterings’ article from May 25, 2011, which detailed the Lacrosse championships won by both the Coronado High School Boys and Girls Lacrosse Teams. As a reminder, in 2011 the CIF Divisions for Postseason Competition were determined by school enrollment and…

The 2009-2010 sports season was memorable because four Islander sports teams won CIF Division titles and the Islander Sailing Team finished as the best team in California and No. 6 in the United States. In the past two weeks we re-ran columns that extolled the virtues of the championship Isl…

This week we’re continuing our series of past Nado Natterings columns that reflect some of the better teams in Coronado High School’s rich athletic history. This article is from the June 9, 2010 issue of the Coronado Eagle & Journal Newspaper and provides the highlights of the Islander B…

Between the weather and the postponement of the rest of their game schedule, the Islander Boys Tennis Team (2-4 overall) was able to play only one match last week. That turned out to be a 10-8 loss to Cathedral Catholic. Islander Head Coach Mackenzie White said, “Our No. 1 and No. 2 doubles …

As has been often said over the past several days, as a nation we’re in unchartered waters due to the presence of the COVID-19 virus. In the sports world, once Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was diagnosed with the virus, it set off a chain reaction which has resulted in the shutdown of virtual…