The summer of 1995 was the summer when my cousins taught me chess in Slovenia .

They taught me critical openings the King’s Gambit , the Queen's Gambit and the Ruy Lopez.

Using all that newly acquired knowledge in actual games brought me immense joy and pride.

It was in these places that I began to understand a simple truth: life is both a winning and a losing game and a whole spectrum in between, and the real skill lies in learning to embrace it all. I am not claiming that I manage, but I know that that would be best for me and my team. - Ana Schnabl is a Slovenian novelist, editor and critic.

Ruben Navarrette : Willie Mays , Rocky Colavito , Pete Rose , Luis Tiant and Pete Rose all played for the Reds .

He says Mays was the greatest player ever, but he didn't see him play except on TV or reading about him in The Sporting News .

He recalls Mays' over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series opener at New York’s Polo Grounds , robbing a potential game-winning hit.

There was Rico Carty and the big debate over the 1964 Rookie of the Year between Rico and Dick Allen . There was Fernando Valenzuela and that great game that he pitched against the Yankees and Expos in the 1981 postseason. And there was Rickey Henderson , who always played for the other team, but I admire his talents. Great players, all of them. And a reminder of when kids collected baseball cards and I played Strat -o-Matic wth my brother. PS: Check out my blog for posts, podcasts, and videos. Image via Pixabay ..

Fantasy Football for Fascists ( FFF ) is ideal for dictators, autocrats, strongmen, neo-Stalinists, far-right nationalist-populists or just students of geopolitics.

Under conventional fantasy football rules, imaginary teams are composed of real-life players from the Premier League .

In FFF , the principal players are typically politicians and public figures who exhibit extreme totalitarian tendencies.

Leading FFF teams include Donald Trump’s Mad Angry Geezers Athletic ( Maga ) and Vladimir Putin's Greater Russia United (GRU).

Maga took the lead when right-winger Steve Bannon escaped his police marker and fired a shot past Rest of the World ’keeper Justin Trudeau (with an automatic assault rifle) In a sensational burst, Maga scored three more times while the Rest Of the World team were in the changing rooms on a tea break.

Trump completed Maga ’s misery, scoring a last-minute own goal.

NFL 's Christmas Day games on Netflix set a record as the most streamed games in NFL history.

Around 24 million people tuned in for each game.

The Kansas City Chiefs vs. Pittsburgh Steelers game drew 24.1 million viewers.

The Houston Texans vs. Baltimore Ravens game was the most-watched Christmas Day game for the coveted 18-34-year-old demographic.

Both games drew more viewers than the 2023 AFC wild card matchup between the Chiefs and Miami Dolphins .

Imane Khelif is an Olympic gold medalist boxer from Algeria who had failed past gender tests.

He was later allegedly proven to be a biological male, according to a French journalist who obtained a medical report.

The boxer was allowed by the IOC to compete against biological women in the 2024 Paris Olympics .

Trump met with Wayne Gretzky on Christmas and asked him to run for Prime Minister of Canada .

The hockey player didn't appear to have any interest in running, but said Canadians should start a campaign to convince him to do so.

Trump has continued to troll Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the past month .

As of last week , NBA ratings were down 17% across its main networks, ABC , ESPN , and TNT .

The NFL , meanwhile, recorded its highest average of viewers per game ( 17.3 million ) through the first 10 weeks of the season .

Some argue that the league has become “woke’s” as players and coaches focus too much on politics when fans just want to watch basketball.

Baseball legend Rickey Henderson passed away on Dec. 20 , four days shy of his 66th birthday.

Bob Greene : For me personally, the passing of Henderson felt different from the deaths of Mays and Rose .

Greene: Our perspective on baseball greatness may be influenced by how old we were when various stars and superstars were in their heyday.

The first 12 -team College Football Playoff had four chances to produce a competitive first -round game.

Bob Greene : Notre Dame destroyed Indiana , Penn State snatched SMU ’s soul, Texas beat Clemson , Ohio State .

Greene: College football is a sport of dud games, all the time, at all levels.

He says the playoff was never about giving 12 teams a chance to win the national title, something no system can do because the sport never has 12 teams capable of that.

Greene says the fun of the NCAA basketball tournament's first round is the occasional huge upset.

Hand-wringing over four lopsided games betrays a misunderstanding or forgetfulness about how college football works.

The average margin of defeat in the four -team playoff was 18.6 points.

Even when playoff games were exclusively at neutral sites and limited to top-four teams, blowouts were frequent.

Crystal Mangum recanted false accusations of rape she'd levelled against three Duke lacrosse players in a notorious 2006 travesty of justice.

Duke debacle helped usher in disastrous # MeToo era, when men accused of sexual misconduct were presumed guilty and labelled as rapists while their (mostly) female accusers were honoured as victims.

Due-process protections for accused students were virtually eliminated from campus hearings, partly pursuant to guidelines issued by the Obama administration.

Now comes secretary-of-defence nominee Pete Hegseth , accused of rape and harassment, as well as alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement.

Until recently, Hegseth opposed assigning women to combat roles.

Also condemned admitting gay and transgender people to the military as Marxist .

Now claims to have changed his mind about gays in the military and women in combat.

But once appointed he’ll obviously be free to change it back.