Could there ever be a better story than Josh Hamilton taking care of this boy?
The truth is Hamilton needs the boy more than the boy needs Hamilton.
As a father figure, Hamilton has something bigger than himself to look after and more meaning in his life.

With the Olympics looming ever closer, understandably security will be a main concern for the London 2012 organizing committee. It looks as though they are on top of things in this respect, having carried out a security test in Scotland recently. The rehearsal took place at the semi-final of the Scottish Communities League Cup between Ayr and Kilmarnock, which the latter won in extra time, and involved fans.

The Name on the Front of the Jersey

"In most American sports, fans have learned to block out the countless corporate partnerships inked by their favorite teams. Only the most deranged of fans knows the identity of the Official Ambulance Provider of the New Orleans Saints, or choose a cell phone carrier based on who bought naming rights to their team's arena.

When was the last time a Canberra team got to a football final, a home final?
Not the Cosmos - remember them?
So when Canberra United walk out for their home semi this weekend Canberra sports fans will be watching history in the making.
And while the Melbourne Victory will make a very tough opponent, United under new Czech Coach Jitka Klimkova have lifted to a new level this season.

It should come as no surprise but it's being reported that Liverpool will tour the USA this summer and play a match at Fenway Park which is the home of the Boston Red Socks.

New owners are looking to tap into the huge base of American sports fans which would be great for club support and reaching potential sponsors.

Every now and then a player emerges who is capable of dividing the sports fans into two camps: lovers and haters. At the European Cup of 2000 in Holland/Belgium, the Feyenoord skipper demonstrated his Bosvelt shuffle in De Kuip and allowed Kluivert to score another goal.

At the EK in Portugal [read more]

This is our last installment in a series of post setting out the top business stories in American soccer from 2011. We have looked at Portland and Kansas City while also discussing NBC's entry as a soccer broadcaster and FOX's big play for World Cup television rights. We will set up a vote to select the top story early next week.

Unwatchable college Bowl games are a problem that can only be solved with a tournament that includes them. A plus-one game doesn't address the deep-rooted situation that no one seems to be talking about.

Time to start the annual end of the year process of lists. Over the next couple of weeks we'll review end of the year of posts and some of the top business stories of the year. We thought it makes sense to start by looking back a year to the end of 2010 at some of the top business stories from that year.

Because of MLS' relative newness to the sports scene, MLS fans have more "ownership" in the league's success. Unlike fans of the NFL, MLB and other mainstream sports, fans of Major League Soccer have real concern about their league and its place on the sports landscape. Fans work hard to bring friends to games, introduce family to the sport and cheer for MLS teams in international competitions.

Is it necessary to have 70,000 seat stadiums? Can 50-55,000 do the trick?
It's common knowledge that people aren't always in the mood to rush out to the stadium fighting traffic, paying parking and high ticket prices.

A new US based magazine has been published on stadiums and is based around the website Stadium Journey which gives fans reviews of stadiums and game day experiences. The website was set up a couple of years ago by Paul Swaney who is based is Ann Arbor, Michigan and the following paragraph is taken from the site itself:
"Stadium Journey is a web venture with the goal to become a world-class community resource for sports fans, built around optimizing the experience of attending live sporting events.

He may not have any role. He may not be asked to participate.
There is, though, a possibility that Bob Costas will have something to say for MLS broadcasts on NBC in 2012.
He'd probably look forward to the challenge.

BARCELONA -- If you love sports, you appreciate the night game.

None of us know why, exactly, but there's just an allure and mystery attached to matches under the bright lights.

Well, in Barcelona, when they say "night game," they are definitely not messing around.

BARCELONA -- If you love sports, you appreciate the night game.

None of us know why, exactly, but there's just an allure and mystery attached to matches under the bright lights.

Well, in Barcelona, when they say "night game," they are definitely not messing around.

Hey look, it's Krazy George! Cracked.com ran an article titled "5 Sports Fans Who Ruined Sports" and coming in at number 4 was Krazy George. What did Krazy George ruin? Apparently the sanity of head coaches of most sporting teams.
According to the article Krazy George invented "The Wave" at a 1981 American League championship game between the New York Yankees and Oakland A's.

It seems like only yesterday to me when former Real Madrid, Man Utd, and England midfielder David Beckham was introduced to the soccer community in the USA with great pomp and circumstance befitting an idolized movie star but here we are, five years later, following the Galaxy's 1-0 win over the Houston Dynamo in the MLS Cup Final yesterday, on the brink of bidding farewell to the biggest star name to play in Major League Soccer to date.

MLS is good enough, talent-wise, to be more popular with sports fans in the U.S. than the English Premier League and other world leagues.
Even though these other leagues may have superstar players and better overall play from top tier teams, sports fans should be able to have a deeper appreciation for MLS due to the history of outstanding relationships built by American sports teams.

In a sport desperate for stars, the two biggest, Beckham and Donovan, play on the same team. They get their second chance at a first title on November 20th at home (They lost their first MLS final to Real Salt Lake two seasons ago).
This match will likely exceed expectations on all fronts; ratings, coverage and sales of paraphernalia.

Sports fans typically don't care where the money behind their favorite team comes from. It's the thinking that as long as we are winning games and championships, does it even matter who's writing the checks? Most are fine with not knowing simple because they don't care for the simple reason that its sports and one of the core purposes of sport is to distract us from reality and allow us to forget about the trials and tribulations of day to day life.

Kemsley and Pinton Broker Their DealI hate Hollywood endings. Like many sports fans, I structure my life with the seasons of my teams, the failure of another trophy-less year the painful reminder of all I hoped to accomplish within the same time span but haven't yet wrapped up. The playoff loss to LA was all the more painful as it seemed to play out to someone else's script.

'
At sports bars around the country, Sunday Night Football between the Steelers and Ravens was in full flight, on multiple HD big screens with the volume turned up. With a little luck, the Semi-final for the MLS Cup, going on at the same time as SNF, between Real Salt Lake and the LA Galaxy (with arguably the greatest tandem ever in U.

At sports bars around the country, Sunday Night Football between the Steelers and Ravens was in full flight, on multiple HD big screens with the volume turned up. With a little luck, the Semi-final for the MLS Cup, going on at the same time as SNF, between Real Salt Lake and the LA Galaxy, (with arguably the greatest tandem ever in U.

Photo by Katy Umaña

On April 2, 2006, over 25,400 sports fans packed into Robertson Stadium on the University of Houston campus to see the first ever MLS match to ever be played in Houston. The match featured the newly minted Houston Dynamo, formerly the San Jose Earthquakes, hosting the Colorado Rapids and the star of the night was a Hawaiian forward named Brian Ching who scored the first goal and then three more in the 5-2 Dynamo victory.

The Denver Broncos are not the only recipients of the unbridled optimism of Colorado sports fans and writers.

Trailing Kansas City 2-0 on aggregate when they take the field tonight at Livestrong Sporting Park in Kansas, the Colorado Rapids have suddenly become the beneficiaries of miraculous hopes for improbable outcomes.

Aggregate scoring are foreign words to U.S. sports fans. Generally speaking, they have no idea what it means and its existence is one more distance marker between them and Soccer.
A win in the first game has no bearing on the outcome of which team moves forward to the next round of the playoffs.

Late Thursday, the Philadelphia Union announced that SportsRadio 610 WIP would broadcast 17 of the team's 2012 matches live on the radio. Those of you who read the match previews will note that this is something PSP has been pushing for as strongly as passive aggression allows.

The details are not all in, but here is what we know:

• 17 games will be broadcast on WIP
• They may be home games, they may be away games.

Now, with the cat out of the bag, strategy becomes the tallest of orders. FOX Sports has won the World Cup broadcasts for 2018 and 2022 and now must figure out how to engage sports fans to ensure they tune in.

Excitement for sports fans ran deep Thursday night as two thrilling events were unfolding at the same time.
The St. Louis Cardinals and LA Galaxy both took a 1-0 lead in their respective contests. But, the teams went separate ways soon after their scores. The Cardinals lost their slim lead and the game, 2-1 in the ninth, and now have their series even at one game a piece.

Union supporter Tim Carr sent us this story about how his trip to PPL Park before the Toronto game, where he was volunteering in support of Breast Cancer and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Day as well as to see the game, took an unexpected turn. Along the way, he was helped by some great Philly sports fans.

Adil Rami 'fights' for the ball with Bosnia and Herzegovina's Edin Dzeko.

Yup, it's gone on forever. But last night, the final round of games in the group qualification stages of Euro 2012 were played. Hopes were crushed. Hearts soared. And Andriy Arshavin took his shirt off.

All were great to watch.

With the fast pace of today's websites it often hard to gauge just what readers and users want. Especially for sports fans who all seem to want something different depending on their choice of sport or team. That's why the great marketing gods from on high have blessed us with the magic of surveys.

Jason Davis wrote an article about the lack of ethnic diversity among management in the English Premier League, and how it related to 'the Rooney Rule' in the National Football League (NFL) here in the US.
England's Premier League finds itself working through a difficult equation when it comes to race and coaching at the professional level.

There is, one again, renewed interest in a Las Vegas MLS expansion. One article has a $1.4 billion muti-sports complex being built in the city of Henderson for both the NBA and MLS. But I wonder... where's the motivation for an MLS team in Las Vegas? No offense to the city's sports fans, but unlike with Portland, Philadelphia, or even San Antonio there's not a strong ground swell of support.

- Jason Davis
As one of those interminable people constantly worried about the popularity of soccer in the United States, I should be thrilled that Fox is giving the sport a run on their flagship over-the-air behemoth of a network starting this Sunday. Manchester United and Chelsea will be shown, on tape delay, right smack in the middle of the usual National Football League window.

Great news! In an article printed on Monday by Sporting News, MLS president Mark Abbott stated that there are currently no plans to expand beyond 20 MLS teams. Here's the exact quote:

"Our focus right now is the 20th team in New York and we have not yet set a timeline for expansion beyond that, or even (determined) if we're going to expand beyond that.

Holidays are not really holidays in Major League Soccer. Or, holidays are truly treated as holidays in MLS. Depends on one's outlook. A sports fan might think the latter, but wishes it weren't true.
There is one match scheduled for Labor Day. It's a good one, with Donovan and Beckham leading the charge against the upstart Sporting KC squad in its newest, state-of-the-art Soccer specific stadium.

What is the role of the American sports fan supposed to be for U.S. Soccer Men's National Team friendlies? In the perfect scenario, sports fans would come in droves to see the team play, nationalism would see an increase and TV ratings would prove to be invaluable.

Is it possible there wouldn't be an MLS if the Seattle Sounders hadn't joined? Prior to Seattle's first season in 2009, the league was still struggling and there were some doubts as to whether it would survive.

This design could best accommodate the sporting public's thirst for more consistent drama and contemporary strategies in Soccer.
New American-style Rules compliment the field's look and extract as much common sense as possible.