Games

Brian Price, once a wrecking ball on UCLA's defensive line, has beaten long odds to return to the NFL after two off-season surgeries aimed at keeping his hamstrings attached to his pelvis, rather than breaking loose and coiling down the backs of his thighs. For Price, who will start at defensive tackle Sunday for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his excruciating recovery was a 10-step process. Meaning just two months ago, he could run only 10 steps. "You have these doubts in your head at times," said Price, a second-round pick of the Buccaneers in 2010 who, because of his congenitally malformed pelvis, spent the last half of his rookie season on injured reserve.

SEATTLE -- It was one at-bat in a season filled with 126 of them through Wednesday, but it spoke volumes for the strides Mark Trumbo has made in plate discipline. With two on in the seventh inning at Texas on May 13, Rangers reliever Mark Lowe threw a 1-and-2 pitch an inch or two off the plate. Trumbo took it for ball two and eventually drew a walk to load the bases, extending a rally in which the Angels scored three runs to trim Texas' lead to 10-5. Howie Kendrick grounded out to end the inning, and the Rangers won, 13-6, but had Kendrick hit a grand slam, Trumbo's walk would have set it up. Had it been 2011, the inning probably would have ended with a Trumbo strikeout or weakly hit ball.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

When historians of such things seek the moment the U.S. Olympic Committee found a way to forge the agreement Thursday that put the U.S. back in the game as a potential Olympic Games host, they need look no further than Oct. 7, 2009. It was five days after Chicago had suffered a humiliating first-round loss in the International Olympic Committee vote for host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. There quickly followed calls for heads in the USOC leadership to roll. It was the day USOC Chairman Larry Probst got so angry about being called out by some of his constituents, including athletes and the heads of the national sports federations, that he vowed to show them.

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Every Friday night, a group of noisy youngsters shuffles through a side door at First Baptist Church of Glendale. They laugh, shove and talk over one another as they enter a large, brightly lighted room with three long tables. Inside, silver-haired Armen Ambartsoumian waits for them to settle down so the session can begin. Ambartsoumian, an international chess master who is determined to groom Glendale's next generation of elite players, demands their focus. This can be a chore when dealing with more than two dozen kids ages 5 to 18. Once the players unpack their black-and-white boards and chess pieces, Ambartsoumian instructs them to pair up and play.

John Lindsey spent 16 years in the minor leagues, or 1,571 games, before getting called up by the Dodgers last week. Like a few other long-time minor league players who are getting their first shot at the big leagues this year, Lindsey is a beneficiary of a rule that allows major league rosters to expand from 25 players to 40 in September. Often, a team in the hunt for the playoffs will grab an extra catcher or another arm for the bullpen. But if the team is out of it, September is used to give a prized prospect a glimpse of the major leagues, or to reward a player who has had a solid minor league season.

When Cody Alexander Morris returned from the war last fall, he carried home a burden -- a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder -- and a new way of playing with guns. The gun game was called "Do You Trust Me?" Morris, 19, learned it from his Kentucky National Guard buddies in Iraq. He taught the game to his roommates: best friend and fellow guardsman Casey Lee Hall, 18, and a 16-year-old cousin, Cory Adams.

Staples Center is home to four professional sports franchises, the Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Sparks. Each team has a different set-up on the arena floor. It is up to the crew overseen by the Staples Center operations department to reconfigure the floor for each game. Several times a year they must make the changeover twice or more over one weekend in between games. Last Saturday afternoon, while fans were still heading for the exits after the Clippers' 103-100 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, 65 workers began transforming the arena for the Kings' game against the Calgary Flames that night.

'The Hunger Games'is avoiding the holiday rush, as Lionsgate will release the blockbuster box office hit on DVD,Blu-ray and digital platforms Aug. 18, the studio announced Wednesday.

Meanwhile, back on the third rock from the sun the rest of us live on, the Dodgers lost. Lost big, lost like regular mortals and everything. The Dodgers fell 11-4 Wednesday to the Diamondbacks in Phoenix to snap their six-game winning streak. There was no pixie dust on this night, no wide-eyed comeback, just a good old-fashioned derriere kicking.

DALLAS — If you're looking for quiet and unassuming, Jordan Burroughs might not be your man. Not that you would expect reticence from someone who spends his days grabbing people and throwing them to the ground. This is a guy who does not hesitate to proclaim himself the new "face of USA wrestling. " A guy who will be tweeting from the 2012 London Olympics under the name "alliseeisgold. " "Obviously, it rubs some people the wrong way," he said. "A lot of people mistake my confidence for cockiness.

PHOENIX — The hitting wasn't there. You could see that coming. The Dodgers had not thrown out a lineup without Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp all season. The pitching, well, that was a little off. The Arizona Diamondbacks scored early and often Wednesday, pounding Ted Lilly and Jamey Wright for 11 runs in the first five innings of an 11-4 victory over the Dodgers. The Dodgers' six-game winning streak came to an abrupt end. Nonetheless, the Dodgers (30-14) flew home with the best record in the major leagues, and a seven-game lead in the National League West.

PHOENIX — As hockey fever grips Los Angeles, Dodgers President Stan Kasten said he plans to explore whether the Kings could play in an NHL Winter Classic game at Dodger Stadium. "Facility-wise, we could certainly handle it," Kasten said. The NHL has yet to award its New Year's Day showcase to a warm-weather city. The Dodgers could offer baseball's largest stadium and the iconic backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. Kasten, former president of the NHL Atlanta Thrashers, said technology would allow ice to remain playable for an outdoor hockey game at Dodger Stadium but said he was unsure if the league would be interested.

Joining the ranks of teenage homeowners is "Hunger Games" star Josh Hutcherson, who has bought a place in the Hollywood Hills West area for $2.5 million. Called the Tree House, the 2,000-square-foot-plus house has been home at different times to talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and the late actor Heath Ledger. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom house, built in 1951, sits behind gates on nearly a half-acre filled with sycamores. Features include glass walls, polished concrete floors, an office, beamed ceilings and video security.

I was nursing our new baby the other day when guilt--the amphetamine of the working-mom set--prodded me to turn to my attention-starved 4-year-old son with an offer. "Tell ya what, hon," I said, my voice a little too eager, "when the baby is finished eating, we'll read a book. OK?" "Nah," Taylor responded with that boyish shrug, the swaggering shuffle passed on like a bad suit from one generation of preschool boys to the next. "I have a better idea. . . . Let's fight bad guys !" Bad Guys.

Every day, before his morning coffee, Frank Nunes takes stock of his domain. The 39-year-old makes sure his walls are secure, his allies are freshly supplied with troops and his fields well tended. Only then can Nunes begin his real-life workday as a furniture installer in Hayward, Calif. Nunes' day job is tame compared with life in Kingdoms of Camelot, a social game on Facebook developed by Kabam Inc., where a lot can happen overnight. In a matter of minutes, a player's realm can be leveled, its crops looted and soldiers killed.

Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem was suspended by the NBA for Game 6 of his team's series against Indiana. Haslem committed a flagrant foul against Indiana's Tyler Hansbrough during the second quarter of Game 5 on Tuesday night, shortly after Hansbrough struck Miami's Dwyane Wade and opened a cut over his right eye. Haslem and Hansbrough were assessed flagrant-1 fouls on the respective plays. If they had been issued flagrant-2 fouls, they would have been ejected.

Here's one indication how far the Galaxy has fallen since winning the Major League Soccer Cup six months ago: Last year it led the league with 17 shutouts en route to the title. Wednesday it couldn't protect a two-goal lead for 18 minutes, losing to the San Jose Earthquakes, 3-2, at the Home Depot Center. The game-winner came four minutes into stoppage time when second-half substitute Alan Gordon cut in front of Galaxy defenders A.J. DeLaGarza and Sean Franklin and headed a bouncing pass over keeper Brian Perk.