Baseball Story Essays - Baseball Rules, New York Yankees Players

Baseball Story Baseball has been providing us with fun and excitement for more than a hundred and fifty years. The first game resembling baseball as we know it today was played in Hoboken ,New Jersey, on June 19, 1846. The New York Nine beat the New York Knickerbokers that day, 23-1. The game was played according to rules drawn up by Alexander J. Cartwright. A surveyer and amateur athlete. It is a myth that Abner Doubleday1 invented baseball. It was Alexander Cartwright, not Abner Doubleday, who first laid out the present dimensions of the playing field and established the basic rules of the game. The first Professional baseball team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings, who toured the country in 1869 and didn't lose a game all year. Baseball began to attract so many fans that in 1876 the National league was organized-the same National league that still exists today. Although the game was played in 1876 it was recognizable as baseball-nobody would confuse it with football or basketball-it was quite a bit different from baseball as we know it now. For example, pitchers had to throw underhand, the way they still do in softball;the batter could request the pitcher to throw a "high" or "low" pitch; it took nine balls, rather than four, for a batter to get a base on balls; and the pitching distance was olny 45 feet to home plate. The rules were gradually changed over the following 20 years, until by about 1900 the game was more or less the same as it is today. In 1884, the pitchers were permitted to throw overhand; in 1887, the batter was no longer allowed to request a "high"or "low" pitch; by 1889,it took only four balls to get a batter to a base on balls; the pitching distance was legthened to sixty- feet, six inches. And since that day in 1846 There have been many greats to make up the game baseball such as Ty Cobb who was born in a small town in Georgia in 1886. He threw right-handed but batted left-handed . He held his hands a few inches apart on the bat and learned to bunt or slap line-drive hits precisely where he wanted them. He made place hitting an art. In the summer of 1905, Cobb joined a major league baseball taem, the Detroit Tigers .On August 9, Ty Cobb registered his first base hit as a member of the Tigers. In the many years to follow he added over four thousand more hits. Along with them would come a national rep- utation. Another player who some have said "changed the game", is John Roosevelt("Jackie") Robinson2.On April 15, 1947 at two o'clock that tuesday afternoon when nine Brooklyn Dodgers sprang out thier dugout to take the feild to start the 1947 baseball season. It was a memorable event in basebaall history, indeed in American history. Undoubtedly Robinson was a great ballplayer. He was National league's Rookie of the year in 1947 and its Most valuable player (MVP) in 1949. He won the election in 1962 to the Bseball Hall of Fame, the first African- American ever chosen for that honor. And perhaps the greatest ballplayer of all time was Goerge Herman (Babe Ruth). During the 1920, Ruth's first season as a New York Yankee, he hit .376, not enough to win the American league batting championship but a figure far beyond what today is registered by major leagues leaders. He also hit safely in 26 consecutive games, clubbed 9 triples and 36 doubles, and batted in 137 runs. Despite his weight of over 215, he stole 14 bases. Most remarkably, however, Ruth slugged 54 home runs for the season. Closest to him in the American League was Goerge Sisler, with 19 homers, while the National League leader recorded a total of only 15. Almost every team in both leagues registered a total number far below the 54 of Babe Ruth alone. There have been many more talented and great ball- players in the game such as Ted Williams,Leo Durocher, Hank Aaron,Mickey Mantle,Roger Maris,Willie Mays,Joe DiMaggio and all these ballplayers have done their part to shape and mold the game of Baseball. And today, we now have a new generation of ball- players like Mark McGwire who in the 1998 season hit an unpresedented 76 home runs and was closely followed by Sammie Sosa with 70 homers which in the 1920 and 30's was un-thought of un-imagnable, to even hit 15 home runs now playes can hit 15 home runs by

Free Essays on Black Rice

â€Å" Grains of Knowledge † Judith Carney, a historical geographer at UCLA, builds on and extends the work of Peter Wood (Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion, New York, Knopf, 1974) and Daniel Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina, Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 1981)and other folklorist and anthropologist to demonstrate that the rice industry of the colonial low country was built by slaves using technologies developed in West Africa. Carney is persuasive, and her book should put to rest forever the notion that the only thing Africans contributed to the early American economy was unskilled labor. The big question is why would a slave want to help his master. Slaves were treated bad and received just what was needed to survive. Carney states that slaves used it as a bargaining chip, by trading knowledge for less work. While others received more time to do things for the family. The Africans still ended up with the worst end of the deal because they still ended up doing the work anyway. Economic historians who turn to Carney for a comprehensive account of the origins of the South Carolina rice industry will be disappointed, for in her enthusiasm to demonstrate her main point, that without the knowledge provided by their slaves, the planters and merchants of South Carolina would have been unable to supply European consumers with so much rice. She focuses almost exclusively on issues of supply and ignores the demand side of the industry. Thus, we are told nothing about the prices rice commanded, or about the marketing process. She is particularly concerned to demonstrate the contribution of slave women to the colonial rice industry. So concerned that she asserts that planter demand for slave women led to shipments in which women outnumbered men. Although the bulk of the evidence indi... Free Essays on Black Rice Free Essays on Black Rice â€Å" Grains of Knowledge † Judith Carney, a historical geographer at UCLA, builds on and extends the work of Peter Wood (Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion, New York, Knopf, 1974) and Daniel Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina, Baton Rouge, LSU Press, 1981)and other folklorist and anthropologist to demonstrate that the rice industry of the colonial low country was built by slaves using technologies developed in West Africa. Carney is persuasive, and her book should put to rest forever the notion that the only thing Africans contributed to the early American economy was unskilled labor. The big question is why would a slave want to help his master. Slaves were treated bad and received just what was needed to survive. Carney states that slaves used it as a bargaining chip, by trading knowledge for less work. While others received more time to do things for the family. The Africans still ended up with the worst end of the deal because they still ended up doing the work anyway. Economic historians who turn to Carney for a comprehensive account of the origins of the South Carolina rice industry will be disappointed, for in her enthusiasm to demonstrate her main point, that without the knowledge provided by their slaves, the planters and merchants of South Carolina would have been unable to supply European consumers with so much rice. She focuses almost exclusively on issues of supply and ignores the demand side of the industry. Thus, we are told nothing about the prices rice commanded, or about the marketing process. She is particularly concerned to demonstrate the contribution of slave women to the colonial rice industry. So concerned that she asserts that planter demand for slave women led to shipments in which women outnumbered men. Although the bulk of the evidence indi...

In 2,500 words, discuss and analyse the key principles important for Essay

In 2,500 words, discuss and analyse the key principles important for developing speaking, listening, writing or reading skills ( - Essay Example A number of methods and techniques that demonstrate the implementation of these theoretical perspectives in the classroom are also articulated, including methods for specific class environments. Introduction Contemporary research into foreign language reading instruction notes that teaching models are greatly varied. Teaching models in first language reading have served foundationally as models in teaching second-language reading. Stahl and Hayes (1997) have discussed the ways that academic models influence and help shape approaches that teacher’s adopt in the classroom. The types of models also change with practitioners’ age and experience. A main concern is that the difference between first language reading teaching and second language reading teaching is that the students have already developed first language reading skills that are influencing the second-language reading process. The different orthographies of the first-language also affect second-language reading a bility and researchers argue that this must be taken into consideration when developing lesson plans. Second language reading theory dates back to the inception of psychology as a formal discipline with cognitive theorists such as William Wundt. This research focused mainly on investigating perceptual issues. Beginning in the 1880s researchers fore-grounded the foundations of what came to represent the predominant focus of studies for the next century. In 1908 Huey published Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading which shifted focus in a more behaviorist slant until the 1960s. With Syntactic Structures and further attacks on behaviorist processes, academic attention shifted back to perceptual issues, with researchers investigating reading speed and eye focus. Notably, it was around this time that reading comprehension became a major issue for teachers. Today there are a number of key principles that are crucial to teaching reading in the foreign language classroom. Still, it is necessar y for the teaching professional to balance these elements according to classroom circumstances and student needs. This essay discusses and analyses the key principles important for developing reading skills and ways these principles can be applied in the foreign language classroom. Communicative Competence Key Principles Research on communicative competence reading theory differs greatly in its exact definition, with each offering slight variations of perspective. In Fundamental Considerations of Language Testing, Bachman offers an extremely dichotomous definition of communicative competence. He begins by stating that effective communication begins with a Language Competence phase and then filters down to a Strategic, Psychophysiological, and ultimately contextual scenario. In large part, Bachman is making the case that separate components of language exist that can’t be measured in objective, starkly grammatical terms. That while Organizational Competence, or â€Å"those ab ilities involved in producing†¦grammatically correct sentences† is a major component of language, communicative competence functions to illuminate the necessity of teaching, â€Å"†¦language users and the context of communication† – that is, pragmatic concerns (Bachman 87). In Communicative Competence, an example of the written elements of language is examined through