A White, White Daisy

In the baseball game spectators’ heart always go with the flying various kinds of balls, such as strike, ball, curve ball, sinker ball, fly ball and foul ball. However, do you aware of hidden danger of such balls? Are you ready for such risk? 

On March, when the Red Sox opened the season in Japan, the organizer rose protective screens along the front-row boxed all the way to the outfield walls for the potential danger of such balls.

 However, according to sampling nearly half of the fans thought the view of game would be obstructed by the screens. Someone said, although he got hit by a baseball right in the head once he would still be taken away from the game to have the screens up.  

In the statistic, there has been only one death as a result of a batted ball in major league history. In 1970, a 14-year-old boy died after being hit in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Dodgers outfielder Manny Mota in Los Angeles. But according to the coming book “Death at the Ballpark”, more than 75 deaths have been caused by foul balls from the major leagues to the sandlots. Whereas if you are injured by a ball or a bat, you can’t sue the teams, the players or Major League Baseball because there is 145-word “warning” on the back of every ticket to remind you the danger sitting in ballpark. You can go to the first-aid room or to a hospital, but you can’t sue.  

Actually, everyone is aware of the danger but they are fascinated by the game and willing to take the risk. The owners also consent to raise a shield for the dugout, set additional screens or netting for the fans avoiding such a hurt. But nothing has done about that.

 I am worried about that. It’s a serious question that should be considered carefully. We can’t let guys getting hurt like this any more. We need to either erect shield or wear helmet when come to the ballpark.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/sports/baseball/20anderson.html 

The mascots for the 2010 Asian Games to be held in Guangdong were unveiled last night. Guangzhou city has a long association with rams and which is nicknamed the City of Five Rams. Also, in the ancient Chinese language, the character yang (ram) is identical to the character xinag(luck). Therefore, five cartoon images of rams were chosen to be the mascots.  

The mascots are named A Xiang, A He, A Ru, A Yi and Le Yangyang. Xinag means auspiciousness, He means harmonious, Ruyi means the satisfaction of a wish, and Le Yangyang means joyful. When you put their names together it represents a strong wish that the Games will bring peace, auspiciousness and happiness to the people of Asia. And the Asian Games mascots also represent the five colors of the Olympic rings.

This design shares common features with Fuwa of the Beijing Olympics. The Fuwa are also five cartoon images whose names mean”Beijing welcomes you”.

There have been several hundreds entries were submitted since last March and some animals and fruit in South China were used in the designs, but eventually the five rams won approval by the judges, for which can fully express Asian people’s desire for peace and friendship.

Best wishes for the 2010 Guangdong Asian Games.

 http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2008-04/29/content_6649805.htm  

The world snooker championship in Sheffield, England is under way. On Tuesday, China’s Ding Junhui overcame Hong Kong’s Marco Fu in the opening session edging him 10-9, which helps to secure Ding’s place in the second round of the snooker world championships

The 21-year-old Ding is the youngest player ever to win three ranking titles the China Open and UK Championships in 2005 and the Northern Ireland Trophy in 2006 - led 5-1 but the less spectacular Fu recovered to trail 5-4 at the end of the opening session.

For this frame, Ding’s emergence along with Fu has been stimulated a huge interest in the sport in Asia which was displayed when a astounding 110 million people tuned into the China Open final in 2005 when Ding made his breakthrough by beating seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry .

It is interesting that British bookmakers William Hill bet 200 pounds in disagreement of 500/1 on a Chinese-born player becoming world champion before 2010 with Dr You Sen Huang from Beijing. Now, William has to face a 100,000 pounds payout.

In my view, Ding’s wonderful performance really contributes greatly to the development of snooker in Chinese mainland. For several decades, billiard is a kind of recreation for hobos setting along the streets. The billiard in most Chinese citizen’s mind has nothing to do with the British gentlemanly appearance. People are misunderstanding of billiard due to the short reporting and poor broadcasting on the snooker game. Ding Junhui’s father run a billiard club when he was a little boy, thus ding began to practice snooker at the age of eight and his father who is the fanatic fans of snooker became ding’s personal coach. Ding digging his way to regional fame as a young snooker player. He won his first champion at nine in Nanjing and made a maximum 118 break when he was eleven. At present, he is preparing for the training in Britain.

Because of Ding’s success more and more Chinese know about snooker, they watch rebroadcast on TV, they come to the China Open, even practice snooker by themselves, like me. The number of child who gets involved in this sport also increasingly rises. In the World Championship there are two other Chinese cuemen who have made the finals, Liu Chuang and Liang Wenbo.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2008-04/23/content_6638001.htm

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego padres tied 3-3 of the Major League Basketball Game. Although baseball is prevalent through the united stated and many other countries in the world, it is a wildly unknown and unpopular sport in china.

More than 12,000 spectators watched the Los Angeles Dodgers play the San Diego Padres to a 3-3 tie that day. Sometimes the announcer’s words in the program made spectators perplexed, but the spectators also felt happy to come to watch what the baseball game was all about. It’s the first time for most of the spectators were Chinese citizens seeing major league baseball games.

“Some had never watched the sport live, at any lever, because it is so rare. About 15,000 people play baseball in china, which has a population of 1.3 billion”, Major League Baseball officials said. The fancy ticket price is another reason for keeping Chinese spectators from the ballpark ranging from $7 to $180. Gong Wan Ming, a retired chemist who was staring at the stadium from a nearby bus stop, said he considered table tennis much more interesting because it is fast-paced and requires cheaper equipment.

Trevor Hoffman who is from the Padres said that Houston Rockets are really popular in china because of Yao Ming, so he hopes baseball can catch on someday, too. The baseball news and knowledge would exist here just like basketball. Actually, the new climate of baseball in china is underway. At Saturday’s game, some fans followed along and cheered appropriately. The program listed baseball’s rules, beginning with an explanation that both teams have an offense and a defense. The big screen in center field even quizzed spectators. After showing a player crossing first base, fans were asked if it was: a) a single, b) a double or c) a triple. Chinese spectators try to comprehend the new game via the live competition, the organization make great effort to introduce it to the public as well.

MLB has ambitious plans to make the sport as popular with the Chinese as it is with their neighbors in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. I think Chinese would fall in love with baseball and good player would develop but that would happen slowly, after all there’s a history to baseball, a tradition and a certain rhythm and charm to it; one can’t just learn that in a weekend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/sports/baseball/16china.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=sports

In my view she is another Michael Phelps—a prodigy in swimming pool; she shares the comparisons with Tiger Woods—an African-American who blossomed in a mostly white sport. Lia Neal is a 13-year-old girl from Brooklyn has broken a freestyle national age-group record for 11-and 12-year-olds since 1985.
Neal did really well in her age-group but there are someone worried about Neal’s early success. In their opinion Neal have swam too much so she would lost interest on it very soon. Because Grace Cornelius, who held the 100 freestyle record that Neal broke towered over most of her peers both physically and metaphorically in her early age felt the ability not equal to her ambition. Once she also mentioned in a telephone interview that she felt competing was so fun as she 12 and 13 years old. She was totally fearless and didn’t have any baggage. However, when you get older-15, 16, 17—it’s easy for one to be overwhelmed by swimming especially get to the elite lever.
Neal’s mother considered that Neal hasn’t taken too much time to think about her excellent performance because every time her mother asked about her races Neal always couldn’t remember her exact times. I think it’s one of the recipes for Neal’s success—no baggage in the competition.
Neal’s coach also said that he will not use the goal to hinder Neal’s progress. At present, he isn’t willing to train Neal become a world champion, on the contrary his goal is for her to go all the way through college and have a wonderful postcollege career.
Neal’s story remains me of the system of sports training in china. The so-called potential athletes are chosen form an early age and undergo the rigorous. They spent the school time on training court; the only target for their life is capturing medals. I suppose there are only a minority of people consider the tough training as a sweet deal most of them want to leave the “medal dream” soon. After all, they cost too much on it. Sometimes, it’s even hard for the once stars to maintain their own life when they get old. Perhaps few athletes don’t have any baggage in the competition who facing such an unhappy reality.
The Beijing Olympic games just on the corner, I wish everyone will come to the arena with no baggage. Wish you good luck!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/sports/othersports/07swim.html?

Next week, Liu Xiang will go to Valencia, Spain to compete in the world indoor championships where Liu can meet the 1996 Olympic gold medalist and seven-times indoor and outdoor world champion–Allen Johnson.
They are rivals, both seeking gold at the Beijing Olympics, but they are also friends. Johnson said that they both respect and admire one another. They have been genuinely happy for each other when the other one run well. Although the language barrier prevented them from free conversation, which may not affect express respect and encouragement for one another. The three-time Olympian said there have been a couple of times he has been in races with Liu when he didn’t run so well, Liu patted him on the back like it was going to be all right. The body language helps the couple of friend communicate and understand each another.
I also feel glad for the two rivals’ friendship. Sports competition is not only an activity for sporting talent showing their excellent performance as well as competing but also a stage for athletes from various countries to communicate, to make friends with each other. There is no boundary in sports world and sport is a media for people to make deep understanding of different culture.

Milwaukee became well know among Chinese after Yi Jianlian went there. Milwaukee city welcomed Yi warmly the day he arrived, whose portrait erected along the street, Milwaukee’s gave him an enthusiastic ovation. yi turned into a magnificent representative for Chinese culture, Milwaukee citizens have known china a lot through him.Yi is widely know in china and basketball is pretty popular in china—the nation with the largest population, if we combine this two point together, it is obvious that Chinese basketball, NBA, Buck and Milwaukee would benefit a lot from talented Yi. Because of yi the NBA matches earn much more Chinese spectators; because of yi many Chinese companies want to corporate with Milwaukee city; because of yi the city’ s exports to china growing by 337 percent since 2002, which has been on the rise. Timothy Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, said China is now the city’s third-largest, and fastest-growing, trading partner.

On November 9, 2007 Houston Rocket against Milwaukee Buck, all the television in our school’s cafeteria stayed on the sports channel, boys watched the match with great passion, girl also joined in just for Yi and Yao are excellent Chinese basketball player who play games at NBA. Someone become basketball fans because they watch Yi or Yao’s contest at NBA.
Sports are the bridge between different culture which bring understanding and friendship to people with various backgrounds. I wish Yi and Yao good luck and the world could know more about china.

access: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2008-02/14/content_6454246.htm

Steven Spielberg’s decision to withdraw as artistic consultant to the Beijing Olympics has been caused controversy recently. IOC president Jacques Rogge also stressed that IOC is “a sporting, not a political association.”

In my opinion, Spielberg made a blunder, any country and individual should not mix the political issues with Olympic Games, which violet the Olympic charter and hurt the one who loves Olympics. Chinese people really feel it’s a pity that the great artist couldn’t be the grand meeting’s consultant, however, they even couldn’t bear that any one misunderstand their kindness and threaten them. Olympic Games are the dream of people in several generations in china. Chinese have made great effort to hold distinctive sports games with high quality. Therefore, everyone wish Beijing Olympic games will have a good and pure environment.

access: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-02/16/content_6460277.htm

The previous nation’s soccer team coach Zhu Guanghu was dismissed after china was eliminated from the Asian cup. Four months ago, Petrovic took the post and regroup the team just a few weeks before the opening of the 2010 World Cup Asian Zone Qualifiers against a tough Iraq side. The regular international defenders Du Wei and Xhang Yaokun were kicked out, which stirring doubt among fans and media about its chance of making the 2010 World Cup finals. A majority of more than 21,000 fans expressed their disagreement on Petrovic’s dissection of the national team. Especially since china was drawn into the “group of death” for the third-round World Cup qualifier in the Asian Zone which includes former Oceania champion Australia, Asian Cup champion Iraq and Asian Games champion Qatar.

Petrovic was the former coaches of Super League champion Dalian and Chinese hold great hope that he could lead Chinese soccer make an improvement. Teammates of Du and Zhang show disapproval of the two defenders’ dismissal. They said that they two had a good relationship with the whole team and everyone corporate very well, but everything turned to apartness. “This had a negative effect on the team’s unity, which cost them their international opportunities.” Du and Zhang are considered as the best defenders. But CFA official Wei Shaohui thought Du and Zhang’ s poor performance lead to the dismissal which could encourage other players to training hard.

In my opinion, we’d better give the new coach a chance to prove his new plan. As long as the match will not play any miracle would happen. After all Petrovic is a good coach in Dalian who has his own reason and view of team reform. Perhaps we could not understand the program but we should let the fact to test it. I wish national soccer team great luck!

access: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sports/2008-01/18/content_6403578.htm

On March 24, 2008, the Olympic flame that represents peace, friendship and hope will be lit in Olympia, Greece. This time the Olympic flame will take its “journey of harmony” by visiting 21 cities on the five continents, and total 31 provinces in china. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay will cover the longest distance and the widest geographical expanse and with the largest number of participants in the history of the modern Olympic movement. While this piece of news reminds me that in September last year the leader of the the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) denied that the torch relay were not allowed to pass Taipei and this question had already beyond of negotiation. This passage talks about the issue in detail, we may figure out the reasons of this matter. However, I don’t want to find out in which side the problem lays in. I against any country or district present political position via sports, which violets Olympic chapter and contradict with Olympic spirit. The Olympic Flame is the highest symbol of the Olympic spirit. The Olympic Torch Relay is a celebration of human peace and friendship. I hope the holy flame melt the ice between two sides.

http://torchrelay.beijing2008.cn/en/news/headlines/n214229448.shtml