Believe or not this story happened to a friend of my father

                         Unit four: Urban Legends
                  
  Believe or not this story happened to a friend of my father 

 Since my childhood, I have heard many fictitious stories that people say that are true, such as "la Ciguapa", who has feet turned  backwards and walks  backwards. " el Bacá "who protects,gives wealth, and health.In exchange for riches a person gives him sacrifices.I did not believe in those stories until  I heard from my father the story of one of his best friends named Feo. Everything happened one day Saturday, it was about eleven o'clock  when he was driving his car on Malecon street.He saw a beautiful woman on the corner of the street. He stopped the car,and aked her if she would like a ride.She made a sign with her hand, but she did not talk to him. During the trip, he asked her many questions, but she only look at him and smiled.He offered to stop at a gas station to buy a drink.She did not answer him, but he stopped and came in at the gas station, bought sodas and came back to the car. While they were drinking, he continued to ask her questions,but she never talked to him.Sunddely he turned his head to the seat and saw that she had disappeared, only the soda was on the seat.He was afraid, his body felt  like ice and his heart was beating fast. He began to drive really fast. He did know how he arrived at his house and got to bed.The next day, when he woke up he found the car turned on with the keys in it,  the lights on, and the alarm sounding. When he saw that, he remembered that this was real  and no a dream.

Urban Legends

I was reading some urban legends and i think they are just stories, strange and scary, some very scary stories, that were told to warn people. Because while i was reading,  something came to my mind.
when
 i was a kid my family and i used to go to the countryside. I remember there was, or i imagine it´s still there, a big lemongrass tree. My family and neighbors used to tell us  that  at nights on the tree there was a  "man with no head", just because they didn´t want us to get away from the house in those nights without electricity cause it was so dark.
And this is funny cause we didn´t pay attention to that and we took it as a game: we used to go there together, very close to each other, and  almost getting to the tree somebody screamed and then all of us ran screaming too. That was scary but funny at the same time.

So, i think that if some of  urban legends were true, people changed or added something to created warnings, so that we are careful.

Baseball

Last week in the class we were talking about baseball, and to be honest i do not like and know anything about baseball. I just know the names of the dominican teams: like  Licey, Aguilas, Escogidos, ect.

So, to talk about baseball i decided to looked for some  information on the internet.
I found that this game is played between two teams of nine players. In the field there are four bases: first, second, third and home plate. So, to score a point the batting, or the player who is batting, hits the ball, which is thrown by the pitcher, and by running advances around the bases and returns to home plate. If the batting has three strikes he is out or struck out.

The beginning of American Baseball and Japanese Baseball

                                                Unit three: J-Ball

The beginning of American Baseball and Japanese Baseball

Even though football is the most popular sport in the world, baseball has become the sport most watched and played in the world. The original name of baseball was townball, which developed in the early nineteenth century in the northeastern United States. The field dimensions that are used today were standardized by Alexander Cartwright in 1840.Henry Chadwick, a sportwriter, wrote the first rule book for baseball in 1858. The Cincinnati Red Stockings was the first professional baseball team organized in 1869. In 1876, the National League was established, and the rival American League in 1901.

On the other hand, the Japanese professional baseball or J-Ball, as is known since 1958, was introduced in Japan by Horace Wilson, an American teacher, in 1873. In the beginning, J-Ball was played in schools as a way to create stronger minds and bodies. In 1920, the first professional team was formed in Tokyo, called Shibaura Club. In 1935, Dainippon Tokyo Baseball Club was founded, which later became the famous Yomirui Giants. The most famous Japanese players are Tetsuharu kawakami, who was nicknamed the God of Batting; Shigeno Nagashima, who was the most revered player; and Eiji Sawamura, who was the great pitcher of Japan. 

  

American Baseball and Japanese Baseball have been intertwined. Many American players have come to Japan, such as, Dave Nilsson and Leon Lees. In  addition to this, Japanese players also have gone to the United States, such as, Mikami Goro, Nomo Hido, and Suzuki Ichiro.

       

 
                                                                 Alexander Cartwright
 


  

                                                  Cincinnati Red Stockings

Henry Chadwick                                   

 

Manuel Arístides "Manny" Ramírez Onelcida (born May 30, 1972) is a Dominican-American professional baseball outfielder and designated hitter who is a free agent. Previously he played in Major League Baseball with the Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays. Ramirez is recognized for great batting skill and power, a nine-time Silver Slugger and one of 25 players to hit 500 career home runs. His 21 grand slams are third all-time, 29 post-season home runs the most in big league history. He appeared in 12 All-Star Games, a streak of eleven consecutive beginning in 1998 including every season that he played with the Boston Red Sox.
Ramirez was allegedly among a group of 104 major league players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during 2003.^[1] In 2009 he was suspended 50 games for violating baseball's drug policy by taking human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a women's fertility drug.^[2] According to steroid dealer Victor Conte, hCG is often used to restart natural testosterone production after a steroid cycle.^[3]
In the spring of 2011, Ramirez was informed by MLB of another violation to its drug policy. He chose to retire on April 8 rather than face a 100-game suspension.[


 FROM: wikipedia

Hello.

good  afternoon.


I'm  gonna  start  saying  that  i'm  a  storyteller. 

my  grand mother  used  to  tell  me  all kinds of weird and incoherent stories,and all these horror stories, where there was never
a happy ending,where ghosts appear, men without heads, etc.. and I now do the same with my small nephews.And I must say that storytelling is fun ,and more  when  there  are  horror stories, it has a point of staying with the mind of a person for a few minutes , and   the faces are changing and that expression motivates a little  bit, and  more  when they are  child.  jeje.

HELLO  GUYS.   here  i  let  you  a  place where  you  can  found  more  urban  legends.  i hope  you like  it.


The Legend:
A couple checks into a hotel and have to put up with a foul odor in their room all night. They call the staff to complain and somebody figures out the stench is coming from the bed.
Now, there's no way that scenario is going to have a good ending. You're almost hoping at that point that it'll turn out the last guest just got drunk and pooped behind the headboard. But, no, the staff take off the matress and discover the couple has been sleeping over the rotting body of a dead girl who had been stuffed in the box spring.


Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_15628_the-5-creepiest-urban-legends-that-happen-to-be-true.html#ixzz2dZQzOsPv

Can we lernd about urban legends?

Urban legends are scaries stories about rare thinks that anybody knew if it realy happened or not, but anyway people tell them to others as if they were truth,

Here, in Dominican Republic we have a lot of urban legends, for example, "Maria la O".

It tells us that Maria Was a girl who lived near the river, she was a mocking liar and she didn't care what her moder said. Everybody said that she was a bad girl, she didn't belive in God.

It tells us that one holly fryday she went to the river and started swiming and then she became in a half fish, and everybody said that it was a punishment for disobey her mother and for making fun of Gad, then she started to cry so much until to converted the river in the occean.

Fathers tell taht story to teach kids obedience, they say that if they disobey they will run into problems and recieve a big punishment from Gad.

And then, I think that we can use some urban legends to teach good things and learn about life. 

Hello, my name is Isabel and today I'm going to write about baseball.

In Dominican Republic baseball is a tradition, no,no,no, is a pasion. Most of dominicans love baseball. In the baseball season everibody talk about baseball, wear their baseball team's t-shirt, caps, and bags, you can see the games in each corner's groceries in a big screen, and people don't talk or think about economics problems, politic, prizes, but just about baseball.

There is not uncommon to hear a lot of discussions on the street, public transportation or at work about which team is better, in spite of you don't know the players, average or game's schedule you always defend your team (licey, aguilas, escogidos, gigantes, estrellas, toros).

The best thing about this season is that families and friends meets to share and see the game together. for that reason, I like the baseball season in my country.

Winter baseball; a real war in Dominican Republic

Every fall in Dominican Republic take place the war of baseball teams, from the north AGUILAS CIBAEÑAS and GIGANTES DEL CIBAO, from the east we have TOROS and ESTRELLAS ORIENTALES and from Santo Domingo TIGRES DEL LICEY and LEONES DEL ESCOGIDO.

It starts in the regular series, where they play 160 games, and the best four of that part continue then to the ROUND ROBIN which is an exciting part of the series, in my opinion is better than the final series because it means a competition to get the best two teams. The most explosive game is when LICEY and AGUILAS face to give the audition a great exhibition  of how to play basseball.

After one of thoose win the final series which  is the best of seven then becomes the national champion.

That is the best baseball of  las americas. Thats why we are the worl champions.

Dominican Republic’s ‘Desperate’ Baseball Culture Fuels Steroid Use, Experts SayBy Bryan LlenasPublished August 09, 2013Fox News Latino

For boys in the Dominican Republic, it’s about becoming a major league ballplayer – at all costs.In a country where 40 percent of the nation lives at or below the poverty rate, Dominicans who are 12 to 14 years old regularly quit school to begin baseball training in private academies in the hopes of saving their families from a lifetime of poverty. For these boys, it’s baseball or failure.For Major League Baseball, like in any business, it’s about the bottom line, mainly, how to find the next franchise player at the lowest cost possible.

But the combination of both priorities mix together like a toxic concoction, in the form of steroid-filled syringes, made easily available to thousands of teenage Dominicans dreaming of lifting their families out of poverty with a swing of the bat. 

The recent suspension of 13 players, 9 of whom are Dominican, by Major League Baseball in the Biogenesis scandal highlights how the growing problem in the country has affected the sport – and many are questioning whether baseball is doing enough to fight the steroid culture in the Dominican Republic, a country the majors has grown more and more reliant on for top talent."If they see that baseball is not the only way out - you’ll see a dramatic drop in use of steroids because the win at all cost mentality will disappear."

- Charles S. Farrell, Co-founder of the Dominican Republic Sports and Education AcademyAs it has each year since MLB began releasing data in 1995, the D.R. led all foreign countries with the most players in the majors in 2013 with 89 players on opening day rosters (out of 856) – the fourth most the nation has ever produced. But, at the same time, the country has a disproportionate number of players who have violated the leagues performance-enhancing drug policy. According to the MLB, thus far in 2013, 15 of the 44 players suspended for steroids in the minor leagues are Dominican and, in 2012, 31 minor league Dominicans were suspended out of 105 total suspensions.

The problem, say experts like David Fidler, co-author of “Stealing Lives: The Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz,” is Major League Baseball’s knack for being reactionary, suspending players, instead of proactive in choosing not to attack the root of the PED problem, like the drug dealers themselves.The players implicated in the Biogenesis scandal, including Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, and Jhonny Peralta, were only caught because MLB cut deals with the drug dealers themselves, who in this case, exchanged valuable information on their customers for immunity.

 In the Dominican Republic, many of these dealers, who Fidler calls part of the root of the problem, are referred to as buscones – individuals who train players and then get a cut of their signing bonus, reportedly 10 to 40 percent, when they sign on to an MLB team.

“

That time when I learned about Dominican baseball with a Japanese guy

That time when I learned about Dominican baseball with a Japanese guy

I arrived in Tokyo on March 18th of this current year. It was a long and tiresome flight, add to that the fact people will look at you as some sort of alien and the awkwardness of one's day could only intensify.

A few days prior to our trip our country won the Serie del Caribe championship and we became, at least for a few days, worldwide famous, still I didn't assume our popularity could reach the farthest corners of the earth.

Currently mistaken by an African woman (which was pretty cool by the way, specially when you're as proud of your African roots as I am), people kept staring at me and my family everywhere we went; in a few cases when people felt like asking about our country instead of assuming where we were from, the word 'Dominican' caused a mayor and positive reaction among people.

They kept saying with a surprise look on their faces: 'Dominican?!' 'world-champion!' and kept going, on something similar to English, about how great Alex and Manny are and gave me a very graphic description of their greatest games while I kept nodding and smiling because the truth is they knew more about Dominican baseball that what I've learned in 26 years.

To conclude, baseball -sports in general- are as popular as music, no matter where you go it is a very well known topic, it's part of the world culture, so please save yourself the embarrassment of not knowing your own national sport or you might end up learning about it by a Japanese guy in a random subway line somewhere in Tokyo.




Written by: Ruth Indhira López Capellán
ID: CG-2624

Baseball as a hobby in D.R.

In our country baseball is the national sport. People, specially men like to watch it on t.v. but it's more exciting to see it in the field. It is practice by a lot of people: children, young people and adults. Some companies organize teams for their employees. It doesn't matter if they are not professional players, they enjoy to playing a friendly sport that helps them to feel out of routine. Those people play on holidays and weekends, and after games they're used to have a metting to celebrate and  to talk about games, jokes, experiences, cars, etc. while they are drinking some beers or rhum. Sometimes this game is not the best for some wives that usually don't go to  the game, but I consider that it's a good hobby for people that couldn´t be a professional player.

Carmen Delgado
CB-0657

According to MLB. some player will go to spring training in order to prove they are worthy for big league  deals.The following  list give us  information about on player from japan who are going to play an important roles with Major League of Baseball in 2013.

• Hiroyuki Nakajima: from Oakland.
• Kyuji Fujikawa: from Chicago cubs.
• Hisashi Iwakama: from Seattle Mariners.
• Tsuyoshi Wada: form Orioles of Baltimore.
• Junis Tazawa: from the Red Sox.
• Yu Darvish: from Texas Rangers.
• Norichika Aoki: from Milwaukee.
• Ichiro Suzuki: From New York  Yankees.

As a result of baseball, Japan and the United State have kept a good relation between them.
This sport has stopped conflict between those big and powerful countries. Nowaday there are a lot of japan's players in the United State and there are as many North americans' players as in Japan trained and recruiting new talent from Japan.



Hector D. Feliz Montero.
DC2869.

Hello everybody, teacher Atilano, this is my first time in this blog. I haven't ever been in any blog. Well, about the baseball game, I like it but I'm not a crazy fanatic. My favorite team is Los Tigres del Licey. I always enjoy the final serie when Licey is playing.