The Raleigh Reds Team

Archive for August, 2008

Alejandro Guevara Onofre asked:




Road to the 2012 London Olympics!

Baseball

Did you know- Baseball is the national sport in the Central American nation of Nicaragua. At the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas (Venezuela), the national team, backed by the Cuban Olympic Committee, won the silver medal, ahead of America and the host country. The silver medal was the second for the country in the Pan American Games; it was the first appearance for Nicaragua in the finals. In the next year, the national team realized its dream of competing in the Olympiad. At the Los Angeles Olympics, Nicaragua was the first Central American nation to compete in the Games. Two years prior to the 1984 Olympics, the men’s baseball team finished sixth place in the XIV Central American and Caribbean Games, behind the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, and Venezuela.

Seoul ‘88

Did you know- As a result of its pro-Marxist policy, the nation’s then-dictator Daniel Ortega Saavedra did not send athletes -like Cuba, Ethiopia, Albania and North Korea– to the 1988 Summer Olympics in South Korea, an anti-Communist nation in Asia.

Claudia Poll

Did you know- Costa Rica’s famous swimmer Claudia Poll -who was one of Latin America’s most prominent athletes of the 20th century — was born on December 22, 1972, in Managua, Nicaragua. She was the first Central American athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in the mid-1990s. During Nicaragua’s 1978 war, she left to country.

Sports

Did you know- The most popular sports are baseball, boxing, table tennis, taekwondo, and weightlifting. Because of the country’s poor sports infrastructure, Nicaragua –unlike Costa Rica and Panama– has never produced an Olympic gold medalist.

2007 Pan American Games

Did you know- At the 2007 Pan American Games Nicaragua reached 24th place in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), winning a total of 2 bronze medals, outpacing Barbados, Bolivia, Paraguay, and the US Virgin Islands.

Sportswomen

Did you know- This Spanish-speaking nation has popular sportswomen: Maria de Lourdes Ruiz (athletics), Katerine Valle (judo), Beatriz Obregon (bowling), Xiomara Larios (track & field), Karla Moreno (weightlifting), and Maria Sacasa Cruz (cycling).

Alexis Arguello

Did you know- The nation’s former professional boxer Alexis Arguello was named as the flag bearer of the Nicaraguan Team at the opening ceremony of the Games of the 29th Olympiad in the People’s Republic of China. On the other hand, the National Olympic Committee sent six athletes -athletics, shooting, swimming, and weightlifting– to the 2008 Summer Games. The country’s best athlete was Karla Moreno, who came in 11th in the 48kg category in the Women’s Weightlifting Competition.

Volleyball

Did you know- By the early 1980s, the women’s volleyball squad finished tenth place in the Central American and Caribbean Games.

Connor R Sullivan asked:




Baseball is more commonly known as America’s pastime. You will find baseball equipment like the bat, ball, player’s glove, pitching machine and player’s cap in many of the houses in the USA. However, even though baseball is the country’s favorite game, it also causes a lot of injuries. Visualize a scene when a ball straight from the pitching machines hits you. The primary measure to avoid such injuries is to have better playing equipment like helmets and gloves. However, injuries might not always end here. There are many serious injuries associated with this game which cannot be cured by just using good equipment.

Elbow Tendonitis

Baseball involves a lot of twisting and turning of the upper arm. Backward and forward movement of the arm overhead causes a lot of strain on the shoulder muscles. The elbow joint is most affected by this. This is because the ligament inside the joint becomes irritated because of the constant strain. This condition is called tendonitis, and is one of the common injuries faced by baseball players.

Rotator Cuff Tear

Rotator muscles are located on the shoulder joint. These are the muscles that keep the shoulder in place and also aid the movement of your arm in raising it high. With frequent throwing, these muscles will rub against the bone that is under them and doing this repeatedly will result in muscle tearing. This may be a small injury that can be cured within a small time, yet is also one of the most painful injuries that players can experience.

Back Strain

Baseball also puts an added strain on your back. Because you need to twist before you throw, your back muscles may be overstretched. This overstretched condition can lead to a back strain.

Ankle Sprain

Strains and sprains are very common in baseball. Ankle sprain also involves overstretching of the muscles in the ankle. Largely, it might be the ligaments that are overstretched. When you are running fast or sliding into a base, you might get a small tear or a complete tear in the ligaments. This will cause a serious injury on your ankle.

Cracked Teeth

This would be one of the most painful injuries experienced by baseball players. Baseball players do not wear any kind of mouth guards and this means that a ball can land anywhere. This condition is more common in young players or beginners who do not know how to respond instantly to bad hop grounders or errant throws from the fielders.

Concussions

These head injuries may also be very common to young players. People might not always wear protective helmets, which means that a ball can hit the head with full speed leading to some serious injuries. Players on the sidelines may not always be paying attention. This would mean that a ball can easily hit them and lead to injuries.

There are many other injuries associated with baseball. Like any other game, baseball also requires a lot of practice before you can excel at it. And this practice means a lot of injuries rushing in. To avoid this, you need to have a skilled coach who can guide you on the total time that you have to spend on practice, and also the proper posture.

Ara Rubyan asked:




Baseball is a sport played with a bat and ball. It is between two teams, each of which has nine players. The winner of the game is the team that has scored more runs at the end of nine innings. Runs are scored by hitting a thrown ball with the bat and then running to touch as many bases as possible before the ball can be caught and thrown back. The bases are arranged in a 90-foot square called a baseball diamond.

The batting team takes turns facing the pitcher of the opposing team who stands in the middle of the diamond on the pitcher’s mound. The pitcher is backed by the other eight players on his team who are arrayed in such a way as to retrieve the ball quickly after it is hit. Their goal is to stop players from getting on base (or advancing once they have gotten there).

The goal of the batter is to advance all the way around the diamond and eventually come back to home plate, scoring a run. He can do this on his own (by hitting a home run) or by scoring on subsequent batters’ hits. One side wins when they have scored more runs than the other at the end of nine innings.

One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning; nine innings make up a baseball game. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets three outs on the batting team.

Baseball is related to more than a few other games that involve bats and balls. An early version of baseball, called rounders, was being played in England over 250 years ago. As the English and Irish immigrants came to America, they brought the game with them.

By the late 1800’s, the game of baseball as we know it, had become the national pastime.

Baseball has also become a world sport, being played amateurs and professionals alike in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East and Southeast Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball as compared to the game of softball which uses a larger ball and is played by teams with more players.

In North America, professional Major League Baseball is played by teams that are divided into the National League (NL) and the American League (AL).

Each league has three divisions: East, West, and Central. Every year, the champion of Major League Baseball is determined by playoffs that climax in the World Series.

Each league produces four teams that make the playoffs. These teams are made up of the three regular season division winners, plus one team (the “wild card team”) that has the best record of the non-Divsion leaders.

Each league plays by a slightly different set of rules. In the National League, the pitcher is required to bat, per the traditional rules. In the American League, there is a tenth player, a designated hitter, who bats for the pitcher, and who does not take the field when the opposing team bats.

Each major league team has a “farm system” of minor league teams at various levels. These teams allow younger players to develop as they gain on-field experience against opponents with similar levels of skill.