棒球是美国最具普遍性的体育项目之一美国棒球baseball.doc

棒球是美国最具普遍性的体育项目之一，被称作美国的“国球”。棒球属于观看项目，由运动员比赛，所以棒球运动员、特别是职业棒球运动员在美国人的日常生活中扮演着十分重要的角色。职业队员的平均年工资约为18万美元。1981年夏季发生了一次席卷全美的棒球运动员大罢工，使赛场附近的酒吧和饭馆大大亏本，有些俱乐部业主在罢工的第一个周末就损失了25万美元。可见棒球运动在美国影响之大；在美国就连杰克逊的歌词里也这样唱道“爸爸我们一起去打棒球去”。 目前，美国约有l000万人打棒球，职业棒球运动员有3000多人，青少年棒球队有8.5万多人。棒球运动场星罗棋布，其中最大的俄亥俄州克利夫兰市体育运动场能容纳近7.7万名观众。老美喜欢棒球、橄榄球就像中国人喜欢兵乓球、足球一样，没有任何理由。虽然这两项运动在中国并不时兴，但是来到这边之后，不经意间它们就渗透进了我的生活。学校放学后学生们玩的是棒球，周末电视上整天整天播放的是NFL所以，耳濡目染，有时候我们也跟着从心底迸发出了某种激情。棒球比赛一共有九局，一般在第七局的时候主场球队会请知名人士来唱歌，这也成为球赛的看点之一。以前一般都是唱Take me out to the ball game，但是自从911事件发生后，就改唱God Bless America这首歌。每当这个时候，全体观众起立，不论种族、不论肤色、不论文化，一起引吭高歌，共同呼吁人类和平，保护他们的家园，场面非常壮观。God Bless AmericaGod Bless America,Land that I love.Stand beside her, and guide herThru the night with a light from above.From the mountains, to the prairies,To the oceans, white with foamGod bless America, My home sweet home.美国人对棒球可谓情有独钟，他们不仅爱打，爱看，还热衷为棒球作歌。美国青少年一般都会唱五六首以棒球为主题的歌曲。在美国人心目中，棒球不仅是一项体育运动，而且是一种全国性的高尚娱乐。每年春夏两季，全国至少有5000万人亲临球场观看比赛，从电视、广播里收看、收听比赛转播的人就更多了。实际上，棒球的影响已在美国形成了独特的“棒球文化”。据美国棒球史专家沃那佛尔森介绍，时下以棒球为主题的歌曲已超过了1000首，其中最流行的首推“带我去球场”。这是1908年诞生的作品，当时诗人杰克诺斯在乘坐纽约地铁时看到一幅棒球招贴画，灵感突来，就写了这首歌。这首歌虽已有近百年的历史，但美国人至今仍在唱。尤其在棒球比赛结束时，观众便在一个特定的时候，一起站起来活动腿脚，并高唱“带我去球场”。为棒球球星谱写的歌曲也比比皆是，其中最有名的首推“挥棒击球的迪马森奥”。迪马森奥是美国人公认的最伟大的棒球明星，曾为纽约扬基队连续56场击出了安打，此纪录保持至今仍未被打破。（若水）美国总统必修课棒球政治学增加曝光率奥巴马担任MLB全明星赛开球嘉宾在美国，橄榄球、棒球、篮球和冰球被誉为四大运动，而棒球又是其中当之无愧的国球。从1910年威廉塔夫特成为第一位为棒球赛开球的总统以来，几乎每一位美国总统都会遵循这一传统。时至今日，球传到奥巴马手中，已有近百年历史。从国家联盟于1876年宣告成立，职业棒球在美国早已走过百年历程，美国总统与民众能始终对其保持一种热爱与激情，也足见这项运动所拥有的巨大魅力。随便一提的是，国内对NBA的报道比较多，所以大多以为篮球才是美国最热门的运动，其实光以现场观众总数论，棒球还是美国的第一运动。 在美国，棒球被叫做“国家娱乐”，就跟咱们把乒乓球列为国技是差不多的意思。按理说棒球这运动对器械和场地的要求比较高，普及起来并不容易，可美国人有时候对越复杂的东西就越感兴趣。历史也是个很重要的原因，棒球在美国的走红比篮球要早得多。早在还没有NBA的时代，巴比鲁思就已经红得一塌糊涂，据说美国人和日本人在太平洋的小岛上打仗那会儿，后者在拉手榴弹跟美国兵同归于尽之前，都会大喊一声“跟鲁思一起见鬼去吧”在他们看来，这就是对美国人最大的侮辱。An early baseball player from A Pretty Little Pocket-Book, published in 1760How Baseball Began No one is exactly sure how baseball began, but it seems to have its roots in the English game called rounders or four-old-cat. This picture was published in a childrens magazine with the title Base-ball in 1760 and shows players standing at bases; one holding a ball. Rounders had many of the same features as baseball has today. The one major difference was that in rounders the fielder put the batter out by hitting him with the ball. Why do you think they changed that feature of the game?Union prisoners at Salisbury, North Carolina play baseball in 1863How Baseball Began When a group in New York City got together in 1845 to regulate the rules of baseball, they decided that to get a base runner out, an opposing player need only tag him with the ball instead of hitting him with it. From then on, baseball was played using a hard ball, and soon the game began to be played on a much larger scale. Baseball became an organized sport in the 1840s and 1850s. People even played it during the Civil War. In this print you can see Union soldiers playing a baseball game in a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in North Carolina. Do you know where the first baseball teams were established?The Brooklyn Atlantics, the Champions of America, 1865How Baseball Began Many early baseball teams were formed in New York City and Brooklyn. By 1860, baseball had replaced the British game of cricket as Americas most popular game. At this time, baseball was an amateur sport, which meant that players were not paid to play. The Brooklyn Atlantics were the leading team in early baseball, winning championships in 1861, 1864, and 1865. They sent this card to teams they were about to play to let their opponents know they were going up against the champions. Although there were many teams in New York, where do you think the first professional team came from? First Nine of the Cincinnati (Red Stockings) Base Ball Club, 1869The first all-professional baseball team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings. It was considered a bold move to decide to openly pay players to play baseball, and it can be credited to Club President Aaron B. Champion, who came up with the idea. In 1869, the Reds player-manager Harry Wright, known as the Father of Professional Baseball, and his team toured the country and won 60 games without a single loss. Although the National Association didnt want to support the professional baseball movement, they were overruled. Major League baseball in America had begun. 最佳答案Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. Players on one team (the batting team) take turns hitting against the pitcher of the other team (the fielding team), which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammates hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning; nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game and the related rounders were brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia. The game is sometimes referred to as hardball, in contrast to the derivative game of softball.In North America, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and 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 culminate in the World Series. Four teams make the playoffs from each league: the three regular season division winners, plus one wild card team. Popularity and cultural impactWriting in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as Americas national religion.140 In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been a unique paragon of American culturea status he sees as devastated by the steroid abuse scandal.141 Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, and how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan.142 Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macors, has been the major leagues primary source of foreign talent.143 Both the local winter league and major league ball are closely followed in Puerto Rico; major league Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente remains one of the greatest national heroes in the islands history.144 In the Western Hemisphere, baseball is also one of the leading sports in Canada, Colombia, Mexico, the Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela. In Asia, it is among the most popular sports in South Korea and Taiwan.The major league game in the United States was originally targeted toward a middle-class, white-collar audience: relative to other spectator pastimes, the National Leagues set ticket price of 50 cents in 1876 was high, while the location of playing fields outside the inner city and the workweek daytime scheduling of games were also obstacles to a blue-collar audience.145 A century later, the situation was very different. With the rise in popularity of other team sports with much higher average ticket pricesfootball, basketball, and hockeyprofessional baseball had become among the most blue-collar-oriented of leading American spectator sports.146In recent years, baseballs position compared to football in the United States has moved in contradictory directions. In 2008, Major League Baseball set a revenue record of $6.5billion, matching the NFLs revenue for the first time in decades.147 On the other hand, the percentage of American sports fans polled who named baseball as their favorite sport was 16%, compared to pro football at 31%; in 1985, the respective figures were pro football 24%, baseball 23%.148 Because there are so many more major league baseball games played, there is no comparison in overall attendance. In 2008, total attendance at major league games was the second-highest in history: 78.6 million, 0.7% off the record set the previous year.61 Attendance at games held under the Minor League Baseball umbrella also set a record in 2007, with 42.8 million;62 this figure does not include attendance at games of the several independent minor leagues.Two players on the baseball team of Tokyo, Japans Waseda University in 1921In Japan, where baseball is inarguably the leading spectator team sport, combined revenue for the twelve teams in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the body that oversees both the Central and Pacific leagues, was estimated at $1billion in 2007. Total NPB attendance for the year was approximately 20 million. While in the preceding two decades, MLB attendance grew by 50 percent and revenue nearly tripled, the comparable NPB figures were stagnant. There are concerns that MLBs growing interest in acquiring star Japanese players will hurt the game in their home country.69 In Cuba, where baseball is by every reckoning the national sport,149 the national team overshadows the city and provincial teams that play in the top-level domestic leagues.150 Revenue figures are not released for the countrys amateur system; similarly, according to one official pronouncement, the sports governing authority has never taken into account attendance.because its greatest interest has always been the development of athletes.151As of 2007, Little League Baseball oversees more than 7,000 childrens baseball leagues with more than 2.2 million participants2.1 million in the United States and 123,000 in other countries.152 Babe Ruth League teams have over 1 million participants.153 According to the president of the International Baseball Federation, between 300,000 and 500,000 women and girls play baseball around the world, including Little League and the introductory game of Tee Ball.154A varsity baseball team is an established part of physical education departments at most high schools and colleges in the United States. In 2008, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 35,000 collegians played on their schools baseball teams.152 The number of Americans participating in baseball has declined since the late 1980s, falling well behind the number of soccer participants.155 By early in the 20th century, intercollegiate baseball was Japans leading sport. Today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there.156 The final rounds of the two annual tournamentsthe National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring, and the even more important National High School Baseball Championship in the summerare broadcast around the country. The tournaments are known, respectively, as Spring Koshien and Summer Koshien after the 55,000-capacity stadium where they are played.157 In Cuba, baseball is a mandatory part of the state system of physical education, which begins at age six. Talented children as young as seven are sent to special district schools for more intensive trainingthe first step on a ladder whose acme is the national baseball team.150Baseball in popular cultureBaseball has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the United States and elsewhere. Dozens of English-language idioms have been derived from baseball; The first networked radio broadcasts in North America were of the 1922 World Series: famed sportswriter Grantland Rice announced play-by-play from New York Citys Polo Grounds on WJZNewark, New Jersey, which was connected by wire to WGYSchenectady, New York, and WBZSpringfield, Massachusetts.158 The baseball cap has become a ubiquitous fashion item not only in the United States and Japan, but also in countries where the sport itself is not particularly popular, such as the United Kingdom.159The American Tobacco Companys line of baseball cards featured shortstop Honus Wagner of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1909 to 1911. In 2007, the card shown here sold for $2.8million.160Baseball has inspired many works of art and entertainment. One of the first major examples, Ernest Thayers poem Casey at the Bat, appeared in 1888. A wry description of the failure of a star player in what would now be called a clutch situation, the poem became the source of vaudeville and other staged performances, audio recordings, film adaptations, and an opera, as well as a host of sequels and parodies in various media. There have been many baseball movies, including the Academy Awardwinning The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and the Oscar nominees The Natural (1984) and Field of Dreams (1989). The American Film Institutes selection of the ten best sports movies includes The Pride of the Yankees at number 3 and Bull Durham (1988) at number 5.161 Baseball has provided thematic material for hits on both stagethe AdlerRoss musical Damn Yankeesand recordGeorge J. Gaskins Slide, Kelly, Slide, Simon and Garfunkels Mrs. Robinson, and John Fogertys Centerfield.162 The baseball-founded comedic sketch Whos on First, introduced by Abbott and Costello in 1938, quickly became famous. Six decades later, Time named it the best comedy routine of the twentieth century.163The games rich literary tradition includes the short fiction of Ring Lardner and novels such as Bernard Malamuds The Natural (the source for the movie), Robert Coovers The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., and W. P. Kinsellas Shoeless Joe (the source for Field of Dreams). Baseballs literary canon also includes the beat reportage of Damon Runyon; the columns of Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Dick Young, and Peter Gammons; and the essays of Roger Angell. Among the celebrated nonfiction books in the field are Lawrence S. Ritters The Glory of Their Times, Roger Kahns The Boys of Summer, and Michael Lewiss Moneyball. The 1970 publication of major league pitcher Jim Boutons tell-all chronicle Ball Four is considered a turning point in the reporting of professional sports.164Baseball has also inspired the creation of new cultural forms. Baseball cards were introduced in the late nineteenth century as trade cards; a typical example would feature an image of a baseball player on one side and advertising for a business on the other. In the early 1900s they were produced widely as promotional items by tobacco and confectionary companies. The 1930s saw the popularization of the modern style of baseball card, with a player photograph accompanied on the rear by statistics and biographical data. Baseball cardsmany of which are now prized collectiblesare the source of the much broader trading card industry, involving similar products for different sports and non-sports-related fields.165 Modern fantasy sports began in 1980 with the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball by New York writer Daniel Okrent and several friends. Participants in a Rotisserie league draft notional teams from the list of active Major League Baseball players and play out an entire imaginary season with game outcomes based on the players latest real-world statistics. Rotisserie-style play quickly became a phenomenon. Now known more generically as fantasy baseball, it has inspired similar games based on an array of different sports.166 The field boomed with increasing Internet access and new fantasy sportsrelated websites; by 2008, 29.9 million people in the United States and Canada were playing fantasy sports, spending $800million on the hobby.167 The burgeoning popularity of fantasy baseball is also credited with the increasing attention paid to sabermetricsfirst among fans, only later among baseball professionalsBy Jill MossBroadcast: August 9, 2004(THEME)VOICE ONE:Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA, in VOA Special English. Im Steve Ember.VOICE TWO:And Im Gwen Outen. This week on our program - baseball and American culture.(MUSIC)VOICE ONE: The game is traditionally known as Americas national pastime. The men who play it professionally are the boys of summer. Baseball is considered part of the American spirit. Books, songs, movies, plays, poems and lots of baseball terms have become part of the American experience.An exhibit called Baseball as America is currently on show at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. It contains more than five-hundred historical items. Most come from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Many people believe that baseball first started in this small town in eighteen-thirty-nine.这场比赛是传统上被称为美国的国家消遣。男人谁发挥它的专业是“夏天的男孩。”棒球被视为美国精神的一部分。图书，歌曲，电影，戏剧，诗歌和大量的棒球术语，已成为美国的经验的一部分。所谓的“棒球作为美国的一个展览”展出的是目前在华盛顿自然历史博物馆，直流它包含超过5 100历史的项目。大部分来自国家棒球名人堂和库珀斯敦，纽约博物馆。许多人认为，棒球首次在这1839年的小镇开始。VOICE TWO:In nineteen-oh-five, a committee was appointed to study the history of baseball. It was called the Mills Commission. Three years later, the Mills Commission reported its findings. The report declared that a Civil War hero named Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown.Evidence collected by the commission showed that Doubleday