Dein erstes Forum » arallel universe in which good and b

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Football reigns in Texas, where communities build $60 million high school stadiums and worship 16-year-old quarterbacks.In Texas, its about Friday nights in places such as Stephenville and La Grange. Its about Saturdays in Austin and College Station, and its about Sunday afternoons in Dallas and Houston.But the start of NFL training camps no longer coincides with the unofficial end of baseball interest in Dallas and Houston. These days, baseball matters in September and October.The Texas Rangers have the American Leagues best record and the second-best record in baseball. The Houston Astros have a roster filled with young players such as Carlos Correa, George Springer and Jose Altuve, who each figure to play in numerous All-Star games.I dont know that both clubs have been at this level ever before at the same time, Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said. When it matters to both teams, thats when its really fun.The Rangers and Astros have shared the AL West the past four seasons, but last year marked the first time both clubs could be considered contenders. The Rangers rallied from an eight-game deficit in August to win the division.On Sunday, the teams will conclude a three-game series in Arlington. The Rangers have won the series first two games, increasing their division lead over the Astros to 10? games. The Astros are four games behind in the AL wild-card race.The heightened awareness that comes around September, the excitement that comes with it, the stress ... its why we play, Astros manager A.J. Hinch said.Texas has beaten Houston in 13 of 15 games this season and 21 of 25 dating back to last season, when the Rangers won the division. The Rangers have won six one-run games against the Astros and three others by two runs. The Astros entered this series with 10 wins in their past 12 games to pull within 8? games. The Rangers bullied Houston in the series first two games, scoring 22 runs and leading each game by at least eight runs.In these learning lessons that are going on now, in the heat of a pennant race in September when a lot of these guys are at the end of their gas tank, its a growth opportunity for them, Hinch said. But its also important that we find a way to navigate through some of these troubles because were going to need the younger guys to adapt.This rivalry is still in its infancy -- even though the teams have played a number of interleague games over the years -- because the Astros played in the National League from 1962 to 2012.For now, fans give the rivalry life because the cities have a natural rivalry. Dallas brags about the Cowboys Super Bowl trophies, while Houston gloats about the Rockets basketball titles.A four-hour drive up or down I-45 or a one-hour flight is all that separates the cities, and visiting fans tend to regularly invade the home teams ballpark.The rivalrys intensity should continue to increase because each franchise should be good for years. Texas has won at least 87 games six of the past seven years, and it has been to the playoffs four of the past six seasons, making consecutive World Series appearances in 2010 and 2011.Houston, which made the playoffs in 2015, doesnt have that type of pedigree. Last season was the first time the Astros finished above .500 since 2008, but all those poor seasons positioned the Astros to draft a wave of stars. Those players are finally getting to the big leagues, and it has put the Astros in a position to be among the best teams in the AL for the next several years.Its alive, Texas manager Jeff Banister said of the rivalry. It may mean a little more to me than some: Im a Texas kid. Growing up in Houston and getting to manage the Texas Rangers, for me, youre asking a guy who probably has a little more invested in this than some.The players they have are young; its an energetic, very talented group that loves to play the game. You see the similarities in their players and our players in ability and how much they love to play the game and the excitement they play with.In 2015, both teams finished above .500 for the first time as members of the American League. That July, Texas Rougned Odor and Houstons Hank Conger had a heated argument at the plate that resulted in both dugouts emptying and the managers screaming at each other.Two months ago, the Double-A affiliates for each club were involved in a bench-clearing brawl that lasted 11 minutes and resulted in three ejections.Were still developing our rivalry, said Astros third base coach Gary Pettis, a coach with the Rangers for several seasons before joining the Astros last year.Right now, its probably more about the cities than the teams, but as we continue to improve, itll get more intense. Its a great opportunity for our players. You want to play games in September that mean something. Will Harris Jersey . -- Team after team passed on Andre Ellington in the draft. Joaquin Andujar Jersey . Francis told several hundred members of the European Olympic Committees that when sport "is considered only in economic terms and consequently for victory at every cost . http://www.customastrosjersey.com/custom-ivan-rodriguez-jersey-large-636y.html . Thousands of fans at Mosaic Stadium will be cozying up to each other in an effort to stay warm in chilly temperatures and block the Prairie wind that locals say can knock your socks off. Jose Cruz Jersey . Now that hes hitting streaking teammates with pin-point passes for easy layups, Love is asserting himself as one of the true superstars in the league. Authentic Custom Astros Jersey . McPhee said that Ovechkins father Mikhail is in stable condition after having the surgery this week and is no longer in intensive care. "Weve told him to stay as long as necessary with your dad," he said. Ovechkin and his Russian national team were eliminated from the mens hockey tournament in Sochi on Wednesday with a 3-1 quarter-final loss to Finland. 24 for 3 is a book about cricket one wouldnt expect. Its chic. It features extracts from Chekhov, and while its literary and involved, it isnt pretentious.The novella has a concern that isnt usually given enough consideration, at least intelligently. What do those (and you probably know and love a good many) who endure cricket in their lives but arent much interested and dont really know what is going on make of the business?Its protagonist-narrator is made to countenance cricket by those around her and the circumstance of a Test match taking place in her city. Her husband listens to Test Match Special on the radio and in the evening watches the highlights on free-to-air television. He elucidates, when the familys Polish au pair takes an interest, and makes an effort to engage the household in the game. The au pair, well-meaning, participates. The protagonist, who doesnt, has an extramarital lover and he watches the game live on Sky Television. When she shows interest and asks questions, he says that explanations always make things more complicated than they are. They get in the way.Its a feature of cricket fiction to treat the game as a backdrop against which a cavalcade of incident occurs. Indeed, those literary works rigidly concentrated upon the sport are, rather like a dry match report, a little lacking. 24 for 3 is set within five days of an England and India London Test match (seemingly, given the names invoked, during the 2007 series, although actually mythical).Other than the odd detail, such as Englands chase of 287 from 24 for 3 at the beginning of the final day, there is scant description of the Test. Rather, it features in circuitous ways. The protagonist sees a streaker on the television during day two, becomes convinced its her teenage son, travels to the grounds local police station and bullies the constabulary into revealing that the streaker is a 34-year-old trainee accountant. On day four, she accompanies her lover to work and, in a family room attached to a burnt-out industrial warehouse, watches VVS Laxman crack a four (probably a wristy flicked drive), eats sweets and learns of the accomplishments and Taunton heroics of Mithali Raj.Dropping in and out, at the dictate of the narrative and whim of the protagonist, cricket writing is an excellence of 24 for 3. Its original, beautiful and stimulating, reading neither like the sports non-fiction nor the patter that graces the games fiction. The narrators circumstances permit a disengagement from the usual mindset of the sport; her voice is fertile and fresh. Unlike many aliens to cricket, who use such opportunity to be contemptuous, her perspective is thoughtful. A perceptive person, contending with the unusual and complex practice that is the game, and engaging with it best as possible.There are novels that use a cricket setting for a romping plot - such as Allen Synges Bowler, Batsman, Spy, where a KGB agent attempts to sabotage an Ashes series to dismember the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, booby-trapping the wicket - but narrative in 24 for 3 is not really the point. Scenes and characters pop up along the way. Such as hyperventilating Harvey, who always hangs about in the common room of an adult education centre (without being a student), ruins a park cricket match, and whose mother, it seems, won him in a raffle. Or a Romani street artist, perpetually perched in front of a tube station, fleecing the gullible with underhand card tricks, who gives the books final score check of England at 199 for 7 after tea on the fifth day. Style, too, is important. The writing is lean and rich, and each word appears carefully chosen. Unsurprisingly, the books author, Charles Boyle, has published six collections of poetry over his 40 years of writing. There is the vastness of that medium in the novella, which, not much over a hundred pages, is a dense though not arduous read.dddddddddddd (He used the pen name Jennie Walker to alleviate self-consciousness, as he originally self-published 24 for 3 and promoted it to booksellers store to store.)As for plot, its a five-day dollop of a headstrong life. A most winning aspect of the book, aside from cricket, is its narrators unapologetic air. She wants her cake and to eat it too. There is no moral queasiness over adultery and she sees it as perfectly unfair that she cant have it off with a bloke she met at a translation conference and still enjoy the love of her teenage son, who feels that he and the family are betrayed by such behaviour. Its a spirited assault against convention, and perhaps decency, which, as the narrator equates, is the batsman who refuses to leave the pitch after hes been clean bowled; the bowler who keeps on bowling after his over is over; the fielder who picks up the ball and, rather than throwing it back to the wicketkeeper, tosses it into the crowd.24 for 3 is not a standard cricket novel. Not that there will ever be one. The writing on cricket is striking yet its a book one is more confident commending to the keen reader of sophisticated contemporary literature than an all-and-sundry sports fan. For, it may be asked, whats the point of these mothers and gypsies and teenagers and insurance claims and nannies, and the rather singular, often detached manner in which they are surveyed? 24 for 3 is an exercise with a theme, using the range of cricket as a literary tool. That, you may worry, risks being abstruse, but the reward is a cricket book that is unexpected and thoughtful.ExtractIts numbers that hold the world together, if sometimes a bit loosely. If I shop for some gloves I expect most of them to come in pairs and with five fingers for each hand, and the temperature cant be minus fifty degrees Celsius or I wouldnt be out shopping at all. Two plus two does equal four, otherwise the supermarket could be delivering three radishes and forty-nine packets of rolled oats and charging me ￡798 and Id have no cause for complaint. Any one number is what it is because of other numbers - they hang together, so that in the end E does equal mc2 and we walk upright and most of the time we dont have to think about them. Its when they dont hang together - five thousand fishes, with twelve baskets of leftovers - that we need to start worrying.I take it on trust that someone has checked all the numbers in Wisden with a calculator and that they do hang together, but the sheer number of numbers in these pages is terrifying. This is a parallel universe in which good and bad, heroism and solid worth, are defined numerically. Also-rans dont get a look-in, the criteria for inclusion being 25,000 runs, 1,000 wickets, 500 achieved dismissals, or 10,000 runs and 500 wickets, or . . . Divinities include the ones with most runs (B. C. Lara, West Indies, 131 - 232 - 6 - 11,953 - 400 - 52.88 - 34 - 48 - 164: presumably the biggest number) and most wickets (S. K. Warne, Australia, 145 - 40,705 - 1,761 - 17,995 - 708 - 25.41 - 871 - 37 - 10 -57.4 - 2.65: take your pick). A man called G. Allot squeaks in because he managed to score 0 runs in 101 minutes. There are thousands upon thousands of numbers here, and I am becoming dizzy. If I take just one of them away, will they all come tumbling down? Like G. Allot, I much prefer my numbers in small quantities, or even singly, like grapes. Such as the apparently random but unarguably exact numbers which Selwyn once recited from some off-the-wall website: the age of the youngest pope (eleven), the number of spiders eaten by a human being over the course of a life (eight), the number of newborn children given each day to the wrong parents (twelve).24 for 3 By Jennie Walker ' ' '