Baseball is one of the favorite sports in the U.S.A. Children play baseball in sports field or in parks.

At summer picnics, there is often an informal baseball game. Boys and girls, the young and the old, take turns to beat. Each team has 9 players.

The baseball season goes from April to September. During this time, baseball matches are on TV and members of the important baseball teams become America’s heroes. At the end of season, the two top teams play against each other. Many baseball fans go along to watch the game. Millions of others listen to the radio and watch television. People seem to talk only about the result and the players.

American football is perhaps the most popular sport in the U.S.A. The football season begins when the baseball season ends. More people are interested in football than baseball when there is an important game. Thousands of people sit beside the radio or in front of the television set to hear or watch the result.

Football is, I suppose, the most popular game in England. In some important matches, you can see the rich and the poor, the young and the old all there, shouting and cheering for one side or the other.

One of the most surprising things about football in England is the great knowledge of the game which even the smallest boy seems to have. He can tell you the names of the players in most of the important teams. He has photographs of them and knows the results of a large number of matches. He will tell you who he expects(预料) to win such and such a match(诸如此类的比赛).

The schools arrange(安排) games and matches for their pupils. Football is a good game. It is good exercise for our body. It needs skills(技能) and wisdom(智慧) and it is popular and cheap. As a result, it is the school’s favorite game in winter.

Yao Ming, the center of the Chinese National Men’s Basketball Team, served the Houston Rockets in 2002 in NBA.The 2.26m, 120kg center became the first player to come from a foreign team.

Yao Ming was born in Shanghai in September, 1980. His mother was a center and captain (队长) of the Chinese National Women’s Team. His father played basketball, too.

Yao Ming is widely known in China. He came to be a very important basketball player in CBA. It’s short for China Basketball Association (联赛) . During the 2000-2001 season, he got 27.1 scores (得分) for the Shanghai Oriental (东方) Sharks in every match.

Yao Ming joined the Houston Rockets in October, 2002. He said it was a new start in his basketball life. He would do his best to learn from the NBA and improve (提高) himself.

Sport analyst (分析家) Bill Walton said，“Yao Ming has the potential (潜力), the capability (能力) of changing the future of basketball.”