Four popular sport in America

first American baseball match was held in 1839 in New York. Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played by two teams of nine players each. The aim 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. American children of 8 years old can join certain leagues where they are taught by coaches. Every player and coach must wear a particular uniform: a shirt, pants, baseball cleats (specific shoes worn by the player for better traction with the earth) and a baseball cap designed to shade the eyes from the sun. Nowadays baseball caps are widespread in our everyday life. Catchers have to wear protective helmets with face masks and a special catcher's mitt.

It is a team sport in which two teams of five players each try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules. Basketball is one of the world's most widely viewed games nowadays. In 1946 the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed. Three years later the BAA merged with the National Basketball League to form the National Basketball Association (NBA). The NBA is famous for many outstanding players, including Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson and Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan

Larry Bird

is called so because it was originated at Rugby — a well-known English public school. As well as common football it is a game played by two teams of fifteen players each. The game takes place on a field 100 metres long and 80 metres wide. There are goal posts at both ends of the field. Rugby is played with an oval or egg-shaped ball which can be carried by hands and kicked. The ball is passed from hand to hand in order to be thrown across the goal line. It is a rather violent game, that is why the players must be big and strong. Another requirement for the players is to wear helmets, masks and chest and shoulder padding.

Man`s Game.

Women`s Game.

kids probably fashioned pucks from frozen "horse apples" and adapted tree branches as hockey sticks, and played on cleared stretches of frozen lakes and rivers, and backyard rinks. Soon it was inevitable that teams began to play against each other and leagues were formed. The earliest mention of the team ice hockey game is a newspaper description of the game played at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal in 1875.

Hockey is a team game played on an ice surface, known as a rink. Six players — a goalkeeper, two defence-men, and three forwards — constitute a side.
The game is divided into three periods, each lasting twenty minutes of actual playing time with -10-minute intervals. There are five face-off spots whereby the puck is dropped by the referee between the sticks of two players. After a goal is scored, the puck is brought back to center ice for another face-off.