Trade Deadline Moves and Part 2 of the Olympics Preview

Big moves as baseball deadline nears

• Major League Baseball's trade deadline is the end of the month. Teams that are not projecting to make the playoffs are selling players and preparing for next year. Ichiro Suzuki, the long time Seattle Mariner’s right fielder, was traded to the New York Yankees on Monday for a package of minor league pitchers. Ichiro is the most well known Japanese import, joining the Mariners in 2000. He is known as a contact hitter (who regularly got 220-240 hits a season) with blazing speed.
• This season has been his worst season statistically and the move is a late-career effort to win a World Series. The Mariners, a team in rebuild mode, were not in contention for the World Series, while the Yankees are leading their division and are amongst the best teams in baseball. Ichiro will be taking a reduced roll on this team but hopes to win a championship before he retires.
• The other big name on the move was Miami Marlin’s third baseman Hanley Ramirez. The 28 year old former shortstop was traded to the LA Dodgers. Ramirez’s move to third base at the beginning of this season was a resounding flop. Moving to the Dodgers will allow Ramirez to play the position he is more comfortable with, and he will bring with him his significant hitting abilities to the Dodgers who are in need of offensive help.

Olympics starting Friday: Preview Part 2 – WADA and Doping

• WADA, or the World Anti-Doping Agency, announced on Tuesday that 107 Olympic athletes will be held out of this year’s Olympics due to doping (or using steroids to aid their performance).
• Drugs have long been part of the international sports, especially in the Olympics. Each year a number of athletes get caught during competition. WADA is planning on running 5,000 tests throughout the Olympics.
• Ben Johnson is one of the most famous cases of this. In the 1988, the Canadian sprinter, had been battling with American Carl Lewis for the title of fastest man alive. Blowing away the competition in Seoul  with a, then world record, 9.79 second 100-meter dash, Johnson was then found out to have been doping. Stripped of the medal he had won, Johnson was suspended for 3 years. He attempted a comeback in 1992, but failed to make the 100-meter finals.