Ralph Branca
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Ralph Branca
Ralph Theodore Joseph "Hawk" Branca (January 6, 1926 – November 23, 2016) was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1944 through 1956. Branca played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944–1953, 1956), Detroit Tigers (1953–1954), and New York Yankees (1954). He was a three-time All-Star. In a 1951 playoff, Branca surrendered a walk-off home run to Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants; the game-winning hit was known as the " Shot Heard 'Round the World". Early life Ralph Branca was born in Mount Vernon, New York, as the fifteenth of 17 children. His father, John Branca, was a trolley car conductor from Italy. His mother, Kati (née Berger), who was Jewish, immigrated to the United States in 1901 from Sandorf, Hungary (now Prievaly, Slovakia). His uncle Jozsef Berger was murdered at the Majdanek concentration camp, and his maternal aunt Irma was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. He was raised Roman Cathol ...
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Pitcher
In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the pitcher is assigned the number 1. The pitcher is often considered the most important player on the defensive side of the game, and as such is situated at the right end of the defensive spectrum. There are many different types of pitchers, such as the starting pitcher, relief pitcher, middle reliever, lefty specialist, setup man, and the closer. Traditionally, the pitcher also bats. Starting in 1973 with the American League(and later the National League) and spreading to further leagues throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the hitting duties of the pitcher have generally been given over to the position of designated hitter, a cause of some controversy. The Japanese Central Le ...
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San Francisco Giants
The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New York Gothams, and renamed three years later the New York Giants, the team eventually moved from New York City to San Francisco in 1958. The franchise is one of the oldest and most successful in professional baseball, with more wins than any team in the history of major American sports. The team was the first major-league organization based in New York City, most memorably playing home games at several iterations of the Polo Grounds. The Giants have played in the World Series 20 times. In 2014, the Giants won their then-record 23rd National League pennant; this mark has since been equaled and then eclipsed by the rival Dodgers, who as of 2022 lay claim to 24 NL crowns. The Giants' eight World Series championships are second-most in the NL ...
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Opening Day
Opening Day is the day on which professional baseball leagues begin their regular season. For Major League Baseball (MLB) and most of the American minor leagues, this day typically falls during the first week of April, although in recent years it has occasionally fallen in the last week of March. In Nippon Professional Baseball, this day typically falls during the last week of March. For baseball fans, Opening Day serves as a symbol of rebirth; writer Thomas Boswell once penned a book titled, ''Why Time Begins on Opening Day''. Many feel that the occasion is a moment to forget last season, in that all teams begin anew with records. Pre-season exhibition games are usually played in the month before Opening Day, during spring training. A home opener is a team's first game of the season on their home field. Equivalents to Opening Day occur throughout the sport, including minor leagues, college baseball, high school, and youth leagues. Because MLB generally begins its season earli ...
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Earned Run Average
In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine. Thus, a lower ERA is better. Runs resulting from passed balls or defensive errors (including pitchers' defensive errors) are recorded as unearned runs and omitted from ERA calculations. Origins Henry Chadwick is credited with devising the statistic, which caught on as a measure of pitching effectiveness after relief pitching came into vogue in the 1900s. Prior to 1900—and, in fact, for many years afterward—pitchers were routinely expected to pitch a complete game, and their win–loss record was considered sufficient in determining their effectiveness. After pitchers like James Otis Crandall and Charley Hall made names for themselves as relief specialists, gauging a pitcher's e ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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NYU Violets
NYU Violets is the nickname of the sports teams and other competitive teams at New York University. The school colors are purple and white. Although officially known as the Violets, the school mascot is a bobcat. The Violets compete as a member of NCAA Division III in the University Athletic Association conference. The university sponsors 23 varsity sports, as well as club teams and intramural sports. Sports Sponsored Nickname and mascot For more than a century, NYU athletes have worn violet and white colors in competition, which is the root of the nickname Violets. In the 1980s, after briefly using a student dressed as a violet for a mascot, the school instead adopted the bobcat as its mascot, from the abbreviation then being used by NYU's Bobst Library computerized catalog. History NYU long offered a full athletic program, and was in fact a pioneer in the area of intercollegiate sports. When NYU began playing college football in 1873 it was one of the first football te ...
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College Basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA), the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA), and the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA). Each of these various organizations is subdivided into one to three divisions, based on the number and level of scholarships that may be provided to the athletes. Each organization has different conferences to divide up the teams into groups. Teams are selected into these conferences depending on the location of the schools. These conferences are put in due to the regional play of the teams and to have a structural schedule for each team to play for the upcoming year. During conference play the teams are ranked not only through the entire NCAA, but the conference as well in which they have tourn ...
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College Baseball
College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional players, as baseball's professional minor leagues are more extensive, with a greater history of supplying players to MLB. Moving directly from high school to the professional level is more common in baseball than in football or basketball. However, if players do opt to enroll at a four-year college to play baseball, they must complete three years to regain professional eligibility, unless they reach age 21 before starting their third year of college. Players who enroll at junior colleges (i.e., two-year institutions) regain eligibility after one year at that level. In the 2020 season, which was abbreviated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 300 NCAA Division I teams in the United States (including schools transitioning from Division ...
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New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the non-denominational all-male institution began its first classes near City Hall based on a curriculum focused on a secular education. The university moved in 1833 and has maintained its main campus in Greenwich Village surrounding Washington Square Park. Since then, the university has added an engineering school in Brooklyn's MetroTech Center and graduate schools throughout Manhattan. NYU has become the largest private university in the United States by enrollment, with a total of 51,848 enrolled students, including 26,733 undergraduate students and 25,115 graduate students, in 2019. NYU also receives the most applications of any private institution in the United States and admission is considered highly selective. NYU is organized int ...
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Mount Vernon High School (New York)
Mount Vernon High School (MVHS) is a public high school in the Chester Heights section of the City of Mount Vernon in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is part of the Mount Vernon City School District. The current Mount Vernon High School came into existence from the merger of the former A.B. Davis High School and Edison Tech in 1964. Sports The school colors are maroon and gold, and teams are nicknamed the Knights. Sports include cheerleading, volleyball, track & field, baseball, softball, basketball, swimming, gymnastics, and football. Basketball Sectional titles 1967, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022 PHSAA titles 1978, 1979, 1981, 1991, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2017, 2022 Mount Vernon's 12 basketball titles (last 8 under coach Bob Cimmino) are a record for any New York State schoo ...
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Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to ...
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Majdanek Concentration Camp
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, the camp was used to murder people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. The camp, which operated from 1 October 1941 to 22 July 1944, was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of the camp's infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove most incriminating evidence of war crimes. The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjace ...
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