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Two great baseball players have said goodbye in the last two days. Although Matsui Hideki retired from baseball last December as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays, he signed a one-day contract with the Yankees and retired in a Yankee uniform on Sunday. His greatest moment in the Major Leagues was winning the Most Valuable Player award for the 2009 World Series. Then, on Monday, Yamasaki Takeshi announced that he would retire at the end of this season. He won the home run titles in both the Central and the Pacific Leagues. He started with the Chunichi Dragons, and he will finish with them.(by Prof. Douglas Jarrell)
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A new crime novel came out in April. The book was by a new writer, Robert Galbraith. It got good reviews, but it only sold 1,500 copies in three months. Then, a newspaper reported that Galbraith was a pen name (not the writer’s real name). The real writer was by J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books. Now her crime novel is a bestseller! Rowling didn’t use her real name because she wanted to write a different kind of novel, and she wanted to write for fun. (by Prof. Douglas Jarrell)
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