SAN DIEGO -- Dylan Cozens said his choice was simple. He could have played defensive end at the University of Arizona or signed with the Philadelphia Phillies.Look at the concussions and look at the injuries in football, the Phillies outfield prospect said. You got a longer career here in baseball.Cozens was among former two-sport athletes in Sundays All-Star Futures Game along with Atlanta infielder Dansby Swanson, Cincinnati pitcher Amir Garrett and Kansas City infielder Hunter Dozier.Rob Manfred has made youth baseball a top priority since becoming baseball commissioner last year, wanting the sport to be more proactive to attract top young athletes.Youth is a huge deal in terms of participation and attendance, he said.MLB hopes future John Elways and Dan Marinos choose the diamond over the gridiron.Cozens had committed to Arizona to play defensive end, then signed with the Phillies after he was taken with the 77th overall pick of the 2012 amateur draft. The 22-year-old, 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, has 24 homers, 75 RBI and a .286 batting average in 85 games this year at Double-A Reading -- but has 108 strikeouts in 329 at-bats.My dad always wanted me to play baseball. Just a longer career. Easier on the body. Play more games, he said.I was just planning on playing baseball. I really didnt want to go to college, he added with a laugh. I couldnt tell them at the time with the draft going on.Dozier was quarterback for Denton High School in Denton, Texas, where football is king.I felt like I was more of a football guy in high school just because in Texas you kind of had to be, he said.His trajectory changed during his junior year game against Little Elm, when he handed the ball off to a wide receiver, who threw it back to him on a trick play. Doziers collarbone was broken in three places, basically shattered, he recalled.Dozier played baseball at Stephen F. Austin, and Kansas City selected him with the eighth overall pick in 2013. The 24-year-old third baseman and outfielder was brought up to Triple-A in May, and he is hitting .341 for Omaha with nine homers and 30 RBI in 35 games.Still, on cramped minor league bus rides up to 16 hours long, occasionally he thinks about what an NFL career would have been like.But Im extremely happy with the decision I made, he said.Garrett, a 24-year-old left-handed pitcher, played for the Red Storm before the Reds. Drafted by Cincinnati in the 22nd round in 2011, he was a 6-foot-5 guard and forward for St. Johns in the second semester of the 2011-12 season, then started his baseball career in rookie level leagues that summer. He went back for his sophomore season in Queens, then transferred to California State Northridge, sitting out the basketball season. He decided to stay with baseball fulltime after going 7-8 for Dayton in the Class A Midwest League in 2014.I was getting older in the basketball world. But I was still young in baseball. I didnt have a lot of innings on my arm or anything like that, he said. My play that year basically made the decision for me.He earned a promotion to Triple-A last month and pitched in his second straight Futures Game. With a fastball reaching 96 mph, he threw two hitless innings and induced a pair of double-play grounders.Garrett has had to learn baseballs unwritten rules of behavior, a subject throughout the sport as Bryce Harpers generation takes over and tries to loosen a code of conduct where emotion can be frowned upon.The basketball mentality, I would say its a different world, Garrett said. On the basketball court, I was aggressive. You could talk, mess to each other. Its all within the game. But baseball, you cant really do that here. You got to channel your emotions.Swanson was captain of the basketball team at Marietta for two seasons.Im 6-1. Im too short, and I just knew that baseball would end up being the future, he said. Reality hit me pretty hard.Swanson was selected top player of the 2014 College World Series as Vanderbilt won the title, was taken by Arizona with the first pick in the 2015 amateur draft, then was traded to Atlanta, his homestate team. The 22-year-old shortstop was bumped up to Double-A at the end of April and is hitting .269 with five homers and 29 RBI in 57 games at Mississippi.Unlike others in his generation, Swanson wasnt put off by baseballs languid pace.I know they say the games are too long. Well, you cant really just fix that with the drop of a hat, he said. I think if people can see and realize how good of an opportunity and how far it can take you, that will say a lot and do a lot for people. People just have to experience and have fun doing it. Black Packers Jerseys . The Australian is competing in his final season in Formula One and still looking for his first win this year. He will look to end Vettels run of six straight race wins on Sunday. 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RIO DE JANEIRO -- What it lacked in flash, Rio made up for with feeling.With a limited budget, the consequence of a biting recession that roiled preparations for South Americas first Olympics, Brazil laced its high-energy opening party for the games of the 31st Olympiad with a sobering message of the dangers of global warming.Graphic projections of world cities being swamped by rising seas set Rio de Janeiros otherwise fun and festive gala apart from the more self-congratulatory and lavish celebrations that Beijing and London wowed with in 2008 and 2012.The heat is melting the icecap, a voice intoned in the Maracana Stadium. Its disappearing very quickly.But it wasnt all doom and gloom. After all, nowhere parties quite like Rio.Supermodel Gisele Bundchen shimmered to the tune of The Girl from Ipanema. Fireworks formed the word Rio in the skies. The colossal Christ the Redeemer statue was bathed in Brazilian yellow and green. Dancers, all hips and wobble, grooved to thumping funk and sultry samba.After one of the roughest-ever rides from vote to games by an Olympic host, the city of beaches, carnival, grinding poverty and sun-kissed wealth celebrated Brazils can-do spirit, biodiversity and melting pot history.The crowd roared when Bundchen sashayed from one side of the 78,000-seat arena to the other, as Tom Jobims grandson, Daniel, played his grandfathers famous song about the Ipanema girl tall and tan and young and lovely.In a video preceding the show, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the games celebrate the best of humanity and appealed for an Olympic truce, calling on all warring parties to lay down their weapons during the two weeks of sporting achievement.There were times after the International Olympic Committee selected Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid in 2009 when it seemed that the city of 6.5 million people might not get its act together for the worlds greatest sporting mega-event. The spreading health crisis of the mosquito-born Zika virus kept some athletes away. Promises to clean up Rios filthy waters remained unfulfilled. The heavy bill for the games, at least $12 billion, made them unpopular with many. Heavily armed security stopped a small group of protesters from getting close to the stadium ahead of the ceremony.But with more than a dash of gambiarra, the Brazilian art of quick-fixes and making do, Rio is ready.Just.Our admiration is even greater because you managed this at a very difficult time in Brazilian history. We have always believed in you, IOC President Thomas Bach said.The honor of officially declaring the games open fell to Michel Temer, Brazils unpopular interim president, who was loudly jeered and faced shouts of out with Temer. He was standing in for suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Her ouster less than four months ahead of the games for alleged budget violations was one of many spanners in the works of Brazils Olympic preparations and impacted the opening ceremony itselff.dddddddddddd Fewer than 25 foreign heads of state were listed as attending, with others seemingly staying away to avoid giving the impression of taking sides amid Brazils leadership uncertainty.The cannonball-shaped cauldron was lit by Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima. At the 2004 games, an Irish spectator wearing a kilt, knee-socks and a beret tackled de Lima while he was leading the Olympic marathon. Instead of gold, he fell back to take bronze.Another cauldron was lit in the citys port area early Saturday that will be displayed for Rio residents to enjoy.Greece, the historical and spiritual home of the games, led the march by athletes into the stadium. They were joined by a first-ever Refugee Olympic Team of 10 athletes, displaced from Syria, South Sudan, Congo and Ethiopia. Their flag-bearer, Rose Nathike Lokonyen, fled war in South Sudan and ran her first race in a refugee camp in northern Kenya. Only Brazils team, which marched last, drew a louder roar from the crowd than the refugees.The athletes were given tree seeds, plus cartridges of soil. When the seeds sprout, they will be planted in a Rio park.With USA emblazoned on the back of his jacket, Michael Phelps carried the flag for the U.S. team, the largest with 549 competitors. At his fifth and last Olympics, it was the first time the record holder of 22 medals had marched in an opening ceremony, having skipped previous ones to save energy for competition.On behalf of all 11,288 competitors (6,182 men; 5,106 women), Brazilian two-time Olympic champion sailor Robert Scheidt pledged that they wont take banned drugs -- an oath likely to ring false to fans after the scandal of government-orchestrated cheating in Russia. As a consequence, Russias team was whittled down from a hoped-for 389 athletes to around 270.Iran picked a woman, archer Zahra Nemati, as flag-bearer for its team made up overwhelmingly of men. Another woman pushed Nematis wheelchair. She was paralyzed in a car accident as a teenager.Shoals of samba dancers flowed in a rainbow of colors, but many showed less flesh than normal for Brazil, seemingly mindful of their global TV audience.After the grandeur of Beijings opening ceremony and the high-tech, cheeky inventiveness of Londons, Rios was earthier and less swish but more sobering with its gloomy environmental look at the future and deliberate penny-pinching. Creative director Fernando Meirelles said their budget, slashed by half as Brazils economic recession bit ever harder, is 12 times less than London, 20 times less than Beijing.It is pretty tacky to be overspending, he said. It is not a good message for the world. When 40 percent of the homes in Brazil have no sanitation, you cant really be spending a billion reals for a show.In the end I feel good that I am not spending money that Brazil hasnt got. Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale NFL Jerseys Jerseys From China Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap Jerseys ' ' '