Iván Nova

Iván Manuel Nova Guance (born January 12, 1987) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the New York Yankees in Major League Baseball (MLB). Nova made his MLB debut in 2010. He bats and throws right-handed.

Nova grew up poor in the Dominican Republic, where he started playing baseball at a young age. An unheralded prospect, the Yankees signed Nova as an international free agent in 2004. After pitching in minor league baseball through the 2008 season, the San Diego Padres selected Nova from the Yankees in the Rule 5 draft. The Padres opted not to carry Nova on their 25-man roster, however, and returned him to the Yankees.

Nova enjoyed a breakout season in the minors for the Yankees in 2009. He reached MLB with the Yankees in 2010. Nova established himself as a key member of the Yankees' starting rotation during the 2011 season. After struggling in 2012, Nova reemerged in 2013, winning the American League Pitcher of the Month Award for August 2013.

Early life

Nova was raised in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic. His father, Manuel, managed a restaurant on the beach. To make ends meet, Nova and his four siblings slept in the same bed and often worked in their father's restaurant.

Major League

Major League may also refer to:

Sport

Nova

A nova (plural novae or novas) is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion on a white dwarf, which causes a sudden brightening of the star. Novae are not to be confused with other brightening phenomena such as supernovae or luminous red novae. Novae are thought to occur on the surface of a white dwarf in a binary system when they are sufficiently near to one another, allowing material (mostly hydrogen) to be pulled from the companion star's surface onto the white dwarf. The nova is the result of the rapid fusion of the accreted hydrogen on the surface of the star, commencing a runaway fusion reaction.

Development

The development begins with two main sequence stars in a binary relation. One of the two evolves into a red giant leaving its remnant white dwarf core in orbit with the remaining star. The second star—which may be either a main sequence star, or an aging giant one as well—begins to shed its envelope onto its white dwarf companion when it overflows its Roche lobe. As a result, the white dwarf will steadily accrete matter from the companion's outer atmosphere; the white dwarf consists of degenerate matter, so the accreted hydrogen does not inflate as its temperature increases. Rapid, uncontrolled fusion occurs when the temperature of this accreted layer reaches ~20 million kelvin, initiating a burn via the CNO cycle.

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league. A total of 30 teams now play in two divisions, the American League (AL) and National League (NL), with 15 teams in each. The AL and NL operated as separate legal entities from 1901 and 1876 respectively, until 2000, when they were merged into a single organization known as Major League Baseball. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities since 1903, in 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. The organization also oversees minor league baseball leagues, which comprise about 240 teams affiliated with the major-league clubs. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament.

Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era; players rarely hit home runs during this time. Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal. The sport rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson.

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern United States and is the United States' 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border in the Atlantic Ocean with Rhode Island, east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the north and Ontario to the west and north. The state of New York, with an estimated 19.8 million residents in 2015, is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City, the state's most populous city and its economic hub.

With an estimated population of nearly 8.5 million in 2014, New York City is the most populous city in the United States and the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. The New York City Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City is a global city, exerting a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment, its fast pace defining the term New York minute. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York City is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural and financial capital of the world, as well as the world's most economically powerful city. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State. Two-thirds of the state's population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% live on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th century Duke of York, future King James II of England. The next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany.