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CHICAGO -- Before the Chicago Cubs completed a trade for Aroldis Chapman, owner Tom Ricketts and president of baseball operations Theo Epstein decided they had to hear from the closer himself about a domestic violence allegation in the offseason.So Ricketts and Epstein asked Major League Baseball for a window to speak with the left-hander, and they got him on the phone Monday. When the conversation was over, the blockbuster deal was on.Chasing their first World Series title since 1908, the Cubs addressed one of their few weaknesses by sending a pricey package of four players to the New York Yankees for Chapman, one of the most dominant relievers in the game, but one who also comes with some risk for a franchise riding a positive wave.This is a game-changer. Aroldis Chapman is a game-changing-type pitcher in the postseason, Epstein said. As you sit around and game plan how youre going to win a big game or how youre going to win a postseason game, it makes it look a lot easier when you see him there on your lineup card.Chapman is expected to join the Cubs for Tuesday nights game at the crosstown White Sox.For the Yankees, it was a rare July trade that saw the best player in the deal leaving New York. But Chapman is eligible for free agency after this season, New York also has All-Stars Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances in the bullpen, and its haul included top shortstop prospect Gleyber Torres, versatile pitcher Adam Warren and minor league outfielders Billy McKinney and Rashad Crawford.This was an easy call, and this was the right call, general manager Brian Cashman said. Easy because we traded from an area of strength and we are excited about the players that weve received for someone that obviously was only under control for two more months.The Yankees had won six of eight heading into Monday nights game at Houston, but they still face long odds of getting to the playoffs. They made the decision to trade Chapman after his agents said he would not agree to a new contract that would start in 2017, a person familiar with the talks said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because no public statement on those talks was authorized.If New York slips back any further, it could engage in a rare sell-off for the franchise. Miller, signed through 2018, also could be traded. All-Star outfielder Carlos Beltran, first baseman Mark Teixeira and pitcher Ivan Nova are eligible for free agency after the season and could be sought by contenders.I think that when the right buy-or-sell circumstance presents itself, then this department will be making recommendations to ownership and then they will direct me on what they want, Cashman said.The 28-year-old Chapman went 3-0 with a 2.01 ERA and 20 saves in 31 games for New York. He threw a 105.1 mph fastball to Baltimores J.J. Hardy last week, matching the fastest since Major League Baseball began tracking speeds in 2008.With lefty-batting sluggers Bryce Harper of Washington and Brandon Belt of San Francisco possibly looming in the playoffs, the addition of Chapman gives Cubs manager Joe Maddon one of the majors top assets when in need of a late strikeout.The Cubs have been playing really good baseball, Chapman said through a translator before he left Houston to travel to Chicago. I think theyre probably one of the better teams in both leagues right now. They have a good rhythm right now. Theyre fighting to get that ring, so it might be a good experience for me to be there.Chapman, who threw the 62 fastest pitches in the majors last season, was traded from Cincinnati to New York last December after a deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers fell through when it was learned Florida police investigated an accusation of domestic violence involving the Cuban pitcher.Prosecutors declined to file charges, citing conflicting accounts, and Chapman was suspended for the first 29 games of the season, losing $1,856,557 of his $11,325,000 salary. He was the first player penalized a finite number of games under Major League Baseballs domestic violence policy.I regret that I did not exercise better judgment and for that I am truly sorry, Chapman said Monday in a statement released by the NL Central-leading Cubs. Looking back, I feel I have learned from this matter and have grown as a person. My girlfriend and I have worked hard to strengthen our relationship, to raise our daughter together, and would appreciate the opportunity to move forward without revisiting an event we consider part of our past.Epstein said the club thoroughly investigated the situation. But it wasnt until they spoke with Chapman on Monday that they were ready to complete the deal.There was genuine sorrow, regret, Epstein said. Hes open about the fact that hes learned from the incident and that he feels hes grown as a person and will continue to grow as a person and that was important to us.Asked if the Cubs spoke with Chapmans girlfriend or someone close to her, Epstein said they took efforts to make sure they looked at the issue from every possible side.Warren was drafted by New York and made his major league debut with the Yankees in 2012. He was traded to Chicago in the December deal that moved infielder Starlin Castro from the Cubs to the Yankees.But the centerpiece of the Yankees package is the 19-year-old Torres, one of the top infield prospects in baseball.Were disappointed we swung and missed in our efforts to sign him as an international free agent back in the 2013 class, but certainly you keep your eyes on players youve liked in the past and he was definitely a target for us, Cashman said.---AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum in New York and AP Sports Writer Kristie Rieken in Houston contributed to this report.---Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenapJarrad Davis Youth Jersey . -- For the first time in two months, an opponent was standing up to Alabama. Calvin Johnson Youth Jersey . Jeff Green scored 13 points and Kris Humphries 12 for the Celtics, who nearly blew an 18-point, second-half lead. Sullingers 20-20 was the first by a Celtics player since Kevin Garnetts first game in Boston in 2007. 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Ovechkin and his Russian national team were eliminated from the mens hockey tournament in Sochi on Wednesday with a 3-1 quarter-final loss to Finland.RIO DE JANEIRO -- It is one of Rios most renowned favelas, the Cidade de Deus made infamous in a film that helped cement a stereotype of the other side of the Marvelous City that is host of the Olympic Games -- one where ghettos are ruled by drug lords and baby-faced criminals shoot to kill.The City of God of today, located mere miles from Olympic Park, is not so easily defined. It is a place of contrasts that defies oversimplification, where poverty and violence persist alongside modest programs that aim to get some kids off the streets and offer a path that keeps guns out of their hands.It is also the former home of Brazils first gold medalist of the Rio Games. Judo champion Rafaela Silva grew up in Cidade de Deus. If not for the sport that helped her climb up and out, I could still be living in City of God now, she said through tears after winning on Monday.The shantytown of nearly 50,000 people became globally known after Paulo Lins novel Cidade de Deus was made into a critically acclaimed movie by Brazilian film director Fernando Meirelles, who also helped create the Olympic opening ceremony that featured a segment depicting the citys favelas. Lins lived in City of God, and both the book and the movie tell a tale of poverty and violence and of youth faced with choices that could lead to an early death -- or a fresh start.While much of Rio was transformed for the Olympics, City of God is a community left behind and still mired in the many problems that were the basis of the movie that introduced its brutal realities to the world. Where other neighborhoods can take advantage of improvements in transit, housing and security, the only thing Olympic in this slum is the painted lane for accredited vehicles to drive past it as fast as they can.Here at City of God, our feelings about the Olympics are like a famous hip-hop song, said one local, Sergio Leal, known as DJ TR. `Look at the black kid watching it all from the outside. We are all watching it from the outside here.In some ways, Cidade de Deus is unlike the hundreds of other favelas in Rio. On the western edge of the city, its far from the beaches where tourists soak in the sun and spreads horizontally across a maze of streets rather than vertically up a hillside. It originally was a housing project, built in the 1960s during Brazils military dictatorship when the government evicted residents from favelas in tony Ipanema, Leblon and Lagoa, and destroyed the shacks to make way for visitors.At that time, not too different from today, the state was determined to `beautify Rio de Janeiro by eliminating favelas from attractive areas of the city and moving the poor to isolated locations, said Mariana Dias Simpson, a researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (Ibase) who has studied Rios slums for more than a decade.City of God, she said, is what local leaders call a re-favela -- a settlement created to house evicted families that kept on growing until it became a favela again.The community was among the first where the government dispatched its so-called police pacification units, or UPPs, which were created in 2008 to curb violence in favelas dominated by heavily armed drug gangs. Police set up local stations, took over territory once controlled by criminals and confiscated weapons, while the state of Rio invested in community centers for children and worked to expand basic services for residents.In the lead-up to the Olympics, the UPPs were expanded to hundreds of favelas across Rio, and many say it felt as if authorities had succeeded in restoring the peace. President Barack Obama, along with the first lady and their two daughters, even paid a visit to Cidade de Deus in 2011. The president rolled up his sleeves and played soccer with some local kids as his family looked on.Here was President Obama coming to this community that once was a symbol of violence, said Juliana Barbassa, a former Associated Press reporter and Brazil native whose book, Dancing with the Devil in the City of God, examines Rios many challenges. She recalled one jubilant store owners reaction: `We used to go to them (the U.ddddddddddddS.) to ask for money, to try to establish a relationship. And now they come to us.Despite that high point, with police forces spread too thin among too many places, the lawlessness that had diminished in City of God and other slums has regained strength.In the most violent section of Cidade de Deus -- a place called Karate -- criminals shot at police just one day before last weeks Olympic opening ceremony; no officers were injured. Several residents interviewed as part of a study by the Ibase group reported that shootings between dealers and the police happen on almost a daily basis, sometimes when children are walking home from school.Violence levels were better all over for a few years ... we had no incidents for months, Leal said. Now, every week, there is a shootout somewhere in City of God. It is not what we saw in the movie, but it is not promising either.Children in the roughest parts of Cidade de Deus often become what the traffickers call avioezinhos, or little planes. Avioezinhos keep watch and alert the drug bosses when police are near. Its considered a first step into the organization, like an entry-level job. Its not unusual to see thugs pointing guns at visitors to the neighborhood even as schoolkids come and go, unflinching because its all customary to them.Still, Dias Simpson and others noted that the vast majority of those living in City of God and other favelas have no involvement in crime at all. Go to the most dangerous favela on a weekday, and youll see ... moms going to work, guys dressed up for their construction jobs, Barbassa said. This is essentially home to the working class of Rio.The film, added Dias Simpson, is a good entertainment piece, but its a fictional film. The reality of City of God is a lot more complex than that.Leo Sagat lived in the neighborhood for 28 years before finally moving out. But he still comes back three days a week, morning and evening, to teach boxing to 270 people, mostly kids, out of a donated room with no air conditioning and three broken fans in one of the safer parts of the slum, appropriately called Switzerland. Even still, next door, is a boca de fumo where dealers sell cocaine and other drugs, and some hang around to use them.Sagat doesnt get paid; he gives his time because he knows sports could help inspire some to find a way out of the slum. His proof can be found in Judo champion Silva. The legacy that I want is to stop kids like these from becoming criminals, he said.In December, amid Olympic preparations, the government donated some boxing equipment to the community, a few gloves and bags that Sagat uses at his gym. But to those here, the gesture is meaningless given all that could have happened these past several years.People of City of God were promised more mobility, more investment in sport and security. They were also promised to be part of a tourism program that would help people in the region become tour guides for Rio, just like in other communities, said Christopher Gaffney, a University of Zurich researcher who spent six years in Brazil studying urban development. But none of those materialized. The rapid-transit bus that could have integrated that region to the rest of Rio doesnt have any stops in City of God. With no integration, there is even more segregation.Despite their beloved Silvas victory, the people of City of God will tell you the revelry surrounding these Olympic Games is not really felt by them. Jessica Santos is just 12, a resident of the shanty for two years who already dreams of more. Standing next to a creek tinged gray with pollution, she spoke wistfully about becoming an environmentalist maybe one day.Look at this creek here, it is completely dirty -- and the water is being more treated than when my family arrived, but people throw their sofas, plastic, a lot of toxic things here.People wanted the Olympics to change things here, too, said the girl. But they did not change much. ' ' '