Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 6/27/07

6/27/1974:
Lee Trevino, Bobby Nichols and Jerry Heard are hospitalized with burns after being struck by lightning during second-round play in the Western Open at the Butler National Golf Course in Oak Brook, Illinois. Lightning also knocked clubs out of the hands of Arnold Palmer and Tony Jacklin, but they're uninjured. Trevino and Nichols both withdraw from the rain-plagued tourney, but Heard plays on, finishing in a fourth-place tie behind the winner, Hale Irwin.

Birthdays:
Willie Mosconi b. 1913
Gus Zernial b. 1923
Rico Petrocelli b. 1943
Jeff Conine b. 1966
Daryle Ward b. 1975

MEMOIRS

Travel writer Laura Fraser had been married just a year and half when her husband jilted her for his high school sweetheart. Crushed, she runs away to Italy to lose herself in the languid pace of the Mediterranean. She meets a man on the island of Ischia and begins an affair. But what starts as an Italian affair turns into a Californian, Moroccan, and English one, as every six months or so the lovers meet in a different exotic locale. Fraser’s lovely writing and her sharp characterizations make the book poignant and memorable, and her sophisticated travel descriptions are seamlessly juxtaposed against her ruminations on overcoming heartbreak and facing middle age.

AN ITALIAN AFFAIR, by Laura Fraser (Vintage, 2002)