Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 7/9/2007

7/9/1971:
The California Angels set a new major league record by striking out 26 times in one game as they drop a 1-0 decision to the Oakland A's in 20 innings. Seventeen of those K's are recorded by A's ace Vida Blue (with no walks) in 11 innings of work. The two teams combine for 43 strikeouts, setting another record. Angels outfielder Tony Conigliaro, still fighting eye trouble after a 1967 beaning, has an 0-for-8 night; tomorrow, he'll announce his retirement from baseball.

Birthdays:
Jim Pollard b. 1922
Red Kelly b. 1927
Mike Riordan b. 1945
Willie Wilson b. 1955
Trent Green b. 1970

CULT CLASSICS

If you like your fiction gonzo, then you’ve got to get a copy of Island of the Sequined Love Nun. Carl Hiaasen says the book is “so delightfully warped and funny that no sane person could have written it.” Tucker Case is a dissolute pilot who ends up on an island in the Pacific with the mission of freeing its enslaved people. He mingles with cannibals, transvestites, missionaries, military operatives, and one buxom woman in a sequined dress. Fast. Funny. Farcical.

ISLAND OF THE SEQUINED LOVE NUN, by Christopher Moore (1997; Harper Paperbacks, 2004)

Tucker Case reappears in The Stupidest Angel, Moore’s bestselling Christmas story.