Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 9/16/2007

9/16/1974:
Joe Ferguson's 13-yard TD pass to Ahmad Rashad with 26 seconds remaining in the game caps a wild finish and gives the Buffalo Bills a 21-20 victory over the Oakland Raiders. The clinching score is the last of three TDs scored in the final two minutes (two by the Bills) and precedes a missed 50-yard field goal attempt by George Blanda of Oakland at the final gun. It's the first home appearance for the Bills on Monday Night Football in their new stadium, and many of their fans spend much of the night "acting out" for the prime-time cameras and heralded team of ABC-TV announcers including Howard Cosell.

Birthdays:
Elgin Baylor b. 1934
Dennis Conner b. 1942
Robin Yount b. 1955
Orel Hershiser b. 1958
Mickey Tettleton b. 1960

BIOGRAPHIES

Stuey Ungar was a poker savant. A kid from the Lower East Side, he dropped out of high school to play gin rummy for a living and quickly worked his way up to poker. By the age of 21 he’d moved to Las Vegas where the second tournament he played in was the World Series of Poker. He won. It was the start of a career that would go from high (winning streaks, cocaine benders, millions of dollars) to low (flophouses, penury). Ungar died early, but he burned fast and bright and dangerously, which makes his biography riveting and impossible to put down.

ONE OF A KIND: THE RISE AND FALL OF STUEY “THE KID” UNGAR, THE WORLD’S GREATEST POKER PLAYER, by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson (Atria, 2006)