Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 9/22/2007

9/22/1973:
Led by third-string sophomore quarterback Joe Bruner and running back Dan Darby, visiting Memphis State upsets Ole Miss, 17-13. It's only the second victory in 28 meetings for MSU against the Rebels, and the defeat is so galling for Mississippi that chancellor Porter Fortune requests permission from the state board of trustees to make drastic changes. Only three games into the season, Coach Billy Kinard and his father, athletic director and Ole Miss immortal Bruiser Kinard, will be summarily fired and replaced by long-time coach John Vaught, who retired three years ago after a mild heart attack following 24 exemplary seasons on the sidelines for the Rebels.

Birthdays:
Tommy Lasorda b. 1927
Ingemar Johansson b. 1932
Vince Coleman b. 1961
Dot Richardson b. 1961
Mike Richter b. 1966

MEMOIRS

“A heartbreaking and perversely beautiful book that should join Catch-22 and The Things They Carried as this generation’s defining literary expression of men at war.”—James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces

When John Crawford joined the National Guard to pay for college, he never dreamed he’d be sent to war. But the semester before his graduation, the call came. He served in Kuwait and Iraq, and documented his experiences in tough, vivid pieces that became this memoir. Intense, the book is an insight into war and how it transforms men.

THE LAST TRUE STORY I’LL EVER TELL: AN ACCIDENTAL SOLDIER’S ACCOUNT OF THE WAR IN IRAQ, by John Crawford (Riverhead, 2005)