Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 01/02/2008

1/2/1965:
Erasing a 16-point deficit with only nine minutes left, St. John's upsets top-ranked Michigan, 75-74, in the finals of the ECAC Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden. Sonny Dove leads the Redmen with 23 points and 18 rebounds as they close the game on a 23-6 run. The momentum clearly changes midway in the second half when Michigan All-American Cazzie Russell (24 points) goes to the bench with his fourth foul. It's an emotional triumph for St. John's, striving to win the tourney in honor of retiring coach Joe Lapchick. It will be doubly sweet in March when they also win the NIT on this same floor in Lapchick's final game.

Birthdays:
Gino Marchetti b. 1927
Robbie Ftorek b. 1952
David Cone b. 1963
Edgar Martinez b. 1963
Pernell Whitaker b. 1964

1/2/1982:
In the highest-scoring NFL playoff game ever, the San Diego Chargers defeated the Miami Dolphins, 41-38, on Rolf Benirschke's overtime field goal.

"It is the one great irony of professional football that magnificent games such as (this one) are almost always decided by the wrong guys. Decided not by heroic, bloodied men who play themselves to exhaustion and perform breathtaking feats, but by men in clean jerseys. With names you cannot spell. -John Underwood, January 11, 1982

Packers Fact for 1/2/2007:
While a junior at Michigan in 1997, cornerback Charles Woodson became the first predominately defensive player to win college football's Heisman Trophy.

HER WAY

Phyllis Diller took a life of unemployed husbands, five kids, and countless bad-hair days and turned it into one of the great comedic careers of our time. Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse is the story of how, starting at age 37, she clawed her way to the top of her profession. You’ll find plenty of her signature self-deprecating humor (“If I didn’t have an Adam’s apple I’d have no figure at all!”), sarcasm, and great stories about the hard-knocks world of professional comedy.

LIKE A LAMPSHADE IN A WHOREHOUSE, by Phyllis Diller and Richard Buskin (Tarcher/Penguin, 2005)