Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 01/17/2008

Not exactly endearing himself to ticket-buying fans of more modest means than handsomely compensated NBA players, Latrell Sprewell offered a haughty response when asked why he turned down a three-year, $21 million contract extension offer from the Minnesota Timberwolves: "I have to feed my family."

Birthdays:
Jacques Plante b. 1929
Kip Keino b. 1940
Muhammed Ali b. 1942
Chili Davis b. 1960
Jeremy Roenick b. 1970

1971:
Super Bowl V, which was the most exciting Super Bowl game to date, featured a record 11 turnovers.

"Perhaps the game should be called the Blunder Bowl. The Baltimore Colts won by default, not design. They defeated the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 on a field goal by Jim O'Brien with five seconds remaining, one of the few plays of the day that worked as it was supposed to. -Tex Maule, January 25, 1971

ABOUT SHERLOCK

Short-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, Arthur & George is a beautifully structured story that interweaves the lives of Arthur (Conan Doyle) and George (Edalji). The Victorian setting teems with issues of class, morality, friendship, and love. Chapter by chapter, Arthur and George merge and emerge. What you need to know comes along in its own good time, while you become completely hooked into this story of the world’s most renowned writer of detective fiction and an unknown Staffordshire solicitor accused of heinous crimes. Why and how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proves George Edalji’s innocence is Julian Barnes’s brilliant achievement, a marvelous fiction based on a true and historically significant story.

ARTHUR & GEORGE, by Julian Barnes (Knopf, 2006)