Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 01/23/2008

1/23/1958:
The Red Sox strike gold when they acquire second baseman Pete Runnels from the Washington Senators for Albie Pearson and Norm Zauchin. The resourceful left-handed batter becomes a master at hitting to the opposite field, rifling hits off the Green Monster at Fenway Park. After averaging .274 and 18 doubles per season in seven years at Washington, Runnels will average .320 with 29 doubles per season in his five years at Boston, winning two batting titles, in 1960 and '62.

Birthdays:

Jerry Kramer b. 1936
Petr Korda b. 1968
Eric Metcalf b. 1968
Alan Embree b. 1970
Erubiel Durazo b. 1974

1983:
At the height of his career, 26-year-old tennis player Bjorn Borg announced his retirement. He had won a record five straight Wimbledon titles.

"The announcement at the end of Presley concerts used to be so agonizingly final: "Elvis has left the building." Why, oh why, couldn't Bjorn Borg go out like Ted Williams, hitting the home run, instead of like Presley, wallowing in self-caricature? -Curry Kirkpatrick, February 14, 1983

Packers Fact:
Defensive end Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila is the older brother of former NFL defensive end Akbar Gbaja-Biamila.


Durrell claimed his famous tetralogy was based on Einsteinian physics: three spatial dimensions (Justine, Balthazar, and Mountolive relating the same events from different perspectives) and one temporal (Clea continuing on, showing what happened next). After Joyce, Woolf, and Proust, it might have seemed the next logical experiment with fiction—and the tetralogy was a critical and commercial success when it appeared nearly 50 years ago, but has it aged well? Yes. Durrell’s prose remains impressive; Alexandria is addictively, seedily fascinating and the mysteries of sex and love are still poignant.

THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET: JUSTINE, BALTHAZAR, MOUNTOLIVE, AND CLEA, by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60; Penguin, 1991)