Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 01/12/2008

1/12/1959:
Elgin Baylor's return to Seattle with the Minneapolis Lakers helps generate a sellout crowd, and his 30-point night reprises his collegiate success with the Seattle University Chieftains, but Tommy Heinsohn and the Celtics are just a little bit better in a 117-108 Boston victory. Heinsohn throws in 38 points while guards Bill Sharman and Bob Cousy combine for 39 more as the Celtics show why they're clearly the best team in the NBA. The buoyant local reception the league receives in this special "neutral site" game in no small measure helps the City of Seattle land an expansion team, the SuperSonics, to begin play in 1967.

Birthdays:
Mac Speedie b. 1920
Joe Frazier b. 1944
Tom Dempsey b. 1947
Dominique Wilkins b. 1960
Jocelyn Thibault b. 1975

1969:
When New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath guaranteed victory over the favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, everybody laughed. But Namath delivered on his promise and led the Jets to a 16-7 Super Bowl win, the first for the fledgling American Football League.

"As grasping, underclass wannabes, trying to dethrone the conservative, respected Colts, they represented rebels everywhere who dared to challenge the status quo. Before Namath, the athletes who boasted publicly about their skills had been mostly boxers...and lower-class scrabblers with little to lose from censure. -Rick Telander, September 19, 1994



At the Village Blend, a historic Greenwich Village coffeehouse, cyanide in the coffee leads to unfortunate consequences, not only for the dead victim but also for the barista who served it to him. Amateur sleuth Clare Cosi, manager of the Village Blend, is certain her employee is innocent. She starts her own investigation of the murder and soon finds blackmail, another death, and ... well, a lot o’ trouble. This charming Coffeehouse Mysteries tale is full of good plot and fun characters, topped off by a tasty recipe for caramel-chocolate latte.

LATTE TROUBLE, by Cleo Coyle (Berkley, 2005)