Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 02/14/2008

2/14/1951:
Sugar Ray Robinson batters Jake LaMotta into submission but can't knock the Raging Bull off his feet, scoring a 13th-round technical knockout at Chicago Stadium to win the world middleweight championship. With LaMotta helpless along the ropes, referee Frank Sikora stops the St. Valentine's Day massacre before Robinson can inflict any more damage. It was the sixth lifetime meeting of the two fighters but first since 1945. Robinson won five of the bouts; LaMotta's only win came in 1943, when he gave Robinson his first loss as a professional after 40 straight wins.

Birthday:
Woody Hayes b. 1913
Mickey Wright b. 1935
Jim Kelly b. 1960
Drew Bledsoe b. 1972
Steve McNair b. 1973

1991:
Tonya Harding was crowned the U.S. Figure Skating champion after becoming the first American female to successfully land a triple Axel in competition.

"After all the hankies were wrung out and all the teardrops had fallen, the [night]...belonged to a 20-year-old dynamo from Portland, Oregon, named Tonya Harding. In one energized four-minute free skating program, Harding leapt from nowhere into history." -E.M. Swift, February 25, 1991

LOSE YOURSELF

A wonderful first novel from the coeditor of the Italian newspaper La Stampa. The prince of the clouds is a dreamy, shy scholar of military history, Carlo, who goes to Sicily after World War II to study and for his wife’s health. He finds himself drawn into real life in a way he never has before, with all the confusion, passion, rueful mistakes, and tiny triumphs that he has avoided for too long. Nicola McAllister of The Observer (London) writes, “Riotta is as romantic as Pasternak, as colourful and densely plotted as García Márquez.”

PRINCE OF THE CLOUDS, by Gianni Riotta; translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli (Picador USA, 2001)