Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 04/19/2008

4/19/1930:
Clarence DeMar wins his seventh Boston Marathon, an all-time record, by a margin of 400 yards in 2:34.48. The 41-year-old native of Melrose, Massachusetts, isn't tested over the last few miles and fails to challenge the track record set just last year by two-time winner John Miles. Although he won't win this event again, DeMar will go on to compete in 33 Boston Marathons, his last in 1954 at age 65. A printing press compositor by trade, he always went right back to his job after a typical race, often helping to set type describing his own achievements for the next day's newspapers.

Birthdays:
Jack Pardee b. 1936
Alexis Arguello b. 1952
Frank Viola b. 1960
Al Unser Jr. b. 1962
Maria Sharapova b. 1987

1912:
The Boston Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders, 7-6, in the newly dedicated Fenway Park.

"Fenway Park is emphatically not a fun emporium, a gag palace frantically designed to keep patrons awake. It is a place for knowledgeable fans. ... If other parks promote baseball as prime-time sitcom, Fenway stages baseball in the style of PBS." -Melvin Maddocks, September 15, 1975

LIVES OF THE POETS

Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate of England, and Sylvia Plath, author of Ariel and The Bell Jar, met and married in 1956. By 1962 they had separated, and Plath committed suicide shortly thereafter. According to Middlebrook, they had the “most mutually productive literary marriage of the twentieth century.” Her Husband is a provocative and convincing account of two brilliantly creative people in an erotic, intellectual, and deeply troubled relationship.

HER HUSBAND: HUGHES AND PLATH, A MARRIAGE, by Diane Middlebrook (Viking, 2003)