Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 04/21/2008

4/21/1973:
Angle Light, Jacinto Vasquez up, scores a stunning upset in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, leading from start to finish and besting the vaunted Secretariat by four lengths. Named Horse of the Year as a two-year-old, soon to become a Triple Crown winner and arguably the greatest Thoroughbred race horse of all time, Secretariat just didn't have it today despite fine weather and a fast track. Angle Light's stiffest challenge comes from Sham, who finishes second by a neck.

Birthdays:
Gary Peters b. 1937
Al Bumbry b. 1947
Jesse Orosco b. 1957
Ken Caminiti b. 1963
Ed Belfour b. 1965

1935:
The New York Yankees named first baseman Lou Gehrig as their new team captain.

"Gehrig's drive was relentless and unstoppable. He was always on hand to steady not only the great Ruth but the whole Yankee team. He was a perfect team man-a raucous, unafraid giant without guile, deceit or overleaping ambition. Gehrig was glad to be a Yankee, not glad to be just Gehrig." - James Murray, April 15, 1957

Packers Fact:
The Packers' week 17 game in 2006 marked their first regular season game every on New Year's Eve. Green Bay had played on New Year's Eve four times in the postseason.


EVER GREAT
Chicago writer Charlie Citrine has woman troubles and divorce troubles. His career is going nowhere, and he’s entangled with a neurotic mafioso. Then he finds that his deceased friend, the poet Von Humboldt Fleisher, has left him a gift that may very well lift him out of this miasma of strife and vexation. The character of Humboldt, a gifted writer and “the Mozart of conversation,” is based on the brilliant poet and story writer Delmore Schwartz. Humboldt’s Gift won the Pulitzer in 1975, and a year later Bellow won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

HUMBOLDT’S GIFT, by Saul Bellow (1975; Penguin Classics, 1996)