Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 05/07/08

Growing up poor in Panama without the means to obtain proper baseball equipment, premier Yankee closer Mariano Rivera remembers how tough it was just to get a bat to play with: "We had to get somebody's broom. Somebody's home would have to suffer for us to play. Some kid that was playing would have to go take the broom from his house. That's trouble."

Birthdays:
Johnny Unitas b. 1933
Bob Weiss b. 1942
Louis Orr b. 1958
Brad Ishister b. 1977
Shawn Marion b. 1978

1995:
Lance Armstrong made his mark on the national cycling scene by winning the 1,130-mile, 12-day Tour DuPont.

"Armstrong's grand cycling dream might be to finish with arms raised in victory on the Champs Elysees at the end of the Tour de France some July afternoon. ... But the intermediate dream was to finish in front of the field in a parking lot at a shopping mall in Greensboro, North Carolina." -Leigh Montville, May 15, 1995

Packers Fact:
In 2006, wide receiver Donald Driver became the ninth player in Packers' history to catch passes totaling more than 5,000 yards for the club.

VENICE OPERA

Having painted the beautiful, seamy, ornate tapestry of Savannah in the grip of a fascinating trial in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Berendt turns now to Venice and the rebuilding of La Fenice, the famed opera house, after its destruction by fire in 1997. Again he gives us an old, old city dancing cheek-to-cheek with its own history, a mesmerizing tale of awe-inspiring artistry and grotesque human perfidy.

THE CITY OF FALLING ANGELS, by John Berendt (Penguin, 2005)