Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 5/26/2008

5/26/2003:
The Virginia Cavaliers win their third NCAA lacrosse championship, upsetting Johns Hopkins, 9-7, before a record crowd of nearly38,000 fans at Ravens Stadium in Baltimore. The Cavs jump out to a 5-0 lead and star goaltender Tillman Johnson makes it stand up with 13 saves, including three on point-blank shots by the Blue Jays in a matter of seconds in the fourth quarter. A.J. Shannon scores four goals for Virginia, but both teams struggle with their passing and footwork on a field that had absorbed four straight days of rain and played host to four other games this weekend before today's finale.

Birthdays:
Cliff Drysdale b. 1941
Darrell Evans b. 1947
Dan Roundfield b. 1953
Wesley Walker b. 1955
Travis Lee b. 1975

1996:
At the Prefontaine Classic, 37-year-old, Mary Slaney was clocked running the 3,000 meters in a time of 8:51.14, her best result in five years.

"It has been 23 years since Slaney first appeared on the world stage, as Mary Decker, a 14-year-old pigtailed prodigy. ... Never mind that she is old enough that many of her competitors remember her from their childhoods-Slaney is fit enough to evoke her past." -Tim Layden, April 29, 1996

Packers Fact:
When Chicago beat Green Bay 26-0 on Kickoff Weekend in 206, it marked the first time that the Packers had been shut out with Brett Favre as the starting quarterback.


Bill Buford, New Yorker writer and home cook, felt the time had come to test his chops in a professional kitchen. Star chef Mario Batali made a place for the writer as a kitchen slave in his restaurant, Babbo, and Buford set off on an extraordinary adventure involving the art of hand-made pasta, a fiery Tuscan butcher, and the inevitable failures and disappointments as he worked his way up in Batali’s restaurant. What makes Buford’s story so irresistible is the people in it, not the least of whom is Batali, as Buford gets to know him at work and as a friend.

HEAT: AN AMATEUR’S ADVENTURES AS KITCHEN SLAVE, LINE COOK, PASTA-MAKER, AND APPRENTICE TO A DANTE-QUOTING BUTCHER IN TUSCANY, by Bill Buford (Knopf, 2006)