Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 8/20/2009

8/20/1966:
Don Meredith has two touchdowns and Craig Morton has another has the Dallas Cowboys defeat the Green Bay Packers, 21-3, in a preseason game inside a sweltering Cotton Bowl. Tonight's tropical climate in Texas offers a direct contrast to the arctic conditions of the Ice Bowl, which these same two teams are destined to experience at Green Bay for the NFL championship on December 31, 1967. The subzero temperatures and wind-chill readings that afternoon at Lambeau Field will establish a true "polar opposite" to this evening's sauna-like heat.

Birthdays:
Sihugo Green B. 1933
Graig Nettles b. 1944
Mark Langston b. 1960
Duffy Waldorf b. 1962
Todd Helton b. 1973

Packers Fact:
The Seven Blocks of Granite was the nickname of the famous line on which Vince Lombardi played during his college days at Fordham.

AN AMERICAN TREASURE

God love him, at the age of 84, Norman Mailer gave birth to a healthy 500-page book. And it’s narrated by one of Satan’s assistants, no less. As might be expected in the late years of the sometimes ponderously serious, sometimes gleefully mischievous writer, there is lots of gorgeous stuff along with quite a bit of ambitious windbaggery in this re-creation of Hitler’s life and speculation on the nature of evil.

THE CASTLE IN THE FOREST, by Norman Mailer (Random House, 2007)