Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 8/25-26/2009

8/25/2006:
At the Reno-Tahoe Open in Nevada, Yusaku Miyazato of Japan becomes the first golfer in PGA Tour history to make two holes-in-one during the same round. Miyazato aces the 230-yard 7th hole and the 173-yard 12th hole during second-round play at the Montreux Golf and Country Club. Bob Tway and Glen Day each had two holes-in-one in one tournament back in 1994, but no one had ever carded two in one round. Miyazato, whose sister Ai plays on the LPGA Tour, shoots a 6-under-par 66 today, but he'll finish nine strokes behind the eventual winner, Will MacKenzie, who captures the first PGA victory of his career.

Birthdays:
Althea Gibson b. 1927
Rollie Fingers b. 1946
Albert Belle b. 1966
Cornelius Bennett b. 1966
Doug Glanville b. 1970

Packers Fact:
Linebacker Ray Nitschke was named the most valuable player of the Packers' 16-7 victory over the Giants in the 1962 NFL Championship Game. He deflected a pass that was intercepted and recovered 2 fumbles that [led] to 10 points.

UP A TREE

Richard Preston continues the tradition of rippingly exciting science writing, as in his own earlier bestsellers Hot Zone, about the Ebola virus, and The Demon in the Freezer, an epidemiological cautionary tale. Here he sets his sights on a gigantic organism—really an ecosystem—rather than viruses and bacteria. Following in the footsteps of scientists (literally, as he learns to do what the botanists do), Preston climbs to a new world, the canopy of the California redwoods, and documents the teeming life to be found there. It is as momentous a discovery as those of the greatest explorers. Publishers Weekly starred review.

THE WILD TREES: A STORY OF PASSION AND DARING, by Richard Preston (Random House, 2007)

8/26/1947:
Philadelphia Athletics right-hander Phil Marchildon has a no-hitter through eight innings and wins his own game with an RBI double in the 12th as the A's beat Cleveland, 2-1. A native of northern Ontario, Canada, Marchildon was a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force who was shot down off the cost of Denmark and spent a year in German captivity. He'll enjoy his finest season in 1947, winning 19 games and completing 21 of 35 starts. In 1983, he'll become a charter member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in St. Marys, Ontario.

Birthdays:
Billy DeMars b. 1925
Tom Heinsohn b. 1934
Swede Savage b. 1946
Donnie Shell b. 1952
Ricky Bottalico b. 1969

Packers Fact:
With 48 receptions in 1980, Gerry Ellis caught more passes than any other rookie running back in Packers' history.

SWINGING ON THE CHANDELIERS

Where and what is Richistan? It’s a country within a country, discovered and discussed by Robert Frank. The author first began chronicling the citizens and mores of the rich and superrich in his Wall Street Journal columns and expands on his observations here. With moralism refreshingly absent, Frank’s grand tour of the newly rich and the world that produced them is both entertaining and enlightening.

RICHISTAN: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE AMERICAN WEALTH BOOM AND THE LIVES OF THE NEW RICH, by Robert Frank (Crown, 2007)