Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 9/24-9/25/2009

9/24/1921:
Seething with rage over ball-strike and baserunning calls he felt had gone against him unfairly, Detroit player-manager Ty Cobb challenges umpire Billy Evans to a fistfight and the two go at it for over a half an hour under the stands at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Players from both clubs, along with a few fans and stadium workers, watch a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle brawl with no rules, no referee and little decorum observed by Cobb, who fights like a wild man. It's finally broken up when Cobb smashes Evans' head into the cement floor, threatening to kill him. Evans never files a report, but American League president Ban Johnson suspends Cobb as a player for the balance of the year.

Birthdays:
Jim McKay b. 1921
John Mackey b. 1941
Mean Joe Greene b. 1946
Rafael Palmeiro b. 1964
Eddie George b. 1973

Packers Fact:
Former Packers' star Reggie White (1993-98) ranks second on the NFL's all-time list with 198 career sacks. Bruce Smith, who had 200 sacks in a career with the Bills and Redskins from 1985 to 2003 is the only player with more.

A RACE FOR TRUTH

Two veteran reporters with roots in the deep, small-town South cover the trajectory of civil rights awareness and the journalism that flowered in its wake. Beginning with Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 classic work on race, An American Dilemma, and moving on to the work of journalists, the authors show how one by one, and then in an avalanche, reporters formed an unbreakable chain of voices to report the titanic changes that were occurring in America.

THE RACE BEAT: THE PRESS, THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE, AND THE AWAKENING OF A NATION, by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (Knopf, 2006)

9/25/1935:
Lon Warneke spins a two-hit shutout against the St. Louis Cardinals for his 20th win of the year, 19-year-old Phil Cavarretta hits a solo homer, and the Chicago Cubs win their 19th straight game, 1-0, clinching a tie for the pennant. It's the third (and last) time Warneke will win 20 games in a season. The Cubs will extend their winning streak to 21 and clinch the pennant by taking a doubleheader from the Cards two days from now. Their 21 straight wins equal a club mark set in 1880, and those two streaks remain the longest in major league history of win skeins not interrupted by a tie game (namely, the New York Giants' 26-game winning streak of 1916).

Birthdays:
Phil Rizzuto b. 1918
Hubie Brown b. 1933
Bob McAdoo b. 1951
Scottie Pippen b. 1965
Chaunchey Billups b. 1976

Packers Fact:
Double coverage was an innovation that opposing defenses came up with in an effort to stop Packers end Don Hutson in the 1930s and 1940s.

SCI-FI SPLENDOR

These stories, the crème de la crème of science fiction from 1929 to 1964, still have the power to rouse nightmares and visions. Feast your imagination on the best of Isaac Asimov, Jerome Bixby, Ray Bradbury, John W. Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Tom Godwin, Robert A. Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon, Roger Zelazny, and many others.

THE SCIENCE FICTION HALL OF FAME, VOLUME ONE, 1929-1964: THE GREATEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF ALL TIME CHOSEN BY THE MEMBERS OF THE SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA, introduction by Robert Silverberg (1970; Orb, 2005)