Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 9/27/2009

9/27/1964:
Despite three consecutive homers by Johnny Callison, the Phloundering Phillies lose their seventh straight game (of an eventual 10), 14-8, to Milwaukee at Connie Mack Stadium - part of a freefall that will cost them the 1964 pennant. Pitching on only two days rest at the behest of panicking Phillies manager Gene Mauch, Jim Bunning just doesn't have it, surrendering seven runs in only three innings. Led by Lee Maye's five hits, the Braves amass 22 base knocks in the rout as the Phillies' nightmare of blowing six and a half games in the standings with only 12 games left continue to unfold with no relief in sight.

Birthdays:
Johnny Pesky b. 1919
Kahty Whitworth b. 1939
Mike Schmidt b. 1949
Monte Towe b. 1953
Steve Kerr b. 1965

POSTCARDS FROM PARIS

The years 1851 to 1896 race by in these tidbits from the journals of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, French writer-critics who defined the term “men of letters” for their time and place. The selections representing each year are short, so that the lives of the brothers, who had an unusually close bond—truly soul mates, even writing the journal “together” as “we”—seem to have been a constant boil of dinners with Flaubert and Théophile Gautier and George Sand, visits to prostitutes, and conversations about art and politics. Enjoy this close encounter of the French kind.

PAGES FROM THE GONCOURT JOURNALS, edited and translated by Robert Baldick (New York Review Books, 2007)