Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 11/30/2009

11/30/1958:
Trailing 27-7 at halftime, the Baltimore Colts score 28 unanswered points in the second half to defeat San Francisco, 35-27, and clinch their first-ever NFL Western Conference championship. Alan Ameche scores twice on short runs, Lenny Moore gets loose for a 73-yard touchdown jaunt and quarterback Johnny Unitas caps the comeback with a seven-yard TD strike to Raymond Berry. Only four weeks from today, Baltimore will beat the New York Giants and become world champions.

Birthdays:
Joe B. Hall b. 1928
Bill Walsh b. 1931
Paul Westphal b. 1950
Bo Jackson b. 1962
Ray Durham b. 1971

Packers Fact:
Guard Fuzzy Thurston (1959-1967) didn't play football until his junior year at Valparaiso in 1953. Thurston's Altoona, Wisconsin, high school didn't have a football team, and he originally went to college on a basketball scholarship.

OFF THE COAST OF LONELINESS

This thought-provoking and heartbreakingly beautiful novel tells the story of Thomas Cave in 1616, who takes on a bet with his fellow whalers of the ship Heartsease that he can survive a winter on the uninhabited Svalbard coast of Greenland. Left with provisions and an extra burden of grief and loss, Cave struggles through, but not unscathed. Publishers Weekly starred review.

THE SOLITUDE OF THOMAS CAVE, by Georgina Harding (Bloomsbury USA, 2007)