Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 1/24-26/2011

1/24/1982:

Led by rising star quarterback Joe Montana, who completes 14 of 22 passes for 157 yards and a touchdown while also rushing for 18 yards and a TD on the ground, the San Francisco 49ers win Super Bowl XVI, 26-21, over the Cincinnati Bengals at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. It's the only Super Bowl that will ever be played at the Silverdome, although Michigan will host Super Bowl XL at Ford Field in Detroit. Announced by Pat Summerall and John Madden, it's also the highest-rated Super Bowl telecast to date.

Birthdays:
Giorgio Chinaglia b. 1947
Atlee Hammaker b. 1o958
Rob Dibble b. 1964
Mary Lou Retton b. 1968
Scott Karmir b. 1984

Packers Fact:
The Packers have won 13 regular-season games four different times. The first time came during the 14-game schedule of 1962. (The others came in 16-game schedules.)

1/25/1955:
Eighteen-year-old Jill Kinmont, reigning national champion in the slalom and a top prospect for a medal at the 1956 Olympics, strikes a tree while competing in the downhill at the Snow Cup in Alta, Utah, and is left paralyzed from the neck down. Ironically, she's on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated, which began publication five months earlier, and her accident gives rise to the magazine's famed cover jinx. She'll also be the subject of two movies: The Other Side of the Mountain (1975) and The Other Side of the Mountain, Part II (1978).

Birthdays:
Lou Groza b. 1924
Don Maynard b. 1937
Steve Profontaine b. 1951
Mark Duper b. 1959
Chris Chelios b. 1962

Packers Fact:
Packers' kicker Chris Jacke scored 820 points (second at the time only to the legendary Don Hutson) from 1989 to 1996.

Australia Day
1/26/1962:
Last year, Roger Maris hit 61 homers to break Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 and Mickey Mantle was close behind with 54. Today, the two superstars sign contracts to play themselves in the movie Safe at Home! The plot centers on a boy who's pressured into lying to his pals about his friendship with Maris and Mantle. Filmed during spring training in Fort Lauderdale, with Whitey Ford and Ralph Houk making cameo appearances, the movie will receive tepid reviews at best.

Birthdays:
Bob Uecker b. 1935
Henry Jordan b. 1935
Jack Youngblood b. 1950
Wayne Gretzky b. 1961
Vince Carter b. 1977

Packers Fact:
The Packers' victory over Chicago on Kickoff Weekend in 2009 pulled them even with the Bears for the most season-opening wins (5) in NFL history.

“It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.”

—DOROTHY PARKER, American humorist and writer

CHIN UP!
CHEST OUT!
BACK STRAIGHT!

—American military slogan, circa World War II

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

—OSCAR WILDE, Anglo-Irish writer

ON METAPHORS, BLIND

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They can do no wrong now in the mind of the public eye.

Kansas City sports reporter, discussing the Chiefs on ESPN radio (thanks to Dave Boudreaux)

ON FUNNY, WE THOUGHT IT WOULD SPEAK JAPANESE

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Honda Civic ’96. AM/FM/CD, low miles, good condition, speaks Spanish.

classified ad

ON WHAT NOT TO SAY WHEN
INTRODUCING SOMEONE IN A WHEELCHAIR

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Stand up, Chuck, let’em see ya!

Vice President Joe Biden, to wheelchair-bound Missouri state Senator Chuck Graham

IS IT LOVE?

Hughie, an out-of-work actor, finds employment in the fine art of flirting. His employers? Husbands who want their wives to feel again the excitement of being wooed. Naturally, Hughie, who turns out to be quite talented in his new line of work, wants to try the technique on the object of his own desire, an older woman whose philosophy is “What’s love got to do with it?” But flirting can have serious—and hilarious—consequences, as this delightful comedy of errors proves.

THE FLIRT, by Kathleen Tessaro (Avon, 2008)

Want your brains shaken up? Try this one-two knockout punch: a history of the Cold War by Tom Reed (a presidential adviser and a nuclear-weapons engineer with the Lawrence Livermore laboratories) and a political history of nuclear weapons from Reed and Danny Stillman, a Los Alamos physicist. This combination will likely blow your mind, and there’s enough in these two volumes to keep you thinking for many decades to come.

AT THE ABYSS: AN INSIDER’S HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR, by Tom Reed (Ballantine, 2004)

NUCLEAR EXPRESS: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE BOMB AND ITS PROLIFERATION, by Tom Reed and Danny Stillman (Zenith Press, 2009)

A RECIPE FOR NOSTALGIA

Take one gentle man twice expatriated (from his native Holland to London, then from London to New York); add the disorientation of 9/11 and marital estrangement; mix thoroughly with West Indian cricketers looking for a permanent spot to play; toss in a few misfits living in the Chelsea Hotel; then garnish with a shady, charismatic man named Chuck Ramkissoon. It’s a difficult recipe to pull off, but Joseph O’Neill’s third novel succeeds masterfully, quietly exerting the heartbreaking gravitas and beauty of a modern classic.

NETHERLAND, by Joseph O’Neill (Knopf, 2008)