Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 2/12-14/2011

2/12/2006:
Nineteen-year-old Shaun White of Carlsbad, California, takes the gold in the men's halfpipe snowboarding competition at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Born with a heart defect that required open-heart surgery as a one-year-old and again at the age of six, the red-haired "Flying Tomato" is also a champion snowboarder in the Winter X Games.

Birthdays:
Chick Hafey b. 1903
Dom DiMaggio b. 1917
Joe Garagiola b. 1926
Bill Russell b. 1934
Chet Lemon b. 1965

2/13/2003:
Tennessee State athletic director Teresa Phillips becomes the first woman to coach a men's Division I college basketball team when she fills in for head coach Hosea Lewis, who is serving a one-game suspension for a bench-clearing brawl against Eastern Kentucky earlier in the week. Tennessee State loses to Austin Peay, 71-56.

Birthdays:
Patty Berg b. 1918
Eddie Robinson b. 1919
Sal Bando b. 1944
Mike Krayzewski b. 1947
Randy Moss b. 1977

Packers Fact:
Packers' star guard Jerry Kramer (1958-1968) wrote the popular account of the sixties' championship years, Instant Replay?

2/14/1999:
In a duel of two great NASCAR rivals, both driving Chevrolet Monte Carlos, Jeff Gordon holds off Dale Earnhardt to win the Daytona 500. On Lap 188, Gordon makes a daring three-wide pass on Rusty Wallace after ducking to the apron and nearly plowing into the damaged car of Ricky Rudd. On the final lap, Earnhardt repeatedly tries and fails to pass Gordon. In the dramatic finish, the two are separated by a mere 0.128 seconds.

Birthdays:
Woody Hayes b. 1913
Mickey Wright b. 1935
Jim Kelly b. 1960
Drew Bledsoe b. 1972
Steve McNair b. 1973

Packers Fact:
Aaron Rodgers finished fourth in the NFL with 28 touchdown passes in 2008. He passed for 3 scores in four different games.

“If at the end I have lost every other friend on earth I shall at least have one friend remaining and that one shall be down inside me.”

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, U.S. president

DON’T
THINK YOU
CAN’T THINK
YOU CAN.

—CHARLES INGE, “On Monsieur Coué,” 1928

“Work is love made visible.”

—KAHLIL GIBRAN, Lebanese-American writer

ON POINTS, REAL GOOD

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The best defence against the atom bomb is not to be there when it goes off.

in a British Army Journal, 1949

ON SIGNS, EXISTENTIAL

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ANYONE
ENTERING OR
EXISTING
PLEASE SHUT
DOOR

sign on gift shop in Point Pleasant, New Jersey

ON ROMANCE IS DEAD DEPARTMENT

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If you had no idea what to get her for Valentine’s Day . . .

Give her the perfect gift, make pre-arrangements as a couple with the affordable funeral home.

funeral home ad

RAVE REVIEWS

THE LINCOLN

“If you aspire to Ultimate Lincoln Knowledge this is a must-read.”—Chicago Tribune

“This profound and masterful portrait will be read and studied for years to come.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Burlingame is a towering figure in Lincoln scholarship, and students of the 16th president have been waiting for this book for years.”—Time

“This book supplants Sandburg and supersedes all other biographies. Future Lincoln books cannot be written without it, and from no other book can a general reader learn so much about Abraham Lincoln.”—Publishers Weekly

There you have it. In two volumes, slipcased.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A LIFE, by Michael Burlingame (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)

A SOPHISTICATED ANTIVALENTINE

The most treasured erotic fantasy of strangely likable yet prurient Felix Quinn, London antiquarian bookseller (from a longish line of same), which he insists is shared by all heterosexual men, is to know that his wife is in the arms of another, worthy lover so that he can imagine all the details, every conversation . . . Felix orchestrates just such a scenario, with charming erudition and manly gusto. But as the games go on, happy Felix may have the story all wrong: Everyone else is, in fact, suffering because of his mania, while Felix plays Othello to his own Iago—and vice versa.

THE ACT OF LOVE, by Howard Jacobson (Simon & Schuster, 2009)