Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 3/17/2011

Cubs general manager John Holland on his team's financial status in 1972, when the highest salary in baseball's major leagues was $200,000: "I know we have reached the saturation point. If our payroll goes any higher, we just can't make it."

Birthdays:
Sonny Werblin b. 1910
Sammy Baugh b. 1914
Hank Sauer b. 1917
Chuck Muncie b. 1953
Mia Hamm b. 1972

Packers Fact:
Wide receiver and kick returner Desmond Howard won college football's Heisman Trophy for 1991 for Michigan. Howard played for Green Bay in 1996 and 1999.

ON HOT TIMES IN IRELAND, LITERARY

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• Sex Instructions for Irish Farmers

• Red-Haired Irishwomen on the Bog

• After the Orgy: Towards a Politics of Exhaustion

actual book titles

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

—JAMES JOYCE, Irish writer

MAKE IT A DOUBLE

David Liss (author of A Conspiracy of Paper) gives us a ripping yarn of intrigue, money, politics, real-life heroes and villains, and even a love story, set against the historical background of George Washington’s presidency. William Hogeland takes a quieter approach to the Whiskey Rebellion, often treated in history books as a minor affair, but there are plenty of lively characters and intricate intrigues to go around.

THE WHISKEY REBELS, by David Liss (Ballantine, 2009)

THE WHISKEY REBELLION: GEORGE WASHINGTON, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, AND THE FRONTIER REBELS WHO CHALLENGED AMERICA’S NEWFOUND SOVEREIGNTY, by William Hogeland (Scribner, 2006)