Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 5/23/2011

5/23/1895:
The Brooklyn Dodgers win a forfeit over the Colonels in Louisville because the home team fails to supply enough baseballs to complete the game. At the start of the contest, there are only three balls on hand, and two of those are practice balls borrowed from the Dodgers. With Brooklyn leading 3-1 in the third inning, all three have been battered out of shape. Louisville business manager Harry Pulliam telegraphs for a dozen more balls and sends a messenger to retrieve them. The messenger boards a streetcar that breaks down en route, delaying his return to the ballpark. Unwilling to wait any longer, umpire William Betts forfeits the game to the Dodgers.

Birthdays:
Vic Stasiuk b. 1929
John Newcombe b. 1943
Tom Penders b. 1945
Marvin Hagler b. 1954
Rich Karlis b. 1959

Birthdays:
The Packers fashioned a turnover differential of plus-7 in 2008 (28 takeaways and 21 giveaways), only the New York Giants at plus-9, had a better mark among NFC teams.

“We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.”

—QUEEN VICTORIA

ON MAMMA MIA!

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Game show host Steve Wright: What is the Italian word for motorway?

Contestant: Espresso.

(The answer is autostrada; thanks to Colin Griggs.)

THE BIRTH OF THE NEW AGE

When you think of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley do you envision hippies? Beatniks? They stood on the shoulders of giants—the bohemians, visionary artists, writers, conservationists, and philosophers who paved the way in the West. Jack London, John Muir, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Bernard Maybeck (father of the Arts and Crafts movement), Ina Coolbrith (first California poet laureate), and Charles and Louise Keeler (Charles founded the very modern-California-sounding Cosmic Religion) are some of the many interesting figures brought to life in this meticulously researched volume.

BERKELEY BOHEMIA: ARTISTS AND VISIONARIES OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, by Ed Herny, Shelle Rideout, and Katie Wadell (Gibbs Smith, 2008)