Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 5/24-28/2011

5/24/1988:
A Stanley Cup finals match between the Oilers and the Bruins at Boston Garden ends in a tie because of a power failure. Edmonton headed into Game 4 leading three games to none. The Oilers had just tied the score, 3-3, at 16:37 of the second period when the arena went dark. The outage occurred when an overloaded 4,000-volt transfer unit on a street beside the Garden burned out. Before the power failure, the steamy, airless rink was shrouded in knee-high waves of fog and play had to be intermittently halted. The Oilers will take the Stanley Cup with a 6-3 win on May 26 in Game 5 in Edmonton.

Birthdays:
Mitch Kupchak b. 1954
Joe Dumars b. 1963
Pat Verbeek b. 196
Bartolo Colon b. 1973
Tracy McGrady b. 1979

Packers Fact:
The Packers drafted cornerback Brandon Underwood in 2009. He was the second of the club's two sixth-round picks that year.

5/25/1951:
Called up from the New York Giants' Minneapolis farm club after batting .447 in 35 games, 20-year-old Willie Mays makes his major league debut during an 8-5 win over the Phillies in Philadelphia. Wearing number 14 (he'll switch to number 24 a week from now), Mays makes a couple of sparkling plays in center but is hitless in five at-bats. After 26 big-league at-bats, he'll have only one hit- a homer off the Boston Braves' Warren Spahn on May 28- but his batting average will exceed .300 by the end of June and he'll finish his rookie season with a .274 average and 20 homers in 121 contests.

Birthdays:
Gene Tunney b. 1897
Bill Sharman b. 1926
K.C. Jones b. 1932
Miguel Tejada b. 1976
Brian Urlacher b. 1978

Packers Fact:
End Max McGee is best known for catching 2 touchdown passes in Super Bowl 1, but he had 345 catches in all, including 50 for touchdowns, in 12 seasons in Green Bay (1954, 1957-1967).

5/26/1959:
Harvey Haddix pitches 12 innings of perfect baseball only to lose 1-0 to the Braves in Milwaukee. Haddix retires the first 36 batters to face him, but his Pirates teammates are unable to dent the plate against Lew Burdette, who scatters 12 Pittsburgh hits while pitching 13 innings. Felix Mantilla leads off the Milwaukee 13th by reaching base on a throwing error by third baseman Don Hoak, Eddie Mathews bunts Mantilla to second and Hank Aaron is intentionally walked. Joe Adcock then delivers over the center field fence for an apparent home run, but he's declared out for passing Aaron between second and third during the jubilant celebration by the Braves. Adcock earns a double and the Braves get the win.

Birthdays:
Cliff Drysdale b. 1941
Darrell Evans b. 1947
Dan Roundfield b. 1953
Wesley Walker b. 1955
Travis Lee b. 1975

Packers Fact:
Linebacker Charley Brock was a three-time Pro Bowl player and two-way center. He was named to the NFL's 1940s All-Decade Team.

5/27:
President Jimmy Carter, on cultural differences between fans at the U.S. Open and those at the Wimbledon tournament in a London suburb: "New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up."

Birthdays:
Sam Snead b. 1912
Jeff Bagwell b. 1968
Frank Thomas b. 1968
Todd Hundley b. 1969
Antonio Freeman b. 1972

Packers Fact:
Greg Jennings caught at least 1 pass in each of the first 44 games of his NFL career until he was shut out against Cincinnati in Week 2 of 2009.

5/28/1968:
Dale Long, a relatively obscure first baseman with 25 career homers in 201 games, sets a major league record by homering for the Pittsburgh Pirates in his eighth game in a row. He hits one home run in each of the eight games, starting on May 19. Don Mattingly will match the feat in 1987.

Birthdays:
Jim Thorpe b. 1888
Jerry West b. 1938
Terry Crisp b. 1943
Kirk Gibson b. 1957
Ben Howland b. 1957

Packers Fact:
The Packers selected linebacker Brad Jones out of Colorado in the seventh round in 2009.

“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

—BENEDICT DE SPINOZA, 17th-century Dutch philosopher

“If you think you are beaten, you are.”

—WALTER D. WINTLE, American poet

“Believe in fate, but lean forward where fate can see you.”

—QUENTIN CRISP, English writer

“I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they’ve come up with so far.”

—NEIL SIMON, American playwright

TO BE DEFEATED
IS PARDONABLE;
TO BE
SURPRISED—
NEVER!

—NAPOLÉON I, emperor of the French

ON TAKING CLASS DISTINCTIONS TOO FAR

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Deer, redfish, tarpon, upland game birds and peasants—you name it, you can fish for it or shoot at it.

from the London Times

ON THE IRS, SO HELPFUL

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Definition of a qualifying child revised. The following changes to the definition of a qualifying child have been made.

Your qualifying child must be younger than you.

from IRS Publication 919, “How Do I Adjust My Tax Withholding” (thanks to Chris from Long Island, NY)

ON HEY, OURS TOO!

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When I look at my backside, I find it is divided into two parts.

an Australian diplomat in France, trying to tell a French audience (in French) that as he looked back over his career, it was divided into two units—before Paris and after Paris

ON MUST YOU SHARE THIS WITH US?

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It’s been a long time since I caught crabs. The last occasion was 15 years ago on the Isle of Wight. Oh, what a long, hot summer that was.

journalist Bryony Gordon, in a Daily Telegraph story

ON BUT IT’S A
PAIN SENDING IT
THROUGH THE MAIL

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Family Feud host Richard Dawson: Name a food people give as a gift.

Contestant: Lasagna.

A GREAT ESCAPE

Detective Inspector John Rebus throws a cup of coffee at a superior, which results in his being sent to police college for some retraining in teamwork. There he begins an investigation of police corruption, at the same time working away at a couple of murder cases. The plot may be somewhat intricate, and Rebus can be moody and difficult, but Ian Rankin has developed him into one of the great contemporary fiction detectives. A compelling page-turner, as always.

RESURRECTION MEN, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown, 2004)

A LIFE

The story of John D. Rockefeller is undoubtedly a major, and powerful, chapter in the story of American capitalism. Ron Chernow, author of The House of Morgan, gives a balanced and engrossing account of the great monopolist and Baptist, from his childhood with a father who was a snake-oil salesman and his pious and long-suffering mother to his rise in and domination of the oil industry and his efforts to be a caring and dutiful father. A richly interesting biography.

TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER SR., by Ron Chernow (Vintage, 2004)

CHILDREN’S AUTHOR UNDERCOVER

Yes it’s true. The author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a spy. Working with Ian Fleming and other cosmopolitan Brits, he charmed his way into the parlors and bedrooms of Washington, passing gossip and information to London while planting propaganda with American journalists. Jennet Conant’s book is an entertaining, somewhat scandalous account of wits and playboys in the service of their country.

THE IRREGULARS: ROALD DAHL AND THE BRITISH SPY RING IN WARTIME WASHINGTON, by Jennet Conant (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

MORE THAN TREES GROW IN BROOKLYN

Brooklyn in the last third of the 20th century is Jonathan Lethem’s territory. He knows its aches and pains, its graffiti and its streets. And in Fortress of Solitude the life, the music, of Brooklyn is all-pervasive. The story is about Dylan Ebdus, a white kid growing up in a mostly black but gentrifying neighborhood, and his friend Mingus Rude. In the end Dylan becomes a rock journalist, but on the way he goes through schoolyard bullying, punk and rap, drugs, crime fighting, and a ring with strange powers. “Prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks,” says Publishers Weekly.

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, by Jonathan Lethem (Vintage, 2004)

RAVE REVIEWS

If you need an intellectual feel-good book, we recommend this rollicking yet scholarly history of some extraordinary moments of scientific discovery that had huge ramifications throughout the world of ideas. It’s a group biography and a sweeping cultural history of the 1700s and early 1800s, where poetry and the planets, the telescope and Frankenstein’s monster, hot-air balloons and magical voyages to Tahiti rub elbows, and there’s no such profession as “scientist” yet.

THE AGE OF WONDER: HOW THE ROMANTIC GENERATION DISCOVERED THE BEAUTY AND TERROR OF SCIENCE, by Richard Holmes (Pantheon, 2009)