Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 8/17/2011

8/17/1948:
An estimated 100,000 fans line up to pay their respects to Babe Ruth, who lies in state at Yankee Stadium. He died last evening at 8:00 P.M. at Memorial Hospital in New York City following a two-year battle with throat cancer. The flag on Main Street in Cooperstown is flown at half-mast, and the lights in all ballparks are dimmed in tribute. In Japan, all baseball games are stopped for one minute. The funeral mass will be held on August 19 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, where thousands of mourners gather outside in the rain. The burial ceremony will take place at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Mount Pleasant, New York.

Birthdays:
Boog Powell b. 1941
Guillermo Vilas b. 1952
Christian Laettner b. 1969
Jorge Posada b. 1971
Dustin Pedroia b. 1983

Packers Fact:
Guard "Iron Mike" Michaelski finished his 11-season Pro Football Hall of Fame career with one year in Green Bay in 1937.

“Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.”

—MAX BEERBOHM, English critic and caricaturist

ON YES, WE CAN SEE WHERE PROHIBITING
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FROM IMPOSING
EXCESSIVE BAIL COMES INTO PLAY HERE

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Q: Who is tougher to handle—your 14-year-old daughter or Manny Ramirez?

Red Sox manager Terry Francona: I plead the Eighth.

ARMCHAIR TRAVEL HISTORY

We highly recommend the travels of Arabian scholar and traveler Ibn Battuta, whose voyage, or rihla, came only a half century after Marco Polo’s better-publicized travels and covered more territory. Starting from his native Morocco, over more than three decades, he saw much of Africa and reached China, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of the known Islamic world, including the Holy Land. Ross Dunn, his translator and commentator, takes us right into the colorful and diverse terrain.

THE ADVENTURES OF IBN BATTUTA: A MUSLIM TRAVELER OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, by Ross E. Dunn (University of California Press, 2004)