Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 9/2-4/2011

9/2/1979:
The Atlanta Falcons defeat the New Orleans Saints, 40-34, on a bizarre play in overtime at the Superdome. With just over eight minutes elapsed in OT, a punt snap sails over the head of the Saints' Russell Erxleben and rolls to the goal line. Erxleben attempts to pass the ball with two hands to avoid a safety, but it falls into the hands of Atlanta's James Mayberry at the six-yard line. Mayberry saunters into the end zone for the Falcons victory. It's the first NFL game for Mayberry, and the interception will prove to be the only one of his three-year pro career.

Birthdays:
Adolph Rupp b. 1901
John Thompson b. 1941
Terry Bradshaw b. 1948
Jimmy Connors b. 1952
Eric Dickerson b. 1960

Packers Fact:
After only two seasons, Ryan Grant already stood 14th on the Packers' career rushing list with 2,159 yards entering 2009.

9/3/2006:
At age 36, before a cheering throng at the U.S. Open, Andre Agassi plays the last match of his career. Despite an impressive string of wins in the four tennis majors between 1992 and 2003 (four Australian Opens, one French, one Wimbledon and two U.S. Opens). Agassi enters this tournament unseeded. In today's third-round match, he loses to Germany's Benjamin Becker in five hard-fought sets.

Birthdays:
Eddie Stanky b. 1916
Luis Gonzales b. 1967
Damon Stoudamire b. 1973
Jevon Kearse b. 1976
Jennie Finch b. 1980

Packers Fact:
Third-year linebacker A.J. Hawk led the Packers with 121 tackles in the 2008 season.

9/4/1891:
Making light of being called an "old man" by the press, 39-year-old player-manager Cap Anson of the Chicago Cubs (currently nicknamed the White Stockings) dons a shaggy gray wig and a long false beard for a home game against the Boston Red Sox. The Cubs win, 5-3. Anson will continue to play in the majors until 1897.

Birthdays:
Dawn Fraser b. 1937
Ray Floyd b. 1942
Tom Watson b. 1949
John Vanbiesbrouck b. 1963
Mike Piazza b. 1968

“Being young is greatly overestimated . . . any failure seems so total. Later on you realize you can have another go.”

—MARY QUANT, English fashion designer

“I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, American writer and physician

NO PAIN,
NO PALM;
NO THORNS,
NO THRONE;
NO GALL,
NO GLORY;
NO CROSS,
NO CROWN.

—WILLIAM PENN, founder of Pennsylvania

ON OUR FAVE FECAL BOOKS

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• Excrement in the Late Middle Ages: Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics

• Fecal Matters in Early Modern Literature and Art: Studies in Scatology

• The Interpretation of Geological Time From the Evidence of Fossilised Elephant Droppings in Eastern Europe

• Curbside Consultation of the Colon

actual book titles

ON SO MUCH FOR
SNACKING ON TOMMY

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While solution is not toxic it will not make child edible.

in the instructions for a bubble-blowing plastic gun, Japan

ON ANSWERS,
TECHNICALLY RIGHT
BUT NOT SO GOOD

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Family Feud host Richard Karr: What is something that can be described as “on the rocks”?

Contestant: A bug.

(thanks to Sarah Whitaker)

HEAVEN’S HIS DESTINATION

Car thief Preston Clearwater picks up 20-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier from the side of the road and convinces the boy that he, Preston, is actually an FBI agent investigating a car thievery ring. Thus begins a wild and woolly road trip through the South of the 195as, with Bible thumping and pet funerals and a woman who can make you think her cats are talking and a lot more crazy yarns and crazier people. Clyde Edgerton knows his material and carries it off in high and funny style.

THE BIBLE SALESMAN, by Clyde Edgerton (Little, Brown, 2008)

A LIFE

“Oh well, I suppose every self-respecting writer should have an English biographer,” Gabriel García Márquez once observed. And now the Nobel Prize–winning author of One Hundred rears of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera has his. Gerald Martin has written an exhaustive and admiring book that is the go-to reference on Latin America’s great novelist, probably for years to come.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: A LIFE, by Gerald Martin (Knopf, 2009)