Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 9/7-8/2011

9/7/2008:
The Detroit Lions open the season with a 34-21 loss to the Falcons in Atlanta. Hopes are high in Detroit after a 7-9 record in 2007, the most wins by the franchise in a season since 2000, and a 4-0 record in the 2008 preseason during which the Lions outscored opponents 8-32. But by the end of 2008 Detroit will become the first team in the history of the NFL to finish the regular season 0-16, concluding with a 31-21 defeat at the hands of the Packers on December 28. In the 16 defeats, the Lions are outscored 517-268. The last NFL team to lose every game was Tampa Bay with an 0-14 record as a first-year expansion team in 1976.

Birthdays:
Paul Brown b. 1908
Al McGuire b. 1928
Clyde Lovellette b. 129
Jacques Lemaire b. 1945
Antonio McDyess b. 1974

Packers Fact:
Donald Lee entered 2009 ranked eighth among all tight ends in Packers' history with 130 career catches.

9/8/2002:
In the first regular-season game in the history of the franchise, the Houston Texans upset the Dallas Cowboys, 19-10, at Reliant Stadium. Rookie quarterback David Carr passes for two Houston touchdowns, including a 65-yard strike to Corey Bradford, to break a 10-10 tie with 12:09 left in the game. A safety with 2:37 remaining cements the win. The Texans will lose their next five games and finish the season 4-12.

Birthdays:
Lem Barney b. 1945
Rogie Vachon b. 1945
Maurice Cheeks b. 1956
Latrell Sprewell b. 1970
Amani Toomer b. 1974

Packers Fact:
Rookie Jordy Nelson turned his first NFL reception into a 29-yard touchdown in 2008 against Detroit in Week 2.

“The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct.”

—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, German philosopher

“How many things I can do without!”

—SOCRATES, Greek philosopher, at a market

ON BUSINESS, BIG

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I’ll tell you, it’s Big Business.
If there is one word to describe Atlantic City, it’s Big Business. Or two words—Big Business.

businessman Donald Trump

ON METEOROLOGICAL INSIGHT,
CATEGORY STUPID

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Even if this hurricane drops back to a category 3, it’s still going to be a category 3 hurricane.

a Weather Channel forecaster, reporting on Hurricane Frances (thanks to Danny Amelio)

SISTERS FOREVER

“Peachy” (Georgia) is the dutiful daughter who stayed at home on the farm and is now married, with two boys—one an epileptic. Beth went on to a (supposedly) glamorous, swinging-single life in New York City. When Peachy catches her sister and husband flirting with disaster, she decides it’s time for the country mouse and the city mouse to trade places for a weekend. Like George Cukor’s film Rich and Famous, this novel succeeds brilliantly as fun and also on a deeper level as an exploration of identity and family.

THE ALMOST ARCHER SISTERS, by Lisa Gabriele (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

TRAVEL BOOK AWARD WINNER

What a wonderful country we live in! Not only do we have civil liberty and economic opportunity but also indoor bungee-jumping. Every state and region in the Union yields out-of-the-way havens of absurd, insane festivals, as well as shrines made out of the oddest things. Try the Furniture Races in Montana, or sleep underwater in a facility designed for science experiments in Florida. Spend a special day in Laguna, California, to join residents and visitors when they moon every passing Amtrak train—or book passage on one of the trains!

ECCENTRIC AMERICA: THE BRADT TRAVEL GUIDE TO ALL THAT’S WEIRD AND WACKY IN THE USA, 2ND EDITION, by Jan Friedman (Bradt Travel Guides, 2004)