Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 9/9/2011

9/9/1960:
On a Friday night at Nickerson Field in Boston, the first regular-season game in the history of he American Football League takes place with the Denver Broncos defeating the Patriots, 13-10. Gino Cappelletti of the Patriots records the first points with a 35-yard field goal in the first quarter. The Broncos' Al Carmichael scores the first touchdown on a 69-yard reception from Frank Tripucka in the second period. The Broncos have shown up in arguably the worst uniforms in the history of professional sport: brown helmets, white shirts with brown numerals and brown pants, bottomed off by brown-and-white vertically striped socks.

Birthdays:
Franke Frisch b. 1898
Charlie Conerly b. 1921
Joe Theismann b. 1949
Dan Majerle b. 1965
Shane Battier b. 1978

Packers Fact:
Through 2008, no Packers' player ever had led the league in sacks (which became an official statistic in 1982).

THERE IS NO ONE
LUCKIER THAN
HE WHO THINKS
HIMSELF SO.

—German proverb

ON ELOQUENCE, PRESIDENTIAL

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Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.

President Barack Obama (meaning to say that the U.S. is a strong friend)

SIXTH SENSE

Every once in a while a novel comes along that channels the best, most enduring gothic mysteries of Wilkie Collins, Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, and, in another medium, Alfred Hitchcock. As in the earlier Postcards from Berlin, a child is the source of concern and a conduit for disturbing messages from another world and time. Margaret Leroy taps into the magical realism of children and the terror of their visions, both for them and for the adults who try to protect them.

YES, MY DARLING DAUGHTER, by Margaret Leroy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009)