Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 2/15/2012

2/15/1953:
Seattle University's consensus All-American basketball player Johnny O'Brien scores 51 points during a 109-68 win over Gonzaga in Spokane to become the first player to score 3,000 points in his college career. Johnny and his twin brother, Eddie, are not only stars on the basketball court, but the baseball diamond as well. The O'Brien brothers skip the NBA, sign contracts with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and make their major league debuts in April 1953 without playing a single day in the minors. Johnny plays second base and Eddie at shortstop. Neither will have much success in baseball, however, Johnny hits .250 with four homers in 815 at bats over six seasons. Eddie bats .236 with no home runs in 554 at bats in five years. Both also try their hand at pitching. Johnny is 1-3 with a 5.61 ERA in 61 innings. Eddie is 1-0 and has a 3.31 earned run average in 16.1 innings.

Birthdays:
Earl "Red" Blaik b. 1897
John Hadl b. 1940
Darrell Green b. 1960
Jaromir Jagr b. 1972
Amy Van Dyken b. 1973

CRITICS’ PICK

Undying love for her daughter, whom she left behind in the pogroms of Russia, draws immigrant Lillian Leyb back to the country she’d fled. It’s an agonizing journey from the teeming streets of New York through the inhospitable plains of the Yukon, but no suffering is great enough to deflect Lillian from her cause. Novelist Amy Bloom is a master, and People called this a “spellbinding story of courage and unwavering optimism.”
     Also be sure to pick up Bloom’s compelling debut, 1993’s Come to Me.

AWAY, by Amy Bloom (Random House, 2008)