Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 3/6/2012

3/6/1982:
The San Antonio Spurs outlast the Milwaukee Bucks, 171-166, in triple overtime at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. Guard Brain Winters of the Bucks ties the score 131-131 with a three-pointer at the buzzer at the end of regulation. San Antonio's forward Mike Mitchell deadlocks the contest at 145-145 at the close of the first overtime with a shot to beat the clock. At the end of the second overtime, it is 157-157. Guard George Gervin scores 24 of his 50 points during the 15 minutes of overtime play. Mitchell chips in with 45 points. Winters tops the Bucks with 42 points, and makes 13 shots in a row. At no dime during the 63-minute game does either team lead by more than six points.

Birthdays:
Willie Stargell b. 1940
Dick Fosbury b. 1947
Sleepy Floyd b. 1960
Shaquille O'Neal b. 1972
Erik Bedard b. 1979

A LIFE

As The Fountainhead makes readers want to be architects, as Kitchen Confidential makes readers want to become chefs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman makes readers want to become physicists. Sound improbable? Give it a try. This surprisingly folksy memoir takes you from Richard Feynman’s boyhood in Far Rockaway, New York—where his experiments nearly burned the house down—to MIT fraternity rituals, hypnosis at Princeton, meeting Einstein, the Manhattan Project, and a Nobel Prize. An extraordinary life rendered utterly normal and disarmingly charming.

SURELY YOU’RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN: ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER, by Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton (1985; Norton, 1997)