BILL BRADLEY: 50 Years Since "Where U R"

The Number Has Been Retired.

Some people stand out in their Freshman year. Bill Bradley did that.

He attracted the attention of John McPhee, a writer for The New Yorker. It's now 50 years since McPhee's article for The New Yorker about Bradley in the January 1965 issue. It was published before Bradley led Princeton to the NCAA Final Four.

Princeton was the first Ivy League basketball team to get that far. The New York Times today paid homage to the man and McPhee's story on the fifth page of the Sports Section (under "Road to Indianapolis" where the NCAA Final Four is being played) and this story is already before 10 am on Sunday the newspaper's most-emailed story.

The title of the article and a subsequent book, "A Sense of Where You Are" came from Bradley after he sent a ball through the hoop while keeping his eyes on McPhee. 

He said: 

When you have played basketball for a while, you don't need to look at the basket when you are in close like this. You develop a sense of where you are.

BIRTH: March 31 –Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow and her dog.

March 31, 2012 – Rachel Maddow's birthday will be tomorrow. She was born in 1973, in California's Castro Valley.

She was the first openly gay American to be chosen a Rhodes scholar. She resided in Lincoln College.

Today she is the first openly gay American news anchor, though my enjoyment of her show is not directly related to her sexual preferences.

She told the Stanford Daily as a 17-year-old freshman in 1990 that she was gay. They were supposed to hold publication until she got home to tell her Catholic parents first. 

Shock... 

The paper didn't keep its commitment, and her distressed parents had a clipping in their hands before she got home...

...But now she says her parents are supportive.

"The Rachel Maddow Show" on cable news channel MSNBC began in 2008 and was the network's most successful launch ever. The program airs at 9 pm Eastern, Monday-Friday and is rebroadcast at midnight. She lives in New York City and western Massachusetts with her partner, artist Susan Mikula. Rachel Maddow's website sends you to Susan’s.

I've wanted to get her to speak to the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race Dinner but it's on Thursday evenings (the 2012 Boat Race Dinner in New York is April 12; it is completely sold out) and her show is on at the same time! In 2008 she told New York Magazine:

I do worry if being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be. Yeah, I'm the unlikely cable news host. But before that, I was the unlikely Rhodes scholar. And before that, I was the unlikely kid who got into Stanford. And then I was the unlikely lifeguard. You can always cast yourself as unlikely when you're fundamentally alienated in your worldview. It's a healthy approach for a commentator. 

Her latest book is on how the United States gets into wars. It is called Drift. Get the Drift? Here is a link to her books.