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She was a star player of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League , the pioneering women's league that kept baseball alive during World War II. When the league folded after the war ended, she, like other women players of the day, packed her groundbreaking history away, along with her glove, bat and baseball uniforms. But with the 1992 release of the hit film "A League of Their Own" about the short-lived women's league, Lavone "Pepper" Paire Davis, an All-Star catcher and gritty clutch hitter, was rediscovered, becoming a popular speaker and tireless promoter of women in professional sports.

In the late 1970s when Edward I. Koch won his first term as mayor of New York, the city was in shambles, its coffers and confidence sapped by financial crises and a paralyzing blackout. It needed a fighter and found one in Koch, a well-practiced pol with the determination - and bite - of a bulldog. He steered the city out of bankruptcy and restored its swagger, a one-man cheerleading squad who personified the witty and feisty New Yorker. The three-term mayor of New York and perennial civic combatant, who rallied and riled the city in and out of office with his tenacious style and irrepressible opinions, died Friday of congestive heart failure at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital, said his friend and spokesman George Arzt.

Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who led the nation's biggest city for three terms in the late 1970s and '80s, died Friday in a Manhattan hospital. Koch, 88, died of congestive heart failure at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital, a spokesman, George Arzt, said. His death came two days after a documentary about the former mayor, "Koch," premiered in New York. Koch had been scheduled to appear at the premiere but a day earlier was admitted to the hospital to be treated for fluid in his lungs and shortness of breath.

PHOENIX -- It was bad enough that the Clippers just couldn't make any shots, but what made it worse was that they couldn't get any defensive stops when it mattered most. As a result, the Clippers suffered one of those bad losses, by a 93-88 score, to a Phoenix Suns team that just fired its coach and has the second-worst record in the Western Conference. On a Thursday night at US Airways Center when the Clippers made just 40.2% of their shots, they also saw another of their All-Stars get injured.

The halfway point of the Lakers' season is still a week away but it's come to this: They need to win home games against teams like the Milwaukee Bucks if they want to make the playoffs. So they did Tuesday night, breaking the Bucks, 104-88, behind another strong-armed effort from Dwight Howard. Howard had 31 points and 16 rebounds as the purple-and-gold streamers dropped from the Staples Center ceiling for a 12th time this season, way too infrequently for a team with such high hopes many, many months ago. The two reasons for their two-game winning streak after a six-game slide: Howard's offense and Kobe Bryant's defense.

Lakers 104 - Bucks 88 (end of regulation) The Lakers won their second game in a row, defeating the Milwaukee Bucks 104-88. The Lakers took a six-point lead to start the period and quickly turned that into a 20-point advantage. Dwight Howard had one of his most dominant nights as a Lakers scoring 31 points on 14-18 shooting with 16 rebounds and four blocks. Kobe Bryant also had 31 on 12-19 shooting with six assists and just one turnover. The Lakers had only 10 turnovers for the game, a point of emphasis for the coaching staff dating back to Mike Brown.

Evan S. Connell Jr., a literary iconoclast whose writings as a novelist, poet, essayist and historian won the admiration of critics and a cult-like following of discerning readers with books on subjects as eclectic as Midwestern provincialism, the medieval Crusades and Gen. George Custer's last stand, has died. He was 88. Connell, who had been in failing health in recent years, was found dead Thursday at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. The cause "was just old age," said his niece, Donna Waller.

HOUSTON - Former President George H.W. Bush will spend Christmas in a Houston hospital after developing a fever and weakness following a monthlong, bronchitis-like cough, his spokesman said Monday. A hospital spokesman had said the 88-year-old ex-president would be released in time to spend the holiday at home, but that changed after Bush developed a fever. "He's had a few setbacks. Late last week, he had a few low-energy days followed by a low-grade fever," said Jim McGrath, Bush's spokesman.

President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev negotiated the SALT II Treaty in Vladivostok, a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton later named "Lucy" was discovered by anthropologists in Ethiopia and the top song on the charts was "I Can Help," by crossover artist Billy Swan. And … the Buffalo Braves' franchise record 11-game winning streak ended with a two-point loss in Chicago, despite Bob McAdoo's 31-point performance. The date of all these seismic events? Nov. 24, 1974.

— It was the end of a four-game, eight-day trip and the Clippers' opponent was a not-so-good Detroit Pistons team. It would have been easy for the Clippers to give in to the elements, to play for another day even though a winning streak was on the line. Instead, the Clippers played enough solid defense and got just enough contributions to pull out an 88-76 victory over the Pistons on Monday night. "Tonight was a game maybe earlier in the season we would have lost," Coach Vinny Del Negro said.