by John Walters

Dollar Quiz Answers: 1. Andrew Jackson 2. Tulane 3. March 4. Ion 5. Serbia

Making Book

This is how extraordinary Devin Booker has played through nine playoff games this spring: Booker’s Phoenix Suns teammate, Kevin Durant, ranks fourth ALL-TIME in NBA career scoring average (27.27), behind only Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor. This postseason Durant is exceeding his career scoring average by averaging 30.0 ppg for the Suns, and yet Booker is both outscoring him and outplaying him.

That’s no knock on Durant. Booker, now in his seventh season, is having something of a national coming-out party this spring. Those of us who see him play regularly have been waiting for the rest of the nation to catch up; now they have. Booker is averaging 36.8 ppg, has shot 80% and 78% the past two games (on mid-range jumpers, not Shaq-range dunks), and is showing the type of resolve only seen with the all-time greats in the postseason such as Jordan, Iverson and Kobe.

Also, like those three, Booker’s game is aesthetically pleasing. I’d almost throw out AI from that list. Booker, in size and game and now, resolve, is very akin to MJ and Mamba.

Whether the Suns will advance past this round is anyone’s guess at the moment—it’s 2-2—but there’s little question as to Booker belonging in any conversation of, at worst, top 10 players in the league.

Michael Jordan did not win his first NBA title until his 7th season. Booker is in his 8th.

Meanwhile, I’ll be surprised if the Suns don’t go shopping Deandre Ayton in the offseason. As Ralph Amsden tweeted on Friday (I’m paraphrasing), “There are, conservatively, 1 billion people on the planet who wish they were able to dunk but cannot, and every single one of them hates Deandre Ayton.”

Yup.

Vida Blue

When I read that former Oakland A’s pitcher Vida Blue died at the age of 73 this weekend, what struck me was his age. Blue was a legend—with one of the more legendary names a sports figure has ever had—from the early ’70s. When I was just becoming aware of life, and sports.

So if Blue was only 73 when he expired, I thought, how old was he when he was making baseball history?
The short answer: very young.

In 1971 Blue, who was 22 when the season began, won both the American League MVP and the Cy Young Award. The Louisiana native went 24-8, posted a 1.82 ERA and had eight shutouts. He threw 24 complete games! (Clayton Kershaw has thrown 25 in 16 seasons). And this was a year before the Oakland A’s advance to the World Series.

In the following three years southpaw Blue, along with Jim “Catfish” Hunter, would be the pair of aces that would lead Oakland to three consecutive World Series triumphs.

A three-time 20 game winner, Blue is not in the Hall of Fame and perhaps his overall career numbers do not support induction into Cooperstown. But, before he turned 26, few if any hurlers ever threw better or harder. It is said that only Nolan Ryan, from that era, threw harder.

In a high school game that lasted seven innings, Blue once struck out 21 and threw a no-hitter. He was also an outstanding quarterback who reportedly had offers from both Notre Dame and Purdue.

You read about a dude such as Vida Blue now–that name, that comet-like stardom—and it almost seems mythic 50 years later. As I age I’m continually reminded that the Seventies was the most extraordinary pop culture decade of my lifetime.

BookTok

Not sure who here is on Tik Tok. I’m not, but I am on Instagram, which I hear is very akin to it. I bring it up because a wonderful phenomenon has been occurring on both platforms, which someone cleverly has titled. It’s where bibliophiles do short videos in which they introduce and provide brief descriptions of books they’ve enjoyed. One person I follow, schizonphrenicreads, provides a list of must-read books by genre.

Love this. He’s gotten me excited about reading all over again. I cannot wait to pick up Plagues and People, The Indifferent Stars Above, Kill Anything That Moves, The Cold Vanish, and Empire Of Pain. That last book is written by Patrick Redden-Keefe, author of Say Nothing, which is easily the best book I’ve read in the past four years.

Books, not guns.

That’s the answer.

Truth Bomb

Lots of truth bombs falling here… https://t.co/YTC8Eu1gEV

— John Walters (@jdubs1966) May 8, 2023

I know that some people turn off as soon as they hear the mention of Bill Maher, but this clip (not sure when it aired) is on the nose. And it’s not Bill on some rant. It’s Bill providing a few stats and allowing a pair of professors to weigh in.

What needs to be emphasized here, from someone who saw how the sausage is made for two years:

1. Yes, colleges/universities require administration, but the administrators-to-faculty ratio has gone completely out of whack. Schools are far too focused on customer retention and growth as opposed to…wait for it… education.
2. That more than two-thirds of faculty are adjunct profs, basically the equivalent of job off-shored to Manila or Mumbai, is just wrong. It’s wrong for the students, who are paying more for tuition than they ever have, and it’s wrong for the faculty: the tenured faculty feel under cut while the adjuncts are hilariously underpaid—I taught three courses in the spring of ’22 and would earn just as much working at CostCo. When I was given a third course, which by law obligated my university to provide benefits, the person offering me that third class and informing me of this boon literally said to me, “We do not want to do this.
   Oh, I’m doing you a favor and none of this comes directly out of your pocket and you need to tell me you’d rather not have to do something that is required? Good leadership.
3. When Maher asked why shouting someone down is fun and the prof replied, I think both missed the point. It’s not about fun; it’s about entitlement. Schools are not selling education as much as they are the experience (Storm the field! Get drunk after classes on Thursday!) and the cost is such that students (even though dad and mom are likely paying) feel as if they’re entitled to get the grades they want, the classes they want, even the opinions they want. Not to mention the jobs.
4. I don’t blame tenured profs for feeling threatened by, or resentful of, adjunct profs. But that’s also a simplistic way to look at it. In a field such as history or literature, for example, it helps to have a PhD who’s put in years of study on the topic. However, in a field such as medicine or journalism, students benefit more from those who’ve spent much of their careers practicing such. The school that cannot differentiate between the two does its students a disservice.
5. The lesson I learned from my lifetime in education is this: There may be some teachers you like in the moment who you will appreciate and be grateful for just as much 20 to 30 years down the road. But the teachers who you more likely will appreciate when you reach middle age are the ones who did not need you to like them; who challenged you and whom you cursed under your breath. As John Powers once wrote of a priest who taught him in high school, “At the time, I thought he was the hardest teacher I’d ever had. Ten years after high school, I thought he was the best. Today, I realize he was the only teacher I’d ever had.” If I can realize that, why can’t schools? Because the higher priority for them these days is to keep the customer happy.

Dollar Quiz

1. What planet corresponds to Tuesday?
2. What Shakespeare play takes place in Scotland?
3. In the 20th century, four U.S. presidents died in office. Name them.
4. What Canadian province borders British Columbia to the east?
5. What does “FDIC” stand for?

by John Walters

ROY Was MVP*

*The judges will also accept “Dead-On Wood” but will not accept “Royz ‘N The Hood”

If you missed Roy Wood, Jr.’s keynote speech at Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, here’s your chance to catch it. It was fantastic. Unlike some other comics who’ve taken the podium previously (and also killed), there’s a down-home, regular-guy aspect to Wood that makes it impossible for even those who might say so to refer to him as “elite.”

Wood had arrows for everyone. Some were Nerf arrows, but others drew blood. He told the audience to stop worrying about kids being groomed at school by drag queens because they’d probably die in a mass shooting, anyway. When that drew groans, he shot back, “Don’t groan. Pass some legislation.”

The HBCU grad saved his sharpest tip for Clarence Thomas, with a line whose set-up came a full minute or two earlier. He referred back to it, subtly, and it was a thing of beauty. I don’t want to spoil it here. If you are unfamiliar with Wood’s work on The Daily Show, maybe this is a reason to tune in.

Also, I came across two funny lines from black comics on Instagram. The first is from Wood, who notes that an abundance of American flags in one area (I live in such a community that overdoes it with the red, white and blue) has that whiff of racism. Wood asks, “How many American flags equals one Confederate flag?” Bingo.

The second is from a comic I didn’t know, but see if you don’t like the line as much as I do. “To a lot of Americans, black people are what pennies are to a cashier. Yes, you’ve got to accept them, but if anyone shows up with more than a handful you’re not happy.”

Gordon Lightfoot

Canadian singer/songwriter, Yacht Rock HOF’er Gordon Lightfoot passed yesterday at the age of 84. Lightfoot will forever be remembered as the man who penned one of the more incongruous chart toppers of the Seventies, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Here was a ballad about a ship that sank in a storm in Lake Superior, a true story that had taken place just one year before its 1976 release.

If you were a child of the Seventies and your parents listened to AM radio in the car, you’re familiar with Lightfoot’s three TOP FIVE hits: the aforementioned, which reached No. 2, “Sundown,” which went to No. 1, and my personal favorite, “If You Could Read My Mind,” from 1970, which topped out at No. 5.

Certain songs immediately transport you across the decades. That last one puts me in the back seat of my parents’ wood-paneled Chevy station wagon as we drive to the beach or to the home of one of our countless Italian relatives or maybe even just on a get-lost Sunday drive.

What Joni Mitchell was to singing/songrwriting for Canadians, Lightfoot was her male counterpart. Thank you, Gordon. RIP.

Ted Lasso Discovers Johan Cruyff

The last two episodes of Ted Lasso. Wow. So much to say, but I’ll limit my comments. The first finds the team in Amsterdam playing a midseason friendly versus Dutch power Ajax and getting waxed, 5-0. First, the little I understand about EPL, midseason friendlies between club teams from different leagues are highly, highly unlikely. But that’s neither here nor there.

The episode was shot in Amsterdam and it’s partly a travelogue and a love letter to that magical city of canals and pancakes and hash. In the early 2000s, before Jason Sudeikis had even made it to 30 Rock and SNL, he was part of an improv troupe along with Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard) called Boom Chicago. It was there that the two first developed an interest in football; so this episode was their prayer of thanks, in a way.

But it was also an ingenious means of steering the ship onto its homeward course (the series ends after this season, I believe), and it ties Ted Lasso’s hopelessly American sports brain to the future of FC Richmond. Sitting alone in an American-themed restaurant, Lasso watches footage of the 1992 Chicago Bulls playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals. He hears the announcer intone about Tex Winter’s triangle offense and how it works. Inspiration comes to Ted: Why can’t we do something like that with 11 players on the pitch instead of five on the hardwood?

When Ted shares his epiphany with the ever-studious Coach Beard, the latter asks Ted if he came up with that on his own. Yes, Ted says. Coach Beard congratulates him and informs him that he’s just discovered “Total Football,” which was the Dutch squad’s innovative strategy that took them as a decided underdog all the way to the finals of the 1974 World Cup (where they lost to Germany).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqMNciLw2f8

In the subsequent (most recent) episode. Coach Beard gives the Richmond squad (and, more importantly, us the viewers) a brief history lesson on Total Football. He expounds on how the Dutch were led by all-timer Johan Cruyff (their Michael Jordan) but how they played more as a synergistic group in flow than as a one-man band (i.e., Zava).

Next, he tells them how Cruyff went on to a highly successful coaching career at FC Barcelona, where one of his star players was Pep Guardiola, who is now the manager at Manchester City. All true. But here is where Ted Lasso receives an unexpected boost from current events. Right now Manchester City is looking, in real life, to win the Premier League and has advanced to the semifinals of the Champions League. They’re also still in the running for the championship of the FA Cup.

The last time a single club has won all three, i.e., pulled a treble, in one season? The year was 1999 and the squad was Manchester United (helmed by David Beckham).

Kind of a spoiler alert here: the full transformation of Jamie Tartt from self-absorbed diva to Richmond’s Cruyff is the signature victory of Lasso’s tenure at Richmond. It is the embodiment of all that he was trying to instill in and teach his squad. What’s the fourth factor, thus far, unnamed? Initially I thought it was “Trust,” but now I believe it is either “love” or “sacrifice.” Kinda the same thing in this context, no?

Also, when Sam and his dad entered Ola’s and the team were inside, cleaning up the joint?… I gotta admit, a tear welled up in my eyes. That’s what great shows do.

An aside: Did Rebecca or did she not get impregnated on that houseboat by the charming bachelor who reminded me a little too much of Tom Tolbert? If so, is he the same Dutch guy who’s been ordered to stop donating sperm due to his 500 fertility clinic offspring? Geez, dude, give it a rest. Literally.

Is This Simply A Meme For Grad School At Cronkite-ASU?

Dollar Quiz

1. Who was the first president (while president) to survive an assassination attempt?
2. Who beat USC in a bowl game last season? (I know you know this one, it’s just fun to remind everyone)
3. What, in ancient Roman times, was considered the first month of the year?
4. What do you call an atom that does not have the same number of protons as electrons?
5. What country is Nikola Jokic from?