by John Walters

Answers to previous quiz: 1) Rochester 2) Troy 3) 180 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 30, 36, 45, 60, 90, 180) 4) Oman 5) Jimmy Burnett (9), Cleveland Indians, in 1932; in an 18-inning game he went 9-11

Mild High

The Denver Nuggets easily handled the Miami Heat in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the greatest elevation differential Finals (5,280 to sea level) in league history. Here’s an interesting factoid courtesy of SportsBrain. The Nuggets could very well win the NBA championship without having played any of the top eight teams in the league in terms of regular-season record. I don’t know if that would be a first, but it sure sounds as if it would.

The top eight teams by record in 2022-23: Bucks, Celtics, 76ers, Nuggets, Cavaliers, Grizzlies, Knicks, Kings.

Also, the Nuggets could win the championship without having faced any of the top 9 MVP vote-getters: Embiid, Jokic, Giannis, Tatum, SGA, Mitchell, Sabonis, Doncic, Curry.

John Q, Publicly

When you consider the first seven American presidents, it’s likely that John Quincy Adams (the sixth) is the one you least consider. George Washington (1) and Thomas Jefferson (3) are literally on the Mount Rushmore of presidents. John Adams (2), Q’s dad, has his own David McCullough bio tome and his own HBO biopic series.

James Madison (4) authored the U.S. Constitution and James Monroe was a wounded Revolutionary War veteran and a Founding Father (and, like Adams and Jefferson, he also died on the 4th of July). Andrew Jackson (7) has his own Jon Meacham bio and his face on the $20 bill. Even the eighth president, Martin Van Buren, was part of a subplot in an episode of Seinfeld.

But I’m here to argue that if you were to graph presidents on the X and Y coordinates of intelligence and decency, John Quincy Adams would rate tops among the first seven. Like his dad, Q was the only president among the first seven to never own slaves. He actually defended the slaves who revolted in the famous Amistad trial. He was bilingual. He also, incredibly, kept a journal from 1879, when he was just 12, until 1848, the year he died.

If you read Greg Grandin’s The End of the Myth, you’ll discover that Quincy Adams was supremely prescient about the troubles consuming present-day America. A one-term president (1825-1829), Q. went on to serve in the House of Representatives (the only former president to do so). As he watched successors such as Jackson and John Tyler and James Polk eradicate and exterminate Indian tribes, move them off their lands, and then foment war against Mexico, all in the name of adding real estate to the USA as a means of keeping the peace among white men (give someone free land and they’ll likely vote for you), Q. Adams foresaw the inherent strain it would cause.

As Grandin writes, “Adams’ speech in the House (foresaw) that the kind of settler violence Jackson had made national policy created an addictive cycle of expulsion, expansion and repression that led to lust for Texas but would not end with Texas.”

Adams argued that America’s “fight with Mexico over Texas would deepen the nation’s habituation to racist wars, leading to the point where racism and war would be the only thing that gave the Republic meaning.”

Finally, in his speech to the House, Adams asked his colleagues point-blank, “Are you ready for all these wars?”

He was referring to the inevitable war over slavery, but also I believe to the metaphorical culture wars.

I know some very smart people (okay, almost always men) who I attended high school or college with who continually surprise me. They’re otherwise decent folk, likely Christian or Catholic and yet they possess this, at least to me, incredible blind spot. Which is this: if it benefits white Americans, which to them is wholly synonymous with America, no matter what it is, it is good. And just.

John Quincy Adams did not believe that. I certainly do not. I live in a state that was once part of Mexico, which became part of the USA simply because John Tyler instigated a war with Mexico (sending U.S. soldiers to occupy Mexican territory, and when Mexico defended itself, as you’d expect, Tyler had his reason to declare war). It’s really no different than what Vladimir Putin is currently attempting to do in Ukraine.

History rewards the winners, alright. Less than 200 years later a giant swath of America is outraged that Mexicans are poring over the U.S.-Mexico border into the USA to work, when after all it was their nation’s land first. Either way, as Quincy Adams warned, when you make the repossession of land national policy, explicitly taking it from brown people to give to white people (and back then, more often than not, to give to white people who’ll have brown people work the land as slaves), well, maybe you’re creating a situation that one day will need a reckoning.

This line from Grandin’s book really struck me: “Adams’ second fear (his first was the dividing of the nation into pro- and anti-slavery camps; how’d he do on that one?) was that perpetual war on the frontier wouldn’t break the nation but rather bind it together in iniquity, with racist terror against Native Americans and Mexicans working like glue, uniting the country’s diverse population in shared hatred.”

Hmm. Here’s to you, John Q.

Zach’s Coming Back

Naismith Award winner Zach Edey of Purdue, who finished 6th in the nation in points per game and second in the country in rebounds per game, announced that he will return to West Lafayette next season. Despite posting gaudy numbers for a team that was ranked No. 1 most of the season, the 7’4″ Canadian was slated to be a second-round pick in the upcoming June draft. And when has a second-round big man from outside the U.S. ever amounted to anything in the NBA (cheeky smile insertion)?

In Bloom

My fall 2020 sports reporting class at Cronkite-ASU had a plethora of talent. Off the top of my head, I’ll give you the names (save for future reference) Adrian Chandler, Nick Stavas, Gannon Hanevold, Egan Adler, SportsBrain, Garrie Ester, James Powel and Michael Garaffa. All of whom will make names for themselves in sports media or news media.

Then there was a wonderful, friendly kid named David Bloom. Our class was hybrid, meaning kids could attend remotely (Covid). David lived in the San Fernando Valley, so I never met him in person. What made him one of the class’ memorable characters is that he had an old soul’s sense of humor and that, while being relatively diminutive, he always parked himself in this comically large overstuffed brown leather couch in his family room. No one else ever appeared. The couch seemed to swallow him up, it became a member of the class, and David seemed to enjoy any of my attempts at comedy related to the couch.

Last week I received a call because someone was writing a story about David. Seems he never told us that he is also an actor and he’s appearing in a new series “American Born Chinese,” that’s airing on Disney+. It’s no small venture, as the show stars recent Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Key Huy Quan (alias Short Round). Can’t say I’m surprised. David’s a great young man with a winning personality. I’m just hoping the brown leather couch makes a cameo.

Dollar Quiz

1. The least densely populated state east of the Mississippi is….?
2. True-False: the first perfect game of baseball’s modern era was hurled by none other than Cy Young.
3. Every actor who has portrayed James Bond has done so in at least two Bond films, with one exception. Name the actor who is the outlier.
4. What do the M’s in 3M stand for?
5. Name four bands in 10 or fewer letters (bonus if you can do it in 9).