IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

To Serbs, With Love

Sports’ two most impressive champions this month both hail from the world’s 99th-largest country: Serbia. They would be, of course, Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and Novak Djokovic of tennis fame.
Jokic, 28, just led the Nuggets to their first ever NBA championship in a season in which he should have won his third consecutive MVP award. He became the lowest-drafted player (42nd overall in 2014) to win Finals MVP and the first player in NBA history to lead the postseason in points (600), rebounds (269) and assists (186) while also setting the record for most triple-doubles in one postseason (10).

Meanwhile in Paris, Djokovic, 36, won a Nadal-free French Open, marking his 23rd career Grand Slam win. That’s one more now than Rafa, who was injured, and of course, the most of any man in tennis history. Only the aptly named Margaret Court, with 24, now possesses more, male or female.

Djokovic’s career Grand Slam stats are absurd. He has won 88% of his Grand Slam matches (348-47) and has made the finals in 34 of 70 of them. Just below 50%. Also, he is the only man to ever make the finals at least seven times at all four of the Grand Slams. You may prefer Roger or Rafa, but Novak’s numbers are superior.

Serbia, a landlocked country in eastern Europe that was once part of Yugoslavia, has only been an independent nation since 2006—for the first time since 1918 (it was a Serb who assassinated Franz Ferdinand, by the way; and his wife).

Sub-Optimal

Watergate, Heaven’s Gate, and now OceanGate. When will they learn?
This week the world is focused on the plight of five people, four of whom paid $250,000 apiece, who were last seen stepping into a claustrophobic immersible sub searching out the remains of the Titanic. One of them is a billionaire. Another is his son.

Titanic is buried more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic and it was always the height of hubris to attempt to be the only billionaire and your Protestants-only country club to be able to say you’d seen the world’s deepest graveyard. Now you’re about to be part of it.

Meanwhile, the sub’s name is… Titan. Tempting fate much?

I’ve heard from two different experts that the above explanation for the sub’s disappearance is the most likely. No use wasting resources on searching for this sub-surface S.S. Minnow before it runs out of oxygen. They’re all most likely already dead. At least it was quick.

Adamant

Today’s thought: The first woman was taken from the rib of the first man, according to the Bible. Hence it may be said that God was the first to split the Adam.

What I Really Want To Do Is Direct

Now playing in the MH Screening Room: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How The Sex-Drugs-And Rock ‘n Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, a 2003 documentary film by Peter Biskind.

I happened upon this doc when I could not sleep last week. It was after midnight and I saw that the film is FREE on YouTube. I thought to myself, Uh oh, if I click I won’t sleep for another two hours. I clicked. No regrets.

It’s the story of an industry that, by the early to mid-1960s had failed to change with the times and had become obsolescent. The old studio heads were holding onto Hollywood’s Golden Age, which fit in postwar America but was out of touch with the grittier, turbulent Sixties. In stepped Warren Beatty, a pretty boy actor who wanted to SAY SOMETHING and who found a script by two Esquire staffers (these same two dreamed up the Dubious Achievement Awards, my favorite annual magazine feature back in the day). Voila: Bonnie And Clyde.

Meanwhile a dude named Roger Corman realized teens were going to drive-ins to be scared or titillated and make out, and so he became the king of low-budget B-movies. He hired hungry young film school grads such as Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdonavich and gave them a little experience. Dennis Hopper, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Marty Scorcese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, even Jack Nicholson and Roman Polanski. All related, all swam in each other’s wake.

They went outside the system to create a fierce and independent new genre of films (The Last Picture Show, Chinatown, American Graffiti, Mean Streets, Harold and Maude) but then quite accidentally created the summer blockbuster (Jaws), thus helping to destroy the new Hollywood they created. First they eliminated the suits, then they showed the suits how to make money, then the suits said, “Thanks, we’ll take it from here.”

Fascinating stuff. And wait until you hear Richard Dreyfus’ anecdote about the climactic scene in Jaws. If you love movies, or stories about Hollywood, this film is a must. Just click “play.”

It’s Oil Or Nothing

If you’re trying to get your head around the fact that the Saudis are buying soccer and golf and may soon make their way into tennis and perhaps ownership of an MLB team, despite having no known athletes worthy of mention in those sports and despite inhabiting a vast land where grass would never grow naturally, we have your answer: oil.

You already knew that, but do you appreciate just how wealthy Saudi Arabia is? A monarchy/dictatorship, the Saudis need not worry about things such as a free market, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, labor unions, women’s rights, etc.

Look at these numbers related to the world’s most profitable companies from 2022. This is ONE YEAR’S profits. The second, third and fourth companies on this list are, in order, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet, with profits, respectively, of $119 Billion, $83 Billion and $79 Billion.

No. 1 on the list? Saudi Aramco, whose profits of $305 Billion are more than than the top three combined.

A reminder that one billion is equal to one thousand million. So if Saudi Aramco profited $305 BILLION in one year, then paying Ronaldo $500 million is tantamount to giving him 1/605th of one year’s profits. Surely the Saudi’s can afford to part with 1/605th of a year’s earnings. If you made $100K this year, Ronaldo would cost you the equivalent of $165.

Dollar Quiz

  1. What is the most populated city in Europe?
  2. What is the name of the bar where the two people meet to plan their escape in The Pina Colada Song?
  3. Who played William Powell’s wife in The Thin Man series of films?
  4. What Premier League club needed a win in the last game of the season to avoid being relegated for the first time since 1953-54 (clue: not FC Richmond)?
  5. The first transcontinental railroad had its terminus in what town/city? (must be exact)

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

M-L-essi

Argentina’s Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player ever and inarguably the most accomplished (World Cup, Champions League, La Liga championships, plus a record-seven Ballon d’Ors), has announced that he will join Inter Miami of the MLS.

Messi, 35, will spurn the $500 million offer made to him by Saudi Arabia.

As someone on Twitter noted, maybe the Saudis will simply purchase MLS.

The MLS has now pried David Beckham, Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahmovic (who retired earlier this week) and now Messi, all in their twilight years, away from Europe. But it still has yet to become a MAJOR American sport. We’ll see how much having Messi moves the needle.

Brownstones and Brown Skies

My city of ruins? Not exactly. New York City is, for once, not to blame for the environment in which it is currently smoldering. The storm-on-Mars air is a by product of smoke from Canadian wildfires. Of course, in Beijing, they’d just refer to this as a Wednesday.

Do You Know This Man?

This is Luis Arraez, currently baseball’s most under-the-radar star.

Arraez, a 26 year-old infielder for the Miami Marlins, is currently batting .401 after 62 games. The last player to be above .400 this late in a season was Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves. Arraez, playing for the Minnesota Twins last season (and that is also why you may not know him), won the American League batting title. He could become the first player to win the batting title in different leagues in consecutive seasons since… (should we save this for the Dollar Quiz?)… well, it’s never happened before.

The Dog Days Of Eternity

Even these two grew tired of one another

Probably not the optimal day to post this, as New York City resembles a dystopian hellscape, but I used to love working as a waiter/bartender at our seasonal outdoor restaurant alongside the Hudson River. In 10 years of service there, I learned a little bit about the circle of life (and about the Circle Line), as each season sort of resembled a lifetime.

Let me explain: we’d open in early April when the weather would still be chilly, but on any day above 66 degrees with blue skies we’d pack in the patrons. New Yorkers were excited about the end of winter and the onset of spring.

Each season there’d be landmark days/weekends. Memorial Day was our first big landmark weekend: summer was not yet here but we could sense it, taste it. The glorified cookout we called a cafe would be mobbed, you’d walk home with at least $1,000 for a three-day weekend, and we’d all go out to celebrate at our favorite Aussie bar on W. 79th.

June would be a dream (our LBGQT servers were stoked about Pride Month and celebrated duly) and we’d all be prepping for our biggest day/weekend of the season, the 4th of July. Because in those early years there were fireworks on the west side of the Hudson, tables along the ledge were at a premium. Again, you could earn a pretty penny.

But something weird happened as soon as we closed on the 4th of July. Although the alignment of the planets and sun told us we were only two weeks into summer, it felt as if summer were over. Depression set in. One memorable 4th a manager who owned a small boat invited four of us to join him as soon as we closed on the 4th and we spent all night, until the sun rose, motoring up and down the Hudson, quaffing beers, sharing stories and even, for a few of us, swimming in the Hudson.

That next day of work was one of the longest of my life.

The next six weeks, the height of the summer with often the best weather of the season, were often the doldrums. Some days, yes, you could blame the humidity, but others it was simply that, well, being in the middle of what we’d all been waiting for, it became impossible for that reality to live up to our expectations.

Then came our next big weekend: Labor Day. Suddenly, the cafe was buzzing again. Whereas on Memorial Day diners and drinkers were thrilled about what lay ahead of them, on Labor Day they were holding on to what they still could before it disappeared. September is possibly the best weather month of the year in NYC (it’s far superior to July and August, as the humidity vanishes) and so we always did well.

Then came October, as our managers and staff, clad in hoodies and occasionally gloves, held on for the hopes of an Indian Summer weekend to keep the bonanza rolling. Finally, November. The restaurant would be boarded up, the tables and chairs put away, and our outdoor nexus of fun and inebriation and potential romantic meetings went into hibernation.

To sit dormant for five or so months before it would all begin anew.

Memorial Day weekend. Anticipation. Labor Day weekend. Gratitude, mixed with desperation. Those were our best weekends. Fourth of July… a huge high followed by a colossal letdown, even though “death,” figuratively, was still at least two months away.

And that’s what worries me about eternity. If it exists. There will be no Memorial Day or Labor Day weekends there. Just an endless 4th of July which, if human nature has taught me anything, is impossible to maintain. An endless 4th of July but, also, an endless summer. Nothing to anticipate for what’s to come, nothing to cherish at the thought of it vanishing.

Eternity, quite simply, might wind up seeming like an eternity. Count me out.

Dollar Quiz

  1. What was the name of the monster Beowulf slew?
  2. What is the name of the river connecting Lake Superior to Lake Huron?
  3. What is smaller for any element: its atomic number or its atomic weight?
  4. Who was the only president to be born on the 4th of July?
  5. In what state did the Battle of Antietam take place?

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 6 Comments

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

Aaron Gordon’s first-quarter energy set the tone

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

Admittedly, resembling Scrooge McDuck probably did Adams no favors in floor debates

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

Maybe they should call him the Stare Master

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).

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Icon Tina Turner

One life, two acts. There was Tina Turner before Thunderdome, and then there was Tina Turner after it.

When those of my generation were introduced to Tina Turner via the variety show circuit in the late 1960s/early 1970s, she was a phenomenon that family-viewing America was not yet ready for. Yes, there were black female singers/front “men,” such as Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald.

But none of them, not even Ms. Ross, possessed the unabashed and in-your-face sexual energy of Tina Turner. I imagine as a husband watching Tina Turner on TV with your whole family was tantamount to going to a strip club with them. She was not hiding it. At all.

Jan. 11, 1970. Baby, it’s cold outside in midtown Manhattan, but not inside this studio.

Some people made fun of her and the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Others got it. When Dick Cavett asked Janis Joplin who was the one performer she’d pay to see, she replied, “Tina Turner.” And when Cavett asked if she’d be surprised if he said he did not know who that was, Joplin demurely hid any contempt she might have (after all, wasn’t he the host of America’s second-most popular talk show? Shouldn’t he be up on this stuff?). You have to love Joplin’s reply. “She sings with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. Ike is her husband, and… the bandleader. She’s the show.”

She’s the show. Indeed.

And then Turner seemed to disappear for most of the Seventies (I have not watched the documentary; imagine they explain where she was) and the early Eighties. Then Ms. Turner, a proto-cougar now in her early 40s, resurrected her career with a massive one-two punch: the album Private Dancer, which spawned three top-10 hits (including a No. 1) and earned four Grammy awards; and the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, where she played the sexy and sadistic Aunty Entity, ruler of Bartertown (“Two men enter, one man leaves”).

Go to 2:58… and yes, many female-fronted bands had a dude who looked exactly like this in the ’80s. The dirty Billy Zabka look.

Turner is a pioneer. I don’t wanna go so far as to say there wouldn’t be a Beyonce or even a Lizzo without her, but I don’t know of any women (this side of Ann Margret, who could get away with it because she looked like apple pie and Independence Day) who were doing what Turner did before she did.

My favorite Turner moments: 1) her performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, working up a sweat while making America feel a little hot under the collar and 2) that climactic moment in “Better Be Good To Me,” where she just goes for it. You know it.

Jim Brown

Of course, Jim Brown, also in his ’80s, and also an absolute icon, passed in the past week.

Arguably the greatest NFL player AND greatest American lacrosse player EVER. E-V-E-R.

NFL: Three-time MVP and led the league in rushing eight of his nine seasons. Never missed a game. This stat will wow you: there’s one running back in NFL history to average more than 100 yards per game and more than 5 yards per carry. Jim Brown.

When your name outshines the name of the franchise for which you played, and it’s the same word, that’s saying something.

Brown played before my time, and before the Super Bowl era, so perhaps he’s not quite as appreciated as he might be. Also, he only played nine seasons. But he was the first BEAST black running back in the helmet-and-facemask era of pro football. He was big and powerful, like Earl Campbell. He ran angry, like Marshawn Lynch, and he leveraged his NFL fame into a film career, like O.J. Simpson. Unlike O.J., he also was an activist for social justice (and he never murdered his wife, so there’s that).

There were black performers and thinkers before the 1960s, but that decade put them in bold relief. And maybe it produced some all-time greats: Turner, Brown, Bill Russell, Cassius Clay, Lew Alcindor, Diana Ross, Jimi Hendrix, Wilt Chamberlain, Sly and the Family Stone, Willie Mays, Sidney Poitier, Bob Gibson, etc. No wonder white people got so scared. These people were better at the sports and the performing than anyone they’d ever seen. Throw in a few brilliant thinkers such as James Baldwin, MLK and Malcolm X, and now we’re talkin ’bout a revolution.

In every class I taught at ASU-Cronkite, I showed the video directly above. It pits Brown, freshly retired from pro football, against Georgia governor Lester Maddox. One played a savage sport, the other governed a state. Notice which one keeps his cool throughout (I think the picking at his pant leg was a stress reducer), while the other throws a hissy fit. It tells you so much.

The Premier League May No Longer Be Luton-Free

Manchester City has already wrapped up the Premier League title heading into the season’s final weekend (remember, Ted Lasso is only a TV show). So where is the drama? It’s playing out in Coventry on Saturday, where FC Luton Town visits Conventry City in what is basically a play-in game to be the third and final squad promoted to the Premier League next season (it’s the match for third place in the Championship League, the second-tier league of English football).

What makes this story so compelling is that only 14 years ago Luton Town was down in the FIFTH division of English football. Long ago, in the early ’90s, it had been in the top tier (it was not known as Premier League then but rather the First Division… we prefer the new name), but hard times emerged and the club foundered. Now, after a long and arduous climb up the ranks, the Hatters are one victory away from returning to the top of the pops… they’d be playing agains Man City and Arsenal and Liverpool and all the rest beginning in August.

A more inspiring story than either Wrexham or FC Richmond. SportsBrain informed me and I thought you ought to know about it.

You Must Be Jokic-ing

True story: Back in the pre-Internet age, I wrote a weekly column for Sports Illustrated called SI View. I wrote that for four very long years. Unlike today, we only had one page per week and there was very little space for commentary. I couldn’t react to the previous night’s events or go long on different facts in the industry. I couldn’t go Richard Deitsch, in short, and major props to him for taking the baton into the internet age and doing wonderful things with the column that I never did.

The truth, though, of it all, is that I never sought a job at SI (or in sportswriting) so that I could sit on the couch and watch sports on TV (I know… what is wrong with me?). I recall some time in my third or fourth year at SI finding a cartoon in The New Yorker. It’s a grave in a cemetery and the epitaph reads, “I watched sports.” That cartoon hit me and I posted it on my door.

And so it was that in my final year on the gig I simply opted not to watch the Super Bowl. I’d had enough. Again, this was not in the age of an internet column. I had not actually been derelict in my duties, but it definitely told me that I had no passion for doing the job they’d given me.

All of which is to say that I understand why Lisa Salters said what she did recently, but given the money she earns annually, I’m still shocked. Salters appeared on a podcast and candidly confessed that she’d never seen Nikola Jokic play. Not, never seen in person, but simply had never seen him play.

WUT?!?

Nikola Jokic is a two-time NBA MVP (and probably should be a three-timer). There are millions of NBA fans out there, globally, who are familiar with Jokic’s game. You are the featured sideline reporter for ESPN/ABC and you’ve never seen him play? Sure, part of this is an indictment of Disney for not putting the Denver Nuggets on TV more often (they did finish with the No. 1 record in the West), but part of this also is on Salters.

This was also not great from a supposed expert…

This is your job. And you are paid a lot of money to do it. No one’s asking you to tell us the starting five of the Charlotte Hornets (I’m not even sure their own announcers could do that). But to have never seen a two-time NBA MVP play on TV or in person? That’s blatant neglect of duties. And yeah, you cannot help but feel that just a little of this dismissal of Jokic’s sublime gifts (13 triple-doubles in the postseason, already a career mark that toppled Chamberlain’s) from the folks at ESPN isn’t just a weeeeee bit of reverse racism (which is, let’s call it bluntly, simply racism) at work here. White Men Can’t Hoop. Except that this one just took out ESPN’s GOAT in a four-game sweep (and LBJ, to his credit, acknowledged Jokic’s greatness).

Susie B. Is Happy

Nvidia (NVDA) popped more than 25% on Wednesday’s after hours earnings report. The tech monster is now up 163% this year alone and more than 500% over the past five years. It reminds me that I should listen to my own advice more often.

And still today on CNBC’s “Halftime Report” there were Wall Street experts explaining why they were smart to not invest in it and why they won’t be doing so now. The facts are wrong; we weren’t. How Nate Silver of them.

Dollar Quiz

  1. Which one of these cities did NOT have an entry in the 1876 National League (inaugural year): Hartford, Louisville, Rochester?
  2. On whose side of the Trojan War was Paris?
  3. What number below 200 has the most other numbers that factor into it as whole numbers (no fractions)?
  4. Name a country that begins with an “O.”
  5. Who holds the record for most hits in an MLB game, or how many hits did he have (I doubt anyone will get this, but we will all learn something).

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

We’ve got a new LinkedIn photo. We understand this is not the highlight of your day, but just though we’d share.

Rooker Of The Year

Ever since I began following baseball—the Bobby Murcer Yankees of 1973—I’ve been intrigued by bad players on awful teams. The nature of baseball is such that the game’s premier player (Hello, Mike Trout) can play year in and year out on a team that fails to make the playoffs. Unlike basketball and football, excellence is able to exist in a vacuum.

So hello, Mr. Trout and Rod Carew (never made playoffs with Twins) and Ken Griffey, Jr., and Ernie Banks and Ichiro Suzuki and Mike Piazza and (mostly) Tony Gwynn, the last of whom is sort of the Walter Payton of his sport: spent almost his entire career on bad teams, then finally made it to the showcase at the tail end.

I bring this all up because baseball’s worst team thus far in ’23, the Oakland A’s, has a standout player: leftfielder Brent Rooker leads the American League in slugging percentage (.605) and is first in the A.L. in OPS (which my Gen-Z students tell me is the most important batting stat, though I’ll still take OBP first, thank you very much). The dude leading the AL in OPS (barely) is Tampa Bay’s Yandy Diaz. The Rays have the most potent offense in baseball, so pitchers cannot pitch around Diaz as much as they are able to Rooker, whose A’s are near the bottom offensively. Back when making an All-Star team meant something, it would be cool to see Rooker play in the Summer Classic. This year, alas, it’ll be a yawn. But he’s still worthy of a little tribute.

Is three-time MVP and former ROY Mike Trout destined to become the best player to never appear in a Fall Classic?

Meanwhile, the A’s are not only awful, but they’re dumb. The first is excusable, the second is not. The other night Oakland trailed the Diamondbacks 5-2 in the 8th. Their leadoff hitter had just crushed a solo HR and the next two hitters walked and singled, chasing the D-Backs’ starter. First and second, down three runs, no outs, and Rooker is on deck.

What happens? The next Oakland batter hits a soft fly in between short and left, but it’s playable. The shortstop runs out to make the catch, but Oakland’s runner on 2nd had his head down on contact and is rounding third. There’s not two outs, there wasn’t even one out: There were NO OUTS. The D-Backs throw to 2nd, double him up, and now Rooker comes to the plate with two outs and one man on.

The A’s go on to lose 5-2. Physical incompetence is a product of baseball’s salary structure. Mental incompetence is unforgivable.

Autocrat Softball Batting Practice

In the past fortnight, two of the world’s leading autocrats, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have been given one-hour interview platforms on cable news networks. Respectively, but not respectably, CNN and CNBC. The interviewers, Kaitlyn Collins and David Faber (again, –ively but not –ably), failed to perform their jobs up to the standards of an interviewer in such a prestige spot. Anyone can ask a decnt question, but you set yourself apart by asking probing follow-up questions. Learning to counterpunch.

Admittedly, I watched none of Trump’s “town hall” (like Melania, I avoid Donald as much as humanly possible) and only saw a few Twitter clips of Faber’s tongue-bath of Musk.

Would we ever see Jon Stewart or John Oliver or Jordan Klepper interview either of these figures? Probably not. Which is too bad.

By the way, this was buried in the never-ending avalanche of miscreant news associated with these types, but Deutsche Bank just paid out a $75 million settlement related to its ties with Trump’s pedophile party buddy Jeffrey Epstein. According to Fox Business.com (!), “The lawsuit asserted that the bank knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex trafficking and ‘chose profit over following the law.'”

You know the other thing about Deutsche Bank? They’re the ones who put Trump in touch with Russian oligarchs looking to buy real estate in the U.S. (for sums far above market value… hmmm). They provided loans to Trump when no one else would.

Super Boulle*

*The judges have no idea if this pronunciation, for pun purposes, is accurate

I am consistently humbled to learn things I never knew. For example, who Pierre Boulle was. Last night’s “Final Jeopardy” asked about the author of a book who saw human traits in apes he watched at a zoo. I guessed that the book would be The Planet Of The Apes but had no idea who the author was. Then when I researched a bit, I learned that French writer Boulle also authored The Bridge On The River Kwai.

Suddenly I’m hard-pressed to name a single author who had two books turned into better movies than those. If you’ve never seen one or either of them, do so as soon as you can. The latter is an all-time favorite, while I’d only recommend the original version of the former.

You can even draw some parallels between the two stories. The loner U.S. military guy in a hostile captive situation who must escape, through wilderness, to survive. The moment of clarity at the end of the film. Etc.

Anyway, I know this is the wrong language/culture, but Jolly good show, Monsieur Boulle. Jolly good show!

Charlie Vs. JJ

Here are two contrasting views on the Ja Morant situation from two retired NBA players who are paid to opine on TV. We respect JJ Redick plenty, but on this one we think he’s dead wrong. And you can point out that Charles Barkley was no angel when he played (in a pre-social media era), but that does not make him wrong here.

Dollar Quiz

  1. Who was the original host of Jeopardy!?
  2. True-False: George Mikan won the first NBA MVP award.
  3. If you go due west of Manila, the first country (beyond the Philippines) you’ll hit is….?
  4. Name a 300-game winner who never threw a no-hitter (extra props if you name the winningest pitcher to never throw one).
  5. Name a film that takes place entirely in Oregon.