According to Facebook, today is Mark Johnson’s birthday. I don’t know how old this makes him — probably just 30-something, I guess — but still, any birthday is a big day. So I wanted to honor it appropriately. I suppose Facebook knows everything about what Mark wants for his birthday, but I am pretty sure I know one thing he wants, maybe more than anything else.
I am a gracious person, both as a person, and as a Commissioner — although maybe not so much as the owner of the Wolverines. And even in the latter capacity, I remember how Mark arranged to give me first place in the EFL for my birthday. True, my birthday is July 30, and I didn’t get first place until July 31, but it was the thought that counted. It’s not Mark’s fault he couldn’t afford same-day delivery.
Ok, ok, I admit there was another factor in getting Mark this gift: the Rosebuds finished yesterday only 0.1 games back, having surged 0.9 games in one day, and 1.9 in three days. So they were going to take it away anyway. It was inevitable. Still, I wanted it to be a gift. After all, as they say, “things that are given, not won, are the things that you want.” (Trivia question: whose lyric is that?)
So, with all that in mind, I decided it would be appropriate if I delivered this present to Mark on his birthday. So, go ahead, Mark, open your present!
(You have to scroll down… )
(I wanted to build in some drama…)
(I usually try to wrap presents in boxes that disguise what they are. That’s hard here, so I had to settle for making you scroll down…)
(Don’t worry. After waiting all of August, this is going to be so worth it…)
(Almost there! …)
(Maybe you should sit down…)
EFL Standings for 2018…
| September 1, 2018 — HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARK! | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 87 | 49 | .637 | — | 667.5 | 496.0 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 86 | 49 | .637 | 0.1 | 720.2 | 532.8 |
| Brookland Outs | 78 | 56 | .585 | 7.3 | 713.5 | 603.4 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 73 | 61 | .548 | 12.2 | 621.1 | 566.7 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 70 | 64 | .524 | 15.4 | 706.0 | 676.7 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 69 | 67 | .510 | 17.2 | 618.7 | 603.4 |
| Cottage Cheese | 66 | 68 | .496 | 19.2 | 649.6 | 651.6 |
| Haviland Dragons | 67 | 68 | .494 | 19.5 | 617.3 | 622.3 |
| Kaline Drive | 64 | 71 | .473 | 22.3 | 585.8 | 620.3 |
| Peshastin Pears | 62 | 73 | .460 | 24.1 | 570.0 | 620.5 |
| D.C. Balk | 58 | 76 | .430 | 28.1 | 577.7 | 665.7 |
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Old Detroit: W, 6 – 3. (37 PA, .258, .378, .419; no pitching) Well. This is awkward. That’s a decent batting line, especially with that nice .120 gap between batting average and OBP, but it doesn’t LOOK like a stalwart goal line stand. Maybe Acuna’s homer or Hedges’ double or one of Trea Turner’s 3 hits in 4 AB is all that stood in the way… I really thought the postman would be delivering a nice present today. Maybe it’s just going to be a little late, like mine was a month ago.
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Portland: W, 4 – 2. (39 PA, .270, .308, .378; 9 ip, 2 er, 2.00 ERA). Two things convinced me today would be the day. One was Paul Goldschmidt’s double and homer in 4 ABs. None of my guys could muster more than one extra-base hit. But it turns out the rest of the Rosebud offense was singles and HBPs — and overall that didn’t measure up to Old Detroit’s. The other thing was that 9 ip, 2 er. Eight of those innings were delivered by Brad Keller. But Brad Keller is only allocated 50%. On such slender threads does the Old Detroit lead hang.
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Oh, well, the present will probably arrive tomorrow *… but, of course, we won’t know about it because I won’t be able to do any standings until Thursday.** Wouldn’t it be a pity if the ‘Buds were in first place from Sunday through Wednesday, but fell back out by Thursday without leaving a trace? *** I’ll probably be in tears if that happens.
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Brookland: W, 7 – 3. (53 PA, .295, .415, .523; 7.3 ip, 2 er, 2.45 ERA)Right about now Brooks is so relieved not to be where the Rosebuds are in the standings. Who would want to go through the devastating disappointment the ‘Buds just went through? If you want to avoid that kind of harrowing experience, you might want to have a talk with Brian Anderson. If he keeps hitting two doubles and drawing two walks every day, you might find yourself standing in the Rosebuds’ shoes sooner than you think. (Assuming an Out can fit in a Rosebud’s shoes, which I am having trouble visualizing.)
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Canberra: W, 2 – (-2). (48 PA, .217, .250, .261; 15.7 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). Man! 15.7 shutout innings. I want some of that. Think I could get the Kangaroos to trade Kluber (7 ip, 0 er) back to me? (Notice how I just put in my claim on Kluber? I’m pretty sure that means no one else can trade for Kluber without my permission… it’s one of those unwritten rules, probably. Baseball is full of them.)
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Pittsburgh: L, 4 – 7. (48 PA, .273, .333, .455; 3.7 ip, 6 er, 14.73 ERA). Two Alleghenys pitched. Lou Trivino succeeded — a shutout inning — but then, he got to face the Mariners in the tatters of a pennant race, so what else would you expect from a big league pitcher? The other two failed: Eovaldi (2 ip, 3 er, 13.50 ERA) oscillated over to his bad side; Joe Jimenez (0.7 ip, 3 er, 40.50 ERA) expressed his Tigerness by quadruple chulking.
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Flint Hill: W, 8 – 3. (26 PA, .318, .385, .636; 3.0 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). I’ve never been interested in fad diets, so I can’t remember what they call the one where you practically starve yourself. Whatever it is, the Tornados are on it when it comes to sending batters to the plate, and they are getting results! 26 PA is a starvation diet in the EFL, where you need 27.9 per game AT LEAST to avoid replacementiasis. But what wonderful numbers the Tornados got from their handpicked elite hitters! Not Mike Trout, of course — he only managed a walk in four plate appearances. That means everyone else went .350, .391, .700! The T’s are going to give eating disorders a good name.
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Cottage: “L”, 4 – (-2). (35 PA, .265, .265, .382; 12 ip, 3 er, 2.25 ERA). How can you lose — or even “lose” — while both outscoring your opponents and putting up negative runs allowed? You must be living wrong, wrong, wrong there in the Cottage to suffer so badly from rounding errors. On the other hand, you got Yoan Moncada to hit a homer as part of a 2 for 4 day, something the Tornados didn’t see too much of. And you passed the Dragons.
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Haviland: “W”, 5 – 5. (36 PA, .276, .389, .345; 9.7 ip, 3 er, 2.79 ERA) Have you noticed how tiny our ERA’s are today, so far… except the Alleghenys, of course, but aren’t mountains supposed to tower over the rest of us, one way or another? Besides the A’s, the highest daily ERA in the EFL is 2.45 so far. Tyler Glasnow led the Dragons’ dominance yesterday, going 7 innings with only 1 earned run. Juan Soto led the Dragon offense, going 2 for 3 with a walk.
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Kaline: L, 1 – 8. (36 PA, .143, .167, .286; no pitching) Even the Drive didn’t get a daily ERA over 2.45… but, apparently, somewhere replacements were pitching on the Drive’s behalf and doing their absolutely reliable terrible job of it.
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Peshastin: L, (-2) – 5. (42 PA, .100, .119, .175; 17 ip, 7 er, 3.71 ERA). Ok, the ERA is a little high by today’s standards (and I mean today, this very day, not the general geological era we’re living in). And that was true even though the two Pear relievers put up pear-shaped performances (2 ip, 2 er for McHugh, 0 ip, 2 er for Infinite Chulking Gsellman). The real problem was the hitting, where everyone not named Javier Baez combined to go 2 for 35 with one walk and no extra bases: that’s a .057, .083, .057 team batting line without Baez’ 2 for 5 with a homer.
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D.C.: W, 7 – 7. (32 PA, .286, .375, .536; 1.7 ip, 3 er). Kyle Barraclough is such a tragic figure this year. After utterly reliable dominant relieving for the last two years, Barraclough has hit hard times. His nonuple chulk (0.3 ip, 3 er) produced a daily ERA of 81.00, and upped his August ERA to 20.77. He was injured (well, duh!) for much of the month, so that ugly result is only over .3 innings (10 ER). But in July he did 9.7 ip, and coughed up 9 er. 3.3 of those innings, and 7 of those earned runs, were turned in after the All-Star game. Something went wrong about then, and it’s not right yet.
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On the bright side, Matt Chapman recovered from his defensive glitches Thursday that opened the door for a Mariners win. Friday Chapman went 2 for 5 with a homer and a double.
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Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2018
| AL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Boston Red Sox | 93 | 43 | .684 | — |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 87 | 49 | .637 | 6.4 |
| New York Yankees | 85 | 50 | .630 | 7.5 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 71 | 63 | .530 | 21 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 69 | 67 | .510 | 23.6 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 61 | 73 | .455 | 31 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 40 | 95 | .296 | 52.5 |
| NL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Atlanta Braves | 74 | 60 | .552 | — |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 73 | 61 | .548 | 0.6 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 72 | 62 | .537 | 2 |
| Washington Nationals | 67 | 68 | .496 | 7.5 |
| New York Mets | 59 | 75 | .440 | 15 |
| D.C. Balk | 58 | 76 | .430 | 16.4 |
| Miami Marlins | 53 | 82 | .393 | 21.5 |
| AL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Cleveland Indians | 77 | 57 | .575 | — |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 70 | 64 | .524 | 6.7 |
| Minnesota Twins | 63 | 71 | .470 | 14 |
| Detroit Tigers | 54 | 81 | .400 | 23.5 |
| Chicago White Sox | 54 | 81 | .400 | 23.5 |
| Kansas City Royals | 43 | 91 | .321 | 34 |
| NL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Chicago Cubs | 79 | 55 | .590 | — |
| Brookland Outs | 78 | 56 | .585 | 0.6 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 76 | 59 | .563 | 3.5 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 76 | 60 | .559 | 4 |
| Cottage Cheese | 66 | 68 | .496 | 12.6 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 66 | 69 | .489 | 13.5 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 57 | 78 | .422 | 22.5 |
| AL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Houston Astros | 82 | 53 | .607 | — |
| Oakland A’s | 81 | 55 | .596 | 1.5 |
| Seattle Mariners | 75 | 60 | .556 | 7 |
| Haviland Dragons | 67 | 68 | .494 | 15.4 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 66 | 69 | .489 | 16 |
| Kaline Drive | 64 | 71 | .473 | 18.2 |
| Texas Rangers | 58 | 77 | .430 | 24 |
| NL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Portland Rosebuds | 86 | 49 | .637 | — |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 74 | 61 | .548 | 12 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 73 | 62 | .541 | 13 |
| Colorado Rockies | 72 | 62 | .537 | 13.5 |
| San Francisco Giants | 68 | 68 | .500 | 18.5 |
| Peshastin Pears | 62 | 73 | .460 | 24 |
| San Diego Padres | 54 | 83 | .394 | 33 |
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* Can the present ever arrive in the future? To even say “the present will arrive tomorrow”, you’d have to be standing somewhere (or sometime) the present hasn’t arrived. I don’t know of any such place or time.
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On the other hand, I suppose the present is continually arriving. But it’s continually arriving in the present.
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But this will be true in the future, too: tomorrow we’ll find the present is still continually arriving. So we can easily say “the present will arrive tomorrow — just as it is doing right now and always has done.”
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But this, unfortunately, saps all the specialness for Mark of looking forward to a present that will arrive tomorrow, since this is constantly happening to him, and will happen tomorrow an infinite number of times for everyone on the planet, birthday or no birthday, whether in first place or second. Or maybe even third.
** Can the present arrive if no one is there to perceive it? I’ve always maintained that the tree really does fall in the forest even if no one is there to see it, because I think it’s stupid to act as if things don’t really exist outside our perception. I am a realist: reality is really there. I go way further: Truth exists, even when we don’t know it. I sometimes suspect cosmologists and others confuse the inability to measure or perceive a thing with the thing not existing. The same thing for the inability to define a thing mathematically. I don’t know where we got the conviction that something not expressible in math or meters therefor doesn’t exist. It’s as if we somehow believe our maths measure the entire universe, that the universe and our maths are somehow linked somewhere in fundamental reality. Now THERE’s a faith statement.
But when it comes to time — to past, present, future — might it be different? Trees are concrete; times are abstractions. Simultaneity is not an abstraction. It would still exist outside our perception: two trees could fall at the same instant. Or two rocks — I want things falling that don’t have a perception of time, or of before and after, or of process, and I don’t want to have to think about whether trees sense the rising of their sap. If time is only sequence, then it’s as concrete as falling rocks. But if time is more than that, if it’s consciousness of a past and experience of a present and anticipation of a future, then there has to be a perceiver for it to exist. Right?
*** Can an EFL team be in first place on a day when no standings are published? When I run the line graph of our standings over the season, our teams lines run straight across the graph on days I don’t publish standings. At the beginning of August, those straight lines are 8 days long. Had I been able to post results for those days, the Rosebuds might have retaken the lead multiple times, and then lost it again. Instead it looks like the W’s were in first every day of the month.
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That’s what it looks like, but I don’t claim it, officially. (I might claim it if it’s useful to making an update more interesting, but that’s a reflection of my commitment to the Truth, not of the Truth itself.) I don’t claim it because we don’t know. We are tempted to say, like Schroedinger, there is nothing there to be known. We didn’t have standings on those days. That’s why, when I was counting a few days ago the number of days each team had been in first place I didn’t count the days in our early-season, no standings-published tunnel. No one knew who was in first. It was indeterminate.
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I suppose those days we had a case of Schroedinger’s standings. Inside the box either the Wolverines or the Rosebuds (or maybe the Kangaroos or Outs, if they had huge surges) were in first. But because no one was there to see it, we treat it as indeterminate. Not nonexistent, just not perceptible. The cat really is dead or alive; we only say it is neither because we can’t give it a value. The move to pretend the cat is neither dead or alive is something we do to be kind to poor mathematicians, but it isn’t a statement about our belief about reality. Someone was ahead August 2. We don’t count it because we can’t, but we know the mystery is about something that was real. And we live with the mystery, rather than pretend nothing was there.