I hold two public offices. Each comes with its own burdens.
In my spare time I am a member of the Newberg School Board. This is election season for the school board, with the election occurring on Tuesday. Except this being Oregon it is more accurate to say the election will stop occurring on Tuesday. Today a letter appeared in the Newberg Graphic complaining that the current school board is insufficiently resistant to the federal government taking complete control of our local schools. Even though I am not up for election this year, and even though I spent hours in an extended email correspondence with the author of the letter, she went out of her way to say this about me:
Ron Mock was courteous and interactive for a while, but eventually gave a verbal shrug and said, “It’s the system we’ve got,” expressing no intention of fighting to regain local control.
I never shrugged or said “It’s the system we’ve got. ” But she nailed the other part: I spend hours (4 hours yesterday and five last week) in local school board meetings talking about how we can make schools better because I see no value in local influence over our schools. I can’t wait to read her insights into my motivations and intentions when I am up for re-election two years from now.
My other public office is, thankfully, invisible to this concerned citizen. It’s always election season for the EFL Commissioner. I serve at your pleasure. You can replace me whenever the need arises. Every morning you wake up, I presume, and ask yourself “Has Ron earned another day as EFL Commissioner?” If the author of the letter to the editor got wind that I could be unelected as EFL Commissioner at any moment, just think of the correspondence she’d be generating now.
What if someone really good got wind of the existence of our league and my office and decided to start a campaign to replace me? Someone really smart and exciting, creative and visionary, committed to resisting a federal takeover of our league. Someone like Branch Rickey. (Ha ha! You can’t give him the job. He’s dead.) Or a bunch of others. I have to be on my guard against a challenge from any quarter.
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Haviland Dragons | 23 | 11 | .678 | — | 171.1 | 118.5 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 23 | 12 | .661 | 0.4 | 197.2 | 142.2 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 19 | 15 | .564 | 3.9 | 166.3 | 146.3 |
| Peshastin Pears | 17 | 16 | .508 | 5.8 | 138.4 | 134.5 |
| Cottage Cheese | 17 | 17 | .499 | 6.1 | 145.6 | 145.1 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 17 | 17 | .492 | 6.3 | 188.2 | 186.7 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 16 | 19 | .448 | 7.9 | 152.7 | 169.4 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 14 | 19 | .429 | 8.4 | 146.6 | 170.3 |
| Kaline Drive | 14 | 20 | .421 | 8.7 | 144.9 | 169.7 |
Haviland: W, 9 – 4. .371, .436, .571; 1 ip, 0 er. The Dragons are also in a public position, as the leaders in the EFL pennant race. I suppose there would be some who would find that position more exalted than EFL Commissioner, let alone Local School Board Pawn of the Federal Government. If that is the case, then you would expect the First Place Team to be even more wary of attempts to bring him down. And the evidence says he is. On a day when the Wolverine pitching magically rebounded from rank mediocrity to two shutouts and another solid start, cutting the team May ERA by half a run, the Dragons still gained a sliver of ground through awesome awefense.
Old Detroit: W, 2 – (-1). .225, .367, .300; 21.7 ip. 3 er. Someone who could probably oust me as Commissioner if he ever took a mind to is Mark Weinert. He is a man of probity and integrity and clear intellect — 100% of all the EFL championship hardware in existence is in his office! So I study his work assiduously. Regularly I stick my head in there, interrupt whatever he was doing, and engage him in conversation to capture any pearls he may casually drop. Early Wednesday afternoon, in fact, he told me that he had spent most of last season bemoaning his decision to let me outbid him for Corey Kluber. (Oh, poor, poor Mark! Losing Kluber to me was apparently so devastating it ruined his entire season. All he had left as a result was one little championship.) But, he said, this season he hasn’t felt so bad about losing Kluber.
I thought, maybe he’s right. Maybe Kluber was just a flash in the pan. That ugly 7.57 May ERA. Maybe Corey has to go… but then, not 5 hours later, I noticed this line from his start yesterday:
Kluber: 8 ip, 1 h, 1 hbp, 0 w, 18 k
He was up to about 110 pitches, so I guess I’m glad they took him out — but he was striking out over 2/3 of the players he faced! He could have gotten to 20 or even tied the record at 21 with a ninth inning.
Flash in the pan, indeed! We’ve all been wrong about players once. Who would want a commissioner who can be so wrong about a player twice?
Pittsburgh: L, 1 – 3. .231, .268, .258; 8.3 ip, 2 er. I’d hate to have to run against Bill James for Commissioner. He is the founding father of sabermetrics — a baby that really has only one daddy (although Branch Rickey might be the granddaddy. And some others are uncles and guardians and godfathers.) Without Bill James there’d be no EFL.
Which is why I maintain my subscription, first given to me by either Melanie or Ryan, to Bill James On Line, which features among many nearly random things a chat thing called “Hey Bill” where Bill answers questions from his readers. I read “Hey Bill” to learn some of Bill’s secrets so maybe the contrast between him and me won’t be as stark if he ever takes aim at the EFL Commissioner’s seat. For example:
Isn’t that stunning? It reveals both of the Alleghenys’ secrets: they have been run by Branch Rickey, apparently, or at least a Branch Rickey equivalent. So now they have a bigger fan base. It has to be true — Bill James says so! — even though you might wonder where this supposedly giant Allegheny fan base is. I’m not rooting for them. Are you? If so, cut it out. We have to shrink their fan base down to the same size as ours.
Canberra: W 2, L (-1); 9 – (-5). .296, .424, .519; 15 ip, 3 er. Whoa! Raisel Iglesias — the one we let Canberra have essentially without resistance, went 8 ip with 1 er. I guess Ryan knew something we didn’t, not the other way around. It’s Shane Green all over again… Wait a minute! On Sunday he’s getting his law degree, he already has his M.P.A. Why haven’t I recognized this until now? He’s grooming himself to be EFL Commissioner!
Flint Hill: “W”, 4 – 7. .237, .256, .421; 1.3 ip, 2 er. Flint Hill management seems like it’s in a hurry to succeed. They’re always looking for an angle. So Thursday’s results probably didn’t go down too well, especially Adam Liberatore’s first two earned runs allowed of the season.
Here is Bill James’ advice to a young owner in a hurry:
In college football and basketball, the teams that are most successful now are largely the teams that were successful in the 1950s. Momentum is extremely powerful. I often say that it takes 40 years for an expansion franchise to be on the same level with an established franchise, but 40 years is conservative.
Isn’t that encouraging? You’re doing just fine. I bet you’ll beat that 40-year projection.
Portland: W (-2), L 3. (-2) – 20. .229, .245, .292; 17 ip, 15 er. Yikes. That may be the most one-sided single-day loss in the history of the EFL. I suspect part of this is the correction of whatever fluke caused the Rosebuds to erase two allowed runs Tuesday without any pitching. That chicken came home to roost Wednesday. Maybe. If you spot a problem with your numbers, Mark, that might account for glitches from both Tuesday (in your favor) and Wednesday (decidedly against you), let me know. I haven’t been able to spot anything.
Kaline: “L”, 3 – 2. .244, .333, .366; 15.3 ip, 6 er. The Drive continued its advance, but without all the fireworks of the last two days. They donned the camouflage of an official “loss” to disguise their progress. But the Drive still gained 0.005 in winning percentage and nearly overtook the collapsing Rosebuds.