The Very Image of a Modern Compassionate Commissioner

(Editors Note:  BP did not update our Friday stats before 10 AM this morning.  I had things to do! Help my inlaws move a couch, then eat the lunch my mother-in-law made as a thanks, then go kayaking with Melanie at Oregon City, then take a nap when I got home. So this Friday update comes later in the day than anyone would prefer.  I apologize — the first of two today.)

Someday when we decide to get ourselves a REAL Commissioner — you know, by actually electing someone as called for in the rules — we’re going to have to remember that, besides the “qualities” we have come to expect from our Commissioner (incurable written loggorhea, unrelenting attention span, and a closer’s ability to remain untroubled by his mistakes) (plus, believe it or not, immense self restraint not to whine too much about his own team’s fate), the next Commissioner is going to have to have inexhaustible fonts of empathy.

I am constantly having to minister to members in misery. Even worse, owners frequently come to me to boast about their team’s successes and expect me to be excited for them or something.  These owners could never be good Commissioners:  they don’t seem to recognize that their teams’ successes are, every one of them, bad news for the Wolverines.

Perhaps you doubt the centrality of empathy in the Commissioner’s job.  Let me share an example from yesterday, when I received this text message:

All four [team redacted to preserve confidentiality] in two photos!

(My note: these images were part of an All Star team display at Nationals Park, the site of next week’s big game.)

I had just begun the following empathetic reply…

Nice

… when my message was hijacked by this emotional outburst from an EFL owner:

Meanwhile I am listening to [pitcher’s name redacted to preserve confidentiality] giving up 4 earned runs before any are out in the 3rd inning…

Make that 6 runs for [name of pitcher], still none out in the 3rd. Currently a triple chulk. 

That brought the following reply:

Oof. 

That reply didn’t come from me.  My Commissioner comments are in red in this recap.  That green reply came from the first EFL owner who was still hanging around the text exchange.  I suppose he thought that was empathetic.  But then he did something many amateur empaths do: he tried to make the suffering owner feel better by sharing his own pain:

… though at least that nicely makes up for Kluber being bad and then getting shutdown for a week. 

Kluber? Who said anything about Kluber? Who cares about Kluber? But the suffering owner wasn’t done:

8 runs now, all earned.  They are pulling him. Quadruple chulk. 

Before I could respond, the first owner  butted in with this:

Ooof. 

In a matter of 6 minutes a pitcher goes from chulking to triple chulking to quadruple chulking, and all this could-be Commissioner can do is add one “o” to the “word” “oof”? If the pitcher had died on the mound, writhing in agony, we know what this man’s response would be.

Oooof. 

The Yellowstone super-volcano explodes, and 100,000,000 perish?

Ooooof.

The cosmos collapses?

Oooooof.

Definitely not Commissioner material. Even when the cosmos collapses, not a single kindly word about the effects on the Wolverines.

The poor suffering owner was in such misery:

Looks like the ‘Roos will have to chase the Rosebuds. The [team name redacted for confidentiality] may not be up to it. 

To which this non-Commissioner replied:

If Kluber is out any length of time, the ‘Roos are also cooked. 

Kluber again?  What’s with this guy’s obsession with Kluber?  I repeat: who cares about Kluber?? Why is his response to everyone’s pain either “oof” or “Kluber”?  Do you feel any better now?  I sure don’t.

Finally, I got a chance to get a consoling word in edgewise:

 [Possessive pronoun redacted to preserve confidentiality] hitters are 4 for 4 so far with two doubles and a walk.  So [pronoun] (should) wait a little longer before conceding.  If [possessive pronoun] hitting holds up and Clayton Richard, Walker Buehler and Bumgarner can give [pronoun] 24 scoreless innings, [pronoun]’ll be ok.   

And then, to throw a little empathy the original owner’s way, I noted this:

Snell to AS game replacing Kluber.

To which the original owner replied, having found somewhere untapped reserves of empathic eloquence:

Yup. 

Oof. Kluber. Yup. Is that the vocabulary of a potential Compassionate Commissioner?