THE COMMISSIONER IS COOKING THE BOOKS, THE LAWYER SANG ONE SONG, AND CHRIS BROYLES GOT FROG-MARCHED OUT OF A KRYSTALS

There's a moment in Goodfellas where Henry Hill admits he has to wait on line at the deli. He has to live the rest of his life like a schnook. He has to eat egg noodles and ketchup. That's me. That's where this column has dragged me. I am eating ketchup pasta in a metaphorical Idaho cul-de-sac while my editor sends me Slack messages with smiley faces and the phrase "the audience is INVESTED!" with three exclamation points where one would have been an HR violation.

The audience is invested. In a fake baseball league. Run by six men who collectively have one functioning sense of shame between them, and even that one is in the shop.

This is column number seven. Seven. I have written more about the Iron Knob Explosions than I have about LeBron James in the last twelve months. I checked. I am not proud. And I want to acknowledge before we begin that I have, against my will, started visiting worldleaguebaseball.org to verify standings, because apparently this is a real website with a real domain that someone — someone — paid actual money to register. I clicked through the home page. I looked at the standings. I felt my soul leave my body in the polite, orderly way that souls leave bodies when their owner has accepted his fate.

I threw up in my mouth. We've started.

THE STRETCH: JUNE 7 - JUNE 17

The Slap Daddies (8-2): Brett Houlberg, The Conflict Of Interest, And The Halflings That Will Not Stop Coming

Brett Houlberg's Knockemstiff Slap Daddies posted the best stretch record in the WLB at 8-2, scored 75 runs in ten games, and outscored opponents by 40. They are now in third place, two games out of first.

I want to be clear about Brett's professional situation, because it is, frankly, the funniest one in the league. Brett Houlberg is a veterinarian who sold his veterinary practice to private equity and then kept working there. He is technically an employee of the company that bought his company. He is paying himself a fraction of the money he sold himself for. There are wisdom traditions across multiple cultures that warn against this exact arrangement, and Brett Houlberg, DVM, said "you know what, let's run it." He shows up to the building he used to own. He uses the parking spot he used to choose. He pets the dogs he used to own the rights to.

And then he goes home and continues to manufacture Dungeons & Dragons figurines on a 3D printer. The basement has not cooled. The resin is being ordered. Whenever you are reading this column — right now, in your bed, on your phone, on the bus — Brett Houlberg is somewhere with a tiny brush, painting eyebrows on a Tabaxi Monk for a campaign that hasn't started yet, while the highest-scoring offense in the WLB hits another three-run double on his other monitor.

But here is the thing I cannot un-see this week: Brett Houlberg is also the league commissioner.

I want you to sit with that. The man who runs the league — who enters the data, who inputs the stats, who has administrative privileges on worldleaguebaseball.org — is also one of the six owners actively competing for the title. The fox is in the henhouse. The fox is also painting halfling eyebrows in the basement. The fox is going 8-2.

I have no allegations to make. I have only observations. I will share one of those observations in approximately three sections. Please be patient. The reveal is worth it.

I threw up in my mouth a second time. We're pacing well.

The Rick Astleys (6-2, W5): Jeff Burris, The Pictionary Disaster, And A Music Director Who Made A Decision

Jeff Burris closed the stretch on a five-game winning streak and his Astleys went 6-2, scoring 51 runs and allowing only 21. A run differential of +30 in eight games. The man whose professional title is Chief Legal Officer of a pharmaceutical company — a title which sounds extraordinary until you remember that "in-house attorney" was apparently not impressive enough at the holiday party — is now within one game of first place.

But I have new information about Jeff Burris.

Jeff Burris was in two high school musicals with Garth Graham. Two. Side by side, in the cheap-fabric-and-stage-makeup ecosystem of late-1980s suburban Tennessee theater, the future Chief Legal Officer and the future radiologist appeared in two productions together.

In those two musicals — combined, total, cumulative — Jeff Burris sang in exactly one number.

Now, Jeff tells this story, I am told, as a kind of triumph. The way Jeff Burris tells it, he negotiated his way out of the chorus. He read the program, identified the legal exposure, and got himself excused from any non-mandatory ensemble singing across two productions. Brilliant maneuvering by a future attorney. Found the loophole. Beat the system.

I have, however, spoken to people. The people I have spoken to have suggested an alternative explanation. The alternative explanation is that Jeff Burris's high school music director, after one early rehearsal, took Jeff Burris aside, placed a kindly hand on his shoulder, and said something to the effect of "Jeff, son, why don't you just stand near the back and mouth along." The alternative explanation is that the music director was the one who did the negotiating, and Jeff was the one who got negotiated to.

The one song he did sing was, I have to assume, the one number where the music director couldn't physically excuse him from the stage and had to just hope for the best. That song happened. It was heard. The audience, including Mr. and Mrs. Burris in the third row, applauded politely the way audiences applaud when they feel a 16-year-old has tried his hardest and is owed something for the effort.

This is, in retrospect, the most consistent version of Jeff Burris available. The man cannot draw. He is a documented Pictionary disaster. He is, as we will get to, also a former teammate on the most consequential church-league basketball squad in Tennessee history. He is in second place in the WLB despite leading the league in wins and run differential. He is, in every way, the platonic ideal of the in-house attorney: technically present, technically credited, technically in the cast photo, technically excused from singing.

Garth Graham, meanwhile, starred in those musicals. Belted every number. The radiologist is in sixth place. The not-quite-singer is in second. The lesson, as it has been every week, is that the men who took the chorus seriously are losing.

I threw up in my mouth a third time. The pattern is repeating.

The Iron Knob Explosions (6-3): Two Andrew Harrises, A Stat Line That Cannot Be Real, And A Real Live Black Belt

Now then. We need to talk about Andrew Harris.

We need to talk, specifically, about two Andrew Harrises.

Andrew Harris the manager runs the Iron Knob Explosions. He is a Children's Theatre CEO in Louisville. He has not made a single roster transaction since March. By all evidence, his contribution to this season has been: he set the lineup, he closed the laptop, and he walked away to direct Annie Jr.

Andrew Harris the player is on his roster. The same name. The simulation gave the manager an avatar of himself, the way it gave Rick Astley to Jeff Burris and Carpenter to Carpenter and Graham to Graham. This is normal in the WLB. Everyone has put themselves in the lineup. Vanity, mostly — the chance to imagine oneself, at 54, hitting cleanup somewhere.

Andrew Harris the player is dominating.

Like — and I say this as a man who has reviewed his stat line on worldleaguebaseball.org more times than is healthy — dominating. The kind of stat line that, if you saw it on the back of a Topps card, you would assume belonged to a Hall of Famer. Power. Average. On-base. The man is producing at a level that would, in a real baseball context, attract scouts, federal regulators, and possibly a documentary crew.

And here is what is bothering me. The commissioner is Brett Houlberg. The commissioner is also Andrew's friend since they were teenagers together — including, as we have established in previous columns, their formative years as the Milk Carton Babies, the high school garage band whose actual product was not music but a line of blister-packed action figures featuring a free Atomic Fireball and a free LOCK OF HAIR (yes, hair, real hair, attached to cardboard backing in retail packaging) for collectors aged 4 and up. Andrew co-founded that operation with Chris Broyles. Brett knew them both.

The commissioner is also the man who enters the data for worldleaguebaseball.org. And the player Andrew Harris's stat line, by multiple sources, was at one point uploaded incorrectly by the commissioner, in what I am told was a clerical error, by which I mean an error that just so happened to massively benefit the lineup of the man currently leading the league.

Was it a clerical error? Probably. Almost certainly. Brett the Vet has too much to do — the figurines, the AirBnB, the dogs, the recap — to stage a deliberate fraud. But the man whose stats got "incorrectly entered" was the player named Andrew Harris, on the team owned by the manager named Andrew Harris, who hasn't logged in since March, and is somehow in first place anyway. In any other league, this gets you a hearing. In this league, it gets you another stretch in first place.

You will recall, from Column Five, that Brett Houlberg co-hosts an AirBnB with a mysterious man named Chad. Multiple guest reviews. "Brett and Chad were wonderful hosts." Chad has no LinkedIn. Chad has no Facebook. Chad is the most mysterious figure in the WLB orbit who is not himself a baseball owner.

I am asking — and I want to be clear that I am asking this as a question, not as an accusation — is Andrew Harris also Chad? Is the commissioner of the WLB silently quarterbacking the Iron Knob Explosions on behalf of an absentee Children's Theatre CEO who is currently pretending to be someone else on a vacation rental platform? Are we watching, in real time, the late-stage merger of the Milk Carton Babies brand with the boutique-hospitality industry, with a side venture in baseball stat-line maintenance? I have no proof. I have only an incorrectly uploaded stat line, an absentee manager, a co-host with no last name, and a commissioner who paints eyebrows.

Now. About Andrew's dojo.

I have, in past columns, written that Andrew Harris fancies himself a black belt. I want to issue a partial correction. Sources confirm that Andrew Harris is, in fact, an actual black belt. He has the certificate. He has the belt. The dojo will testify. The senior instructor will reluctantly confirm. The man went and did the thing.

This does not, however, make it less funny. If anything, it makes it worse.

Because here is the situation we are now contemplating: a 54-year-old Children's Theatre CEO whose teenage business venture was hand-lettered action figure packaging with HUMAN HAIR SAMPLES is also, in the year 2026, a certified martial artist. He produces Annie Jr. in the morning. He throws kata in the evening. He fields a baseball team that won't stop winning despite his refusal to log in. He may be moonlighting as a man named Chad. And on Saturdays, somewhere in suburban Louisville, he is bowing to a sensei and breaking boards with his hands.

The man fancies himself a black belt and is one. These are not mutually exclusive states. You can earn the belt and still walk around like a guy who needs to remind people that he has it. The certificate addresses the fact. It does not address the demeanor. The demeanor is the joke. The demeanor remains, regardless of the certificate, that of a man who would absolutely volunteer "well, you know, in the dojo we'd say —" at a dinner party that did not require the dojo's input.

He is in first place. He has not logged in. His player stats are mathematically suspicious. His commissioner has been very generous with the data entry. And he can, when called upon, defend himself with his hands.

I threw up in my mouth a fourth time. We are still pacing well.

The Huanca Wankers (7-4, W3): Chris Broyles, The Spaceship, And The Worst Krystals Story On Record

Chris Broyles's Huanca Wankers went 7-4 in the stretch and are on a three-game winning streak. The spaceship is, against all narrative odds, still operational. David Cone's arm did not fall off. Robin Yount continues to do what Robin Yount does, which is hit baseballs to right-center field with the placid expression of a man who knows he was a Hall of Famer in real life and resents being conscripted into a simulation by a man who wrote a business book.

About that book. I am required by the bylaws of this column to remind you that Chris Broyles wrote Can't Stop the Spaceship, a parable about the crew of the Horizon One navigating an AI-driven mission, organized around the Core Pathways Model. The Wankers are on a three-game winning streak. The spaceship is moving. The Core Pathways are pathing. The b-degree.com website is presumably converting.

But before he wrote the book, before the Core Pathways Model, before "strategic visual communications for high-stakes moments," Chris Broyles was the co-founder of the Milk Carton Babies, which I want to remind everyone was a fake band whose real output was action figures named Chancy Chauncey and Radical Ralph, blister-packed with a free Atomic Fireball and a literal lock of hair. This was Chris Broyles's first business. This was the foundational entry on his entrepreneurial résumé. The transformation visionary, the AI-disruption consultant, the man whose website charges Fortune 500 companies for persuasive media in high-stakes moments, started his career by sealing locks of human hair into retail packaging.

I also have to tell you a story about Chris Broyles that has emerged from witness statements this week, and the story is, in my professional opinion, the worst possible version of every Krystals story ever told.

Sometime in the late 1980s, Chris Broyles snuck out of his house. He was not alone. He was with Andrew Harris and at least one other co-conspirator (identity not yet confirmed; Garth Graham continues to decline comment, which is its own kind of comment). They went to a Krystals — the regional fast-food chain whose square sliders smell, at any hour, like onions that have transcended this physical plane — and they sat down to enjoy what the menu, with absolutely no irony, calls "the original American slider since 1932."

And then the door opened and Mr. Broyles Sr. walked in.

He did not order. He did not sit down. He did not eat. There was no ceremonial paternal moment in a booth, no sad shared meal, no quiet lecture over a tray of fries. Mr. Broyles Sr. walked into the Krystals, identified his teenage son, and immediately drove him home. Frog-marched. Just yanked him out. Get up. Get in the car. We're going. Chris Broyles, age 16 or 17, walked out of that Krystals leaving a tray of square sliders and his social standing on the table behind him.

And here is the worst part. Here is the part that broke me when I learned it.

Andrew Harris and the other co-conspirator(s) stayed.

They stayed at the Krystals. They kept eating. They watched Chris Broyles get hauled out by his dad and they did not, apparently, feel any obligation to leave in solidarity, or pay the bill, or even visibly react. They sat there. They finished their sliders. The future Children's Theatre CEO and at least one other 54-year-old-in-waiting watched their friend get extracted from a fast-food booth by parental authority and then ordered another round of fries.

Chris Broyles now writes books about leading transformation and turning resistance into momentum. The Core Pathways Model has six pillars. None of those pillars, I have checked, address the specific situation in which your dad shows up at a Krystals, drags you out by the elbow, and your friends keep eating sliders without you. That is not in the book. But it should be. It is, fundamentally, the most actionable case study in the entire Broyles oeuvre — the one where the spaceship gets stopped and the rest of the crew keeps eating sliders without you.

The Wankers are 41-28. The spaceship is moving. Andrew Harris is in first place. Some men cannot be stopped. Some men were stopped at 17 by their own father at a Krystals while their friends finished their fries in calm, collegial silence, and the experience formed them.

The Fugging Honey Badgers (5-4, L2): Garth Graham, Who Made It To The Girl's House, And Whose Car Made It Halfway Home

Garth Graham's Fugging Honey Badgers went 5-4 over the stretch and closed L2, dropping to sixth place at five games back, and you would think this is the worst thing happening to him right now, but it isn't, because he is still under WLB league office investigation for fielding two ineligible players (Bip Roberts AND Ramon Martinez, in case anyone forgot, which I have not, which I will not).

I have a story about Garth Graham, and credit where credit is due, the story is partially good news.

In high school, Garth Graham snuck out of his house to visit a girl. He made it to the girl's house. He saw the girl. By all accounts the visit was successful in whatever way 17-year-old Garth Graham had hoped it would be — I am not interrogating the details, neither should you, the man is now a respected radiologist and chief of staff and we owe him whatever dignity he can salvage from this story. He had his evening. He had his fun. He left her house on his own two feet, mission accomplished, an unambiguous win in his column.

And then the car stalled.

On the way back. Mid-return. The mission already complete. The car, which had successfully transported him to the girl's house, decided that the ride home was where it was tapping out. Garth Graham — future radiologist, future Chief of Staff at a hospital in Loudon, Tennessee, the man who has dedicated his entire professional life to looking at scans and identifying what does not belong — did not, in 1989, identify that his automobile had only sold him a one-way ticket. He treated the engine like a roundtrip. The engine had other ideas.

He did not make it home until morning.

I want to restate that with the appropriate gravity. He did not make it home until morning. The good news: he made it to the girl's house. The bad news: everything else. The car stalled, on a back road, in the early hours, with a 17-year-old whose story for his parents was going to have to be really, really good and was not going to get any better the longer he sat in it.

This is, in my opinion, the most diagnostically pure version of Garth Graham. He completed the difficult part of the mission. He missed the routine part. The radiologist diagnoses the lesion and ignores the engine. The radiologist fields Bip Roberts and Ramon Martinez ineligibly because, presumably, he was so focused on the parts of his lineup that mattered that the parts that should have been routine slipped past him. The car got him to the girl's house. The car did not get him home. The lineup got him to first place earlier this season. The lineup also got him under investigation. The win is real. The fallout is also real. He has been making this trade-off since 1989.

The Honey Badgers are 38-28. They're climbing, slowly, like a man being towed home in the early light, knowing the conversation when he gets there is going to be its own kind of awful.

The Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers (4-4, L2): Chris Carpenter, NAIA Tennis Champion (Approximately), And The Sermon You Definitely Don't Hear In Seminary

Chris Carpenter's Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers went 4-4 in the stretch and dropped two to close, sliding to 38-27 and 4.5 GB. The team is still very much in the playoff conversation, but the Discipleship Pastor lost some ground, and the way he lost it was the way Chris Carpenter loses everything: quietly, with grace, in close games. The Crepe Wrappers are 11-10 in one-run games and 5-2 in extra innings. The man knows pressure. The man's entire vocational training is pressure. He also, and I cannot stress this enough, played NAIA tennis at Lincoln Memorial University, which means he has been competing at a level just barely on the official end of "officially competitive" his entire adult life.

I want to honor Chris Carpenter's title. Discipleship Pastor. This is the title given to the minister who works primarily with small groups. The implication being, the big congregation thing did not pan out. He was not asked to give the Sunday sermon to the whole flock. He was asked to lead the 8-person Wednesday night Bible study in the church basement. This is honorable work. Vital, even. It is the small-batch artisanal end of the ministry profession. It is also, unmistakably, the Triple-A of pulpits — much like NAIA is the Triple-A of college tennis. The pattern with Chris Carpenter is consistent across his entire life: technically credentialed, technically competing, technically a winner, in a division of the activity that exists adjacent to where everyone else is paying attention. NAIA tennis at Lincoln Memorial. Discipleship Pastor at a regional church. Fifth-place fake baseball team. The arc is the arc.

But here is what I learned about Chris Carpenter this week. It retroactively explains a great deal not just about Chris Carpenter, but about the entire WLB social fabric.

In high school, all six of these men were on the same church league basketball team.

I want you to put down whatever you are reading on, take a breath, and absorb that. The Iron Knob Explosions, the Rick Astleys, the Knockemstiff Slap Daddies, the Huanca Wankers, the Fugging Honey Badgers, and the Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers — all six current owners — played church league basketball together as teenagers. They wore the same matching uniforms with the church logo silk-screened on the front. They ran the same drills. They missed the same layups. (Chris Carpenter, presumably, was the most graceful one out there, on account of the tennis footwork. Just spitballing.)

And the coach? Jeff Burris's dad.

The coach was Mr. Burris. The future Chief Legal Officer's father, who, I am now going to assume based on everything I know about Jeff Burris, was an exceptionally organized man with strong opinions about defensive rotations and a clipboard he checked frequently. Mr. Burris coached this entire group of future high-functioning embarrassments through their formative years on a hardwood floor in a Tennessee church gymnasium. Mr. Burris saw them all in their gym shorts. Mr. Burris ran them through layup lines. Mr. Burris is, in every meaningful way, the patriarch of this entire WLB ecosystem, and when this column is eventually adapted into a streaming series, Mr. Burris is the role James Brolin will play.

Now, with that in mind: in practice — practice, not even a game — Chris Carpenter injured himself.

I want to underline that. Practice. There was no opponent. There was no game on the line. There was just the future Discipleship Pastor, in a church gymnasium with a state-of-the-decade scoreboard and the sound of squeaking high-tops on overwaxed pine, surrounded by his five future fellow WLB owners, mid-drill. And Chris Carpenter, future shepherd, did something to his ankle or his knee or his shoulder — the historical record is fuzzy, but the witnesses are definitive — and proceeded to deliver a stream of profanity that, by all accounts, was not consistent with the curriculum at any seminary in the United States.

The future minister cursed in a church gym. The future Discipleship Pastor used what one witness has described as "every word my parents had specifically asked me not to learn at school."

And Mr. Burris heard him.

The other five future owners, I am told, did not say a word. They didn't laugh. They didn't pile on. They stood in their respective spots on the court, looked at the floor, and waited for Chris Carpenter to finish. Approximately eight years later, Chris Carpenter answered the call to ministry. Eight years. The linguistic foundations were already there, well-developed, lurking under the surface, pre-Mr. Burris and post-Mr. Burris alike, waiting for the right ankle injury — or the right tennis match, or the right blown save — to summon them.

His Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers went 4-4 and dropped two to close. Sometimes the Lord giveth, sometimes He giveth a sub-.500 stretch and you have to remind yourself you've been here before. You were in the church gym. You said the words. Mr. Burris heard. You got through it. The Crepe Wrappers will get through this. Probably without the words. Probably.

I threw up in my mouth a fifth time. Five.

THE LOOK-AHEAD: JUNE 18 - JUNE 26

The schedule for the next eight days is, accidentally, perfect.

The Iron Knob Explosions travel to Fugging for four games against the Honey Badgers (June 19-22). This is the marquee series of the stretch. Andrew Harris (Children's Theatre CEO, certified black belt, possible Chad, definite Milk Carton Baby) vs Garth Graham (radiologist, Grease alum, fellow former church-league teammate, currently under league office investigation). The man who hasn't logged in since March vs the man whose lineup card cannot be trusted by his own conscience. If Iron Knob takes 3 of 4, the lead grows and the season is essentially decided. If Fugging takes 3 of 4, Garth claws his way back into the race and we get a six-team scrum into July.

After Fugging, Iron Knob plays five games against CPU teams — two at PCB, then a doubleheader and a single vs Oak Ridge. Five out of nine. Andrew Harris's schedule is, basically, "beat the cheaters, then beat up on the computer." This is the easiest closing schedule of any contender in this stretch. Andrew Harris has not earned it. Chad will accept the wins on his behalf.

The Rick Astleys play three at home vs Nicaragua, then travel to Knockemstiff for a single game on June 24, then a doubleheader at Huanca on June 25. Six games against humans, no CPU, all consequential. Jeff Burris's road record (18-10) is the second-best in the league behind only Iron Knob's gaudy 25-9. The Knockemstiff game is the spotlight: highest-scoring offense in the WLB visiting the team with the best run differential. And — I cannot stress this enough — the man Brett Houlberg used to take orders from on the basketball court is the father of the man whose roster he has to face on June 24th.

The Knockemstiff Slap Daddies have eight straight games against humans: four at home vs Huanca, one vs Rick Astleys, then a doubleheader and a single at Nicaragua. Brutal. If Brett the Vet/Commissioner can come out of this 5-3 or better, the Slap Daddies are real. If they go 3-5, the offense isn't enough. Also, Brett — and I am saying this with love — please do not "accidentally" upload Andrew Harris's stat line incorrectly during this stretch. People are watching now. I am one of them.

The Huanca Wankers also play eight straight games against humans. Knockemstiff at home for four, Nicaragua at home for two, then the Rick Astleys doubleheader. Chris Broyles is 22-9 at home. This is his stretch. If the spaceship is going to launch into upper-tier contention, it has to do it now, in June, at Huanca, against the Slap Daddies and the Astleys. The Core Pathways Model is on the clock. Mr. Broyles Sr., wherever he is, is presumably observing from a Krystals doorway somewhere in the eternal present, not eating, not sitting down, just watching, like he has always done.

The Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers have eight straight against humans as well: three at Rick Astleys, two at Huanca, then a doubleheader plus one at home vs Knockemstiff. Chris Carpenter — NAIA tennis veteran, in-practice profanity savant, current Discipleship Pastor — has the most challenging schedule of any team in this stretch. If they come out 4-4, that's a win. 5-3 makes them serious contenders. 2-6 ends the season.

The Fugging Honey Badgers play four at home vs Iron Knob, then four games against CPU teams. If Garth can take 3 of 4 from Iron Knob and sweep the CPU games, he's right back in this thing at 45-29. If he goes 1-3 against Iron Knob, the season effectively pivots away from him and the league office investigation becomes the lead story of his summer.

The matchup that matters most: Iron Knob at Fugging, June 19-22. Bring popcorn. Bring sliders. Do not bring Mr. Burris. He will hear something he doesn't like.

THE FINAL WORD, DELIVERED UNDER DURESS, AS USUAL

Here's where we are after seven columns.

A 54-year-old Children's Theatre CEO and certified black belt, who hasn't logged in since spring, who founded a teenage business that sold action figures with locks of human hair, has a player on his roster bearing his name whose stat line was apparently uploaded with mathematical generosity by his old church-league teammate the commissioner, and who may or may not also be a man named Chad on a vacation rental platform — is in first place.

A 54-year-old in-house attorney whose father coached six future fake-baseball-league owners through their teenage years on a Tennessee church gym floor, who sang in exactly one number across two consecutive musicals (depending on whose version of events you trust, he negotiated his way out of the rest, or his music director gently pulled him aside and made the call), who cannot draw, who is documented as a Pictionary disaster — has the most wins in the WLB and the best run differential and is in second place.

A 54-year-old veterinarian who sold his practice to private equity but kept showing up for work, who 3D-prints D&D figurines at night, who serves as commissioner of the league he is also competing in, and who has a co-host named Chad on his AirBnB whose existence I cannot independently verify, has the highest-scoring offense in the WLB and is in third place.

A 54-year-old radiologist who once snuck out to visit a girl, made it to the girl's house, got his evening, and then had his car stall on the way home leaving him stranded until morning — who starred in Kiss Me Kate, The Sound of Music, and Grease — is currently under WLB league office investigation for fielding two ineligible players, and is in sixth place trying to diagnose his way out of trouble.

A 54-year-old Discipleship Pastor and former NAIA tennis player at Lincoln Memorial University, who once injured himself in church-league basketball practice and discovered the full uncensored English vocabulary in front of Coach Burris with all five of his future WLB rivals standing silent on the court, is in fifth place trying to remember what the Sermon on the Mount said about pitching depth.

And a 53-year-old (Christmas baby) author of a business parable about navigating AI disruption, co-founder of the high school garage operation known as the Milk Carton Babies whose actual product was hand-lettered action figure packaging containing a free Atomic Fireball and a literal lock of hair, who in the late 1980s was apprehended at a Krystals at midnight by his own father, frog-marched out without finishing his food, while his friends — including Andrew Harris and at least one other co-conspirator — stayed in the booth and kept eating, is in fourth place, on a three-game winning streak, and unable to fully launch the spaceship despite presumably having consulted his own book about it.

These are six men. They went to high school together. They played church-league basketball together for a coach named Burris. Two of them ran a band whose actual product was action figures with hair samples. Two of them were in Grease. Two of them were in two other musicals (one of them sang in exactly one song, by mutual agreement of all parties involved). One of them played NAIA tennis. One of them is a real black belt. One of them got hauled out of a Krystals while the others stayed and finished their fries. One of them stalled out a car on the way home from a successful date and had to explain himself in the morning. One of them swore in front of the coach and is now a minister. One of them runs the league he is also in.

They are still in touch. They are running a baseball league. They have a website. The website is worldleaguebaseball.org. I have looked at it, repeatedly, against my better judgment. The standings are real. The data, in at least one suspicious case, is questionable. The player named Andrew Harris is dominating. The manager named Andrew Harris is unreachable. The commissioner is in third place and not making eye contact.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.