The Simulation Won't Let Me Go

I had a plan. The plan was to watch actual basketball, write about actual basketball, and never again type the words "Iron Knob" in a professional context. The plan was good. The plan was just. The plan lasted eleven days.

Then my editor called and said the WLB piece was their highest-engaged content of the quarter, and I threw up in my mouth a little. Not metaphorically. I had to excuse myself from my own home office, which I own, where I am the only employee. That's where we are.

Fine. Let's look at the standings. Let's do this again.

The Current State of the Disaster

The Rick Astleys sit at 23-11, which means Jeff Burris, attorney at law, has the best record in the league and is still somehow the most anxious person in any given room. This is what lawyers do. They win, and then they immediately begin drafting the appeal of the win. Jeff has the most wins in the league and he's probably awake right now at 2 AM reviewing pitch sequencing data and billing himself for the emotional distress.

The Huanca Wankers and Fugging Honey Badgers are tied at 21-10, locked in what I can only describe as a deeply personal conflict between a man who named his team after what sounds like a regional British vulgarity and a radiologist who has weaponized his understanding of human anatomy into a scoreboard advantage.

The Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers are 18-12. A minister named them this. I need to say that again for myself. A minister. A man of God. A person whose professional calling involves words like "grace" and "covenant" and "eternal salvation" looked at a blank text field and typed "Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers." I threw up in my mouth again. I am running out of mouth.

The Iron Knob Explosions are 17-11. The Knockemstiff Slap Daddys are 17-13. Both teams will be discussed. I am already tired.

Jeff Burris, Esq., and the Eternal Billing Cycle

Since my last column, the Astleys have continued to operate exactly like a law firm: they bill a lot of hours, they occasionally win something spectacular, and they find new and creative ways to snatch existential dread from the jaws of comfort.

Jeff Burris is 23-11. He is leading the league. He looks like he's aged four years this month.

Dr. Garth Prinsloo Graham, Radiologist, and the Images He Reads

Let me be precise here, because precision matters in medicine and apparently also in simulated baseball: Garth Graham is not a regular doctor. He's a radiologist. He doesn't see patients in the traditional sense. He reads images. He looks at scans and finds things hiding inside other things.

Which makes complete sense when you watch him manage the Honey Badgers, because he is doing exactly that with this roster. He found Kelly. He found Kelly before anyone else noticed Kelly, and Kelly has been lurking in this lineup like a lesion that only a trained eye would catch — three home runs, sneaky stolen bases, the kind of player who shows up on your scan and you think "hm, that shouldn't be there, but also it seems to be working in our favor."

The Honey Badgers lead the league in runs scored. Of course they do. Garth Graham looked at his roster with a radiologist's cold, diagnostic eye, found exactly what was hiding in there, and prescribed himself a winning season. Somewhere a patient is waiting for their imaging results and Dr. Graham is checking his lineup card. The patient is probably fine. Probably.

Andrew Harris, Youth Theater CEO, and the Children Who Believe

The Iron Knob Explosions are 17-11 and I looked up what a youth theater CEO actually does and I think it involves writing grant proposals, teaching twelve-year-olds stage presence, and explaining to parents why their child was cast as "Third Tree" in the spring production.

Andrew Harris has somehow transferred all of this energy into a simulated baseball team. The Explosions lost 7-6 to the Crepe Wrappers on 5/5 in a game that featured a genuine ninth-inning comeback — Strawberry hit a three-run homer to make it 7-6 with nobody out — and then they ran out of batters. I can picture Andrew Harris watching this happen with the specific expression of a man who just watched his star pupil nail the big monologue and then forget to exit the stage. You had it. You had it right there.

The team is 17-11, which means despite the chaos and the ninth-inning collapses and the fact that the words "Iron Knob Explosions" exist in a sentence I wrote with my hands, Andrew Harris is still in the playoff picture. The kids believe in him. The algorithm believes in him. I remain skeptical.

Chris Carpenter, Minister, Man of God, Crepe Wrapper

Here's what I know about the Reverend Chris Carpenter: he is 18-12, his team is on a genuine roll, and he named his team the Nicaragua Crepe Wrappers. I have tried to find the theological underpinning for this decision and I cannot find one. I've checked scripture. I've consulted commentaries. There is nothing in any major religious tradition that connects Central American geography to thin French pancakes.

The Crepe Wrappers beat the Explosions 7-6 on 5/5 in the most dramatic game of the recent slate, a nine-inning slugfest where Dawson hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the eighth, Puckett tripled in two in the ninth, and Olson came in with a 7-6 lead and two men on and got the final out. I'm not saying God intervened. I'm saying that when you're a minister managing a simulation and your team needs one out to win and somehow gets it, you'd be forgiven for whispering "thank you" at your laptop screen.

He also has a player on his team named Carpenter, which the simulation apparently inserted with full knowledge of the irony. Chris Carpenter's team has a player named Carpenter. The minister built himself into his own roster. I threw up in my mouth a third time. I am basically empty.

Brett Houlberg, DVM, aka Brett the Vet

Brett Houlberg is a veterinarian who owns the Knockemstiff Slap Daddys, which means he spends his days healing animals and his nights slapping daddys. There is something specifically unhinged about a man who probably has a "Hang in There" cat poster in his exam room who also decided his sports franchise should be called the Knockemstiff Slap Daddys.

The Slap Daddys are 17-13 and they play exactly like you'd expect a team owned by a vet to play: they keep things alive a little longer than you expect, they have occasional moments of genuine brilliance, and then something weird happens in the late innings. This roster is the baseball equivalent of a dog that has clearly been trained but still eats the couch sometimes. Brett the Vet built this team and he cannot fully explain what it's doing. Neither can I. That's the Knockemstiff Slap Daddys experience.

Chris Broyles, Owner of the Huanca Wankers, Author, Transformation Visionary, 21-10

Chris Broyles "creates strategic visual communications for high-stakes moments." He does litigation graphics that win verdicts. He does marketing messages that resonate. He does transformation narratives that drive change. He creates, and I am quoting this verbatim, "strategic visual communications for high-stakes moments."

Chris Broyles then named his team the Huanca Wankers. This is a man who makes his living communicating things — strategically, visually, at the highest possible stakes — and the message he chose to send to the World League of Baseball was "Huanca Wankers." I would pay significant money to see the brand deck. "Our core visual language: disruptive. Our transformation narrative: we are the Wankers, and we are 21-10 about it."

Chris also wrote a book. It's called Can't Stop the Spaceship, and it's about navigating change in the age of AI. There's a crew. The crew is on a spaceship called Horizon One. The AI-driven mission causes everything the crew thought they knew to unravel. There is something called the Core Pathways Model, which provides "the mindset and strategies to turn uncertainty into opportunity."

Chris Broyles wrote a book about a spaceship that you can't stop, and then named his baseball team after a word his British friends use casually and his American friends cannot say at dinner, and then proceeded to go 21-10 in a fake baseball league while Robin Yount hits .353 for him. The man contains multitudes.

David Cone has a 1.73 ERA. He pitched a complete-game shutout against the Hurricanes on 5/5, allowing five hits and striking out five, and the Wankers won 7-0. The Wankers swept the CPU Hurricanes back-to-back, winning 5-2 and 7-0. The Core Pathways Model says to turn uncertainty into opportunity. Robin Yount just hit another single into right-center. The spaceship cannot be stopped.

A Note on What This Is

I've now written three columns about a simulated baseball league run by a lawyer, a radiologist, a minister, a youth theater CEO, a veterinarian, and a man who wrote a book about a spaceship that cannot be stopped and named his team after a British vulgarity.

The Oak Ridge Nukes are 4-28. The PC Beach Hurricanes are 2-28. Nobody manages them. They play into the void, losing night after night, uncoached and forgotten, and I respect them for that in a way I cannot fully articulate. They are the only participants in this enterprise who have been honest about what it is.

Meanwhile, Reverend Carpenter is somewhere between Sunday services and a lineup decision, asking the Lord what Puckett's platoon splits look like against right-handed pitching. Brett the Vet is between appointments wondering if he should have pulled Perez earlier. Chris Broyles is creating a strategic visual communication about his run differential. And Andrew Harris is telling a thirteen-year-old they really found something in that second act while watching a ninth-inning meltdown on his other screen.

I don't know what any of this means. My editors are thrilled. The simulation keeps simulating. Somewhere in a server rack, Robin Yount just lined another single to right-center and Chris Broyles cannot stop the spaceship.

I'm going to go stare at a wall until the real MLB makes sense again.

Next week: I will apparently be covering the WLB trade deadline, at which point I expect to leave my physical body entirely and request reassignment to literally any other beat.