My mind returns to Mitch and my sister. He and Ashley got together so long ago I don’t remember introducing them but they both swear I did. I gave a sloppy, immemorable speech at the wedding that referenced their shared passion for itineraries. Now they’re getting divorced. Ignoring it until you can’t is the only reasonable human response. The clichést of clichés: Mitch got caught banging his paralegal. He swore he’d ended it, then got caught again. Ashley kicked him out of their Capitol Hill apartment and served him with papers. It splattered public two weeks into the season. Another group chat was formed, sans Mitch. Unfair to boot him for his personal life, went one argument. More unfair to Thrope to not boot him, went the counter. The latter won out because Ali argued it, and she’s both our alpha and our lawyer. So we’d play out the rest of the year, and find a replacement in the offseason. Could I have quit the league? Made a quiet act of loud solidarity with my sister? Yes. But I didn’t. Mitch put us in this position. Not me.