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The Stolen Credentials

The successful Season 11 run at the Hellmouth Cup by the Ft. Worth Piano Tuners is the thing that keeps E Division auditors awake at night. The Tuners’ path to the Cup began with a grotesque 3-way tiebreaker for the Wild Card. The wild card tiebreaker only occurs when there are more teams than wild card spots - usually 2 teams and 1 wild card spot. In this case, it was 3 teams: Ft. Worth Piano Tuners , Long Beach Flightless Birds , and Jersey OSHA Violations . According to the rules, the tiebreaker win goes to the team that scored the most points over the course of the season. But the point totals for Season 11 show a terrible mistake: the Flightless Birds, finishing the season with 7,069 points, lost the tiebreaker - and the Piano Tuners, finishing the season with 6,607 points, advanced to the Division Series.

Rank	Team	League	W-L	Points Scored	Points Allowed
1	Atlanta Glitter Sharks	Hot	31-18	7,544	5,802
2	Orlando Business Majors	Hot	31-18	7,006	6,396
3	Elko Astronauts	Cold	30-19	7,513	5,850
4	Baltimore Texas	Cold	29-20	7,531	6,271
5	Seattle Sneakers	Cold	25-24	6,754	6,396
6	Long Beach Flightless Birds	Cold	24-25	7,069	7,175
7	Alewife Arsonists	Hot	24-25	6,832	6,886
8	Sacramento Boot Lickers	Hot	24-25	6,804	6,757
9	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	Cold	24-25	6,607	6,586
10	Detroit Grape Chews	Hot	24-25	6,484	6,530
11	Jersey OSHA Violations	Cold	24-25	6,309	6,676
12	Delaware Corporate Shells	Hot	23-26	6,796	6,295
13	San Francisco Boat Shoes	Hot	21-28	5,843	7,323
14	San Diego Balloon Animals	Cold	20-29	6,088	7,436
15	Tucson Butchers	Cold	20-29	5,892	7,373
16	Milwaukee Flamingos	Hot	18-31	6,487	7,807

The Flightless Birds were understandably outraged, but tie breakers were not subject to review and the Commissioner's Office had nothing to say on the matter, leaving the Tuners to advance to the postseason on stolen credentials.

As word of the Piano Tuners' stolen postseason spot spread, their postseason run continued to attract scrutiny and criticism. In Game 1 of the Division Series against the #1 seeded Astronauts, the match went just 1,006 generations - only 6 generations more than the bare minimum mandated by the league. The Tuners established a microscopic, barely-stable tub pattern, the Astronauts were called on a technical foul before they could even launch their first spaceship, and the match was over before fans had even reached their seats.

When they defeated the Seattle Sneakers (3-1) and clinched the Cold League pennant, many expected a repeat of the Season 7 Cup series flameout. But when the Piano Tuners snuffed out the Alewife Arsonists (4-1) and clinched the Hellmouth Cup, the entire league was stunned. Somehow, a middle-of-the-pack team that never should have been in the postseason to begin with had turned a bug in the tiebreaker code into an improbable run for the Cup, defying the league's low expectations and low opinions of them, and humiliating the Commissioner and E Division in one fell swoop. The tiebreaker mistake that snowballed into a stolen Cup blew a hole in the notion of a benevolent Commissioner.