A pitcher’s earned-run average is calculated by multiplying the total number of earned runs allowed by nine, then dividing by the total number of innings pitched.

Tommy Cronk could calculate an ERA when he was 4 years old.

“He’s a math genius,” Tommy’s sister Natalie says. “We knew that he was well beyond any of us in math.“

I learned this first-hand in the late 1970s while sitting at the top of our driveway on a cul-de-sac in La Mesa. Each afternoon I would fold copies of The Tribune before delivering around the neighborhood. Tommy, the youngest of 12 siblings, lived three houses down. He frequently wandered over to sit and talk.

The conversation, inevitably, centered around the Padres. The team wasn’t very good, of course, but that didn’t matter.

You don’t think about it in the mome

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