About 25 years ago, I played in a co-ed softball league in Juneau. That was before a broken leg and broken finger. Aging is good for wine, cheese and classic cars, but not so good for softball players.

I played on a team mostly of lawyers, which might tell you where this column is headed.

There was a particularly close play at second base. My aging memory recalls that our team was in the field and the ump called the other team’s runner safe. One of my teammates, who happened to excel at being argumentative in court and on the field, shouted out a statement toward the ump, more of a question actually: “What a**hole made that call?”

The ump, or “blue,” as they are known, took offense at the question. He asked my teammate: “Did you just call me an a**hole?”

Mr. Attorney, ever looking for a legal loophole, quickly responded: “I didn’t call you an a**hole. I just said whoever makes a call like that must be an a**hole.” Or words to that effect — there is no court transcript of the argument.

The ump didn’t accept the legal distinction that perhaps, in theory, my teammate was not calling him a name, merely expressing an opinion as to any ump who made such a call. The man in blue tossed the player out of the game. Unlike in court, there are no appeals.

I thought of that day on the ballfield when I read earlier this month that the Trump family’s real estate firm, the Trump Organization, had provided a similar answer to the question of whether the family was violating an ethics agreement pledge that it would not do business directly with foreign governments.

Before Trump moved back into the White House in January, the family business announced it would not enter into new contracts with foreign governments during his presidency. Making such deals could violate the U.S. Constitution, not to mention raising serious ethical concerns about profiting from elected office and putting personal financial gain ahead of foreign policy.

But there is always a way to adhere to pledges while avoiding the actual intent of the pledge.

According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the Trump Organization has publicly announced 12 international projects during the president’s first four months on the job, including residential high-rises, hotels and golf courses. The dozen are six times the number of deals the family business announced during Trump’s first term.

Despite the ethics pledge not to sign business deals with foreign governments, several of the dozen deals involve foreign governments, especially in the Middle East, the Journal reported.

This is where the baseball story comes into play.

There is a crucial distinction, the Trumps say. The family business is not signing deals directly with foreign governments. Instead, the billions of dollars in real estate deals — and even a $2 billion cryptocurrency investment — are joint ventures with companies that are doing business with foreign governments. The Trump Organization is part of those joint ventures.

Setting up a joint venture to evade an ethics agreement is as phony as claiming you did not call the ump an a**hole.