By Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square

How do you get yourself thrown out of a ballgame? The late Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel, who was ejected from 40 major league games, believed in persistence and obnoxiousness: “You just gotta argue with the umpire until he gets tired of listening to you.”

How do you get your state thrown out of the country? If Californians want independence from the United States, they should follow the strategy of Stengel, who made his home in Glendale.

Provoking Trump to eject us would be faster, cleaner, and more practical than secession. With California in immediate danger from the U.S. government, those advantages matter.

The White House is occupied by a self-described dictator who ignores law and shreds the Constitution. He is deporting our neighbors (even those here legally), withholding emergency aid, freezing funding, dismantling agencies, firing civil servants for disloyalty, punishing our economic partners, and ordering a dangerous flooding of the Central Valley.

No wonder polling shows more than 60% of Californians saying we’d be better off as our own country.

This column was published in newspapers across California. Read the whole column at the Ventura County Star.