[Rails] What is the Ruby idiom for this?

I have a problem regarding an algorith, for a record I am looking for.
I can do it in straight sql statements, but I am certain there is a
Ruby "idion" for this (which, coming from another language, is the
hardest thing about this fantastic language, getting a handle on the
idiomsm the syntactic sugars).

Suppose I have a table with

channel_id int(11)
associate_id int(11)
battingorder int(11)

I have an id for an associate ('my_associate_id') and I want to
determine if my associate is in this table with a given channel_id (my
channel_id) and if not, to select the associate_id in this list whose
channel_id matches my_channel_id with the lowest batting order.

Doing this in a couple of sql statements is quite trivial -- but is
there a way to do it in a purely Ruby-like idiom?

Thanks, RVince

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