October 10 – 10 run 1st inning?

10 run 1st inning?
grand slam in the 10th? You choose …
zugzwang at the park!

Atlanta fans for once did not wake to the news that, once again, their team did not go down in flames. (Just what did Sherman start here?)

Because the Braves played at 4:30PM and it was all over by 5PM and Atlanta fans went to bed knowing what had happened to yet another pretty good baseball team.

Later that night, the Los Angeles Dodgers lost in the 10th inning on a grand slam home run.

10 runs in the first inning or a grand slam in the 10th.

Nice symmetry of the number 10 and it is October 10th today.

This was also the 10th consecutive playoff series loss for the Braves.

Recently I have been made aware of the chess term, zugzwang.

A situation in which the obligation to make a move in one’s turn is a serious, often decisive, disadvantage.

In other words, you have to make a move but all moves are bad and most likely make the situation worse.

So many times in life fit in with zugzwang.

Almost of all sports is.

Tony La Russa once said, “There isn’t much I can do to win a ball game but there are a lot of things I can do to lose a ballgame.”

Or as one writer put it (it may have been Roger Angell), “Go to a bullpen filled with convicted arsonists?”

Zugzwang.

So to the original question.

10 runs in the 1st?

4 runs in the 10th?

Both win or go home games.

Would you rather have it be over almost before it started?

Or snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Give up 10 runs in the 1st?

Are you kidding?

On five hits?

Is that even possible?

Who does that?

Who can do that?

Well, besides any Atlanta team.

My Dad often said he liked his team to get a big lead and steadily pull away.

Or a grand slam in the 10th after being up 3 to 1 earlier in the game.

That seems to have happened more often.

The 10 runs in the 1st was a new record.

A record one team wants no part of.

That’s what nightmares are made of.

A grand slam in the 10th.

That’s what dreams are made of.