Don't Get Greedy

You hear it said all the time about baseball: every time you go to the ballpark, you have a chance to see something you've never seen before - maybe something no one has ever seen before. Well it would seem that for wiffle, too, that is a truism. For today, seven players and one professional photographer were witness to some serious offense.

Extraordinary offense.

Historic offense.

It all began with Eric Zamonski leaving the ranks of the "zeros." That is, Eric surrendered 2 first inning runs to the home-standing Han-Soo, Kim, Laura Hume (making her season debut) and Stats.

The two runs stood as the lead until the fourth inning when Laura took her turn on the mound. This inning did not go well for Professor Hume - seven consecutive hits by da Commish, Eric, and the Artist (making his gleeful return to the asphalt after the fine Bar Mitzvah for his son, Tobias) to start the inning.  Things started to turn however as Laura induced a fly ball and a frankly spectacular ground out (which involved a somersault!).  Now with 2 out, bases loaded and four runs in, Hume was an out away from escaping with her team only trailing by two.  And she induced the pop-up she needed!

Stats, playing short for just this situation, dropped it. Here's the photographic proof:

And the flood gates openeth. (Photo: Brian Kollig)

The visitors then mounted a two-out rally for the ages. The next 13 batters would stroke hits, including three home runs, two of which were grand slams.  There were other dropped fly balls, too, and when the home team finally was able to return to the folding chairs, the score was 20 to 2.

Ice and Advil, Laura. Ice and Advil.

After the game, members of the winning team described their batting approach to Laura's pitching. They followed the mantra, "Don't get greedy." Truly a sensible approach for any at-bat as it means, "Don't over swing; just put the ball in play." And it was executed to near perfection as 8 of the first 9 hits were singles. Then later in the barrage they began to feel that they had perhaps .. scored enough. And they indicate that they thereupon switched to a different approach. They switched to, "Just swing for the fences."

The logic here, as explained to me post-game was that swinging hard was more likely to result in K's, pop ups or fly outs.

Yes. Or home runs. (Homers accounted for 11 of the last 14 runs scored in the inning.)

Now, da Commish and the Artist: these are two amongst the very founders of Oakwood Whiffle and Ale, and I am in no position to question their wiffie wisdom. But if we're seeing, perhaps, the nascent formation of an unwritten rule of wiffle, I feel it is on me as the league statistician to point out that the empirical evidence would seem to suggest that "Just swing for the fences" does not prevent a team from running up the score.

The sun shone bright on the visiting team today (photo: Eric Zamonski)

Eric, Glen, Peter - 20
Han-Soo, Kim, Laura, Matt - 2

W: Berwald
L: Hume