Glossary
"Dead off the bag": Baseball analogy: Runner is dead/out before even leaving the bag and trying to reach the next base. Strategically and tactically, a futile move (only redeemable if viewed as a sacrificial effort allowing advance elsewhere).
"Stadium race": To those not familiar with a circular race in a stadium, at the beginning and for quite a while, it will look like those on the outside lanes are winning. However, in actuality, the initial positioning is to compensate the "outsiders" for not having the advantages of the shorter lanes for the "insiders." A long time ago, I remember my older son's basketball coach pulling out our best players when we were ahead, apparently not fully realizing that the other team was obviously much better than ours and temporarily short their best player. Despite the fact that our team played their hearts out, you could see their immense fury and frustration that our chance of victory was being sabotaged by our very own leader. Needless to say, we lost when the other team's best player came back in.
Copyright 2008-2009 - William J. Bahr