1-0
BY DAN VALENTI
PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY
(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY APRIL 22, 2026) — While THE PLANET waits along with everyone else to see how the rapidly evolving situation with Iran turns out, we offer this change of pace.
Baseball.
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MEET DAN VALENTI @ BARNES & NOBLE PITTSFIELD 2 p.m. SAT., APRIL 25 BOOK SIGNING OF DAN’S NEW BOOK, SANITY MADE SIMPLE
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There’s something captivating by both the line score and the contest itself about a 1-0 ballgame, let alone one that goes extra innings won by the home team in walk-off fashion.
You see, I’m a baseball outlier, preferring runs being at a premium, with great pitching and good defense. You can keep the bombastic bombing that today’s free-swinging sluggers produce with their 110 mph, 470-foot fusillades, that is, when they’re not striking out. Who cares?
Give me a 2-1 thriller, and I’m going home happy in under 130 minutes. Even better? The 1-0 affair, where every pitch might literally mean the game and the crisp, bell-like tension increases with every pitch. You can’t get that in a 12-10 blaster, with more canon shots than the Rebs’ attack on Fort Sumpter.
A 1-0 score is baseball perfection, Don Larsen notwithstanding.
The visiting Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox played such a contest on April 17, 2026 at legendary Fenway Park. It was enough to revive the love for baseball in the heart of a long-time adherent turned off by the tsunami of money and rule-tinkering characteristic of the “National Pastime” as it’s played today.
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STOPY BY & MEET DAN VALENTI @ BARNES & NOBLE PITTSFIELD 2 p.m. SAT., APRIL 25 BOOK SIGNING OF DAN’S NEW BOOK, SANITY MADE SIMPLE
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For THE PLANET, the string of zeros representing of a 1-0 game hits perfection in the line score:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
DETROIT — 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BOSTON — 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
This looks harmonious. This looks clean, with no crooked numbers from rally inflation. That the run scored in the last at-bat seems the fitting coda. If you look at that line score, you see two strings of nine zeroes reflecting each other, like matched dueling pistols or the way a line of evergreen trees mirror themselves in the stillness of a mountain pond. Only in the 10th inning does Burr kill Hamilton or a stone thrown in the pond wipe out the equilibrium. The winning blow came as pinch hitter Masataka Yoshida bounced a single over the pulled in second baseman, scoring Jarren Duran from second base.
We got to wondering: How many 1-0 games have the Sox played in their 123-year history.
Turns out that the Red Sox have played 441 games all-time ending in a 1-0 score (216 wins, 225 losses … last loss: 3/29/24 at Seattle … last loss at home: 9/23/23 vs. Pope Leo’s White Sox).
Of those games, 180 have been at home (103-77 record), including 157 at Fenway Park (91-66 record).
Some 48 of the total 1-0 games in franchise history have gone into extra innings (24-24 record) … They are 19-7 in extra-inning home games ending in a 1-0 score, including 16-7 at Fenway Park.
Diving deeper, we can get a sense of the rarity of the 1-0 score. From Opening Day in 1901 until the April 17 game, the Red Sox played 19,399 games with a winning percentage of .517 (10,052-9,347). With the 441 1-0 contests, we find 1-0 games account for 2/10 of one percent of the team’s games.
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STOPY BY & MEET DAN VALENTI @ BARNES & NOBLE PITTSFIELD 2 p.m. SAT., APRIL 25 BOOK SIGNING OF DAN’S NEW BOOK, SANITY MADE SIMPLE
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THE PLANET finds one and zero the most profound of digits. Consider, for example, the mathematical conundrum of 1 divided by 0. It has vexed algebra students, mathematicians, and philosophers for millennia, possessing strange properties and a quotient of “undefined.”
Then there’s the AI tsunami, which threatens to take the analog world into the wormhole. Once you get down to the digital substrate, you find that all the HAL 900s and high-tech systems, including its monsters, exist only as bizarre sequences of ones and zeroes. Bits, the techies named them. “Buts,” I would prefer, as in the coordinating conjunction, indicating a transitional pivot point …
… back into the 1-0 baseball game.
There’s the great joke of the English cricket player in America, witnessing his first baseball game. He knows as much about baseball as the typical American knows about cricket. He has just seen a 1-0 affair, with the run coming in the top of the first.
After the contest ends, his host and companion asks him what he thinks of the game. Alastair replies, “Jolly good, that, but one thing puzzles me.”
“What’s that?” His friend asks.
“The final score: One hundred million to naught. How on earth did they score all those runs?
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“Nothing is as hopeful as the bottom of the ninth” — Sir Donald Turpentine, Knight of the Bath.
“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”
LOVE TO ALL.
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ONE Pittsfield One BIG beer belly One Voltron One Dumpster One BIG budget soon….
Yes, and zero accountability, zero oversight, zero regard for citizen-taxpayers and small businesses.
Mayor ZERO !
Who would you trust the least?
Bill Clinton with a White House Intern in her 20’s?
PAC Man Richie Neal on K Street?
Nuciforo with BIG insurance companies?
Earl and the 2-Pete’s Pittsfield politics managing our taxpayer dollars?
Kufflinks cooked books nowhere near a FORENSIC Audit?
“Jon Melle the have-NOT” paying off Pittsfield’s BIG municipal debts plus unfunded liabilities that are said to be close to $1 billion?
Bill Gates babysitting your teenage daughter?
Lazy Boy Lover J.D. Vance sitting unsupervised on your couch?
He wears the same sports coat no tie has to stink?
The Big Beer Belly and his Smelly Suit. Look at Dan in his Tux. Make Beer Belly look like a third hand prom date.
Game 6 of the 1975 WS was one of those times that brings to mind of what you are getting at. Although the Red Sox ended up losing to the Reds in game 7, it was that moment in game 6 with Carbo’s hr. that made it the best times of the games played.
One writer said of that Series, it was the first time a team won 3 games to four.
I agree with Planet.Best close game series and it seems Planet loves pitching and,playoffs type baseball was Bumgardner back to back pitching expertise excellence in the San Francisco winning the World Series . Dan,last years Toronto L A was a great game all time an inch cost Toronto the Series.
Favorite Red Sox minor players were Chris Coletta Jim Russian Bill Lee and the great Fred Wenz. Hung out. With all three.
Dan & I both witnessed Coletta muff a simple fly out to left. Whoops, nice catch, Chris!
Great recall, JERRY!
Coletta was a good ballplayer. I thought he would join Scott, Smith, Waslewski, and other others who made the jump to the Red Sox. Not to be. He did, though, get into 1 ballgames with the Angels in 1972. He went 9-for-30, .300 with 7 RBIs. That was his only Big League action. But at least he can boost he was a lifetime .300 hitter in the Majors. He was bow-legged, reminding me of Frank Malzone. Good speed. He’ll be 82 on Aug. 2. I think he lives in Brooklyn.
Russin not Russian.
Yup, the big first baseman, Jim. Russin, Lehrer, Montreuil, Scott in the infield.
,y favorite baseball recollection was Brooks Robinson making two infield errors in one inning at Fenway in the seventies. Had box seats for a week Orioles were in at the time. Slept at the Somerset hotel in Boston.
Dan I was watching a meeting board in Pittsfield where it was zoomed. The city councilor was caressing his cat. Is that normal.Would you do it? I mean it is t v.
Nope. No cats at a council meeting. Not even a councilor who identified as a cat.
Now that the city, local media and its overlords are finally getting to tear down Waconah Park it might be a good time to read one of the major leagues premier pitchers, Jim Boutons, best seller, FOUL BALL.
In it he describes the dirty underbelly of Pittsfield politics back in the early 2000s…2000-2002. And the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” could never be more true.
The library may still have a copy or two if they have not been confiscated but do yourself a treat and find and read it. You will be glad you did.
Bouton and Chip been the resurrected ones. At least we had a name. Jim Bouton. Instead you have Lumpy.low throw the Pete’s dumpster, gold kong …
Foul Ball by Jim Bouton: Compare Prices on New & Used Copies | Alibris
Glad it was his cat rather than a Jeffery Toobin zoomed moment!
“You can observe a lot just by watching”.
In today’s age of high scoring MLB games, a 1-0 baseball game is a rarity. It seems today, it’s more like 10-8 games.
I do like an occasional pitchers dual, like a 1-0 game. But to have it all the time? No, thanks.
Give me a 1986, game 5 of the Red Sox vs. Angels, 7-6 game any day over a 1-0 game.
Donnie Moore later committed suicide because of this game and the HR he gave up to Dave Henderson.
Take a listen to Al Michaels on the call too.
7-6 nah. How about a nail biter all the way with an overworked pitching staff holding by a thread to keep runs from scoring. That’s what the planet is talking about. Buffoons.
You don’t know anything about politics let alone sports you two buffoons.
Read your last sentence a$$clown, aka-Meanwhile.
You post under so many different names, you forget you’re responding to YOUR OWN POST.
“….let alone sports you TWO BUFFOONS.”
It’s only my post and you answering yourself.
Get a hobby. TDS is truly debilitating. Ever considered getting medicated? If not, you should.
Dan, I’m wondering how many more Zero’s would have been recorded, if it wasn’t for the dreaded Ghost Runner. Way to ruin Baseball MLB.
Like anyone would what your talking about buffoon.
I’m making a comeback this June at city hall. Look Out Lumpy. Dina. Mopp Head Pete and DUMPSTER. I’ll will be accompanied by my lawyer every meeting.
Thanks for the warning.
He will be there and hells coming with him….Tombstone. Dan will have something to write about. No holds barred. Just watch.
Good thing he’s bringing a Lawyer, someone has to be coherent. Huge Cumback.
The charge isn’t whether Mathew Rutledge was allowed to have sex with a 16 17 year old, but rape. Two different items. Change what law? Age of consent? If it wasn’t consent then it’s rape.
As we have all been told minds are not evolved to an adult state until 26 so why should the government allow 16 year olds the ability to grant consent for sex? You can’t sign a legal document until 18! Why haven’t the Me Too crowd pushed for the age of consent to be raised?
Unappreciative bastard.
You never showed at clapp park. Coward. I was there. Might have got my ass kicked but I was there. Don’t ever make an appointment you can’t keep. I’m an old man.
I played ball on that diamond. I made the final out (a running catch in right-center of a line drive) when Union Federal won the BRL city crown in 1965, led by catcher Jimmy Whitfield. I have also watched countless games there.
Jimmy was a jr. in high school at that point.
Yup. Great athlete and a good friend.
Whitfield cool. Didn’t he play for Padres and Yankees.
If Lumpy,the two dumpsters Pete and Dumpy are allowed to invest taxpayer money into a facility that just isn’t feasible let alone environmentally sound then this should be put to a vote.
No referendums under this administration. Itsa proclamation. Can’t do it. Won’t do it. Taxpayers need to shut the hell up when it comes time to have their money spent.
Just Zip It Now!!!! Right now this minute!
Right. There’s no Kings in Bitchfield, but there are plenty of Queens.
The true “Kings” are the scared spineless selected leaders in Pittsfield and across all of MASS! Have you ever seen a 50/50 vote?? Votes always seems to be 11-0 and they never listen to the citizens. To think if they used the ARPA money for the water plant our taxes would not be going up $500!!
Zero and Ghost Runner? Are you high? Seriously.
Sorry I confused you. Really wasn’t that difficult.
Youre a ghost writer along with Pat fritz oh really us ,Joe. And all the rest. I give my name and appear in real time when I address the buffoons in this city. And admit it pubs are done Trump wartime prez..
One big gut for mayor and what do you get? a hire like kufflinks and deeper in debt, you owe your soul to the company foal (sochol) the taxpayer makes up the rest of the toll.
You got a D P W head who don’t know his head, everything he touches becomes a bundled up mess,you ow your soul to the company foal,the taxpayer pays and we’re deeper in debt.
Great song
The people I know all agree Trump is full of shit on this war he has us into. I give myself 24 thumbs up.
Trump says war can last many more weeks. He doesn’t want to rush himself. What a buffoon.
Here’s the fucking warning you give Iran. Stop the nonsense yesterday or we will nuke your ass. One week to make the final decision.