Pitchers can adjust their pitches based on the umpires’ first few calls. The campaigns of Democrat Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman sat through about 160 of the board’s rulings Tuesday before signaling that they’d be adjusting their piles of challenged ballots accordingly.

“I sure hope that if you’re adding them, you’re also subtracting them,” said Ramsey County District Judge Edward Cleary.

U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s attorney, Tony Trimble, told reporters after the Tuesday meeting, which kicked off four days of meetings by the board, that the campaign would return “200-some” to its ballot-challenge pile, but also would remove some others. “We’ve restored challenges … simply because the board has now indicated how they rule on several different types of marking,” Trimble said. “And with that, of course, we have to adjust.”

On Wednesday morning, the Canvassing Board’s proceedings took the air of a baseball game in which both sides were settling in. Democrat Al Franken’s 80 additional withdrawals were much in evidence as the board sped through ballots the campaign had challenged in Minneapolis, including many dispatched within seconds of a cry of “withdrawn” from the Franken bench.

“Thank you. It’s wonderful to get withdrawals,” Ritchie remarked Wednesday morning after Franken forces withdrew another ballot as it came up before the board.

It wasn’t clear how late additions and subtractions affected the combined number of challenged ballots the board must work through this week. “We’re still south of 1,000,” Trimble promised, in the geographic-numerical nomenclature the Coleman camp has adopted, despite subtle suggestions of the American South — Florida, to be specific.

UPDATE: The Norm Coleman camp says they’ll trim their ballot challenges to “somewhere south of 1,000.” 

With two unanimous votes going its way at the board’s Friday meeting but rival U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman petitioning the state Supreme Court for delay, the Franken campaign is eager to please the board and help things proceed according to plan. One hitch: Tit-for-tat mass withdrawals to bring the challenged-ballot count down from a combined high of 6,655 to a manageable number may be welcome and all, but even processing the withdrawals means extra work for dog-tired election officials.