Sorry to be a tad off-topic here, but technically ANYTHING is a "metaphor" for life. To assume baseball is the sole ownership of that is well...naive. Sorry, but those of us who don't live in the Northeast can be a little blase' about baseball.

Just small things like that bug me.
(I'm more a soccer/realfootball aficionado)

(OK, it's also a cool feeling when Mustang League teams ask for you to work their games, because they think you do a cool Elvis impression when you call strikes).

You, my dear umpire, should know that you should never ever be bigger than what's going on in the game or be a distraction from it!

;-)

Relax, I tease! I'd give my left one NOT to have parents ump our games like we do at the Majors level (11-12) where I coach. (Example: "That was awfully close, son. Swing next time.") Ugh.

On the subject now: "Stepping up to the plate" has always meant to me that when, as a batter or even pitcher, you took charge and took responsibility for carrying the team, or became the catalyst that gets the team going. You take the burden of all upon your shoulders. Like "somebody's gotta do this, might as well be me." Be a man (or woman), be a leader.

It's especially telling to tell this to players whose parents are predominantly liberals. They look at you like "What do you mean, be a leader? How can I do that without taking into consideration the diversity of my teammates? Shouldn't everyone lead equally?" You can see it their eyes on the first day of practice.

In the 6 years I've been coaching I've had 4 kids that I can think of who instinctively knew what "stepping up to the plate" meant. And did it.

Great post. And, you're correct about the baseball and life connection. It's real.

Next up: THE BUCK STOPS HERE?

3rdWaveDave,
Easy. Back in the day, when playing poker, they would pass the deck from player to player, each dealing the hand in turn. To reduce the chance of cheating. They used knives as the marker to denote who had the next deal. The knives used buck horn handles more often than not. The markers were thus called bucks. Anyway, after each hand, the buck and the deck were passed to the next player at the table.

Eventually, silver dollars were used as knives were not fit for more polite surroundings. They too became known as bucks.

I would offer a sightly different notion of this metaphor. To me, it is not necessarily "taking the chance you'll get hurt for a small reward, doing the hard job because it's necessary."

It's knowing what the job to be done is, recognizing the difficulty of it, and taking it on regardless of what the consequences are. There may or may not be a risk of getting hurt, the reward may or may not be large or small -- those are not the considerations that inform the decision to act. The decision to act is simply knowing what has to be done and being willing to do it.

Pulling it of is just a consequence, not a motivation.

As always...DJ, your intellect is phenomenal.

Thank you.

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SCSIwuzzy--Good job on the explanation. Few people know this and often think it has something to do with money--a dollar.

Also, the saying--The Buck Stops Here--denotes "responsibility".

I retired from the gaming industry about 4 yrs ago and, btw, the "buck" of today is called a "dealer button".

,,,the "buck" of today is called a "dealer button"

And bless the donks who don't understand its power. ;-)

It's an even better metaphor than that, DJ. Baseball's balance between individual effort and team coordination is a nice fit to American society. Most of any man's life is about individual effort and achievement, but the loose, largely informal coordination among our individual selves, our "little platoons," and our larger social systems and structures forges a "team" whose achievements are incomparably greater than the sum of their parts.

If baseball is a metaphor for life, is the designated hitter a metaphor for outsourcing?

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