Balls in the Dirt

POSTED BY JHW22

I am NOT a baseball fan AT ALL. But one day I was listening to NPR and had no other choice than to listen. Normally, I like to listen to NPR but this day, they were playing an interview with a baseball player. Ugh. B.O.R.I.N.G. But as I listened, it was anything but boring. It was fascinating and I learned a lot. I like strategy. I enjoy analysis. And this interview was a former catcher, Brad Ausmus, explaining his job from an analytical perspective. In that moment I felt I could like baseball as long as I didn't have to watch it.

And as the interview went on, the catcher said something about balls in the dirt that gave me what Oprah would call, "An a-ha moment". This discussion of balls in the dirt became THE analogy for how I view President Obama. So, I never thought I'd ever make a baseball/politics analogy, but read this, think about it and understand that with all the cries for Obama to "grow a pair", he has a big ol' pair and he knows how to control them.

DAVIES: Now, you mentioned balls in the dirt. They're a terrific weapon for your pitcher, I mean to get a batter lunging at a ball that's dropping out of the strike zone. And so you get a lot of ground balls and a lot of strikes that way, and that's good for your team. But there's also the risk that that ball can get past you, the catcher, and a base runner can advance.

You were known for being good at stopping balls in the dirt. Any particular tricks you used?

Mr. AUSMUS: There's nothing - no trick to it. And really the important thing about keeping balls in front of you - this is how I often explain it. If I was a basketball player, and somebody took a jump shot, and I swatted the ball into the stands, blocking a shot, everyone might ooh and ahh, but the truth of the matter is, is that team gets the ball back because it went out of bounds. So it doesn't do us any good.

That is very similar to catching. You can't just block the ball, you have to control the ball, because if you block it and it ricochets more than five feet away from you, the runner's going to advance anyway, and it hasn't done you any good.

So my whole theory on blocking was controlling the ball, kind of catching the ball with my chest protector and keeping it close to me, because if it went too far, we're in a worse predicament.

Now, did you see the analogy within the analogy? The catcher made a reference to basketball. He said:

If I was a basketball player, and somebody took a jump shot, and I swatted the ball into the stands, blocking a shot, everyone might ooh and ahh, but the truth of the matter is, is that team gets the ball back because it went out of bounds. So it doesn't do us any good.

President Obama is a smart player. But because he doesn't perform the dramatic, spectacular, ahhh-inducing, crowd-to-their-feet plays on a regular basis, he's called weak and naive.

On the contrary. This President controls the ball to save the play. And THAT is why I support this President and humble myself (which is a hard thing to do) by reminding myself that this stay-at-home mom who likes to blog and Tweet about politics, doesn't know shit about baseball, basketball or politics when compared to the great Barack Obama.