A Linguistic Change of Pace?
How opposing starting pitchers Anibal Sanchez of the Atlanta Braves and Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs arrived at yesterday's start makes for interesting comparison. Darvish was courted by the Cubs with a six-year contract rarely given to free agents. Sanchez was scooped up by the Braves after being released by the Twins near the end of spring training. Darvish got his deal after establishing himself as one of baseball's most imposing strikeout artists. Sanchez is a savvy survivor.
That Sanchez was the one exhibiting mastery yesterday is what makes this a memorable event for this Atlanta fan. Narrating the action as it unfolded, one of the Braves' announcers said watching such subtlety flummoxed the planet's best hitters is similar to the pleasure weekend duffers get from watching PGA pros struggle in the sand trap. When an overanxious hitter swung comically early at Sanchez's 76 mph offering which arrived at the plate and two-thirds of the time he might have anticipated from a hard-throwing major league pitcher, Chip Carey divulged the advantage of being different. He said a major league hitter to whom he spoke admitted so many pitchers are throwing 96 and 97 miles per hour that, while this speed is respected, the change of pace is a real competitive advantage.
Most of us are more Sanchez than Darvish, even if our engagement with life's obstacles has more to do with linguistics and pitch location. Where our profession, our parenting, our positioning within a constellation of friendships involves persuasion, we reach back for word choices with the intensity of a blistering fastball. The verbal equivalent of a picture of 96 or 97 miles per hour may be both beyond our range and increasingly unexceptional. Even events between the white lines of the baseball diamond which could gently pull wordsmiths back toward subtlety can yield to the culture's insistence on life-and-death word choices. In the same telecast, Joe Simpson lamented that difficulty with the placement of his top hand PLAGUED Jason Heyward's swing. To follow after the pattern of C.S. Lewis's writing admonition, if we use the word PLAGUED to describe the relative struggles of a professional who is compensated handsomely, what have we got left to describe an actual plague, or events more analogous to it?
Accustom ourselves to choosing extreme words for relatively ordinary events, and we internalize a perpetual state of alarm. We, as a counselor once pointed out to me, account ourselves gentle if we use anything less than the high-pressure rhetoric that circulates within us to cajole somebody else. We respond to politicians who tell us that a particular trade agreement is the equivalent of rape, and we remain unengaged unless our leaders reach for the highest register, the equivalent of a 97 mile an hour fastball. Meanwhile, leaders who are the Anibal Sanchez of their particular sphere of influence work effectively but are not noticed.
That Sanchez was the one exhibiting mastery yesterday is what makes this a memorable event for this Atlanta fan. Narrating the action as it unfolded, one of the Braves' announcers said watching such subtlety flummoxed the planet's best hitters is similar to the pleasure weekend duffers get from watching PGA pros struggle in the sand trap. When an overanxious hitter swung comically early at Sanchez's 76 mph offering which arrived at the plate and two-thirds of the time he might have anticipated from a hard-throwing major league pitcher, Chip Carey divulged the advantage of being different. He said a major league hitter to whom he spoke admitted so many pitchers are throwing 96 and 97 miles per hour that, while this speed is respected, the change of pace is a real competitive advantage.
Most of us are more Sanchez than Darvish, even if our engagement with life's obstacles has more to do with linguistics and pitch location. Where our profession, our parenting, our positioning within a constellation of friendships involves persuasion, we reach back for word choices with the intensity of a blistering fastball. The verbal equivalent of a picture of 96 or 97 miles per hour may be both beyond our range and increasingly unexceptional. Even events between the white lines of the baseball diamond which could gently pull wordsmiths back toward subtlety can yield to the culture's insistence on life-and-death word choices. In the same telecast, Joe Simpson lamented that difficulty with the placement of his top hand PLAGUED Jason Heyward's swing. To follow after the pattern of C.S. Lewis's writing admonition, if we use the word PLAGUED to describe the relative struggles of a professional who is compensated handsomely, what have we got left to describe an actual plague, or events more analogous to it?
Accustom ourselves to choosing extreme words for relatively ordinary events, and we internalize a perpetual state of alarm. We, as a counselor once pointed out to me, account ourselves gentle if we use anything less than the high-pressure rhetoric that circulates within us to cajole somebody else. We respond to politicians who tell us that a particular trade agreement is the equivalent of rape, and we remain unengaged unless our leaders reach for the highest register, the equivalent of a 97 mile an hour fastball. Meanwhile, leaders who are the Anibal Sanchez of their particular sphere of influence work effectively but are not noticed.
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