In Little League, there’s a saying the coaches would use when the players started trash talking each other. Like one kid would say, “You suck, you neanderthal,” and then another kid would come back with, “Your mother is a pony-faced dog soldier.”
Then the coaches would peal the yapping kids apart and say, “Say it with your glove. Get back on that field.”
It was a great way to handle confrontation and trash talking. “Say it with you glove” meant to shut your mouth and play the game so well that any argument would be rendered moot. Be the better player. Win the game with your talent and skill. Play the game with your glove and not your mouth. Win or lose, do your best and leave it all on the field.
During one play-off game, Adam, our youngest son’s team proceeded to crush their opponent. On a close play, Adam slid into home and was called out. Because he was sure he was safe he had started to argue the call with the adult umpire before he had even gotten off the ground to dust off his uniform.
Now I am not one of those mothers who think their little darlings are never wrong. I was one of those mothers that was completely sure her kids were up to no good, and twice on Sunday.
Before Adam could call the umpire a neanderthal, dog-faced pony soldier, I was on my feet, fingers hooked in the backstop wire telling Adam, “Shut up. Get up. And go sit down. The umpire called you out.” He did.
It wasn’t ‘say it with your glove.’ It was more along the lines of don’t be a disrespectful poor winner or a whining loser and get up play the game like the gentleman I am raising you to be.
“Say it with your glove.”
It’s a phrase that has come to mind on more than one occasion lately as I listen to people try to tell me the right way to live and be happy. So much trash talking, so much whining, so many unhappy little leaguers turned adults.
“Say it with your life.”
I wish more people would shut their mouths and get back on the field and ‘say it with your life.’
If your choices are right for you, then they should make you happy, regardless of what that other team thinks or believes. If your choices are making you miserable, mean, or prone to name calling, something seems wrong.
Your happiness is not the umpire’s responsibility. Live your life so well that there can be no argument about who is or isn’t a neanderthal. Live your life so well that anyone looking at your life will know you’ve played the best you could and you’ve left it all on the field.
My husband and I made big choices (against conventional wisdom for the most part) and sacrificed all kinds of worldly “trophies” in the name of faith and family. And in the end, I truly mean it when I say, “May you find your way as pleasant.”
Linda (Right Fielder) Zern
