Hitting the Cutoff Man
How Tom Hanks' famous line in A League of Their Own helps politics and business.
In trying to explain to the business and political communities what is going on in each of their world’s so that they can better work together to make our lives better, or at least tolerable, I like to use well known quotes or movie scenes or something in popular culture that is relatable as well as instructive.
Today’s lesson comes from A League of Their Own which starred Tom Hanks as Jimmy Dugan a famous yet cynical baseball star whose career was destroyed by his alcoholism. Dugan is hired to coach the Rockford Peaches in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.
The AAGPBL was an actual league during World War II.
Dugan knows a lot about baseball but not a lot about coaching women.
The famous scene “There’s no crying in baseball!” occurs when Peaches’ right fielder, Evelyn Gardner, fields a hit to right and throws home trying to get out their opposing team’s runner. In doing so, Evelyn allows the hitter to advance from first to second putting her in scoring position.
Evelyn intentionally, but also mistakenly, missed the cutoff.
The cutoff man - in this case woman - in baseball is an infielder who goes out into the outfield to present him/herself to receive the ball fielded and thrown by the outfielder so that the damage being done during the play is limited.
Baseball coaches drill into their players the need to hit the cutoff man because if the ball is hit so far out into the outfield, the outfielder is not going to be able to throw out the base runners given the distance and accuracy required of the throw.
Hitting the cutoff man limits damage or downside.
Having played catcher for years, I cannot begin to tell you how vital it is for outfielders to throw it to the cutoff. That one play is critical to stopping your opponent’s ability to score. Catchers are the only players who see the whole play.
So, Evelyn comes to the dugout after the inning is over and Hanks does what he does best in delivering a fantastic performance. In this clip, however, there are TWO scenes of Dugan interacting with Evelyn. The first is the famous scene and the second is, perhaps, the more instructive.
In the second, we see Dugan learn how to coach Evelyn who not only missed the cutoff again but did so in the championship game. Yes, the batter advanced to second while another runner scored. Again.
Dugan can barely contain his anger but does as he is able to coach Evelyn in a manner that she understands so she will not do it again. Hopefully. Hanks is, of course, just brilliant in these two scenes.
Please watch these scenes mashed up and then help me by answering my question below:
See, I’m having the same reaction as Jimmy Dugan as I read through the legislation being proposed by some legislators and also read stories about some of their political behaviors.
While I want to yell and scream about the complete lack of understanding about how businesses and jobs are created, even though the business community has been very clear about what are good policies and what are bad policies, I know that becoming adversarial is not a helpful construct. In fact, it can make matters (players) worse.
In the clip above, the umpire tells Dugan to treat each of his players as if they were his mother.
Having coached girls and boys teams over the course of my life, I can tell you that the umpire is much closer to right than wrong. Girls and boys respond very differently to coaching. Frankly, girls are far more coachable than boys. Not even close. They just listen better. Another lesson for another day perhaps.
But looking at the bills and/or recent political headlines, one has to ask them:
Which team are you on?
I don’t mean Democrat or Republican. This is a problem for both parties.
This is Team Virginia and many of our legislators seem to be playing for Team Carolinas or Team Texas or Team Florida or Team Tennessee.
One has to ask - legitimately - are you trying to help Virginia businesses recover from the pandemic or not?
You see, the cutoff man in this conversation is the business community. If you have a goal in mind, we’re here to help. Truly. We might disagree but if we at least understand what you’re trying to do, we can help you limit the downside damage. But if you keep trying to throw home and letting our competition advance against us, we have to make our own decisions.
Those include - Leaving. Investing Less. Selling. Closing.
All downside moves.
Business doesn't just happen. We don’t open one day and start employing people for, as my dad says, “skittles and beer” reasons.
This is real damn hard stuff to do day in and day out in an ever changing global economy with more and more complexities brought on by people who just don’t understand or even care about what it takes to start, run, maintain, and grow a business.
It pains me to no end to have to ask this very simple question of too many of our elected representatives:
Which team are you on?
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