|
Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “He said, ‘It is time for you to step up to the plate and make a decision’.” My comments: In other words, what’s to do next is up to you. The decision is yours, plus the responsibility that comes along with it. It’s time for you to make something happen. Time for you to take a central role. Time for you to be in the spotlight, and, hopefully, to shine. Anyways, “step up to the plate” is the phrase troubling us here. This is a useful American expression that originates from the great American sport of baseball. The plate refers to the home plate, or the home base, a marked out square in which a batter stands ready to hit the ball thrown at him from a pitcher who stands in the middle of the playing area. In the game of baseball, of course, every player gets a chance to bat the ball (so long, of course, as your team continues coring – by, after running around the playing area, returning to touch the home plate before defenders bring the ball back; if the ball returns to the defender standing on the home plate first, you’re out). That’s when they emerge from the seating area and walk up to the home plate. At the plate batting the ball, you have a chance to hit a home run (by hitting the ball so hard that it travels all the way to the spectator’s stands) and earn a point for yourself and each of your teammates who have already stationed themselves on the first, second and third bases. Or at least you can hit a safe ball to enable you to run to the first base (or others to run to the next) before the ball is picked up by a defender and retuned to one of the bases first – if it’s returned to the first base before you do, you’re out; second and third bases likewise. | 
