[
HER SPACE] editorial
Don’t Cry, Just Play I
Jimmy Dugan had a point in his iconic outburst
t’s one of the greatest lines in one of the greatest sports movies. When Jimmy Dugan, a washed-up, alcoholic baseball has-been, sees that daffy right fielder Evelyn Gardner has burst into tears after a dugout dressing- down, he cocks his head in disbelief. His tobacco- filled mouth gapes for a second, and then he asks three times in a row, “Are you crying?” with mounting incredulity. Then comes the killer punch line we all know. Say it with me: “There’s no crying in baseball!”
The line was No. 54 in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movie Quotes; personally I’d rank it even higher. “A League of Their Own” rises above the innate boringness of baseball and gives us a terrific movie about sports in general and women’s athletics in particular. Jimmy eventually learns that while sometimes coaching women requires different skills than coaching men, it’s just as satisfying, challenging and heartbreaking. And while there’s an excellent column to be written about men coaching women, that’s not why I allude to “A League of Their Own.” It’s the crying thing. I actually think Jimmy had a point when he laid into Evelyn, however indelicately he put it. You can argue Jimmy is at fault in the “no crying” confrontation for how harshly he berates his poor hapless outfielder. Certainly he is not a PCA-approved Double Goal Coach, what with the drinking, the womanizing and
28 LACROSSE MAGAZINE March 2012 >>
the joy he takes in nailing Stilwell Angel in the face with a baseball glove. But the great thing about Jimmy is he treats the women on his team as athletes, not as sideshow freaks. He expects them to have their game faces on, even when dealing with errors, blown leads, disrespectful crowds and jerky managers. Evelyn is having a nuclear meltdown mid-game, when her team needs her to get her act together. She isn’t a bad person, poor Evelyn, but at that moment she’s not being a great teammate. The “no crying in baseball” line is iconic for a reason. It’s about the mental and physical toughness sports require, and how women in the 1940s were generally not conditioned to have those qualities. Crying is perceived as a sign of weakness, a crack in the armor where your opponent will be able to strike you dead. Crying is girly and pathetic. Boys don’t cry, right? Actually, that’s untrue, in my experience. I’ve seen plenty male and female athletes get a little misty after a game, but the only all-out, red-eyed, chest- heaving, post-game sobs I’ve seen were from men. And I think it’s completely OK — even healthy — to cry if you do it after the final whistle. There can be crying in baseball, and lacrosse too. But it’s a major faux pas to lose your cool while the clock is still running.
That brings us to another major gender stereotype: when women get upset, they
cry. When men get upset, they yell. Because sports have been more traditionally a man’s domain, crying is seen as a huge breech of etiquette, whereas yelling is standard operating procedure. But crying and yelling are really two sides of the same coin, and neither is a great way of handling stress. I’m not talking about yelling in terms of speaking loudly, but rather in the form of lashing out at someone else — your coach for correcting you, your teammate for bricking a pass, the ref for making a call you don’t like — when you feel a situation is beyond your control. Jimmy makes this mistake when he rips on Evelyn. The Peaches watch him in disbelief and mounting anger, and he’s so wound up over a solitary botched play that he mouths off to the umpire, who throws him out of the game. His own team claps for his ejection. Great comedy. Terrible coaching. It’s wonderful to be passionate about a game.
It’s one of the best things in the world, really. Just know that things are going to get hard sometimes, and you have to find a way to rise to the occasion. Don’t cry, and don’t yell. Just play. As Jimmy Dugan says, it’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great. LM
I’ve seen plenty male and female athletes get a little misty after a game, but the only all-out, red-eyed, chest- heaving, post- game sobs I’ve seen were from men.
—Clare Lochary
clochary@uslacrosse.org A Publication of US Lacrosse
©JOHN STROHSACKER
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