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Speaker 1: Those old Saints, phrases, idioms, you know those things your

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family and friends would say. And it usually came from

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out of nowhere, and only sometimes it actually made sense. Well,

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they had to start somewhere, right, Who, what, where, why,

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when and how? Some of those old Saints are not

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only ancient, but still carry a powerful punch. Even today,

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I happen to live by one of those old saints.

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Winning is a choice. The goal of these episodes is

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to help preserve not only a language, but lessons in life.

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My name is Arrow. Get on the ball. It actually

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came into action in the early part of the twentieth century,

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and yes, it is connected to baseball as well as football.

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Get on the ball it later gained in popularity and

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took up shop in our conversations by way of the

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military and American businesses. In baseball, when a pitcher was

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told he's on the ball, it meant in control, alert

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and throwing accurately. In the military, get on the ball

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was how soldiers were told to amp up your performance, sir,

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pay attention, get focused, and start performing better. When slang

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becomes part of our culture, it begins to show up

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in books Get on the ball. Authors that first used

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it were Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep, J D.

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Salinger The Catcher in the Rye. The narrator Holden Coalfield

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used the slang to describe people who are into the

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required action. James Baldwin was also an early user of

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get on the ball. He used the phrase to reflect

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urgency and competence. American movies also helped push get on

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the ball between nineteen forty and nineteen sixty. That led

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to sitcoms from the nineteen fifties to the nineteen seventies,

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and yes, even the legendary Hall of Famer James Brown

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had a song called get on the Ball, recorded in

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nineteen fifty nine. Get on the ball something our parents

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would say. My name is Arrow.