Reader question:

Please explain this sentence, with “right off the bat” in particular: “And right off the bat, let’s debunk a common myth: Larger vehicles are safer than smaller ones.”

My comments:

The speaker is talking about safety and the first thing he or she does is to expose the falseness of (debunk) the myth that larger vehicles are safer than smaller ones.

Larger vehicles are not safer than smaller vehicles. It’s just a common myth, something a lot of people believe to be true – but is not true.

Well, not always true. For one thing, smaller vehicles are nimble and more agile. This simple fact means driving a smaller vehicle allow you to steer clear of a possible collision more easily.

Well, anyways, that’s not what we’re concerned about here. Here, we want to focus on the expression “right off the bat”.

This is an American expression that means right away, immediately and without delay.

The “bat” in “right off the bat” refers to the baseball bat, the stick a player uses to hit the ball thrown at him from an opponent.

In the actual game, the batter hits the ball and right after the ball bounces off the bat, he runs towards first base, one of three such bases before running home and score a point. He starts to run immediately because his aim is to touch the first base before an opponent catches the ball and passes it to a first-base teammate before he arrives.

If the ball is passed to first base before he arrives, then he, the batter, is out.

Eliminated. Killed. Done for.

Or in baseball terminology, struck out.

Hence and therefore, by analogy, when people in other walks of life talk about one action happening immediately after another, they say it’s “right off the bat”, in the same way the batter takes off right after the ball bounces off the baseball bat.

That’s the idea.

Also, since batting is the first play in a baseball game, “right off the bat” is often used to describe the beginning of a process. For example, a boy and a girl meet and they hit off right off the bat.

That means they got along and fall for each other right away.

Love at the first sight, in other words.

Good for them.

Now, let’s read a few recent media examples of “right off the bat” in different situations:

1. A fast-moving wildfire erupted in Southern California on Wednesday, destroying homes and sending firefighters rushing to get residents out of homes and to safety, officials said.

The Mountain Fire in Ventura County prompted evacuation orders and grew to over 14,000 acres, fueled by what fire officials called a significant Santa Ana wind event.

Firefighters at the scene of the brush fire, which broke out between the communities of Moorpark and Somis, “were faced with a tough firefight,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Trevor Johnson said.

“Firefighters were right off the bat engaged in pulling people out of their houses and saving lives,” Johnson said.

The fire was moving so fast that firefighters drove residents out of the area in fire engines because of the danger, he said.

- California wildfire fueled by high winds grows to over 14,000 acres and forces evacuations, NBCNews.com, November 7, 2024.

2. Five of the most interesting words in Donald Trump’s rhetorical repertoire are, “I shouldn’t say this, but...” While it’s obviously impossible to read the former president’s mind, whenever the Republican uses the phrase, it’s an apparent acknowledgement that he knows the rest of the sentence will be politically problematic, but he’s simply unable to help himself.

As his first year in the White House came to an end, for example, Trump declared, “I shouldn’t say this, but we essentially repealed Obamacare.” He was, of course, lying, but the comments served as a reminder of his anti-health care vision. About a year later, campaigning in Montana, the then-president publicly praised Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for physically assaulting a journalist who asked a question the governor didn’t like.

“I shouldn’t say this [but] there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Trump said in reference to the violence.

Six years later, the Republican is still stumbling into inadvertent moments of candor. HuffPost reported:

Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he ‘hated’ to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so. Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver ‘gigantic tax cuts’ via his pledge to end tax on tips, on overtime and on social security benefits for seniors.”

“I know a lot about overtime,” the Republican candidate boasted. “I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”

The public comments stood out for a few reasons.

Right off the bat, there are still some political observers who like to pretend that the former president is some kind of ally to working-class Americans. It’s against that backdrop that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to admit that he, as a boss, deliberately took steps to deny his own employees overtime compensation to which they would have been entitled.

What’s more, let’s not forget that the GOP nominee recently endorsed ending taxes on overtime pay, as a way of bolstering his ostensible populist bona fides. But the gambit only served as a reminder that Trump, while in office, was needlessly regressive on overtime compensation. His “I wouldn’t pay” comment only reinforced the obvious fact that his faux populism is a sham.

- On overtime pay, Trump slips up by accidentally telling the truth, MSNBC.com, September 30, 2024.

3. Ariana Grande has told the BBC that she channelled her personal feelings of loss when filming Wicked.

“Losing someone you love is something we've all unfortunately had to experience – and sometimes we have the privilege to say goodbye and sometimes we don’t,” she says.

Grande, 31, plays Galinda Upland in the film, which is an adaptation of the hugely successful stage musical exploring the Wizard of Oz universe from the perspective of two witches.

The two-time Grammy award winner has suffered personal tragedy in recent years, after the 2017 Manchester bombing of her concert and the death of her former partner Mac Miller a year later.

She says appearing in Wicked, one of the first Broadway shows she saw as a child, “feels like a homecoming”.

“This music has always brought such comfort and now being able to spend time with it and be trusted with it is the privilege of a lifetime.”

In the weeks running up to the film’s release, the close relationship between Grande and co-star Cynthia Erivo has been in the spotlight.

“From the moment we were cast, Cynthia invited me over and we hung out for five hours and we laughed and we cried and got to know each other.

“We had a real conversation right off the bat about creating a safe space for each other and being honest with each other,” she says.

Grande and Erivo’s characters begin in the Oz universe as university students, before later becoming enemies as Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba the Wicked Witch of the West.

Erivo, 37, has described her role as “a real honour” and nods to the foundations formed by the original stage actors Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who she calls ‘the architects”.

“We’ve been handed something really special and it’s a dream come true and truly big shoes to fill,” she adds.

- Ariana Grande channelled her loss into Wicked role, BBC.com, November 20, 2024.

本文僅代表作者本人觀點(diǎn)，與本網(wǎng)立場(chǎng)無(wú)關(guān)。歡迎大家討論學(xué)術(shù)問(wèn)題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發(fā)布一切違反國(guó)家現(xiàn)行法律法規(guī)的內(nèi)容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣）