Offermann.us

Another favorite phrase of ours is “The Crux Move”. This comes from rock climbing, where, in a given climb, the crux move is the one rated hardest to complete. Master that move and you can reach the top. Otherwise, you fall.

I’m not exactly a climber (among other reasons, I’m getting increasingly more and more afraid of heights as I get older), so how we use it in our house is a little less life-and-death:

“To get the kids to bed on time, we’ve got to eat dinner early. That’s the crux move!”

We’ve used this phrase for so long and so often, I forget it’s a bit obscure. But, recently reading about a phrase with a similar meaning made me think about it again.

The new phrase came from a profile of Lenny Dykstra in the New Yorker:

“The one-one count is another of Dykstra’s baseball metaphors for life, meant to illustrate that some moments, and the choices they bring, are more fateful than others (i.e., the next pitch makes all the difference), or, in this case, that circumstances set in motion during the early stages of development are difficult to overcome later on. If a batter falls behind, one ball and two strikes, he’s in a hole from which, the statistics augur, he will not recover, even if he is Barry Bonds; and if he gets ahead, to two balls and one strike, he wrests control from the pitcher and takes charge of his own destiny.”

Have we been using our beloved “Crux Move” for too long? Perhaps it’s time to phase it out. Should “One-One Count” be the one to replace it? Can my wife stand to hear me quote the wisdom of Lenny Dykstra on a regular basis? Time will tell…