"The ball will be in their … corner"?
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Mixed metaphor of the week – via email from J.H.:
House Speaker Mike Johnson, apparently trying to lay the groundwork to blame Democrats for a government shutdown, is quoted by Politico as saying “The ball will be in their corner.”
Presumably he meant to say “The ball will be in their court,” a tennis metaphor, but confused this with “in their corner,” which I assume comes from boxing. When someone is in your corner, that typically means they’re supporting you, and I don’t think the speaker meant to imply that Democrats have the support of any balls.
Someone at Politico must have thought this sounded odd, since they put ‘corner’ in quotation marks in the headline.
A quick search didn't turn up the audio — with luck a reader will fill the gap.
Chips Mackinolty said,
September 4, 2025 @ 6:16 am
… and speaking of punctuation, should it not read:
… Democrats' 'corner'?
Stephen Goranson said,
September 4, 2025 @ 9:12 am
Maybe he wanted to corner, trap, them–paint then in a corner–or demean their existence as a mere corner? Who knows, trumpspeak.
DaveK said,
September 4, 2025 @ 1:52 pm
Knowing Congress, they’ll probably strike out on fourth down
Francois Lang said,
September 4, 2025 @ 2:10 pm
@DaveK: Or on match point.
Rick Rubenstein said,
September 4, 2025 @ 4:29 pm
Interestingly, as written it probably works fairly well as an unintended soccer metaphor.
David Marjanović said,
September 5, 2025 @ 2:20 pm
Yes!
J.W. Brewer said,
September 5, 2025 @ 6:44 pm
I really don't understand the inadvertent soccer metaphor. Not that I have that great a grasp of soccer, but probably as good or better a grasp as the median resident of the 4th District of Louisiana, whence cometh Mike Johnson. Which corner is "theirs"? When team A gets to control the ball via a corner kick, it's in one of the corners at team B's end of the field, which leaves me confused as to whose corner it is.
Philip Taylor said,
September 6, 2025 @ 4:25 am
Well, I’m British, and I don’t understand the "inadvertent soccer metaphor" either. But then I don't follow (or even watch) association football (a.k.a. "soccer"), so the preceding statement would naturally follow.
Tony DeSimone said,
September 7, 2025 @ 9:25 am
Okay, at the risk of completely overthinking the soccer metaphor, if he can put the ball in their corner then his team can kick it and score.
But that's certainly unintended because the last thing a MAGA Republican would do is reference world football.
chris said,
September 10, 2025 @ 3:42 pm
> I don’t think the speaker meant to imply that Democrats have the support of any balls.
Isn't that mixing the metaphor even further? I mean sure, if the Democrats volunteer to save the Republicans from themselves there is a certain kind of balls they will be alleged not to have, but not the sporting equipment kind.
tenarchits said,
September 29, 2025 @ 12:56 pm
I thought of four square.