Right in the Sweet Spot

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, this is Dr. Gary Barrett, and I guess we better get out of the way.

There’s no nepotism here.

I do not know that we’re related to Grant at all.

My long-lost son.

My friend, I may be your long-lost father versus your son.

Well, welcome to the show, Dr. Barrett.

Where are you located?

Yeah, I’m calling from Lars, South Carolina.

This time I called because I used to listen to you guys on South Carolina.

And, excuse me, it was first on WHUR out of Wilmington, North Carolina.

And that’s 60 miles away from Lars.

And then we got you guys on South Carolina.

And I came from Conway, which is 20 miles just south of Lars.

And so I was beginning to contemplate, well, I’m in the sweet spot.

I get a double serving of you guys every week.

And then I was concerned about, well, where did the sweet spot come from?

Where did that originate from?

What did it really mean?

Yeah, you definitely are in the sweet spot to hear our show.

You get us coming and going.

So sweet spot, S-W-E-E-T space, S-P-O-T.

You might have heard this in a sports context.

In golf and baseball and cricket and surfing and figure skating, there are each of these sports have a notion of their own sweet spot.

For example, in figure skating, it’s the spot where your skate blades touch the ice when you spin.

And in cricket, the sweet spot of the bat is known as the meat of the bat.

Just like in baseball, both of these sports is the place where when you make contact, the greatest force is possible or the greatest control of the ball.

And each of these has variants.

In baseball, you might also say hit it with the good wood or hit it right on the screws.

And in surfing, the sweet spot is the place that is best to stand on a particular surfboard.

But the earliest uses that I know of all come from golf, and it’s the spot on a club’s head where the ball makes contact for the most effect.

There was Spalding, who you may know, makes sporting equipment, including golf clubs and golf balls.

Spalding used to run a series of ads in the 1920s that specifically used the phrase sweet spot to talk about the benefits of their clubs.

And so I don’t know that that’s the source of it, but certainly it was an early source of popularization.

I mean, sweet to mean good or beneficial and not talking about food and taste.

It has a long, long history.

So it is kind of natural that sweet and spot would go together.

But it is also interesting, at least to me, that it’s kind of widely spread throughout different sports and different sporting activities.

But, you know, sweet spot is used all over the place.

It’s not just in sports.

You’ll find it in the right temperature for making beer.

You’ll find it.

It’s what you have to do with an instrument where the sound is most pleasing.

So there’s a ton of this.

So you might even have sweet spots on your back when somebody gives you a massage or a back scratch.

Well, I will look forward to that next time around, my friend.

Well, we will look forward to hearing from you again sometime.

Thank you so much for your question.

Okay, bye now.