Pips, meatballs and new life: Inside the world of silly chants in a softball dugout
Immaculate Heart and Ramapo not only play a good game, they talk a good game.
The two North Jersey softball superpowers will collide in Saturday’s Bergen County Tournament final at 1 p.m. in Wood-Ridge, but you may hear them before you see them.
Both teams perform the beautiful jazz symphony of what is best described as dugout chatter, a steady stream of exhortations of various decibels for their teammates to either get a hit, recover after a whiff, or maybe just a random inside joke.
“There’s a chant that is ‘new life, use it,’” Blue Eagles senior shortstop Gianna DiMeglio said. “That’s when you foul a ball off and you get another pitch to hit. A couple years ago, our pitcher Jocelyn Moody forgot the second part and just said ‘new life,’ so now that’s what we say and it will continue for years to come.”
“We have one that happened when we were in Florida, ‘more than a donut,’” Ramapo senior infielder/pitcher Ava Dandeneau said. “But no one will get that except us. We also have a special one that we came up with 'pip, pip, put it in play.' We do that when there are two strikes on the batter. We also have three redheads on the team, so we say 'gingers run Po.'”
Who comes up with these inspiring calls in the moment? Are they well planned out? Do they just happen? Does everyone just focus on the player’s name? Does every player participate?
The answer is, it’s a combination. At IHA, some of the chatter is standard, you know, the usual chant for the leadoff batter and such, and the Blue Eagles do a special lineup announcement before each game with each starter getting a shoutout. For Ramapo, assistant coach Katie Garbarino brought in some chatter from her time in college for inspiration.
“It’s the way we cheer each other on,” Dandeneau said. “We never do it to get under the other team’s skin. We’re just a loud group. We’re all sisters in this dugout and it gets us going and gets our energy high. We play better when our energy is high.”
“You just keep moving them through the line-up and you’re cheering for each other,” DiMeglio said. “It’s a game of failure, and if you swing and miss, or foul off a good pitch, you want to know that your teammates have your back. It shows a bond and I think that’s what softball is all about.”
Both Ramapo coach Darren White and IHA coach Diana Fasano stress that the chatter is always G-rated and always positive. It’s never directed at a mistake made by the other team. It’s all about the players in the same uniform.
“We always keep it clean,” Dandeneau said. “If we’re up by a lot and having a good game and the other team makes a good play, we usually congratulate the other team and hype them up too. We never talk bad about the other team, because everyone always can have a bad day no matter what.”
DiMeglio said she doesn’t even hear it that much when she’s at bat, but she knows it's often a call for her to ‘do it for the Motherland,’ a reference to her Italian heritage. A ball hit short of the fence means a cry to “eat more meatballs.”
“I think it’s so fun, it adds another aspect to the game,” DiMeglio said. “It’s not just about hitting and fielding. We’re always making jokes in the dugout and cheering for each other. It just makes it all so much more fun.”
Softball fans at the Wood-Ridge Athletic Complex on Saturday will see a great game and hear one too, if they’re paying attention.
“Softball is a loud sport,” Dandeneau said. “And we’re loud in the dugout.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ softball: Inside the silly jokes, cheers and chants in the dugout
