We giggle when the guys rearrange their testicles, dirty their uniforms or lean bat handles up against their groins while they readjust their gloves. We salivate and fantasize, even fetishize. But for all the preening, posturing and sexual innuendo that accompany the game of baseball, women, I believe, have come to love the sport because it is about men and their manhood. Unlike football, hockey or boxing, baseball says nothing about the primal, untamed, innate beastliness of man. Women are made aware of such things not only in organized sport but in such things as rape and murder, the lyrics of Eminem and the propensity for civilization's leaders to engage in war.
Baseball shows, instead, that men are as capable of control as they are of creating chaos.
Or the grace in not throwing a bat after being struck out, of not challenging an umpire's call. A true baseball hero sucks it up and thinks about his next chance to contribute. And baseball players come to play. He was scheduled to arrive at 8 o'clock, so at 7 p.m. I set about cleaning my apartment and shuffled down the street to the store, where I bought a six-pack of beer, two bags of chips, salsa and a box of Tastykakes. Yankees up 4-2.