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Nerve.com - Baseball Groupies at Spring Training
Asked if they'd dated players, Lauren and Sarah, both sixteen, said, "Not yet, but we plan to!" Marlins players, most of whom are single and in their early twenties, refer to these two omnipresent blondes as "the twins," but, according to the girls, won't have much to do with them until they're legal. The women have their own countdown going, and a MySpace page through which to express their enthusiasm for the team.
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A few minor-league players took a camera into the bathroom and took penis pictures to titillate the female bartenders. It didn't work. |
We come to games as often as possible and try to meet the players," said Lauren. "They're really nice." Both prefer pitchers.
"I always pick really bad players to like," said Lauren. "So they're always getting sent down to the minors and I have to find someone new." Her current favorite: Logan Kensing, a pitcher with a 4.54 ERA. Why? Because "he's really strange. Like today, he had his pants rolled all the way up and no one else did." Sarah's crush is Scott Olsen — a left-handed pitcher who that day would get hit hard. The Marlins lost 12-3.
Both women just like coming to the games and flirting. "We make shirts for all the players," said Lauren of their hand-made booster gear. "We like to spread the love around."
After that game, two young female fans wearing Cardinals red could be seen trolling the stadium with the same feverish bent as the turquoise-hat woman. They looked like sorority sisters a few years out of college — former track runners, maybe. Plain, but hot from afar, thanks to tight T-shirts. Having failed to find any players in the course of their recon mission, the pair adjourned to a nearby Mexican restaurant and bar, where they joined another
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(Above) The Mets do their post-game workout.
(Below) Striking out with a pitcher (click to enlarge). |
friend at an outside table and whispered frantically to each other about their next move.
Asked if they'd met any Cardinals, one girl who had apparently flattened her hair one too many times said, proudly, "Yeah, we only played beer pong with two of them last night right here in this very bar." One of her friends scrolled through her phone and willed the conversation over. The other laughed nervously. Their trip to Florida from their home in St. Louis seemed to have an air of desperation about it. "We got wasted," the braggart said. "I can't even remember the players' names." Her friend looked at her sternly, and they settled in for a night of waiting to see if the players would come back to roost.
Never at a loss for players: the Applebee's on Highway One in Port St. Lucie. Behind the bar most afternoons is Kimberly, a New York-y looking brunette who is sexy in a weary way, is a die-hard Yankees fan. She watches the games behind the bar or tapes them at home. "I wish I could see every game in person," she said while mixing fruity drinks.
"You
like Derek Jeter's tight pants!" said a guy drinking at the bar, when Kimberly tried to explain what she loved about baseball. "It's more than that," she says, seeming hurt. "I try to talk about baseball with the players, but they never want to." After bedding "one — okay, more than one" ballplayer, she says she's disillusioned about them romantically. And not because they're too wild. If anything, they're too juvenile, too tame, for these women who love and want them. Case in point: one night, a couple of minor-league players took the bar camera into the bathroom and took penis pictures with which to titillate the female bartenders. It didn't work. "It was itty-bitty," says one woman who saw the photos. "What were they thinking?"
"The players meet girls hanging out at the bar," says Maurice, a waiter at the Applebee's,
These players aren't exactly studs. They seem a bit repressed. |
"but it's all very high school. Nothing ever seems to go very far. It's all, 'You can have a drink with me and frolic around in the pool, but that's as far as it goes.''
Could it be that in the past twenty years, players have stopped behaving like the depraved horndogs they have been throughout history? According to "On the D.L.," the brilliantly named blog of baseball-related blind items that's been trading in unverifiable rumors since 2005, players are still screwing around plenty. One example:
Which National Leaguer's seemingly harmless hookup with a random barmaid resulted in an unbelievable amount of drama including his relocation to a new city, his wife's urgent need for a trip to the gynecologist, and the arrest of a cameraman?
Phew. STDs and infidelity. That's more like it. But the more I read, the more I started to notice that these players — whose penis size, sexual technique and overall uncouth manner are typically mocked in the posts — aren't exactly studs. They seem a bit repressed, and the more stupidly they act, the more On the D.L.'s pseudonymous lead blogger, Trixie Bells, seems to rejoice.
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