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To wit:
Which big league backup (and all-around devoted family man) caught himself a couple of lovelies in a hotel bar one night, and invited them to his "party room" to watch a movie? Needless to say, his idea of a movie and their idea of a movie were very different. As the porn started rolling HE started masturbating, and graciously encouraged the girls to do the same... but when they tried to touch him, he freaked out. Guess if you don't touch, it's not cheating!
Reading about the players' ill-fated, neurotic sexploits, I started to feel sorry for them. Every story depicts them as desperately trying to get just a little action without being caught or sued. What is clear is that there has never been a worse time to be a rich, horny, hot young baseball player. You go out to the bar, have a few drinks with some college girls, and you don't know if you're going to wind up in someone's camera phone and all over the internet the next morning — and not in a "Look at this stallion!" way. There's no longer any sense that players are supposed to go wild and that groupies are supposed to go wild right along with them. When did it become embarrassing for our baseball players, the very emblem of American masculinity, to be sexually voracious?
"Too much is at stake now,"
Three minor-league players said they'd be happy to give me the lowdown on their sex lives. |
says Bill Liederman, who watched groupies and players interact for twenty years behind the bar at Mickey Mantle's Bar & Grill, which he bought in 1987 and sold last year (and about which he wrote a book, Mickey Mantle's: Behind the Scenes in America's Most Famous Sports Bar). These days, "the big leaguers don't go out as much." Or if they do, they seek out strippers, who are less likely to rush home and blog about it.
Which suggests that the only players holding down the slutty fort are the minor leaguers, who are younger, usually unmarried and too obscure to merit much bandwidth. Sharing a plate of salsa and chips at Duffy's, the sports bar in an entertainment complex near Tradition Field at which the waitresses wear cute green baseball-style uniforms, three minor-league players, each about twenty years old, said they'd be happy to give me the lowdown on their sex lives as
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Female fans assess the new team. Above, a player chats with fans between innings (click to enlarge).
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long as I didn't use names and didn't have anything to do with the table of sportswriters by the window, to whom they've been told to say "no comment" on all personal matters.
The players say women either love them or hate them. I said I thought it was mostly love; on what grounds would anyone hate them? "Our reputation. It's love 'em and leave 'em," said one player, a blonde with squinty eyes and an easy manner, total Southern-style hot bully. He seemed proud of this reputation.
"Lust 'em and leave 'em!" corrected his friend, a less suave, dark-haired pitcher with a toothy smile, who is married and blatantly jealous of his compatriots. A third player, an outfielder with good skin and a quiet confidence, nodded in agreement. "Basically," said the catcher, "the goal is to have as much fun as possible with girls you never see again." He smiled like he knew exactly how cute he was. This, I thought, is a man who does not have trouble sleeping at night.
"We're living the dream," said the outfielder. "We get to play a game every day and earn money for it." The pitcher added, "And you can go out at night and get hammered and play great the next day even with your brain switched off. It's like living the college life without going to college. If you're single, there's no downside."
The catcher said he's slept with "two or three" women so far this Spring Training. I say I would have thought more like fifty. He looked flattered but demurred. "Oh, I don't think I've slept with fifty women total,"
There's not nearly as much sex as their should be. On a punishing schedule of all-nighters and blow snorted off Catholic schoolgirls, the '86 Mets on the World Series. |
he said. He and his friends looked at each other and considered this number, awkwardly. "Well, maybe fifty." He puffed back up a little. "Yeah, somewhere in there."
Maybe it's a sign not so much of repression but of the influence of feminism that minor-league players think fifty is a high number, that they should appreciate teenage fans from a distance. No one seems all that bothered by the decline of hedonism. All the MySpace girls who identify themselves as things like "Mets Princess" and "Mets Grrl" say they work hard to avoid the stigma of the groupie. "I know a lot of female Mets fans who are really big fans and love the team for more than just it's cute players," says "MetsGal," "but there are some females who are only interested in meeting and dating the players. If they're successful then good for them! But I definitely have more respect for the girls who have a passion for baseball, like I do."
Still, I can't help but feel that there is not nearly as much sex as there should or could be. Babe Ruth, so the old joke goes, hit all those homeruns on a diet of hot dogs and beer. On a punishing schedule of all-nighters and blow snorted off of Catholic schoolgirls, the '86 Mets won the World Series. The philandering Atlanta Brave Chipper Jones is a famous Met killer. The Cardinals beat the Mets in the 2006 post-season, and I'm starting to suspect why: beer pong. So in the interest of going all the way this year, I'd like to encourage the Mets to get back to their roots and whore around. I know it's nerve-wracking and tiring, but take one for the team.
n°
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Nerve consulting editor and Babble editor-in-chief Ada
Calhoun has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor and theater critic at New York magazine, and her softball team's MVP.
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©2007 Ada Calhoun and Nerve.com |
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