Study of Jurassic Ballparks

Mankind's yearning to participate in sports is older than recorded history, carbon dating back gazillions of years ago.

Mostly to when the first Neanderthal picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the club into the air, and tried to hit it with the rock. Eventually a teammate slammed the club into his sloping forehead and told him to swing the club at the tossed rock instead and became history’s first recorded coach.

What inner force drove this first prehistoric athlete? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably, because beer hadn’t been invented yet. In truth, dirt, grass and running away were about the only sports items that were invented back then.

All I know is, whatever the reason, Mankind is still nutsy cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs about sports. As Dave Madden, who may not be the most likable play-by-play announcer in the world, but is certainly one of the most opinionated, put it;  "In terms of Mankind and sports, the quarterback sneak is the silliest play ever invented by the Green Bay Packers and Dallas still has the hottest cheerleaders and worst mascot."

Notice that Dave “The Maddening One” and I both use the term "Mankind." Whereas "Womankind" really isn't into sports in the same way. Oh, I realize things have changed since my high school days, when physical sports were considered unladylike (and some real winners these days even think that cheerleading is a sport) and your average girls gym class consisted of twelve girls in those gym outfits colored Kermit the frog Green, running around dribbling a ball, trying to not break a nail and squealing in pitches that dogs and bats hear while sixty other girls stood on the sidelines in big poofy hair, shiney jewelry and civilian clothing, claiming it was “that time of the month” or they had parental notes to be excused “due to excess gravity.”

I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as WNBA player Tamika Catchings, who can run like gazelles and bench press Dodge pickup trucks. But, to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it. Just look at Danica Patrick! Or just look around the Pub on Superbowl Sunday. There is one lady for every 22 dudes.

This is why it's usually a mistake for men and women to play on teams together. I know this macho bloke who ownes a construction company, and plays in a co-ed slow-pitch softball league where the rules say you have to have at least two women on the field.

These teams always have one of the women play catcher, because in slow-pitch softball the batters hit just about every pitch, so it wouldn't really hurt you much if you had a certified zombie at catcher position. Their team usually puts the other woman at short center field, where the maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out in case of emergency, like a routine pop up (whereas at second base this would invoke the infield fly rule and be really embarrassing).

As far as I can tell, their second woman can actually perform and fills in a lot at third base. She is a nurse in a military hospital and knows how to deal with free flowing testosterone. This basewoman is a consistently athletic baseball player, maybe better than David Wright anyway, but there's no way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging over from, say, shortstop, to deal with it.

She's been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her. They know, deep in their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she would probably elect to save the infant's life, without even considering whether there were men on base or not.

But given the chance, she too would barrel into the catcher and the three guys surrounding her like a rhino avoiding a forest fire, knowing full well that afterwards, she is going to have to reset her own dislocated shoulder herself as the rest of us cavemen watches her squeamishly.