It’s “Women’s History Month,” where we’ll hear about the struggles of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Naomi Wolf. Or about the highlights like the 19th Amendment, the Rosie the Riveter days of World War II and the founding of the National Organization of Women in ’66. Or of landmark Supreme Court decisions like Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) — which ruled the 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting hormonal contraception usage unconstitutional and proclaimed that the US Constitution did protect our right to privacy — and Roe v. Wade. That’s all fine and dandy. But from where I sit, there remain many tensions within American feminism and in everyday relations between women and men and women that are unresolved and are usually left unspoken even during Women’s History Month.

The main refrain from Alana Davis’ ’97-’98 hit song “32 Flavors” 32 Flavors.m4a (a cover version, yes, but she did make it her own) includes the words “I am what I am.” The song serves as a reminder that women aren’t the equivalent of cookie dough cut into even circles by cookie dough machines at a Pillsbury plant in Minnesota. Yet leaders of the feminism movement lean toward the cookie cutter methodology of describing the roles, rights, and relations of women in our still sexist nation. It makes me cringe whenever I hear these feminists speak of “women” in the universal. Even with the emergence of third wave feminism in the ’80s and ’90s, of people such as Kimberle Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Trishala Deb, bell hooks and numerous others, when feminists in this country say “women,” most of the time they’re only referring to White women.

Even more to the point, they’re really talking about professional, middle class White women with at least a four-year college education at a liberal arts or state institution. Given the middle class and affluent backgrounds of these folks, when they discuss things like “women” facing a glass ceiling in politics or in corporate America, or how “women” are struggling with their relatively new roles as caregiver and primary breadwinner, they’re really talking about their friends. It’s not as if Black or Latino or Asian women haven’t been struggling with these issues and their dual roles for decades. It’s not as if poor and rural White women haven’t faced aspects of these bread and butter issues off and on since the 1920s. But when presented at conferences or in the media, whether it be Nadine Strossen or everyday commentators on MSNBC or in the New York Times, the universal “women” remains in vogue. It’s drives me nuts, because it doesn’t represent most of the “women” I’ve known in my life. “Thirty-two flavors and then some” isn’t typically represented by their faces and voices.

What also drives me nuts in our gender discourse are double-standards that are also like double-edged swords. We still live in a world where men — regardless of race, class or sexual orientation — are expected to treat “women” as “ladies,” a very Victorian idea indeed. Of course, this applies to everyday practices like holding doors open for women, letting a woman take your seat on a train or bus, allowing a woman to exit an elevator or train before you move to do so yourself.

These ideas are also applied and implied in dating and in marriage. In these scenarios, men are expected to be assertive but not aggressive, or, at least, most of the time, assertive and on occasion aggressive. Preferably in the bedroom. Men are expected to be vulnerable but not expected to be emotional, or at least, it’s okay to express your full range of emotions sometimes.

While much of this is ambiguous, some of this isn’t at all. Men are still expected to be the primary breadwinners, to be bad at parenting and to be decent and dumb fathers that learn to be pretty good by the time their kids are in college. Men are expected to deal with all of the big family issues like finances and bills, getting the car fixed, retirement accounts and life insurance, and mowing the lawn, while women do all of the cooking and cleaning and child rearing. At least, that’s what even feminists in the media eye often imply. I consider myself a feminist, a good father and at least a decent husband, and I still find all of this confusing. Luckily I tend to treat my wife as an equal, for no other reason than I can’t do it all, that I’m hardly perfect.

Which leads me to that other thing that annoys me to no end. When women — and this one really is universal in our culture — describe themselves with adjectives like “strong,” “assertive,” “aggressive,” “bitch,” “sensual,” “sexy,” and so many others. In my experience, women who say these words often don’t demonstrate the meaning of these words in their lives. The women I known who are such don’t go around saying these things about themselves. Some of the strongest women I’ve known in my life demonstrated their strength in their actions, not by describing how they would like to be in a casual conversation about it. Could you imagine any man describing themselves with the adjectives “strong” and “assertive.” Or for that matter, “masculine yet effete” or “in touch with my feminine side?” And all as part of an everyday adult conversation, casual or political? In this case, action and activism that demonstrates all of this is more important than asserting these adjectives over a glass of red wine.

One last point. If the goal of all branches of feminism is to level the playing field for all women, to speak truth to power, to overturn patriarchy — or at least to separate patriarchal wheat from chaff — then it should also respect the rights of women whose views of gender relations and feminism may not fit with the full program. From Rihanna and Chris Brown to the “Octo-Mom,” commentators and bloggers have gone overboard with their criticisms of men and women who don’t fall in line with the feminist mystique. In both cases, we don’t or can’t know the full story. As someone whose mother was abused by her second husband and was abused as well, I understand the sense of anger and outrage expressed in the blogosphere. As someone who spent his teenage years helping my mother take care of her four youngest children — ages between one week and five years old at one point — you have to shake your head at someone who doesn’t understand why women from every stripe fought for Griswold and Roe.

But people are more complicated than feminist philosophy, and circumstances are never as easily sorted in real life as they are by Nancy Grace or Campbell Brown. If we all truly believe that women are “32 flavors and then some,” then we should stop with the rabid knee-jerk responses to what comes out of our popular culture or political discourse. We should be truly universal when talking about the contributions of all women — and a few good men, I guess — to expanding and preserving the rights of women in this country and around the world. We should recognize that sexism in this country isn’t just practiced by men, and that feminism itself isn’t completely innocent in preserving aspects of American sexism. All that said, I hope that I’ll continue to meet women who are strong, assertive, aggressive, and even sexy, but hopefully without them saying so.

I wrote this story about three years ago, after an incident that occurred at my organization’s volleyball game. In light of Eric Holder’s recent comments about Americans being a “nation of cowards” on race, I decided to dig this up as a example of trepidation, guilt and anger whenever race bubbles to the surface. Although it’s a stretch to call Americans cowards about race, the fact that we are less than honest or open when we discuss race is still a big problem, even for folks born well after the end of the Civil Rights Movement. By the way, the full story is also on my website under “Other Writings”

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I played on my company’s volleyball team, one that hadn’t won a set of a volleyball match in two years. With a recent change in coach and a lack of available players, we were left with seven players for a game that required six starters. For this game I was the only person of color who attended. During this match we finally won our first set, which was the match’s first set. Our new coach increased the pressure, saying that it was time to win our first match. Our team proceeded to miss a ton of balls in the second set. I mishit some easy balls, and others missed balls hit directly to them.

I noticed as the second set drew to a close that some of the players were covering spots on my section of the floor. Not just covering my section. They were literally jumping right in front of me to do so. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, chalking it up to poor team communication. But after a third time of someone nearly running into me to hit a ball I was already in position to hit, I finally noticed that there was a strange team dynamic developing.

Just before the start of the third set, our coach said, “All right, we need a victory here.” With that, the six other players were assigned spots while I sat out as a substitute player for the start of the set. I said to myself that it “figured that the one Black guy on the team would have to sit out….”

After the match, I sat in the bleachers, still processing what had just happened. In the process, I hadn’t talked to any of my teammates. Our coach came over and asked me what was going on. I said hesitantly, “Well . . . I felt that there was some bias involved the decision to have me sub out.” When asked to explain what I meant by “bias,” I said, “well . . . I felt like race was involved here, seeing that, after all, I’m the only African American on the team.” My statement was received with several moans and a sardonic “Oh God!” by my teammates. I had instantaneously transformed myself from a teammate, co-worker, writer, historian and teacher to Kevin Powell on MTV’s The Real World in their eyes—a stereotypical, angry Black man. This despite the fact I felt more confused and disappointed than angry.

Our coach said that the “rest of us are White and that’s not going to change” and that I wasn’t “being a good sport accusing [them] of racism.” “I haven’t accused anybody of anything,” I said. “This isn’t about intentions; this is about perceptions.” I went on to say that I temporarily took myself out of the game because I didn’t want to hurt the team, considering how angry and confused I was at the time. With that, all but one teammate left the gym….

As I left the gym, I found the rest of the team waiting for me in the parking lot. At least they weren’t carrying sticks and stones. It seemed like a positive gesture at the time. They wanted to “hear me out” regarding my perceptions of bias and what might have caused them. I was already emotionally exhausted at this point, and didn’t want to talk to a group that had collectively banded together as Whites to defend themselves. I repeated in four different ways my emotions and my thought process during the third set, adding that I hadn’t drawn any final conclusions about their intentions or my perceptions. “Whether it was intentional or unintentional or my perceptions were correct or incorrect doesn’t matter,” I said….

I knew that my teammates, though well-intentioned, had disregarded my perceptions around racial bias, assuming that other bias issues were involved. I knew at least one had thought I was playing the so-called race card to deflect from my inconsistent play. If I could discuss my perceptions again, I would’ve used another example. I would’ve described a company basketball team with six players, of which only five could start. Five of the six players are Black. One is White. When the White player is in the game, his teammates consistently cut in front of him to catch passes and play defense. The White player is riding the bench at the beginning of the final period. When combined with the reality that his teammates aren’t exactly NBA All-Stars, the White player recognizes that his teammates don’t trust him. Most likely he thinks that the Black players have unintentionally and unconsciously made him a bench player because he’s White.

If I had used this analogy, I’m sure most of my teammates would’ve better understood what I had attempted to say. That a group dynamic had set in. It was one in which good, well-intentioned people had brought their unconscious assumptions together in a negative, unintended way. It included the fact that some teammates were desperate to win the match. There was the fact that my play wasn’t at a level superior to my other teammates. And there was the reality that I was a relatively new teammate among the seven playing on this night. All of these were inadvertent, unconscious and unintentional factors in my teammates’ actions, ones that at a minimum proved that they didn’t trust me as a teammate. When combined with the fact of my Black maleness (with the possibility of athletic stereotypes attached), it made sense for me to pick up on these dynamics and to interpret them as I did.

That’s just it, though. As surprised as I was initially by my perceptions around the volleyball incident, I found myself equally amazed by how much stronger the group dynamic became the moment I mentioned “race” to my teammates. Their individuality as White women and men, Israeli Jew and Scotch-Irish Americans completely disappeared as they moaned derisively with one voice. The continuation of our conversation about what happened during the game confirmed for me something about the unintentional and unconscious assumptions we all make around race. As my teammates gave me their assurances, I reminded myself that many Whites and those who identify with Whiteness find it difficult to sort out how their sense of universal American privilege clouds their ability to see bias. This privilege, no matter how gently one confronts it, brings with it knee-jerk guilt and automatic anger.

This doesn’t mean that someone like me should stand by because I’m not completely certain about my colleagues’ intentions or actions or because I don’t want others to see me as the “bad guy.” Even if race wasn’t a significant motivation for their actions, their lack of trust was obvious. And mistrust in a multicultural setting by definition possesses racial undercurrents, for we are humans after all, each living our lives within a specific social context. We each need to have the space to confront group dynamics that work against us, even in public. We should be damn sure about our own perceptions before we speak of them. But we also should feel welcome enough in our group circles to raise race and be taken seriously before folks who otherwise see themselves as “colorblind” dismiss what we’ve said. Maybe it’s here—in the everyday group dynamics that occur at work, at school and in other settings—where it’s most critical for all of us to strive for a more tolerant society.

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I think that this last paragraph encompasses a lot of what our new Attorney General was attempting to say. Any conversation about race is tainted by knee-jerk reactions on all sides, whether race is an issue, not an issue, or the issue that needs to be explored. For some of us saying the word “race” is equivalent to shouting “Fire!” in the middle of a crowded theater — hence the title. For others, it’s either treated as the joker from a deck of fifty-two cards or, if we’re seriously raising the issue, it’s as if we’ve lost our minds by bringing it up for conversation.

Whether one agrees with my perceptions really isn’t the point. It’s whether my perceptions or perspective is treated with the respect that it deserves. Falling short of that means postponing a conversation that has been necessary for at least four decades in most circles, and generations longer in others. Maybe we should shout “race” in the theaters of our lives, along with “money,” “power,” and “sexual orientation.” It would mean that we as a nation would need to shed our uncomfortability around these issues if we shouted about all of this more often, and in a proactive way at that.

I neglected to mention one of the most important things of all when I discussed why I’ve been a “lying actor” for most of my life. Anyone who has ever watched a movie with me or been to the movies with me already knows this. For whatever reason, I can put myself in any film. A dramedy, a comedy, a romantic comedy, an epic film. It almost doesn’t matter. As long as the film is good and the acting is very good, I tend to be “in” the film, in the moment. I become emotional, romantic, more free of my inhibitions — at least in my head — than I would be if I had three glasses of White Zinfandel after coming home from a date with my wife.

Keep in mind, there are only two periods in my life in which I’ve watched movies regularly. One, from ’74 to ’81, and the other, since The Untouchables came out in the summer of ’87. Between the ages of four and eleven, I saw everything from Ben Hur, True Grit and Casablanca — thanks in large part to the old WNEW (Channel 5) in New York in the years before Rupert Murdoch — to Carrie, Star Wars and Breaker! Breaker!. I had no particular set of movie tastes at all. My father Jimme loved “shoot ’em ups,” he said to me over and over again years before Clive Owen starred in a movie by the same name. My mother had no movie tastes and no discernment as to whether a five-year-old like me should watch The Omen with her. My ex-stepfather only liked martial arts films — I use this term loosely — like ones with Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, or David Carradine. I never had a chance to develop a set of tastes over time, especially during my teens.

While all of my classmates would consume movies like large buckets of popcorn, I was relegated to the occasional commercial trailer for the really, really big movies. It took me ten years to figure out why one classmate would walk into class almost every day singing “Roxanne!” a couple of octaves higher than Sting all throughout eighth, ninth and tenth grade. I didn’t see 48 Hours or Eddie Murphy’s take on The Police’s classic song until ’91. I’ve never seen E.T., Flashdance, Fame, The Verdict, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Cotton Club, Out of Africa (not that I’d really want to) or Gandhi. I’ve only seen movies like The Killing Fields, Witness and A Soldier’s Story in the past ten or fifteen years. And others, like Platoon, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I only got to see relatively close to their release dates because of cable (we didn’t get it until September ’85) or the Pitt Program Council.

So I appreciate the opportunity to see a good film with a good plot and great acting when I can. I easily get caught up in stories, even hokey ones, because I know I am a goofball and that out of six and a half billion people, there have to be others like me out there. I do emote at some of these films, but not usually at the obvious ones. I once walked out on Breaking the Waves because three women were sitting around me crying as the movie was drawing to its depressing close. Emily Watson’s character somehow believed that she was keeping her paralyzed husband alive by doing what he wanted, which in this case was sleeping with other men. Gimme a break! It was stupid, desperate and scary, but not something to cry about. Of course, my then girlfriend Angelia (now wife) dragged me to this “great” Indy film because she wanted a change of pace.

But I digress. I do cry at films. Usually when unrequited love is rewarded — I wonder why. Or when someone dies, especially when the other character or characters have developed a relationship with that person. Or when someone’s truth and life is vindicated. Movies like Chocolat, The Color Purple, Love, Actually, Finding Forrester, About A Boy, The English Patient, Crash, Good Will Hunting, Sixth Sense, even Jerry Maguire. Over the years, I’ve become a fan of Indy movies, quirky movies, movies that are character studies or have a plot that only a sensitive person like me can appreciate. I see a bit of myself in some characters. So when a character manages to overcome great obstacles, it makes me smile, laugh, even cry as if I’m in the film. When a character can become angry, I can be angry for them. When they fall in love, for that moment, I’m in love, too.

Still, I do watch some action films. Like Shoot ‘Em Up, Tombstone, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon, sometimes over and over and over again. I’ve seen Tombstone at least thirty times over the years, and we own the DVD! I find myself liking the so-called bad guys almost as much as I like the lead characters. Documentaries, especially those by the ever-rabid Michael Moore, pull on my social justice strings. And, by the way, we sometimes need someone as rabid as Moore to hit us over the head about issues in which we need to take action. Of course, animation has become bigger in my movie selections of late. I love The Incredibles, Cars, the first two of Shrek. Of course, none are better in my mind than Kim Possible or Avatar: The Last Airbender — although Ben 10: Alien Force is starting to catch up.

As I get older, though, I can’t watch horror films or sci-fi films with horror or these docu-dramas that provide real life horror, like Boys Don’t Cry, 28 Days Later, or Hotel Rwanda. I can relate in the case of real-life horrors, but either the horror is over the top or just too much for me to relate to at one time.

The one thing I can’t watch at all any more are apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic movies. Because of what I’ve gone through, I can and become obsessed with the end of the world as we all know it at times. Terminator, Terminator II, The Day After, The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, Independence Day (still a great film, though), and so many others. Between ’83 and ’03, I had so many bad dreams about being caught in the middle of a thermonuclear detonation that I had to stop watching Hollywood’s various depictions of Armageddon. If it happens, it happens. At least I’m experienced some form of it in my upbringing.

So, I’m a emotional sap when it comes to some movies, but also like a bit of “Movies For Guys Who Like Movies” movies, but have to back away from movies of cataclysmic pain and suffered, not to mention gratuitous violence and horror. I guess that makes me normal, and it gives me a sense of what kind of lying actor I would’ve been had I pursued this even casually growing up. Somewhere between Hugh Grant, Rob Brown, and Cuba Gooding, Jr., I guess. The best that I can do with the calling I have related to movies is to write something inspiring enough that by the time Noah’s my age, someone has used some of it in a movies. That means turning off the DVD player long enough to write or read.

Finding my calling in life has been just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Not because I have no talents or skills. Based on all I’ve done so far in this life, I likely have more skills than I can pursue as a calling. Trauma like domestic violence, poverty, psychological abuse, being Black and gifted in America, and overcoming ignorance justified by religion can all cloud one’s path to their unique calling. I’ve written extensively about my path to seeing myself as a writer, a two-decade-long journey that started at the age of eleven and ended soon after marrying at thirty.

For many folks, spring training and baseball is part of their rite of spring transition from America’s game (football) to America’s past-time. Or, as I like to say, to a sport whose time has long past, regardless of how many people come out to watch. I’m an ex-baseball fan for many reasons, a fair number of which I’ve discussed in my postings at the end of ’07 and in February ’08.

Much of my disdain for the sport is because of its contradictory history around race. It’s not just what happened before Jackie Robinson and the ’47 Dodgers or with Hank Aaron in chasing down Babe Ruth or with Al Campanis’ horrible comments about Blacks as managers or in the front office on Nightline in ’87. No, it’s about the everyday nature of how many Americans see baseball that reshaped my thinking around the game between high school and graduate school.

It all started with my own experience trying out for Mount Vernon High School’s varsity baseball team my junior year, in March of ’86. As much as I loved football and liked basketball, I really loved America’s favorite pastime. Having worked out with the baseball team in the fall had given me the confidence to pursue the week-long process of elimination. One of my student-athlete classmates spent some time encouraging me, although I didn’t doubt that she had doubts about me making the team. She was on MVHS’ swim team and was an excellent swimmer. This was in addition to the school newspaper, Meltzer’s mock trial team, the National Honors Society and a thousand other things she was into. Out of all of my classmates, there were few I knew who were busier — at least in school. Her day started around 5 am, with swimming at 5:30 or 6. As much as I thought that I couldn’t do what she was doing, I was often up at 5:30 or 6 am myself, ready to start the day.

Despite her ambivalent encouragements, I went for baseball as hard as I could for the most part. The second week of March was to be four days of constant competition followed by frustration. The tryouts were all after school, from three to five o’clock, in the indoor practice facility for the baseball and track teams. We did calisthenics and stretching, followed my more calisthenics and stretching, followed by defensive practice. Beyond the competition, the first thing I noticed was that out of the thirty-two of us, including the team, only four Blacks were a part of this entire process. All four of us were trying out. The team itself was all-White and virtually all-Italian. The coach was a fat Italian man in his late-thirties and not exactly the nicest guy in the world. If you made an error, even if you managed to work it out, he called you off the field immediately and tried someone else in that spot. None of us had much margin for error.

But I made two errors that week that stuck out for me. One was on Tuesday. The coaches took us outside to practice catching fly balls. I’d never practiced catching anything in the outfield, whether to run up on a ball or to back up, or even how to hold my glove. There was one hit directly to me, a line drive of a fly ball. It hit my glove fine, and then I allowed it to drop. As soon as I dropped the ball, the coach took me off the field. My second error was on Wednesday, but it did more damage to me. We were doing infield drills, and they had me at shortshop. I must’ve fielded eight or ten balls while I was out there, backhanding balls, spinning and throwing to first pretty good. One ball hit to me took a hop right off my balls. I caught it in my glove and threw it to first before I fell down and grabbed myself. It took about forty-five seconds before I felt the full force of the pain, which went away just as quickly. There was certainly a lot of laughter around that, drowning out the fact that I still made the play. The coach just shook his head.

The last day of tryouts was spent in the batting cage. Each of us were supposed to take whacks at an eighty mile-an-hour ball coming from the ball machine. When my turn came up, I had a total of four balls to swing at in the simulator. I was already over-thinking the scenario before I got in the cage. My mind went to a situation in gym last year, to softball on a humid upper-80s day. Before we started the game, I took some practice swings with a gym mate throwing the softball overhand as hard as he could. I swung as hard as I could and hit the pitch just about a hundred yards. My arms and hands, though, were numb, and my crooked left fingers in a lot of pain. I’d conjured up my own downfall. I was scared to make full contact with the baseball. And, for the first three swings, I swung and missed, swung and barely tipped the ball, and swung and missed again. I thought to myself, “This is ridiculous. If I want any chance to make this team, I have to make contact.” I slowed down the last pitch, swung and made contact, and it didn’t hurt. I wished that I’d done that sooner.

There was only one other Black guy trying out by the fourth day, someone I didn’t know, but was really athletic. He got in the cage and tore up the baseballs, making crisp, clean consistent contact with the balls. I knew he was a shoo-in after that. There was another kid, a kid I recognized from the neighborhood. It was the son of the pizza shop owner, the one whose pizzeria was just down the street from 616. This guy had missed all three days of tryouts, but was invited to batting practice on the fourth day. He too went in the batting cage and clobbered the baseball. At that point my heart sunk. I knew I wasn’t going to make the team. Sure enough, the coach posted the names of the guys who made the team the following week, with my name not on the list. I was disappointed. “[The coach] says that you’re pretty good, but you’re also a danger to yourself,” my student-athlete classmate said with a bit of a giggle. I smiled, but I wasn’t in a joking mood.

Of the thirteen people who were on the team, twelve were White, and eleven of those twelve were Italian. The one token Black guy was easily the best athlete on the team, head and shoulders over most of last year’s starters. And the kid, the one whose father owned the pizza shop near 616, the one who only showed up for tryouts on the fourth day, was among the guys on this year’s team. I may or may not have been good enough to make the team. I just felt that the Italian coaches had rigged the process, tainted it in some way to favor kids who were one of their own or played Little League with their nephew or second cousin. The experience left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. “How is this even fair?,” I thought to myself as I looked at the list. “Mom really is right. You do have to be ten times better to be equal in this society.” I knew that there was a track coach and a basketball coach still interested in me, but the racial thing stuck out to me. To recognize that baseball was an Italian’s club while only Blacks played basketball and ran track, Whites did almost all the swimming and football was the only sport where the spirit of integration lived on really bothered me. I guessed that the “content of character,” or in this case, talent or potential meant little to these coaches.

That experience did not end my love affair with baseball. It did start me on the road to becoming an ex-baseball fan, though. Ironically, it was the Mets winning the World Series in October ’86 that accelerated the process. They were my ultimate team of underdogs, a team that most New Yorkers only cared about when they were winning, which wasn’t very often. Now that they had the best record in baseball and were officially world champs, all kinds of things started coming out about Darryl Strawberry’s alcohol and drug use and Dwight Gooden’s first positive drug test. That was bad enough. Hearing what folks would say about these guys on talk radio was even worse. They were “animals,” I heard many more than a few callers into the sports talk shows say. They make “way too much money,” or they “don’t deserve a second chance,” I heard others say. Mind you, this was the era of Steve Howe, a seven-time violator of the major league baseball drug policy.

In a league full of coke heads and beer bingers, the two star Black athletes were being beat up, not by talk show hosts, but by blue-collar White callers who longed for the good ol’ days of Ruth, DiMaggio, and Mantle, or the happy-go-lucky Willie Mays. At least two of those guys regularly medicated themselves with alcohol, but I guessed that was okay, because they looked more like the people who were calling into the New York area talk shows wanting Strawberry’s and Gooden’s heads.

Moving to Pittsburgh and going to college gave me a better perspective on major league sports, especially baseball and football. Outside of baseball crazy New York, most folks I met were crazy about football, basketball or soccer, whether as grade schoolers or grad students. Baseball was boring, plain and simple. It really was. I watched enough Pittsburgh Pirates games to understand that. Even when the Bucs — as they’re called in the ‘Burgh — were good, the games were about as exciting as a Champions Tour golf tournament in the middle of August. Even with them making the playoffs three out of four years in one stretch, the media and the fans hated Barry Bonds. Now, Barry Bonds has always made himself hard to like, or to put it another way, is a surly jerk. But so are so many other professional athletes that actually have superior talent. Like Strawberry and Gooden, Bonds was vilified on the talk radio shows by folks who wanted him to be more like his grinning godfather Willie Mays.

The next and final set of turning points came in the four years before the ’94 strike and lockout. When conservative columnist George Will published his book about baseball and its wonderfully timeless symmetry and treating the game as a science, it killed my interest in the sport. I knew as a spectator and as someone who actually spent some time playing the game how simple it really is. Reading defenses in football is hard. Figuring out which club to use on a windy day at Pebble Beach is difficult. Catching a baseball is pretty basic by comparison. Waiting forever for someone to hit a ball in your direction, that’s boring and excruciating. After reading the first ten pages, I wanted to burn the book.

By this time, I had started playing basketball to relieve the stresses of graduate school. I found myself gaining confidence in my jump shot and in playing pickup games with average Joe’s and with former Pitt basketball players. I found the follies of Greg Norman and golf more exciting than watching a great pitchers’ duel between Greg Maddox and Orel Hershiser. I always enjoyed football, playing and watching. By the time Joe Carter hit his World Series ending home run against the Atlanta Braves in ’93, I no longer had a real interest in baseball. I still knew its history, or rather, its mythology around its statistics, records and glory days. But I also knew way too much about its ugly history and its seedy underbelly to continue to follow the sport.

That was why when Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary came out in the fall of ’94 — right in the middle of the baseball lockout that would cancel that year’s World Series — I declared myself an ex-baseball fan. Watching sportscaster Bob Costas drone on and on about how he cried when he walked by Babe Ruth’s statue when he was seven years old made me gag. Hearing old and crusty White guys talk about their White greats when Blacks especially were shut out from playing major league baseball pissed me off. But most importantly, the complete whitewash of continuing to call baseball America’s pastime when the sport had been in decline since the late ’50s was just too much to swallow.

Today, I see it as an American sport supported mostly by White guys between the ages of thirty-five and seventy-five, mostly living in the Northeast corridor between Washington, DC and Boston, and mostly waxing nostalgic about the heroes they barely know or knew. It was baseball that taught me one of my more bitter lessons about talent versus collusion and ethnic identification. I hope, for my son’s sake, that he never falls in love with this sport.