Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Jock Straps

A reunion of sorts is being held at the college I attended commemorating the 30th thirtieth anniversary of the demise of the school baseball team in the Small College World Series. Back in the day, there were two divisions in NCAA baseball; so, our 2100-student college played the eventual national champion University of California at Irvine, with its 20,000+ student body. Thinking back on it, those guys had some kind of new-fangled metal baseball bats and looked like they were on steroids, whereas we had some taped-up wooden bats with guys on the team from places called Gomer, Elida, and Wapakoneta, who never saw a building taller than three stories and were surprised that the black guy on the team was dark brown all over, not just where he was supposed to be sun-tanned.

Stacey and I are going to the April 25th dinner and other planned events, having been convinced to do so by my old friend and teammate, DT, and his wife. It is a strange thing, but about half the players on that team were married or getting married that year and all but one are still married to the same woman.

I let my mind saunter back down the memory lane. And what strikes me on that stroll?

The smell of leather and the crack of bat on ball? No, not at all.

Boxer shorts come to mind.

I prefer boxer shorts over the other kinds. This preference is a proximate result of wearing an athletic "supporter" and "protective" cup for 25 years or so. The "protective" cup, made of hard plastic or steel, is advertised to offer some degree of security against foul tips off the hitter’s bat that might happen to smash into the area between a crouched catcher’s legs at ninety miles an hour. That term "protective" in the name is loosely applied because such a ballistic collision with the impact-resistant plastic or steel causes exquisite pain to run on some undiscovered nerve pathway from the area below the belt directly to the throat with a concomitant hollowness being reamed out and lasting anywhere from several hours to days.

The athletic "supporter" or jock strap, as it is known in the popular parlance, doesn't so much support as it does smash body parts together and pushes them back into the abdomen from where they came (I’ve read this sentence several times and I do not see any dangling participle). Add the hardened steel or impact-resistant, unbreakable plastic "protective" cup to the athletic "supporter" and they combine to produce a condition that doctors term claustrophobic genitalia.

After having suffered with this condition for many years, the thought of tight underwear just sends shivers up my spine.

Posted by Bill at April 14, 2004 06:39 PM