Lamentations of a Lady-Fan

As a female fan, I get my share of patronizing looks and remarks, and then stares of amazement when I prove I'm not in it to ogle the players' butts in baseball pants. For instance, this Friday afternoon I was at a club meeting, and a freshman who I'd met once or twice before walked in and asked, to the room at large, "Who are you all picking to win the World Series?"

Of course, I've put a lot of thought into this, and so I immediately answered "Philly."


"No," he shook his head at me. "They're losing to San Fransisco in the NLCS. Tim Lincecum is going to destroy Roy Halladay."

Normally, I enjoy baseball debates, but he had the air of someone who is teaching a stubborn first grader that 1+1 does, in fact, equal 2. I bristled at his tone, and asked him a simple question:

"Really? How many perfect games does Tim Lincecum have under his belt?"

He stared blankly at me, before answering, "Well, none. But how many Cy Youngs does Roy Halladay have? Zero."

I gaped at him in disbelief. "Seriously? Roy Halladay was the Cy Young winner in 2003! In the AL East, no less!"

He then scoffed at the ferocity of competition in that division, calling it overrated, at which point got some backup from another boy in the room:

"Seriously? The three best teams in baseball are in that division!"

"And," I added, "The Red Sox won eighty-nine games with a final lineup that included several players who had started the year in Double-A!"

"So?" The original questioner asked, "The White Sox won more than that and they had injuries!"

At this point, the other members of the (predominantly male) club were staring at us. My friend Steph, the only other girl in the room, and decidedly NOT a baseball fan, was giggling. [This would be a better story if Halladay had shut down the Giants last night, but the Phils lost. Either way, it was not the pitcher's duel most baseball fans were expecting.]

I decided not to correct him. He clearly did not know what he was talking about, and he doubted my credibility as a source in any case (for the record, the White Sox won 88 games in 2010). I'm not sure why he thought I wasn't a reliable source of baseball knowledge, but in the past I've been told that I can't possibly know sports because I am a straight female.

This is exactly WHY I am sometimes judgmental of other fans - shouldn't they be held to the same ridiculous standards of knowledge as I am?

This is ridiculous. I spend 90% of my free time researching, watching, or discussing baseball. I run this blog and another, and I have a veritable library of baseball books. My computer toolbar has six baseball links, one for Twitter (where I discuss baseball), and one for my college's athletics website.


So, clearly my being in possession of a uterus excludes me from intelligent baseball discourse. I'm sorry for wasting all of your time with my yattering about a sport I am biologically unable to understand.

Marijuana: PED?

Yesterday, Giants pitching phenom Tim Lincecum was pulled over for speeding on a highway in Washington State, and arrested for possessing a small amount of marijuana.

Let's be honest here: is anyone really surprised? More importantly, is anyone all that upset?

As Twitter user Kdawg1313 said "I'd be shocked if Lincecum was busted for steroids! Weed, not so much." I would be MUCH more upset if Lincecum was cheating with some sort of performance enhancer... As it is, I just wonder what sort of penalty he'll face from baseball.

Now, if it were up to me, he would have to answer to his state laws, and MLB would have to leave him be: he wasn't cheating, so in my opinion, this falls outside of their jurisdiction. If Joba Chamberlain can endanger his own life and the lives of others with DUI without sanction from MLB, Tim Lincecum deserves the same luxury.

Personally, I don't smoke (marijuana or otherwise). However, many people do... It's naive to believe with any sort of certainty that baseball doesn't have players who enjoy smoking recreationally; many of them enjoy tobacco in one or more of its forms, and I don't think marijuana is that different.

Now, I understand this is a legal issue, because regardless of public opinion about marijuana, the fact is that it is illegal in the United States (with certain exceptions in certain states)... But as a baseball fan, I take the same stance on this as I took with the Michael Phelps debacle: if he can smoke pot and still dominate all of his competition, more power to him.

What do you guys think?