[chicoruiz]

It's April in Washington D.C. The cherry trees are in blossom, the mayor is on trial for perjury and cocaine use, and the President has taken a decisive stand against broccoli. And over at Eisenhower Field, the thoughts of ball players have turned to sex, just as they do in every other month of the year.

Former Tiger manager Mayo Smith once said, “Open up a ballplayer’s head, and you know what you find? A lot of little broads and a jazz band.” That was twenty years ago; the jazz band has since packed up and moved out. There’s no room.

These musings were brought to mind by the predicament of backup catcher Martin Irwin, who found out recently that his last relationship had perhaps not been as exclusive as he imagined, and that his former paramour had left him with a little something to remember her by. As he sat in front of his locker examining his penicillin vial and bemoaning his fate, he said, “But I thought what Cheryll Ann and I shared was magic”.

“Face it, Marty”, replied pitcher Larry Goll. “Cheryll Ann has shared her magic with more people than David Copperfield”.

Irwin is hardly the only victim of Cupid’s perfidy. Ossie Barranco’s multiple girlfriends coming and going in our Boston hotel produced a situation reminiscent of a French bedroom farce. And Ty Monaco, our ace pitcher, believed he was too big a star to let anyone know he was infected with crabs, so he resorted to self-treatment with Sergeant’s Skip-Flea Dog Soap.

Baseball players seem to attract several strata of women, ranging from goddesses that the lucky ones get to settle down with, down to attractive-in-a-stripperish-way types good for a season at most, and eventually descending all the way to the mullions, the girls who just want a baseball player; any baseball player. And believe me, the WBL mullions are even a step further down from Major League mullions. The common rule of thumb is that a WBL mullion requires the ingestion of at least one more beer than a MLB mullion before she becomes acceptable.

I speak hypothetically of course. I’ve had a couple of dates with a girl who works for the Library of Congress, but I wouldn’t ask her to come out to the ballpark to ooh and ahh over my athletic prowess. For one thing, it’s highly unlikely that I’d get into the game.

Ernest Shrum, as best I can determine, is celibate…