The Gay Connection of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays

I hate sports.  I've never seen a sports match on tv all the way through.  I have no idea who belongs to what team, or what RBA the MVP has with what blocking average and defense in the line draw.

I also hate it when people assume that because I'm a guy, I'm naturally obsessed with sports.  Random people stop me on the street and proclaim "The Vikings are ahead 3-2!"

Vikings?  Like in Thor and Odin?

Or ask "How's the game going?"

The game?  You mean Tetris, on my computer?  It's going ok, I guess.

When I was little and went in for a vaccination, the doctor advised "Be brave!  Be like your hero, Mickey Mantle!"

I was so offended by the imputation of hero-worship for a sports star that I forgot to be afraid of the shot.

Actually, Mickey Mantle (1931-1995) was one of three baseball players that I had actually heard of.  I even know that he played for the New York Yankees during the 1950s and 1960s (because they mentioned him on Seinfeld).  He set some records and stuff, and he has some gay connections:

1. He drew gay rumors, even though he was married for many years, and had many affairs with women. There are homophobic rants online complaining that he doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame "because he was a f***"

2. His nephew Kelly is a famous drag performer, with credits in movies, theater, music, and tv, including RuPaul's Drag Race.

3. He had quite a nice physique, and was apparently gifted beneath the belt.

The other baseball player that I've heard of is Joe DiMaggio, because of that song, and the third is Willie Mays (1931-), who played for the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants, known as the "Say Hey Kid" for some reason.  He's got a gay connection, too.

1. On an episode of Bewitched, he shows up at a party for witches.  Darren is shocked that Willie Mays might be a ....you know, but Samantha retorts, "The way he hits?  What else?"  So ever after, I thought that Willie Mays did his sports things with witchcraft.

Witchcraft was code for...you know, so I figured that he was gay.

2. Apparently he's straight but not homophobic.  He appeared in a tv commercial for Coors Beer along with gay Olympic medalist Bruce Hayes.  When asked if baseball was "ready" for an openly gay player, he responded: "Can he hit?"

3. He had a very nice physique, and a super-sized baseball bat.

See also: Joe DiMaggio's Nude Frolick

10 Things You Should Know about Sportsball Player Rob Gronkowski

I don't usually do sportsball players, but apparently everybody knows about this one, so I have to do a 10-things article to get up to speed.

1. Rob Gronkowski was born in 1989 in New York.

2.  After college (University of Arizona), he started a career in sportsball for some team.

3. His position was "tight end," which I'm sure has a sexual connotation.

4. His nickname is The Gronk, which sounds like a bad guy in a 1970s Sid and Marty Krofft kids' show: "In today's episode, the evil Gronk tries to steal the ice crown and bring chaos to the Land of Shadows."

5. He's photographed nude a lot, but I have found no actual penises.  It's always a tease, with his genitals covered by a football or a picture of himself.

6. He's photographed with bikini-clad ladies a lot.  Apparently he likes women.

7.  He seems quite full of himself.  I've never seen him on film, but in nearly every photograph, he has an annoying smirk: "Don't you wish you were as good as me?  But you're not, are you?"

8. There are 537 articles in various newspapers and magazines exclaiming, with utter surprise, that Gronkowski would be fine with a gay teammate.  Since when is this newsworthy? Would he also be ok with a black teammate?  How about a Jewish one?

9. There's that annoying smirk again.  I don't care if he is ok with a gay teammate, I don't like him.

10. He's not playing sportsball anymore.  He retired at age 30.

Beefcake Alert: Shirts vs. Skins Basketball in the Campus Gym

Since time immemorial, I've run at 2:00 pm Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Three or four miles outside in the summer, sometimes five, and in the winter, a quick three miles plus warmup on a treadmill in the campus gym, plugged into Bob's Burgers or Judge Judy

But lately I've been going at 4:00 or later, and skipping the treadmill to run around the indoor track, so I can look down and see the show. 

Basketball, either intramural or recreational, down on the gym floor.  

I'm not at all interested in basketball, but I'm very interested in ten guys running around on the floor, five of them shirtless, their chests, shoulders, abs, and arms available for anyone to gawk at.

Sometimes there are two games going on down there.

That's twenty guys, ten of them shirtless.

Occasionally even three games.

Thirty guys, fifteen shirtless, the sound of thunder, the smell of testosterone and sweat. 

They're much closer than these pictures would suggest -- I'm only a few feet above the players.

I try to gauge my pace so I run past the basket where they're trying to block and throw the projectile.



Each game involves two baskets on opposite sides of the gym.  Sometimes they're running in the opposite direction.  

But I have lots of chances.  The indoor track is only 1/10th of a mile around.

Three miles, thirty laps. 

Plus I need to walk a few laps before and after my run, right? 

The players keep changing.  There's always someone new to look at.

The ginger boy with a dusting of chest hair and a glory trail.

The swarthy Middle Easterner with thick hair and dark eyes and smooth, marble-hard abs.

The baby-faced freshman who reddens easily.

The skinny guy with thin arms, a narrow chest, and an innie belly button.

The short black guy with massive shoulders and pecs.

The long-haired, bearded Jesus Christ, with a hairy chest and a cross necklace.

The blond boy with a beautiful physique who yells "Aright!" when he makes a basket.

The chunky geek with a huge basket that keeps shifting around in his sweat pants.

The later I arrive, the better the show gets.

I've been coming in on my weight-training days, too.  I have to do a few laps to warm up, right?  And after my workout?

None of the other runners has yet noticed me slowing down when I'm near the players, and then zipping around the deserted regions of the gym.

None of the players has yet looked up and noticed me looking, or if they do, they just think I'm into basketball.

It's late March, warm enough to run outside, but I think I'll give the campus gym a few more weeks. 

How can I miss the show?

Youth Wrestling

I don't understand competition. Why does there have to be a winner and a loser? There's no point in hurting someone's feelings just because they didn't perform as well as someone else.  In teaching you never tell the A students that they're winners, and the C students (C is the new F) that they're losers.

That's why I don't like sports.  Why is that team trying to take the ball away from the other team?  Can't they just share?

And I hate violence, so I especially don't like sports that are just stylized fights, like wrestling.

The only reason I pay wrestling any attention is for the homoerotic subtext of two guys grabbing at each other.

And of course for biceps and bulges in the revealing uniforms.

So I don't approve of "youth wrestling," where they take preteen boys, aged 5-13 (typically girls aren't admitted), and force them to compete and fight with each other.  It's nothing but a training school for bullies.

But there are hundred of youth wrestling clubs around the U.S. for parents to force their kids into.  They have state and national competitions with thousands of participants.

Thousands.

I don't get it.  Who would want to watch their kids doing this?

















And photographing their 5-year olds in creepy preteen beefcake shots, thinking "Soon my muscleman will be beating up fairies in the schoolyard."

The Wisconsin Youth Wrestling Federation even suggests proselytization.  To be fair, it cautions against using sexist rhetoric like "Are you man enough?"  Instead say things like "I think you'd be good at wrestling" or "Want to have fun wrestling?"

Team USA cautions that "Wrestling does not promote violence.  Matches begin and end with a handshake."  It also promises that youth wrestlers don't have to wear singlets, so no bulges on display (leave that for high school), and that "wrestling is for all ages, races, and genders."

It doesn't mention sexual orientations, but I doubt that gay kids are welcome.

Beach Volleyball

Beach volleyball has a sleazy, heterosexist reputation, all about girls in bikinis jiggling while men leer.  But actually it's a legitimate sport, more difficult than regular volleyball because the sand is so soft. 

It began in the 1920s on the beaches of California as a "family fun" sport.  Tournaments began in the 1940s, spreading out from California to Hawaii, Florida, Europe, and eventually around the world.

Beach Volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1996.  In 1997, world tours began, with prizes up to $400,000.

It's a big deal.


 Beach volleyball is offered by many colleges and high schools in Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Kentucky (yes, there are beaches in Kentucky),  and other states.

The Georgia State Panthers


















But of course California is the mainstay.

San Marcos High School.   I don't know why red trunks are so appealing.  Maybe they stand out against the sand better.

Santa Monica High School.

Even Catholic schools get into the act.  Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana.












Private clubs have their own teams.

The uniforms aren't quite as evocative as swimsuits, but you can't beat the beefcake.

"Selection Day": Ultra-Closeted Gay Cricket Players Who Don't Play Cricket

The 2016 novel Selection Day, by Aravind Andiga, traces the journey of two boys, Radhu and Manju, being groomed by their father to become cricket stars.  Well, perhaps "aggressively shoved into" is more accurate.  The elder Mr. Kumar is completely obsessed with the sport, and believes that his sons are his ticket to fame and fortune. 

Manju, the central character, has two secrets: he doesn't like cricket very much, but he's afraid to tell his father tha he wants to become a scientists; and he's gay.  But if he comes out, he will lose his cricket scholarship and his career -- cricket is even more heterosexist than American sports, and gay athletes absolutely "do not and cannot exist."

His wealthy boyfriend Javed encourages him to come out anyway, but you know, Manju is poor.  The rich have options that the poor do not.  They can choose not to marry.  They can spend most of their time in London.  They can be "eccentric" without losing their families, their social statuses, maybe their lives.  The poor have to marry or die, they can't flee to London.  They are stuck.  The novel ends with Manju stuck.

I was interested in seeing how the Netflix tv series (2018) would handle the book.  After all, Manju being gay is pretty much the entire plot.  How could they heterosexualize him? 

Turns out that they don't exactly heterosexualize him, but they gay-subtext him into oblivion.  He's angst-ridden over something that is unknown and unknowable.  He kind of glances at Javed. He hangs out with girls.

Javed (Karanvir Malhotra, above) is such a minor character that he doesn't make much of an impression at all.

I actually get more of gay vibe from Lord Subramayan (Shiv Pandit, top photo and left), Manju's touch-feely mentor. But it's a creepy-homophobic gay predator vibe.

If I didn't know Manju was gay from the book, I'd never figure it out in the series.  In an interview, Mohammad Samad (who plays Manju) states that he wasn't even aware that his character was gay until after he was cast.

I have two more questions about this boring, homophobic mess:

1. These are athletes. Shouldn't there be some locker room scenes, or at least some shirtless workouts?

2. In a tv series about cricket players, shouldn't there be some scenes with them playing cricket?

A Remedy for Twinks

I've been doing a lot of twink-style beefcake lately.  Time to get back to macho men with muscles and chest hair.

This wrestler has a singlet with an eagle logo and "Jacob Curby, 1984-2010."  I can't read the line in cursive below it, but it probably says something like "Rest in peace."  So I wanted to find out who this Jacob Curby was, and why this wrestler memorialized him.  His big brother, perhaps?

Jacob Curby's obituary was easy to find: He was from LaGrange Highlands, Illinois, and he had two siblings, Nicholas and Courtney Curby.

He graduated from L.H.S. in 2002, and studied at the United States Olympic Education Training Center in Marquette, Wisconsin.  He was a member of the U.S. Graeco-Roman Wrestling Team.

After receiving his B.S. from Northern Michigan University, he moved to Boise, Idaho, to train for the 2012 Olympics.  But died unexpectedly one day, while taking a nap after a practice.

He suffered from cancer as a child, so memorials were requested to go to U.S.A.Wrestling or to Loyola University Pediatric Oncology Research.

More details: Jacob's family sponsored the  Jacob Curby Foundation, which offered the Curby Cup to American and Iranian wrestling teams every year from 2010 to 2015.

I don't know why American and Iranian in particular, but the 2015 winner was Bashir Babjanzadeh, who also competed in the 2016 Olympics.  He was suspended from competition for four years for doping (misusing steroids).

So who is wearing the memorial singlet?  I tried  Jacob's brother, Nicholas, the fiancee's brothers, and wrestlers at his old high school. No dice.

A reverse image search on google revealed "Beefy Men," "Muscular Wrestling Hunk," and various other photo names.

Then I found an exact duplicate: "Ben Proviser vs. Manuchar Kvirkelia, 2012 Curby Cup.  The memorializing wrestler must be one of those two.

Manuchar Kvirkelia, from Tbilisi, Georgia, won a gold medal in the 2008 summer Olympics.


















Ben Proviser, from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, competed in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics.

The memorializing wrestler doesn't really look like either of them, but things change in 6 years.  It's probably Ben.

Here's Philippe Doux LaPlace, just because he's bulging and has chest hair.



















And someone whose name I don't know, just because he's bulging.

Tired of muscle men yet?

Lutte, Lucha, and Ringen: Graeco-Roman Wrestling for Grown-Ups

The high school and college wrestling we know, with adolescents in very revealing singlets trying to pin each other, is purely American, not practiced anywhere else except in a few Canadian schools.

In Europe, it's all Graeco-Roman wrestling. lutte in France, Ringen in Germany, borroka in Basque.  And practiced primarily by adults, not as a school sport.

I never did see the point in displaying the biceps and bulges of teenagers to an audience of strangers.  It makes more sense to wait until they're adults, and are more able to handle the knowledge that they are objects of admiration.

Besides, grown-up physiques are far superior to thin, lanky, barely post-pubescent puppy-dog muscles.

Teenagers do participate in Lutte on occasion, but it's not a usual thing, and they don't seem to be very good at it.  Here Nazaryan from Bulgaria beat Nifri from France 9 to 0.

Of course, grown-ups don't display their beneath-the-belt parts quite as much, or as aggressively, as the high schoolers, but that's not necessary a bad thing.  No embarrassing "Should I pretend not to notice?" moments.



















Besides, they are open for dating.  Or at least a romantic fantasy about dating them.

















Grownups are less likely to be proficient in English, so if you are going to cruise, a familiarity with French helps.  Or Greek.

More Rowing Beefcake

I already posted on crew (competitive rowing), thinking that it was practiced solely at ultra-exclusive Ivy League colleges and the private boarding schools for the children of the rich and famous.  But a bit of searching revealed rowing teams in several ordinary, everyday public high schools and less-than-prestigious colleges.  It all depends on how close you are to a river or lake.

1. Berkeley High, but not the one in Moncks Corners, South Carolina.  This one is in the real, prestigious, elite Berkeley, California.

2 Commencement Bay Rowing Club, in Tacoma, Washington, where school is always letting out.

3. The Culver Military Academy for boys in Culver, Indiana, which happens to be on a small lake.

4. East Hampton High.  Ok, East Hampton, on the tip of Long Island, is not exactly ordinary, everyday.  The median price for a house is $800,000 (four times the national average).

5.  Liverpool High in Liverpool, New York, a suburb of Syracuse.

More after the break