Why Home Runs and Cherry Pie?

Jan 9, 2013 by admin+

Why Home Runs and Cherry Pie? Because baseball is a sexy sport, probably the sexiest of the sports played by men. It can’t be denied. The language of baseball has become fused with how we talk about sex within our culture. If you get to kiss a girl, you’re at first base. If she refuses you, you struck out. And a home run? Well, that means you made it all the way.

But how did baseball come to be a metaphor for sex? Soon, we’ll talk about when it all began, but people made the connection because baseball is an inherently sexy sport. There’s an intimacy between baseball and its fans that doesn’t exist in any other sport. Elizabeth Bales Frank wrote what is probably the best description of the sexiness of baseball in her article “Why Baseball Is the Sexiest Game” published in Elysian Fields Quarterly. She points out that “(f)ootball is a game, basketball is a sport, but baseball is a state of mind.” She writes:

Baseball is the only game that invites you in as it unfolds at its own pace, not predetermined but dependent – like romance – on the mood, condition, energy, and skill of the two sides in question. Every romance has at its core its peculiar myth: “We have a lot of fun” or “The two of us are really hot together” or “We’re friends at the bottom of it all.” So does every baseball team that makes itself a legend: the team is a stormy rotation of power and clean up, for example, or a harmonious squad of speed and stealth. Will you ever forget your first love? Will you ever completely forsake the first team that grabbed a piece of you and wouldn’t let go?”

Home Runs and Cherry Pie celebrates the sexiness of baseball,  the metaphor that baseball has become for sex, and the erotic nature of the game and its fans. We’re not about baseball news (although you’ll find some of that here, too), but about commentary on the sexy and seductive happenings of the game.

Why cherry pie? That, too, is a sexual metaphor related to both baseball and sex that we’ll explore, but it also means just what it says, “Cherry Pie.” In between the stories and commentary and images, we’ll also share a wide variety of cherry recipes. You see, baseball, sex, and food are all connected.

Now, who wants some pie?