Catching up on the Ashley Madison scandal

(628 words)

I want to preempt exposure on Ashley Madison hack lists by announcing my eagerness to cheat.

The randy initiative burst through just last night when I saw hundreds of men and women — kids, too! — doing it right there in the grass.

They were having a ball.

Actually, they had about 50 balls.

Shame-free orgy?

No, they were playing catch on the PNC Park outfield after the Bucs 4-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

They were doing the kind of shagging that would be a cruel disappoint to Austin Powers.

It looked like so much fun.

I’d never heard news of this splendid promotion. I didn’t know who these happy strangers were or how they got lucky enough to scramble out on the outfield of the most beautiful ballpark in America to toss the ball around.

Playing a game of catch is maybe the second most glorious things two consenting adults can one-on-one do together.

Care to guess what’s first?

I can’t get either Val or my daughters, ages 14 and 9, to play catch with me. So sign me up if there’s ever an Ashley Madison with the tag line: “Life’s short. Play catch with a stranger!”

Of course, I owe it to my readers to take a bold stand on Ashley Madison.

How do I feel about cheating? Am I ever tempted? How would I react if my spouse’s name was released on the cheater list?

You deserve to hear me issue honest answers to these salient questions.

And I vow to provide that candor the instant there’s irrefutable proof my darling wife no longer reads this stupid blog.

Come September, we’ll have been married 19 years, long enough that younger men on the precipice of matrimony have actually asked me for advice, which I freely bestow.

I start these counseling sessions by asking these young romantics the question: “If marriage is so great, how come God is still single?”

Talk about Mr. Right. When it comes to eligible bachelors, even the great Derek Jeter is a distant second.

I don’t think newlyweds understand how little nuance there is in that part of the wedding vows that insist betrothed couples must now forsake all others.

The clause includes precious little wiggle room. You can’t make exceptions if you’re drunk, horny, lonely, feeling scorned, available or looking especially sexy in that pretty new peek-a-boo dress.

It’s why the country music genre is such an enduring money maker.

I think most people get hitched believing in their heart of hearts they’ll never cheat, but if they do, they believe they’re marrying a person who will, of course, be understanding if he or she happens to stumble. This same person — hallelujah — is so divinely faithful he or she would never dream of cheating.

In fact, most people eventually learn they are married to emotional human beings just like themselves, people who will think of severing things more carnal than a relationship if they find out they’ve been cheating. 

Of course, I’m looking forward to reading all the salacious details about the hypocritical family-values celebrities — thank you, Josh Duggar! — but hope our neighbors will be understanding about the human failings of those who slip.

I like it anytime events take a whack at the Puritanical underpinnings upon which so much of America is based.

But there’s bound to be some necessary soul-searching from people who think they can get away with something that means so much to someone they say they love.

If you’re one of those people and are feeling tempted, you’re welcome to get in touch with me. We can hook up.

Bring a baseball and a mitt.

You and I will together enjoy the kind of pastime where getting caught actually makes playing all the more satisfying.

Related . . .

How come there’s no Mrs. God?

What happened when I spent 72 hours handcuffed to Val

I cry over commercials (farewell, Capt’n Jeter!)

A great day for baseball … let’s play 2! Or 3!

I play Centerfield

The Bucs, the duck & playoff baseball in Pittsburgh

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I’m becoming concerned that on October 21 Americans will wake up to headlines revealing crazed Pittsburgh Pirate fans have commandeered a four-story rubber duck and are refusing to let it depart.

Yes, I fear the Duckaneers. 

Western Pennsylvania is buzzing about ducks and Bucs.

The giant rubber duck showed up last week, two days after the Pirates clinched their first playoff spot in 21 years.

Coincidence?

Of course, it is.

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman certainly had no idea the Pirates were going to make the playoffs when he agreed last year to showcase the 40-foot high by 30-foot wide duck on the Allegheny River. I’d be surprised if Dutch artists followed MLB standings.

But what do I know? Maybe Hofman has Andrew McCutcheon on his fantasy team. I have no idea. “Dutch Artists” would be a show-killer category for me on “Jeopardy!”

In fact, the entire sum of my knowledge about Dutch artists is that one of them got famous by constructing giant rubber ducks, pretty much guaranteeing the rest of the Dutch artists who do things like paint still life bowls of fruit are resentfully killing themselves because they didn’t dream it up first.

The giant rubber ducks are an international sensation. Hofman has since 2007 displayed similar creations in France, Australia, Japan, Brazil and five other countries. 

The one in Pittsburgh is the first to appear anywhere in the U.S.

Take that, New York, L.A. and all the rest of you smug cultural enclaves!

When it comes to cutting edge art, Pittsburgh alone can say, “Duck it!” 

It’s scheduled to be here through Oct. 20, which is after the National League Championship Series, but three days before Game 1 of the World Series.

It’s moored on the Allegheny River where it can’t help but stare straight at PNC Park, where on Tuesday evening the Pirates will play their first playoff game since 1992.

The duck and the Bucs are all everyone is talking about.

And just because it’s all coincidental doesn’t mean Pirate fans won’t begin to regard the duck as some sort of good luck charm should the Bucs go on an October tear.

The sports logic goes like this: Giant Rubber Duck arrives, Pirates win. So Giant Rubber Duck must stay until Pirates lose. 

As sports logic goes, this actually makes more sense than wearing the same underwear for 30 days straight and I know plenty of guys who’ll pull that one off, which, speaking of coincidences, is what they’ll eventually have to do with the actual underwear. 

I’ve already heard one friend suggest someone should drape a Pirate eye patch over one of the duck’s manhole cover-sized eyes.

Guaranteed, the duck will make a ton of cameos on the TBS broadcast, marquee attention that’d certainly make the Pirate Parrot green with envy. Not that anyone would notice on a neon green feathered mascot.

I look at the competing lineups in the baseball playoffs and believe Pittsburgh has just as good a shot as anyone.

This might be one of those magical years. The team has great starting pitching, solid defense and the positive kind of chemistry we can resume talking about now that Walter White is no more.

God knows the Pirates are due.

It’d be interesting to see how the local sports teams performed in other cities after the duck appeared.

I think the sports-obsessed would have already forewarned talk radio if teams had tanked when the duck showed up.

We’d have known this because there would have been armed squads of vigilantes protecting the city from the yellow-skinned intruder, much the way Rock Ridge locals did in “Blazing Saddles” when another intruder showed up in skin that locals found offensive for reasons that had nothing to do with potential sports jinxes.

That poor guy’s goose was cooked, a fate that I hope awaits the Reds and the rest of the Pirates October opponents.

I wouldn’t bet against them.

A Pirate quack attack might just do the trick.

Related . . .

A great day for baseball -- let’s play 2! Or 3!

I play Centerfield

Roberto Clemente, Mr. 3000

Go Bucs! Jumping on bandwagon over jump on bandwagon phrase

The Pirates enter the All-Star break in first place and even the skeptics are starting to crowd their way onto the bandwagon.

Me? I’m trying to recall if I’ve ever seen a band on a wagon so compelling it made me actually want to hop on board.

I don’t think so.

There were about three or four bands on wagons at last week’s Fourth of July parade. I enjoyed seeing them for the 30 or so seconds it took them to roll past my station outside the bar, but none of them had me thinking:

“Wow, that’s some band on that wagon! How tuneful! I think I’m going to jump on that bandwagon and tag along clear down to that other divey bar I never go to before my drink’s empty.”

I remember seeing concert footage of the Rolling Stones riding a flatbed truck through Manhattan to promote the 1974 release of their classic “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

I don’t remember anybody jumping on that band’s wagon, but it was just a few years removed from Altamont and memories of lethal stage-crashing repercussions may have been deterrent.

It would be cool to hear a really good band rolling down the street on a wagon. I’m surprised the catchy FreeCreditReport.com band hasn’t tried it.

The phrase “jump on the bandwagon” dates back to 1848 when a fascinating circus clown named “Yankee” Dan Rice barnstormed the country in support of eventual 12th president Zachary Taylor. Rice was the Will Rogers of his day, was friends with both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, and was feted by Mark Twain in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

He’d invite Taylor “jump on the bandwagon” to bask in his associated popularity. The phrase became derogatory when people saw herds of mindless politicians trying to do the same.

The fact that Rice in 1868 ran for president makes me wish we lived in an era when citizen clowns turned to politics instead of one where politics turns citizens into clowns.

No one can accuse me of jumping on the Pirate bandwagon. I’ve been on board for as long as I can remember.

I used to attend more than 30 games a year and twice earned my wife’s enmity by putting my Bucs over our baby.

The first time happened at the very instant I was learned I was becoming a father.

I was on the phone with my friend Wally -- and everyone should have a friend named Wally if not the actual Wally. Everyone loves Wally.

It was 2000 and the Pirates were moving into snazzy new PNC Park. It was up to me to decide whether we should get the 30-game plan with seats at $40 per game or the cheaper seats that were like $20.

I’m uncertain of the prices, but they are approximate.

You could say they are ballpark!

Just then my frantic wife came running down the stairs clutching a home pregnancy test.

I told Wally to hold on for a second and put my hand over the phone.

“It’s positive,” she said. “I’m pregnant. We’re having a baby in September.”

I did not react or say anything and she immediately left the room, I guess, to guzzle vodka.

I remember clearly what happened next.

I put the phone to my ear and told Wally, “Let’s go with the expensive seats. Go Bucs!”

The decision to spend at a time when savings were in order is open to criticism, but I snagged a foul ball in those seats later that year so I feel vindicated. I close my eyes and still hear the cheers.

That home pregnancy test was correct because about eight months later our first daughter was born on September 25. I went to my first Pirate game as a new father two days later.

I remember my wife, new baby at her breast, glaring ferociously as I left for the game.

The criticism was echoed the next day when my brother expressed his contempt. How could I, he wanted to know, go to a baseball game with a two-day old baby at home?

It was Three Rivers Snow Globe Night, I said, as if that explained everything.

The Pirates have the fourth best record in baseball and are playing like champions. They have pitching, hitting, defense and an appealing chemistry that is capturing the imagination of the city.

The daughter who was the source of so much pre-natal controversy asked me last week if the Pirates could win the World Series.

Yes! I exalted. After 19 years of losing baseball, it hadn’t occurred to me to even consider the likelihood. But they could. It’s amazing.

The Pirates are making this summer a joy ride.

Climb on board. The wagon’s rocking and this is one band that really swings.

Mr. Fancy's 30th high school reunion

My daughter, 5, complains full-day kindergarten is a drag. She wondered if there was anything she could do to make it less boring?

I nearly blurted out the perfect solution:

Grow breasts.

Because that’s when it all gets really, really interesting.

The Mt. Lebanon High School class of ’81 had its 30th reunion Saturday night at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. That meant nearly 200 of us were tingling with recollections of the emotional crucible from when boys and girls become biologically capable of conceiving children while still acting like them.

The 30th reunion is where a bunch of 48 year olds stand around congratulating one another on how fabulous we all look secretly relieved there are no honest 18 year olds to rebut the compliments.

High school memories are indelible. If you’re kind to someone they remember it forever. If you’ve ever been mean to someone, it’s a nasty grudge they’ll forever bear.

Truth of the latter was slammed home to me at the last reunion I attended.

I was sitting at the bar by myself when a muscular gear head with cut-off sleeves got in my face and said, “I remember you. You always thought you were better than me. Well, what about now, Mr. Fancy? Still think you’re better than me?”

I gave him a good long look and thought, yeah, I am better than you.

Because this wasn’t my reunion and I’d never seen the guy before in my life.

It was my wife’s reunion. She wanted me to attend to show all the mean girls she’d married a presentable guy who didn’t eat things like salad and pasta with his fingers (practiced for weeks).

Once that mission was accomplished, she immediately ditched me to flirt with old flames and I retired to the cocoon-like comfort of the bar.

Even after the guy’s nervous wife persuaded him I was innocent, I’m sure the guy still wanted to kill me. He was one of those misanthropes who instinctively hate handsome men like me with nice smiles like mine, but calculated that was insufficient reason to assault a stranger.

The episode convinced me bringing a spouse to a reunion was a bad idea.

I wouldn’t want Val to go through what she made me go through -- and I’m referring to confrontations with stupid bullies and not being abandoned in a bar, my natural habitat.

Plus, there’s this:

I didn’t want my darling wife there in case one of the 300 or so girls I spent puberty dreaming about came up to me and said she’d always had a crush on me and, hey, would I mind sneaking away to behind the Pirate dugout so we could make out?

Sadly, this didn’t happen and I blame a flaw of the reunion dynamic.

There’s no forced mingling. Some of the girls who may have been eager to make out with me might have been ensnared in long bouts of glibberish.

Glibberish is my word for pointless party chatter between two people who’d rather be talking to anyone else.

The reunion’s first hour should be like speed dating. Everyone in two long lines has to say hello to one another. A bell rings after four minutes and you move on to the next old classmate.

Then after an hour of this you can decide which people have evolved into worthwhile adults and which ones must be avoided like algebra.

I was fortunate to have had about five really soulful conversations and they were like Christmas ornaments, something to cherish.

There was some glibberish, but I had a ball.

I’ve been so fortunate with friendships throughout my life. I guess it’s because so much of what happens after high school is so repressive and serious and I’m not.

People seem drawn to that, at least all the people I’ve always liked.

It for me became the perfect reunion in the early morning as I was walking through downtown Pittsburgh back to my car and two beautiful women came up and proposed something more illicit than bleacher kisses.

Sure, they were hookers. I had the cash and with proper motivation can be a savvy haggler. But I declined because their proposition had already given my night a happy ending.

Thanks to them, I’ll be forever able to remember my 30th high school reunion as the night everyone said I looked great and two girls pestered me for sex.

All-in-all a damn good night for Mr. Fancy.

Taking pregnant women to the ol' ballgame

I wish I had a great, big pregnant woman to take to Pirate games. Understand, I don’t want anything to do with causing her pregnancy or, gadzooks, for being responsible for the ensuing squaller.

Who needs that?

But the Pittsburgh Pirates are just coming off a great homestand that saw them take two of three from the Major League best Philadelphia Phillies. PNC Park was packed. It was a great baseball atmosphere.

I wish I could have been there. But I haven’t been to a baseball game all year. I still resent the cheapskate owners, the high prices, and the year’s been a tumult of family obligations that have vacuumed up all my time and income.

The weekend had me missing the summers when I was at a ballgame at least once a week.

Prior to all the eventual mayhem resulting from my own pregnant wife, I used to attend as many as 30 games a year with my buddies. And what fun we had.

We’d sit there in the stands guzzling beer, profanely jeering the opposition and spouting just enough real baseball insight to confuse the crowd into thinking we were idiot scouts.

In fact, we might as well have been. My peak baseball attending years coincided with the 18-year span involving some of the worst baseball in Pirate history.

Real Pirate idiot scouts were probably just a few sections over acting exactly like we were and confusing fans into thinking they were just drunken fans.

So we had a lot of giddy guy fun.

But I also loved for different reasons going with my wife, none more so than when she was great with child.

To many people, professional baseball is boring. I guess to them life is, too.

I find it impossible to mix more than 20,000 people, an interesting athletic spectacle and $7 domestic beers and not be entertained. It’s all theatre.

That’s why Val was such a great, big asset when she had a really great, big, uh, profile.

It always happened on Sundays when the team was giving away crappy souvenirs to kids 10 and under.

There were cheap jerseys, batting helmets, team clocks -- stuff nobody wants.

Unless it’s free.

I remember on this bright Sunday they were giving away tiny Giant Eagle-sponsored Kevin Young souvenir bats. They were miniature foot-long versions of the game-used bats Young swung, but for practical purposes they might as well have been the real thing.

Young couldn’t hit a curve ball with a Giant Eagle souvenir bass fiddle.

Still, I felt a craving. I’d see the ticket takers distributing the cheesy novelties to the line of dopey kids and think, “How can I get my hands on one?”

That’s when it struck me: I already had a dopey kid of my own. It was just that neither my wife and I had met her yet.

The ticket taker scanned our tickets and gave a friendly, “Enjoy the game!”

I asked him if I could have a bat.

“Sorry, pal, those are for only kids 10 and under.”

That’s when I pointed at the audacious belly of my 8-month pregnant wife.

“C’mon! The kid’s gotta be with you!”

He’d fallen right into my trap.

“Are you telling me life doesn’t begin at conception?” I shouted. “This isn’t some senseless mass of tissue. It is a child! In fact, it’s possible we will enter this game as a couple, but leave before the seventh inning stretch as a family. She’s due any minute!

“Now, I’ll be happy to stand here and argue Roe v. Wade with you all day, but I’m not leaving until you give me a lousy bat!”

I felt sort of bad for the guy because he never thought when he’d taken what is generally a happy minimum wage job that he’d be asked to litigate third trimester legalities.

But, hey, I wanted that bat.

He gave it to me -- and I was careful to ensure he gave it to me and not my humiliated wife who later said she would have used it to beat me senseless to the cheers of the exasperated crowd.

I still have that bat. The kid, too.

Sometimes I still pick it up, squeeze it, and think of all the carefree times I had down at the ol’ ball game.

It brings back a lot of really great memories. It still means a lot to me.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether I’m referring here to the kid or the bat.

The Bucs need Barry Bonds

It’s time, for the good of the game, to bring baseball’s most disgraced player back to baseball’s most disgraced franchise.

Yes, it’s time to bring Barry Bonds back to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bonds, who turned 46 on July 24, is under federal indictment for charges stemming from his enthusiastic embrace of performance enhancing drugs. He without fanfare retired after the 2007 season just 65 hits shy of one of baseball’s most hallowed landmarks, the 3,000 hit club. Only 27 men in history have achieved the milestone.

The Pirates, his old team from 1986-92, should offer him a one-year contract with the goal of him becoming the third Pirate to get 3,000 hits. The pursuit would be one of the most comical and compelling spectacles sport has ever witnessed.

The often vacant stands at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park would overflow with fans eager to alternately cheer and heckle the surly, tired old slugger. Pirate fans, me included, still haven’t forgiven him for his many villainies.

He was a joyless mope, he couldn’t hit in the clutch and -- worst of all -- he failed to throw out a gimpy legged Sid Bream in the most heartbreaking playoff loss in Pittsburgh history.

A golden era of baseball was passing, a grim new one dawning. Rampant greed and performance enhancing drugs were about to ravage the game as never before.

For the Pirates, the long, steep decline started with the departure of Bonds’s buddy, Bobby Bonilla. The erratic right fielder left Pittsburgh for the hated New York Mets. The Pirates had offered him $25 million for five years (today four players make in excess of that per year).

Bonilla demurred saying he “needed to take care of his family,” a contention that led flabbergasted Bucco manager Jim Leyland to blurt out, “His family? For $25 million, he could take care of Guam!”

It was the early 1990s. Gasoline was $1.09 per gallon, phones were still tethered to walls and the only Cyrus tormenting American pop culture was Billy Ray and his Achy Breaky Heart.

In fact, Mylie Cyrus, born November 23, 1992, has never drawn breath while the once venerable Pirates, winners of five World Championships, were winners. No team in professional sports has ever gone as long without a winning season.

The news probably wouldn’t trouble the singer whose song, “Party in the USA” brought my daughter, 9, to her feet yesterday as we watched the feckless home team lose to the San Diego Padres 6-3.

Tell folks you’re taking a 9-year-old girl to watch the Pirates and many, my wife and mother included, will look at you like you like you left a dainty poodle in the car at noon with the windows rolled up.

They think it’s inhumane.

Nonsense. I adore baseball. I knew, win or lose, my daughter would enjoy the festivities -- and that’s without even getting her drunk on $7.25 warm Bud Lights.

Skeptics say baseball’s boring. I believe the world could do with a little more mandatory boredom. 

Baseball invites fans to be as focused or as distracted as they like. I’ve been to games where I was so focused I actually kept a score sheet detailing the result of every pitch. And I’ve been to games where I was so distracted by related activities that I’ve dozed through the final innings, the long ride home and didn’t learn the outcome until past noon the next day.

Of course, there’s nothing like being in a city when the baseball team’s compelling. Every pitch counts. It unites even the most beleaguered of cities.

That’s what would happen overnight in Pittsburgh if the Pirates signed Bonds, even if it was to pinch hit his way to 3,000.

It would be the talk of the sporting world. And it would be mutually beneficial to both Bonds and the Pirates.

Bonds, as the most hated man in baseball, would have a chance to redeem his dismal reputation. Perhaps he’s eager for another shot at those 65 tantalizing hits to 3,000.

The Pirate would sell tens of thousands of tickets, and I’m sure Bonds would agree to play for the league minimum.

It’s not like he has to take care of Guam or something.