Baseball Boys

I don’t know if y’all saw the story about the two friends who were on opposing sides of a big baseball game--it would decide which team was going to go to the state championship. It’s the end of the game and pitcher sends his pitch and strikes the batter out. His teammates rush to celebrate and sweep him up into a team hug and he moves away from them to hug the kid he’s just struck out. Apparently they’ve been friends since they were 13 years old and it was more important for him to console his friend than it was to celebrate. He even pushes past the catcher who is trying to hug and high five. And he wraps his friend up in a hug. It’s not a timid, little bro hug or some otherwise half-assed thing. No, it’s a full body tight embrace that lasts.

It gives me such hope for the future to see it because here are two young men: one showing grief and one openly and honestly giving comfort in front of family and friends in this incredibly sweet, tender way. Men have been pushed and pushed to believe that the only emotions they’re allowed to experience are anger and maybe, maybe some sort of interest in a girlfriend/wife. Sure there are men who break this mold, but society on a whole forced men to believe that they’re only “real” men if they’re “tough.” It’s infuriating to me that men are treated that way. That they aren’t allowed to explore themselves emotionally or show affection with their friends without hiding it in shoulder punches and back pats is absolutely cruel and a detriment to literally all of society.

It's despicable that “showing affection” is equivocated with “being gay” which is their way of saying “unmanliness,” basically. The fact that “being gay” is both an insult and equivocated with “being penetrated” which in my mind is also shows a lack of respect for women. Men’s OBSESSION with thinking that the ability to penetrate someone somehow gives them power is gross.

Having said all that… I 1000000% have a story in my head about how these two guys grew up together, played baseball for years, spent all their spare time together and fell in love. I really want to write it as a story and I think I might. I know it’s not fair to those boys. I definitely won’t use their names or anything, but yeah, I think really do have to write a story like that.