Baseball is already a nasty game. A strike would make it even nastier.

Date published: 8/4/2002

BASEBALL IS NOT a game of cultural refinement. It's a nasty game.

Major League Baseball players will do almost anything in front of 40,000 people and a television audience of millions.

This fact suddenly hit me the other night as I watched a clean-cut young man step out of the batter's box, lean forward slightly and blow his nose while the TV camera was showing a close-up of him.

This guy, of course, didn't use a handkerchief. He simply put his finger against one nostril and blew vigorously through the other. Then he repeated the procedure on the other side.

Now I would bet all the zucchini in my garden that this player came from a good family and was properly schooled in the art of nose-blowing. And if his mother was watching when he blew his nose in front of all those people, she surely had to be restrained from driving out to that ballpark and taking a switch to her son.

Despite the best upbringing, baseball players are ill-mannered men when the game is in progress and do things they would ordinarily never do elsewhere in public. They will, during the course of almost any given game--and I watch maybe 30 contests a week--blow their noses, scratch themselves, spit, pick their noses and blow sunflower-seed hulls in every direction.

And none of these ill-mannered transgressions seem to elude the camera. It is as if games are scripted and ballplayers know exactly when to spit or scratch.

While players usually scratch themselves or blow their noses out on the field--in full view of everyone--they save most of their other nasty habits for the dugout, where they don't think they will be seen. But TV cameras find nose-picking players with the same efficiency that tornadoes home in on trailer parks.

When the cameras pan the dugouts, you will notice that players generally sit on the back of the bench with their feet on the seat.

There is a good reason for this. A ballplayer's nastiness usually winds up on the dugout floor.

Ah! The dugout floor. TV cameras never show the dugout floor, for the same reason C-SPAN never shows the main body of the House of Representatives or Senate: The aura of majesty would be lost in a heartbeat.

Date published: 8/4/2002