Recently, I was reading SI's baseball preview issue when I discovered that Dodgers' third baseman Adrian Beltre and I have something in common. We are united by a dubious distinction: both of us have spent a great deal of our lives playing baseball, and neither of us has ever worn a protective cup.
Though I usually air on the side of over-explaining things to ensure that my audience understands what I'm talking about, in this case, I don't think it's necessary to explain the importance of wearing a cup on the baseball diamond. Even if you haven't played baseball, you hopefully understand what a cup is and where it goes. And presumably, even if you're not big on equations, you can make sense of this one: baseball hitting certain area of body at any velocity = more painful (and potentially harmful) than anything you can possibly fathom this side of death.
Now, a bit of background, so you can at least understand where I'm coming from in my failure to properly protect myself. For most of my life, I have been a well-informed and quite aware individual who has somehow managed to miss the occasional key announcement or crucial tidbit of information that quite often leaves me in a somewhat compromising situation. (The deadline to register for classes is this Thursday?...I was supposed to RSVP to this party?!?!...You mean to tell me that every player on the field, no matter what position they play, is supposed to wear a cup? I thought those were just for the catcher!) So that's my excuse -- I just didn't know. Thankfully, and somewhat amazingly, my failure to get that particular point did not result in any horrible dismemberment during a baseball career that lasted from little league through high school. Though there was a minor incident in a pickup softball game in central park last summer that made me realize it's time to "strap it on," as it were. Let's just say I was "playing the outfield" when a ball took an "errant bounce" and hit me "directly in the privates." Lesson learned.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that the same is true for Beltre. While my excuse of pure ignorance shouldn't elicit a great deal of sympathy, Beltre's is even worse: apparently, he knows full well how dangerous it is, and he refuses to wear a cup because he says it's uncomfortable. The funny thing is, when he was playing ball in the Dominican summer league as a teenager, his coach would walk down the line of players and tap a baseball bat in their groins to make sure they were wearing a cup. Beltre never was, and apparently, he dislikes the things so much that he's willing to be bludgeoned about the testes with a bat in order to avoid "discomfort."
