Men to boys

Imagine this, for a moment, if you're a male of the species who thinks your job is like a life stretch on Devil's Island:

You are a woman, first of all.

You are a foreign correspondent who's moved to the United States to cover baseball in Chicago, Ill.

And it just so happens it's 2016, which means you get to ride shotgun with history. You get to cover the Chicago Cubs the year they win their first World Series in 108 years, the summer of all summers in Chicago, Ill.

Except ...

Except one day in August you get another unsolicited text from a guy who's been sending you unsolicited texts all season.

This time it's a photo of an erect penis.

The penis in question belongs to Jared Porter, the Cubs director of professional scouting, and he's not asking what she thinks of his latest find. It's the culmination of a series of texts he's sent her all summer trying to, I don't know, harass her into a meaningful relationship in the creepiest way possible, I guess.

OK, first off: What is it about men and dick pics? Do they think this is how women want to be courted in the 2000s? Does it ever actually work, if so? And do they send them because men have some biological anomaly that stops their brains from developing once they get to seventh grade?

The answers are apparently, doubtful and apparently.

Also, as a former Sportsball journalist, there is this: What the bloody freaking hell? Again? 

It's 2021, people, which means women have been regulars in Sportsball press boxes for more than half a century.  Melissa Ludtke sued for and won the right to get into the Yankees clubhouse in 1978, 43 years ago. It's been 31 years since Lisa Olson sued the New England Patriots after some of them waved their business in her face while she was trying to do her job in their locker room (again with the penises!). And still, still this goes on.

And that's not even the half of it. Ask any woman sportswriter how many times she's been disrespected or slighted or been otherwise reminded she's a woman, so what does she know about sports? Most of them will have a tale or two to tell.

Look. I did the sportswriter thing for 40 years, and I still freelance a bit. In that time, I've known or worked with a fair number of women colleagues. Almost all of them were tougher and sharper than I am, because they had to be.

In all that time, I can count on one hand the times I can say I actually saw any of them treated differently than their male counterparts. This is not because it didn't happen. This is because, as one of the male counterparts, my radar likely didn't register it.

But I know the stories, and they go on to this day. Five decades on from Melissa Ludtke, women sports journalists still get told by Twitter Neanderthals to go bake cookies and make babies. Occasionally some knuckle-dragging cretin will kick up a fuss about them being in the locker room. Also: Dick pics.

This is because Boyz II Men had it backwards, basically. The more accurate band name would be Men II Boyz.

At its core it's a power thing, of course, which is why it se ems such a hardy perennial. The difference is men occasionally get shamed or fired for it now, at least if they've been dumb enough to be particularly dick-ish about it. And so I'm guessing Jared Porter has some fast talking to do to his bosses these days, now that he's confessed to what he did in 2016.

His bosses are no longer the Cubs, by the way. They're the Mets.

And Jared Porter is their GM.

Update: Make that was their GM. That didn't take long. Mets showed Porter the road a day after he admitted being a horny exhibitionist. These things will happen.