In Synch

(Note: this post will turn into a reflection on romance and sex after an important digression.)

I'm watching baseball on TV. It's exhibition baseball (A's vs. Giants) but the real thing will be here in a few days. With the arrival of my favorite sport season, life acquires a different rhythm, one familiar since my childhood long ago in the Midwest.

The seasons cycle by as they always have. Time either feels fast or slow, depending where you are, personally, in your own life cycle. My boyhood team, the Detroit Tigers, never won a pennant. In fact, in my lifetime, they've gone to the World Series only three times.

The first time I was 21, the next time I was 37. Those two times they won it all. The most recent time was last year. I was in New York with Julia as the Tigers eliminated their hated rivals, the New York Yankees, and preceded to the World Series, where they folded and lost in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals.

A couple blocks from my home is the site of the old baseball park (which is now Franklyn Square, where Aidan plays soccer every Saturday morning) for the minor league San Francisco Seals, the only team this city had until 1958, when the Giants shocked New York by moving here, as their hated rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, simultaneously relocated to L.A.

As my older kids became old enough to learn the game, by the late '80s, I transferred my baseball loyalty to their home team -- the San Francisco Giants. They've since gotten to the World Series twice, in 1989 and in 2002, but lost the championship both times.

None of the "experts" I've read predict the Giants can make it back there this year. Everybody says the Dodgers or the other National League team in California, the San Diego Padres, will win what is known as the N.L. West Division.

I'm using my badge as an official MLB blogger tonight to make a prediction: This is the Giants' year. I'm not being sentimental or hopeful. I'm using baseball logic. The Giants have a deadly (for their opponents) combination, youthful pitchers and experienced hitters, veteran pitchers and young hitters.

Their team is a model of balance -- lefties, righties, speed and power, good fielders and pinch hitters. They have several weapons no one else in their division can equal: a healthy Barry Bonds, who will probably hit 35 homeruns; two great pitchers, Barry Zito and Matt Cain, who should each win 15+ games; and a bunch of players I expect to make impressive comebacks late in their careers -- Matt Morris, Russ Ortiz, Ryan Klesko, Rich Aurelia; as well as a few stars likely to duplicate their recent successes -- Omar Vizquel, Dave Roberts, Pedro Feliz, Noah Lowry.

They've got two good catchers and a raft of young, talented relievers. And then they have the controversial veteran closer, Armando Benitez, who is highly motivated to turn last year's boos into this year's cheers.

They have a new coach, one of the best I've seen over the years, Bruce Bochy, formerly of Sad Diego.

Yep, I think this is the Giants' year. I'll probably show this blog to Larry Baer, in the Giants' front office. My sense is the Giants will win 95 and lose 67 and win the division by 3-5 games.

After that, it will be the veterans against the rest of the division-winning teams and the wild card entry. I like the Giants' chances there, too.

***

The couple in the photo at the top of this post swam along the coast of the bay where my office is yesterday. I watched them for a while. They were inseparable, let's call them by that quaint term, man and wife. It's taken me most of a lifetime to begin to understand relationships from a woman's point of view.

There's no doubt in my mind, now, that sexual attraction and coquettishness fool men. When men find a woman attractive, she is going to receive plenty of attention. And, if you think male attention is a nice thing (and many women do), luckily men's tastes run the gamut when it comes to women. Every size and shape and color has her devotees.

Men are hard wired for sex. Our excitement also is so visible: You can tell when a man is turned on. You also, as a woman, live your life through men's eyes. Our eyes are everywhere you go; it seems like you can never escape.

I remember being with a colleague (not a girlfriend) in Hawaii on business one time. She was an attractive young woman and when most of our work was done, we decided to see some of the sights on Oahu, which led us to visit a beach on the North Shore.

As she stripped off her shirt to reveal her bikini top, somebody nearby whistled. "Oh, please," she griped, angry at his attention.

We sat there on that beach and watched the surfers far offshore as the sun went down. It was mesmerizing. As the temperature dipped, she put her shirt back on, and we headed back to our hotel.

I've never forgotten her reaction on that beach to the unwanted compliment from an unknown man. And I've never known what to make of it.

When I was young, I now realize, I was a fairly attractive male, with a slim but athletic body that tanned easily, black hair, blue eyes, and an easy smile. I see myself now in my oldest son, now the age I was in 1972, when we were publishing the only three issues of SunDance Magazine on Fillmore Street.

One of my colleagues kidded me many years later that when I turned 25, I announced that I was a "quarter century old."

What an odd interpretation of time, I now see. Always obsessed with numbers and with the passing of time, always the older brother, colleague, the one breaking through barriers the others around me would soon be encountering.

A Baby Boomer at the front of our demographic curve. We're all bossy.

***

How can you tell, as you age, that you have met somebody that you can be with? Chemistry is still a factor, of course. Unless you both don't want to have sex anymore (it happens), your physical connection ought to be special. But I would wager that something else becomes even more important, and that is your conversation.

Who can you talk to? How can you find yourself so deeply into conversation with another that new ideas, new feelings are emerging? Maybe that is a rough description of intellectual love. If that happens, you may have met a soul mate. When you can add in the physical, even if it is not explosive at first, and the emotional, which is the trickiest of all connections, you have found love.

At least that's what I say.

Once you've found it, beware of casting it away. As the years pass, opportunities for these kinds of connections fade, for obvious reasons. We all, men and women, finally reach the stage where nobody notices us as we pass. No one turns around, no one whistles, no one even wants to see you take off your shirt, wherever you may be.

Yet we still need love, we still need connection. How do we find each other now?

I do not have any answers to that question. The answers are blowing in the wind, yet here, tonight, there is no wind. It is still, hot and expectant in this city. Questions hang in the air above us, but answers elude all but the angels.

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