Monday, April 04, 2011

What Baseball and Bubblegum Can Teach You to Improve Yourself or Your Relationship and Marriage

Baseball players are notorious for letting their “inner child” out, doing everything from throwing tantrums by destroying the water cooler to the ritual bonding displays of their 40-step “handshakes.” There’s an attitude amongst all that which women find irresistible, and that once you recognize it, you can easily live with, because it’s naturally part of YOU, too!

Baseball season is finally here again, and I wanted to tell you my favorite baseball story for men looking to be more of a man, because it’s a great one. (We have a Baseball forum in the Hobbies forum at, and it’s time for fans to start posting in it!) Even if you’re not a baseball fan or have never seen a baseball game, there is something you can learn from baseball players about being that attractive mix of alpha male and naughty little boy that no woman on the planet can resist. I saw a perfect example at a Yankees game, and it’s been proven perfect by the reactions of several women, too!

Bobby Abreu is a Venezuelan-born player who was traded by the Philadelphia Phillies to the New York Yankees. At that time, he was a very good player, and one of those guys who is always playing like he enjoys the game, frequently cracking a big grin on the field and at the plate. (Phillies fans have written that they don’t care much for him, but was a great addition to the Yankees. He’s playing for the Angels now, and I have no idea how he’s doing.)

I was watching a game between the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers, and the Tigers had some pretty tough pitchers. The game was close, and Abreu walks up to the batter’s box and starts going through the ritual gripping, mock-swinging, etc., that all players go through when getting ready to bat. As the pitcher caught the signal for what pitch to throw from the catcher and stood up straight to deliver, thunder struck…

Abreu was chewing a huge wad of gum, as usual, and started blowing a bubble that was as big as his head, and just held it there for a few seconds, let it pop, and then grinned the most classic naughty-boy grin I have ever seen, taunting the pitcher, who was so rattled by the comedy of it that he had to step off the rubber (the thing at the top of the pitcher’s mound that they brace against and push off of to help them throw harder and more consistently) to try to compose himself. The next pitch was very nicely hit, indeed, crushed, because (according to the pitcher in the post-game interview) Abreu’s stunt had destroyed the pitcher’s concentration and it was a little too close to the middle of the strike zone to be missed, especially by a skilled batsman like Abreu.

I asked some female readers and friends who were Yankees fans about it and the response went pretty much like, “I like him. I wasn’t sure about him before, but after that bubble-blowing stunt, I like him a lot. He’s fun to watch!” Think about that, and let’s analyze…

First, this big guy comes walking up looking very strong, confident, and pretty much swinging a club. Very primal, and if you don’t think it has an effect on women, who seldom play the game, take a look in the stands sometime and see how many are WATCHING the game, often in groups of women! I’ve sat near groups of them at games and listened to them, and some of them know baseball, but the majority of them are there to see the guys in their tight pants swinging their clubs with authority, having fun, and making things happen. Why else do you think Derek Jeter is one of the world’s most eligible bachelors? Look at any picture of him and what do you see? That same “naughty little boy out to have a good time” ear-to-ear grin, and women eat that attitude like candy.

Now add to that the confidence and confident expression of a guy who’s batting very well and an excellent fielder – basically an expert in his chosen profession, a huge display of authority – who walks up to the plate and in open defiance of a pitcher who is regarded to be among the best, says, “You don’t scare me a bit,” by blowing a huge bubble in his face and grinning like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. It put me in mind of a ten-year old boy getting ready to smack a teacher in the back of the head with a grapefruit-sized spit ball and getting caught, and cracking that grin as he said, “Who, me?” in true Alfred E. Newman (MAD Magazine) style.

Which brings up something else, something that may be even more important! The average guy, if he had seen his wife responding to another man like that and was smart enough to realize that he was seeing attraction would have immediately been insecure and started either wussing out or getting jealous and angry with his wife. Why? And more important, why should he NOT?

He would have done it because he didn’t know any better, and would have seen valuable information as a threat to his ability to maintain his fragile fantasy of being enough to satisfy his wife instead of seeing it as an example of something he could do to make things better in his relationship or marriage. You may have a tendency to do this as well; let’s face it, if everything was good at home you probably wouldn’t be reading this. But why should you not get angry, and instead see this as an opportunity to learn?

For starters, another man’s attractive behavior isn’t necessarily a threat, nor is your wife’s reaction to it, at least not at first. Remember, it’s the behavior, not the guy, that excites her; a biological trigger, not a conscious, logical value judgment that makes her respond to him. Most of all, it’s a big clue as to what you should be doing if you’re not doing it! And if you get mad when she does something like this, you lose all opportunities to learn what flips her switches, where if you take note and play along, she feels free to “let it all hang out” and “open the window to her soul,” so to speak, for you to learn all you can about her inner desires and automatic responses.

Never, ever allow yourself to see something that is better than you are currently capable of to be perceived as a threat. It’s a choice, so frame it as a goal, an opportunity to improve, and an example to follow as you try to make things better. Treat the person who excels more than you as a mentor, not an enemy, and you’ll go much farther in life.

I’ve given you some VERY valuable lessons today, unfortunately more valuable than most of you will ever realize; I’d like to think that these lessons won’t be lost on any of you, but the truth is that only half or less of the people who receive this e-mail will actually read it, and a large percentage of those who do will mistakenly think self-defeating thoughts like, “Treat somebody who’s better than me as a mentor? Yeah, right! Like somebody successful would want to teach me something.”

Well, yes, a lot of people would love to teach you something, especially me, if you would just wake up and realize that the world is not against you, and people do enjoy seeing others succeed so they have somebody to swap stories with. That’s part of what being a guy is all about, isn’t it??? We do things, they work out, we learn from them, and we swap stories and celebrate our victories, and tell each other how to avoid making the same mistakes. Has it not occurred to you that what you are reading is just such an effort? WAKE UP!

You will have noticed in your life that not everything you pay for has value; also notice that not everything you don’t pay for is without value. Sometimes people want something other than money in exchange for their effort, and sometimes they want a mixture of things, and money is only a small part of it. I want to see the world populated with real men, because I’m tired of the wuss attitude, laziness, incompetence, and the gaping “black hole” where male self-respect used to be.

I need to earn a living like most other people, but I need to live an enjoyable life, too, and for me, that means meeting and creating men who are a lot more like me and a lot less those bumbling, neurotic, wussy jackasses on television and that I interact with nearly every day of my life. Men are not nearly as social as women, but we still crave the company of others from time to time to beat on our chests, dance around the fire, and tell stories of great hunts and battles.

I grew up amongst such men, and watched them slowly die out as I went through my 20’s and 30’s, until in my 40’s I found myself being viewed as a barbaric anachronism by most of the men I knew and seeing every woman’s head turn as I walked into any room, in any situation, not because I have movie-star looks, but because I was the first “man” they’d seen in a long time. They like it when they see a guy who “owns the room” before he walks in, and they don’t try to hide it.

So a bunch of those women and I, along with some other authors like Shelley McMurtry, John Alanis, Jason King, Ann May, John Alexander and others are trying to turn things back around, because we’re all pretty much sick of the way things are and know not only that things can be better, but how much better they can be, because we help people make it happen every single day. And once it happens, their relationships and marriages quickly and significantly improve, even if sometimes it means they find another one because they realize they don’t need the needy parasite or predator they are with and are ready to step up from a dependent to a real partner and be truly happy for the first time in their life.

So for those of you who do realize the value of what’s written here, whether it was before the ass-tearing or after, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I have that will help you. Over 3,000 man-hours went into the research and writing of "THE Man’s Guide to Great Relationships and Marriage," and it contains the wisdom of the experience of hundreds of couples, 118 of them in the first writing and hundreds more since. Download your copy right now at and take advantage of all of us who are offering to be your mentor, giving you what you need to make your life and relationship better than it’s ever been, maybe even better than you ever dreamed it could be, from our own experiences.

David Cunningham

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