When I played softball for Esquire, against Screw

Al Goldstein, who died recently and made the front page of the New York Times, was among the world’s most disgusting men. But hardly as repellent as Charles Saatchi and certainly without the coward’s bullying manner — against women, that is. Goldstein founded Screw magazine during the Sixties and pushed hard-core porn into the mainstream without the usual excuses of it being art disguised as porn, or vice versa. He apologised for nothing and took no prisoners and gave the finger to an outraged establishment who thought him rather vulgar, to say the least. I met him once and it was on a baseball diamond.

Back in the Seventies there was a regular softball competition in New York’s Central Park among magazines — most of them, like Life, Look, Collier’s and the Saturday Evening Post, now gone. I played third base for Esquire and as luck would have it we drew Screw in the first round. Word had got around that Screw would provide oral sex to anyone on either side who hit a home run, and the vile act would be performed right at home plate. Catching for Screw was an enormous bull dyke, who I noticed during the warm-up was throwing the ball like a man, and then some. My first two times up she yelled at the pitcher that ‘sunny boy here couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn’, and other typical baseball barbs. I was able to fly out deep both times up at bat, then on my third time got hold of one which fell between left and centre. I flew around the bases and approaching third I saw the coach holding up both hands signalling me to stop with a stand-up triple. But I had made my mind up and never broke stride. Heading for home, I was beaten by a mile and the bull dyke had gone down on her knees with her shin guards blocking the plate.

In such a situation, in real baseball, the runner barrels into the catcher at full speed, lowering his shoulder and aiming for the catcher’s head, more often than not injuring the receiver and knocking the ball off him.