Feeling the love

By Joseph P. Kahn, Globe Staff, 10/8/2003

"To every thing there is a season," it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing."

For the Boston Red Sox, whose motto in seasons past has been some variation of "25 men, 25 straitjackets," the time to refrain from embracing ended roughly around Memorial Day.

The 2003 Red Sox are huggier than a John Bradshaw inner-child group therapy workshop. Never mind the game-winning home run. These guys share a dugout hug when a teammate advances a runner to third base with fewer than two outs. Every clutch hit is a call to arms. Alan Alda could be their bench coach.

As they roll through the playoffs, one improbable victory piled upon the last, their posture as icy professionals is threatening to melt into a pool of Dr. Phils. "Cowboy up!" may be the team's rallying cry. Yet the image sticking with hyperemotional Sox fans is of slugger David Ortiz wrapping his massive arms around Trot Nixon or Jason Varitek and sharing the love, baby.

Not exactly Clint Eastwood digging a bullet out of his leg and swinging himself back in the saddle.

Team chemistry? Every winning baseball team (well, most) is said to have a positive mix of personalities. Seldom, however, is good chemistry expressed this exuberantly.

"It's well known that hugging has many physical and psychological effects, including a rise in endorphin levels," says author Michael Christian ("The Art of Hugging"), a former Boston College professor who writes under the nom de plume William Cane. "Men shy away from expressing feelings through touching, but they should get over it."

Get over it? There are more endorphins in the Sox dugout now than right-handed pinch hitters.

Might there be a message here for a culture that expects different (i.e. more macho) behavior from its sports heroes? At least two authorities on male adolescents, Dr. Eli Newberger and William Pollack, think so. Both reside in the Boston area, and both have been following the team's fortunes with a professional's eye, not just a fan's. The larger lesson, they say, is that real men can hit and hug.

After Monday's lovefest in Oakland, says Newberger, a pediatrician and author of "The Men They Will Become," his immediate reaction was amazement. What a needed counterpoint, he thought, to the California gubernatorial race and headlines about frontrunner Arnold Schwarzenegger's boys-will-be-boys behavior.

"In his game, which was bodybuilding, there's a tremendous amount of sexual ambiguity," says Newberger. "His aggression toward females may indicate his own doubts about himself as a man."

Conversely, says Newberger, the natural way Sox players express support for one another -- as likely the bear hug as the butt slap -- bespeaks a comfort level that young males anywhere can emulate. Nor is it a coincidence, Newberger suggests, that the current Sox have more minority players than teams of bygone eras. Three of the team's stars -- Dominican natives Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, and Ortiz -- are Latino. So is Carlos Baerga, from Puerto Rico, who introduced the "Baerga hug" to last year's Red Sox before signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks this season.

Says Newberger, "We're getting beyond the Anglo-Saxon, European scripts of what's appropriate male behavior."

Pollack, a psychologist and author of "Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From the Myths of Boyhood," views the hugging as the flip side of the "cowboy up" mentality.

"It's the sense that you really can't do it alone without teamwork and camaraderie -- not just in words, either, but with physical closeness," says Pollack.

The fact that male ballplayers are unafraid to show such emotion, he adds, "says something about where we're going as a culture." Will we get there by the World Series? Doubtful, says Pollack. But for young males especially, "it can't help but be positive seeing that their sports heroes don't have to bash each other," he adds.

For Red Sox Nation, it's a notion they're happy to embrace with both arms.

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.