Under the Boardwalk

The Drifters

Baseball is a sport of statistics. You talk about batting averages, RBI’s and today there are increasingly rarefied forms of statistical analysis used to describe the sport. So it’s not surprising that baseball, which is perhaps the most popular of all sports for young American males, was once used as a metaphor for many first experiences with the opposite sex. And it’s also not surprising that today’s young men stand a better chance of having high life time batting averages than their predecessors. Today’s average adolescent (either male or female)  has more sexual experience than their parents and it’s only the most myopic parent who would dare attempt to lecture their male or female offspring on sexual practices that the child is far better qualified to understand. However, is knowledge necessarily  bliss? Today’s youthful sexual athletes "hook up" before they’ve had the experience of old-fashioned concepts like love and romance while the lovers of yesteryear heavy petted and made out “Up on the Roof" or “Under the Boardwalk." These pleasures which adopted the lingo of baseball---you got to first, second or third base or if you were really lucky hit a homer— are all but forgotten in an age where nudity is meaningless and undressing someone has little more significance than unwrapping their Bazooka, with a blow job being about as routine as blowing a bubble. In the late 50’s and 60’s when The Drifters were all the rage, getting to third base, or fingering, an act that today occurs before couples are even introduced, was a form of intimacy that was almost impossible to imagine. Home run hitting was only a dream, but if you ate your Wheaties, girls were going to pay attention, when the ump called out “batter up!”