Bryan Curtis had a great observation a few months back about “baseball’s homoerotic rituals?the butt-slapping, the excessive man-hugs.”

I was thinking about that recently when my friend Josh and I were sitting at the ballpark while they played YMCA on the house sound system. That and foot-stomp-clap introduction of Queen’s “We Will Rock” you have become ballpark staples, in the midst of the mainstream middle American splendor of the ballpark, where brauts are brauts and beer is beer and men are men (of a particular kind, you understand).

When I was a teenager, Queen was the rock band that I saw more than any other. I liked them, but was not a huge fan. No, the reason I went again and again was a succession of girlfriends who loved them. They thought Freddie Mercury was hot. Which he was, though the observation is not without irony.