Adrián Beltré's Right Nut by Todd Taylor

It’s safe to say that no dude likes getting hit in the nuts really hard.

On Wednesday, August 13, 2009, during the ninth inning, Seattle Mariner third baseman Adrián Beltré Pérez attempted to field a routine ground ball off of the White Sox’s Alexei Ramirez. The ball took the unkindest hop of all. With great force, it smashed into Beltré’s right testicle. Although Beltré was able to recover the ball (the one in his mitt), his throw to first base was far off the mark, resulting in an error.

“It hurt pretty bad,” Beltré said about the ball’s impact. “It was hurting me pretty much the whole game after that.”

After the ball-to-ball contact, Beltré played five more innings and three more at-bats. He was suffering from a yet-undiagnosed tear in his testicle, which had become contused from the blow. (Picture one of the claymation California Raisins doing an extended blues sax solo.) In the tenth inning, Beltré tackled the White Sox’s Scott Podsednik on a pickoff throw from catcher Rob Johnson.

Blood continued to coagulate in Beltré’s scrotal sac through the fourteenth as Beltré dove back into first base during a pick-off attempt after his single. The game ended with a Ken Griffey, Jr. single and Beltré scoring the winning run of the game.

Poor workmen blame their tools. Professionals play through pain and act like nothing’s out of the ordinary. Beltré left the field stoically and assessed the damage in the clubhouse. “When I looked down, after the game, it wasn’t a pretty sight. My testicle got the size of a grapefruit.” The average, unwhacked-by-great-force male testicle is approximately the size of an unshelled almond, fig, or robin’s egg. Beltré iced his injury. He was put on the disabled list. Surgery was scheduled.

Beltré is a man who needs room to boogie. He had not been wearing a cup when the accident occurred.

Adrian, a native of the Dominican Republic and born in Santo Domingo in 1979, had signed with the Dodgers organization when he was fifteen years old. During his youth and when he played on the Liceo Maximo Gomez High School team, he had never worn a cup. “When I came through the Dodger camp, they forced me to use it,” Beltré said, “but I told them I can’t play like that. I feel like I can’t move.”

Beltré advanced to the majors, debuting with the Dodgers in 1998 at the age of nineteen. He didn’t view wearing a cup as a minor inconvenience. It sucked. He felt it as an unnecessary hunk of plastic in a restrictive place that prevented him from playing his best game. Beltré’s a steely dude. He isn’t a whiner. The cup wasn’t just a minor inconvenience. Prior to the 2001 season, while in spring training with the Dodgers, he suffered the after-effects of a botched appendectomy. While healing from a second operation to close the wound left by the first, he fielded ground balls while wearing a colostomy bag.

C-bag? No problem. Cup? No ma’am.

And so, for over an entire decade, the quick-fielding Maginot Line-style hands of this third baseman were all the protection he had needed to stop all balls advancing into his groinal area. Thousands of balls had hurtled towards him at over one hundred miles per hour from one hundred feet away. In 2007, he won a Gold Glove.

But if decade’s-worth of watching America’s Funniest Home Videos has taught me anything it is that it only takes one direct shot to the snacks to convert one man’s private tragedy into a nation’s laughter.

Mariners’ manager Don Wakamatsu used Beltré’s misfortune as a public service announcement directed to aspiring baseball players. “This guy is not a guy that hadn’t played a long time in the majors. But sometimes you think your hands are so quick, it will never happen to you. The word is—no matter how good you are—that one chance is not worth taking. Wear a cup.”

Beltré’s confidence in his skills and his freedom of movement had far eclipsed concerns for his nuts’ safety and continued sperm production.

“If it happens every ten years and you get hit there, it’s not bad,” Beltré reasoned. “I have never been hit right in the spot (before). It’s been close, which hurt, but not right on one of the testicles. A cup just got in the way... I made a play and dove and it hurt more when you had the cup on than without it. I never liked it…I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move.”

In the two weeks that followed the incident, while on the fifteen-day disabled list, the final diagnosis was good. Although there had been internal bleeding and there was a tear on the testicle wall, there was no permanent damage. All systems go. Clean bill of health. Unshelled almond-sized testicle once again.

Upon Beltré’s return, Wakamatsu insisted his third baseman wear a cup to facilitate a complete recovery.

When reporters asked if Beltré—father of two—would consider “cupping up” upon his return, his response was similar to that of old bikers when requested to voluntarily wear helmets “for safety’s safe”: a fuck you that almost sounds like a yes.

On Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009, at his first at-bat after the errant ball, Ken Griffey Jr. got the stadium to play Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” as Beltré stepped into the batter’s box.

As for the cup?

“I wore it for a couple days,” Beltré said, “so they think I’m wearing it. After that, I stopped. At the end of the year, I was back to normal.”

Beltré is currently swingin’ in the breeze once again with the Red Sox.

A Short History of the Jock Strap and the Cup

Adrian Beltré had a five-year, sixty-five million dollar contract with the Mariners. A fancy jock strap with an ergonomic cup runs around fifty bucks. It’s reasonable to assume that finances weren’t the reason he didn’t wear one. It was freedom. Freedom of movement. Freedom to play baseball in the manner most comfortable to a player, regardless of the risks involved. Freedom from the Man cupping several precious ounces in the name of security from future attacks. What is comfortable and right for one man may not be for another. What is important is the right to choose and the pursuit of happiness, be it commando-style or hardened protection. In contrast to Beltré, pitcher Tom Seaver of the NY Mets used the security of two straps, plus a pair of jockey shorts, all sandwiching a plastic cup fitted inside the second jock. During his career, he threw 3,640 strikeouts with his “kids” wrapped up like a mummy during Halloween.

Let’s set down the equipment basics. What’s referred to, almost interchangeably as “the jock strap” or “the cup,” is actually a two-part system. “The cup” is a piece of hard material used to physically shield the genitals from impact. Such cups normally define a cavity area which is designed to encase the male genitals. The original designs look like urinals and bananas. The new ones—like the NuttyBuddy and the Shock Doctor—are more contoured and form fitting. The NuttyBuddy, in particular, looks as if you cupped Michelangelo’s David’s groin with loving, careful hands, and formed a PG-rated bump of plastic in that private place.

“The jock strap” is a garment that houses and positions the protective cup. It was traditionally a knit pouch held up above by a wide elastic waistband and below from two leg straps going upward from the groin. Jock straps have, in recent years, been largely replaced by compression shorts (stretchy boxer briefs) with a pocket for the cup to be inserted into and look a lot less like the wearer is in a Cameo video or an extra on A Clockwork Orange.

In 1874, Charles Bennett was approached by the Boston Athletic Club to design an undergarment that would help alleviate the blistering and chafing which resulted from the friction between a bicycle jockey’s dangling testicles, the bicycle’s seat, and the violent jostles provided by Boston’s rough, irregular cobblestone streets. The thin material of a union suit wasn’t limiting the sway of a heated scrotum against the surface of an unforgiving seat. A device was needed to comfortably hold the genitals close to the body so they didn’t bounce around—and get crunched—during vigorous athletic activity. Bennett adapted the idea of women’s girdle, but for dudes, positioned a little bit lower. Athletic supporters were born. The garment’s original trademark name was the Bike Jockey Strap. Its insignia was a penny-farthing’s spoked wheel. Over time, the undergarment became known simply as a jock. Bennett’s invention was a continued success. In 2005, after over 130 years in production, Bike had made its 350 millionth jock strap.

Unlike the reasonably verifiable origins of the jock strap, there is very little corroborating evidence—or even a claim about—who first inserted a cup into the jock. Specifically designed to lessen the impact of hard objects hurtling at high speeds to protect the male genital area, there is speculation that it found its way into hockey rinks soon after Bennett’s invention. However, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball credits White Sox catcher Claude Berry with introducing “the safety cup” to major league baseball in 1904. Berry’s cup was made out of steel.
To this day, major league baseball regulations state that only the catchers are required to wear a protective cup. It is voluntary compliance for all other players, primarily enforced by their ball clubs in the name of safety, prolonged productivity, and the protection of valuable assets.

Todd Taylor is the editor and publisher of Razorcake Fanzine, America’s only bonafide non-profit zine dedicated to DIY music. He is currently figuring out which Little League team that plays in the field near his house is the absolute worst and will start cheering for them. He’s a sucker for the underdog.