Bobby Sox rocks, period. The high-quality sideline drama gives the sport a definite edge

I often grow beards of intermediate length. I once got frostbite because I was wearing shorts while standing outside for four hours watching a football game in 10-degree weather. I have combed my hair three times in the last eight years.

I am a man.

That said, numbered among my 10 favorite movies are at least three chick flicks. I read “Pride and Prejudice” and found it enjoyable. I remember birthdays.

So it stands at least a little to reason that I consider Bobby Sox and youth league softball in general to be far superior to Little League.

Much to my detriment as a human being, neither my dad nor my mom encouraged me to join Little League.

My dad instead taught me other sports ““ Ping-Pong, badminton, craps ““ while I spent 10 years or so poorly playing soccer and basketball.

So my experiences with both Little League and Bobby Sox come entirely from observation.

My sister, Molly, played upward of six years of softball ““ and I say upward of six because I don’t know for sure and she’s asleep right now, or else I would ask. I was probably in attendance for half of her games because of my being unable to find better things to do.

These are the stories of those games.

First, though Little League is the province of angry fathers filled with residual rage from when they were forced to play baseball by their angry fathers, it is the soccer mom who dominates the softball stadium.

One time my sister was playing catcher and had a ball that scooted away from her on a throw home.

My sister gathered the ball just in the nick of time and was able to reverse direction and basically tackle the runner coming home right before the runner hit the plate ““ she probably should have slid.

In Little League, the parents would be mostly saying something to the effect of “all right, dust yourself off, get up,” to the runner. They might even yell at the kid that he should have slid.

Not so with softball.

When the runner went down in a heap and took a beat or two too long to get up, her mom started screaming from the stands ““ at my sister. Something like, allowing for my faulty memory, “What is wrong with you, were you trying to kill her, oh God, my poor baby, oh God.”

Afterward, she was heard to comment that my then-10-or-11-year-old sister was something that rhymes with “itch.”

So in terms of lunatic parents, I think softball gets a decided edge.

And then, of course, there is the timeless, mind-bending quality of softball cheers.

I have been unable, for the past 10 to 15 years of not watching softball, to get them out of my head.

Regardless of inning, the teams were always going down by the river, taking a little walk, meeting up with the other team and having a little talk (and then pushing them in the river, and so on and so forth). And there was always a h-o-l-e hole out there, so hit the b-a-l-l ball out there.

And lest we forget, they wanted a pitcher and not a belly-itcher, and they would also like a catcher and not a belly-scratcher.

So in terms of getting phrases and songs stuck in your head to the point of near-homicidal rage, softball also comes out ahead of Little League.

But ultimately, when it comes down to it, watching any kind of youth sports, unless you A. have a vested betting interest, as Bobby articulates, or B. have a kid on the team, is an exercise in masochism.

So really you have to bring it down to the basic fundamentals: Softball uses a bigger, easier-to-see ball.

There’s nothing more fundamental than that.

E-mail Woods at [email protected] if you think the fundamental argument for youth league softball is probably the fact that Jennie Finch once played it, but find you can’t figure out a way to say that without sounding like a creeper.