We know what professional baseball players do on the field, but what about after the game? Most players who have had a bad game usually leave the clubhouse swiftly, while those who have had a good game don't mind lingering, savoring their success and enjoying the banter. Either way, after showering and dressing, many players call home. go outside any clubhouse, and you'll see half the team, phone locked to their ears, each player in a little pocket of private space calling their wives or girlfriends, Birmingham Barons broadcaster Curt Bloom told me. 'Hey, babe, how ya doing? Let me tell ya what happened tonight.' In the Minor Leagues cell phones have replaced what used to be a sprint back to the hotel to get one of the few outside lines. In my playing days in the 1960s, if you weren't quick, you could wait ages for a line to free up. As the players head out into the night, they pass kids who have been waiting patiently for an autograph, and a gaggle of groupies--young, overly made up, provocatively dressed women hoping to catch a player for a night ... or longer. Few players go straight home after work. As veteran manager and former Cubs pitching coach Q. V. Lowe noted, I've never known a player who could just go back to his hotel room, lie down, and go to sleep. You are so worked up after the game that it takes two or three hours to come down. So you go out to a bar or club. That ballplayers go out after a game isn't surprising when you consider that they work a later shift than the rest of us; their workday doesn't really begin till early afternoon. Going out after a game for a few beers is the norm wherever professional baseball is played. Journeyman pitcher Phil Brassington, who has played pro ball in the United States, Holland, Taiwan, Korea, Italy, and his home, Australia, explained, doesn't make any difference where you are, or whether you are Taiwanese or Italian; players want to go out, have a few drinks and unwind. Anthropologists would say this behavior is part of the culture of pro ball. In the Minor Leagues players often go out in large groups. Half the team may wind up at the same club, where their number may be swollen by players from the opposing team. In the Major Leagues teams splinter into pairs and threesomes. It wasn't always this way, and old-timers, like Yankee bench coach Don Zimmer, wax nostalgic for the days when the team hung out together. In today's big leagues players don't even share hotel rooms. No matter what town they're in, ballplayers know where to go, often learning of the best local nightspots from friends on the home team. Most teams have two or three favorite watering holes. In Baltimore it's Baja Beach Club and Have A Nice Day Cafe; in Boston it's McCarthy's and The Rack; and in double A Birmingham, Alabama, it's Gabriels for a quiet evening over beer and wings, and Senor Frogs for top-forty pumping music and girls to watch. In some large cities players merely head to a particular district, like Church Street in Orlando or Rush Street in Chicago. There is always one place, however, ballplayers avoid, and that's the lounge and bar of their hotel. Team management forbids it because any rowdy behavior there could reflect badly on the entire team. I played for a team in the New York--Penn League in 1965 that was banned from staying in the hotel in Geneva, New York, after a few drunken teammates fought in the hotel bar. Thereafter when playing Geneva we were forced to lodge in the next town, twenty-seven miles from the ballpark. After a game most players start the evening talking baseball. Rookies especially have a hard time mentally leaving the game at the ballpark since they typically have fewer diversions than veterans. Usually unmarried they not only spend their entire workdays and evenings with other ballplayers but share apartments and free time with them as well. After verbally processing the game, the talk drifts to other topics, including women, fishing, hunting, and other pursuits. …