SOAPStone of Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out

Leah Pederson

SOAPSTone Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out

The subject of Dave Barry’s Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out is that women and men have their differences that can only be understood by the same sex. This idea is illustrated through the author first describing how he doesn’t understand women’s interest with cleanliness, and then as he shows women don’t understand men’s profound curiosity with sports. It’s known that men are very into their sports but women just can’t fathom why they are so important the men, and men feel the same way about the absolute cleanliness women strive for.

This essay was written during the current decade. This essay’s time is creation is illustrated by the conventional role of women (cleaning) and the popular interest of men (sports games). We also see this through the fact that the author is watching the World Series on television. The probable place of the essay’s creation is in America due to the strong interest in sports and how relatable the essay seems to the readers.

Dave Barry’s specific audience for Striking Out is mainly typical American men. The author’s target audience is exhibited by the disdain to women’s interest of cleaning and the keen liking to sports and sports games. We see this through the lack of understanding the author has with his wife’s housework and how strongly he feels about watching his sports games.

Barry’s purpose in Striking Out is to provide comedic relief to everyday events and poke a stick at American life. We see this portrayed by how the author explains how he cannot see the dirt his wife sees; “I go into the bathroom and it always look perfectly fine.” The author is showing that men don’t demonstrate such a fine interest in cleaning in women as do, and that women don’t care as much about sports as men do. He shows the second point as he says, “this is an area where men tend to fel very sensitive and women tend to be extremely callous.” We can see that the author is showing how different the two sexes are.

Dave Barry, a long time sports fan, believes that men are so absorbed in sports games that it seems ridiculous that women are not. This is shown as he describes how he was watching a World Series game and the women seemed extremely uninterested in it while he was simply hypnotized by the television. Dave Barry also believes that men weren’t meant to clean and cannot identify the meticulous uncleanliness that women see. He earlier explained how his wife found his son’s bathroom to be filthy while he saw it as perfectly clean. This influences the essay’s purpose by separating the views of men and women farther apart in these two areas of interest.

Barry shows a humorous and lighthearted tone about the subjects. He is not being sexist and he is not being arrogant about sports or cleaning; rather, he is just being truthful and honest. These attitudes are expressed with word choices such as “filthy” or “broadcast rays zinging through the air.” These show that the author feels strongly about his topic; women care too much about cleaning and men care too much about sports. It is not the author being ignorant about his topics, it is just him portraying typical American culture in a funny way.