What I walked away with most from the World Series was the notion that the gay softball community IS a community. People, including myself, refer to the "gay community" all the time - but it would better be called the "gay noncommunity." At the World Series, you had gay men and lesbians celebrating together with friends from around North America. It was very cool.

It's really sad, but teams cheat at the World Series. Three of them, Long Beach Blue Dot, Ft. Lauderdale Stingers, and Twin Cities Smoke, got caught. Each division, A, B, and C, has a maximum number of "points" on a 1-27 scale that each player can have to be eligible for that division, and that the team must have to be eligible as well. What these teams did was somehow "fix" their player ratings cards to say that they should be in a lower division than they should have been.

Why do they cheat? To win. In the cases of the Stingers and Blue Dot, they should have been playing in the A Division - where they would have virtually no chance of winning due to the dominance of the LA Stray Cats. These teams got caught up in some need to bring home a trophy - and it cost these two their participation in the games.

The general reaction to the disqualifications seemed to be very positive - not because people didn't like the teams, but because, as I heard over and over again, "it's about time."  This has been going on for years, apparently, and NAGAAA has done little about it until this year.  Kudos to them for finally taking a stand.

Make no mistake - these teams are not the only ones to do it. I heard specific rumors of over a dozen teams somehow cheating - lying about their player ratings or having an extra straight player (you're only allowed two). Yes, they're only rumors. But, I would be surprised if these were the only three teams to do it.

"They're a franchise." That's what one player from another team told me. The LA Stray Cats won their eighth consecutive World Series on Saturday. They are the best gay softball team in North America, bar none.

Big deal. To the Stray Cats, unfortunately, winning isn't just a goal - it's everything. While a wonderful community has grown out of gay softball, the LA Stray Cats are not a part of it. They show up for an event from time to time, but I got no sense that this team cares at all about anyone else out there but themselves.

While the rest of the teams are having fun, enjoying the games and enjoying each other, the Stray Cats find their worth in winning year after year. If this was the Major League Baseball World Series, I could understand that. But, it's not. It seems to me the Stray Cats, with all of their trophies, just don't get it.

Two of the rules that make the LA Stray Cats such a dominant team are the ability to have two straight players per team and to have two out-of-town players per team. And, as a former Stray Cat told me, "we will go out and get the two best straight players, and the two best out-of-town players, we can find." And then either the team or those players fly in from, say, Ohio and Michigan, for at least half of the team's league games to qualify for the World Series.  To what end? Surely the rules aren't there so some guys can go out and have fantasies like they're the Yankees. Rather, they're probably there to allow a team to include friends to play.  Getting the best players "we can find" doesn't exactly exude the spirit of this rule.

Addendum from the author:  Some readers have mistaken what I wrote as me saying that the Stray Cats cheat.  On the contrary, I'm quite convinced that they do not cheat, and have been reassured of this by many players.

Presently, NAGAAA allows each team to have two straight players play with them. I spoke to two straight players this past week about this.

Kim Gruttadauria, 33, plays for the Atlanta Dramanotz. She has been married to a man for 11 years and has two kids.

This was her first year with a lesbian team - and what an experience. She had been playing in an open league and had a teammate who was playing with the Dramanotz. "I’ll play with them as long as they’ll have me," she said.

I asked her how she would feel if straight players weren’t allowed.

"If they didn’t allow straight players, I’d have a problem with that." Guttadauria echoed the arguments many have made about a double-standard - if a gay league didn’t allow straight players, they’d be as bad as any homophobic policy they didn’t like.

Eric Sedwick, 28, of the Portland Gay Yellow Pages, resounded a distaste for a straight-less gay league, and even went further to argue with the limit of two straight players.

He moved to Portland last year after playing with several gay teams in San Diego since 1992. He had originally stumbled across his first gay team while shopping in Hillcrest and answering a "players wanted for softball team" ad.

Sedwick says that the straight limit should be examined on a case-by-case basis. For example, he has been playing with gay teams for ten years, half of his friends are gay, and he volunteers in the gay community. Why should he not be considered a gay player?

An interesting question, given the problems NAGAAA has when determining if a player in question is, in fact, gay.

If there is a poster boy for straight players in gay sports, Sedwick is it. Before playing with a gay team in 1992, he had no gay friends. Now, he is an active part of the community. Wouldn’t it be better to encourage more straight players to play? It could certainly help open some minds and make a statement about the state of gay sports in general.

Jim Marks, aka Bubba D. Licious, of the Atlanta Comets, is the former commissioner of the open division of NAGAAA, and had another insightful take on the idea of straight teams and players: "straight teams have a talent pool of 90% of the population; we only have a pool of 10%."

What’s the answer? For once, I don’t have an opinion. But, until a better solution comes along, NAGAAA’s two-straight-person limit seems to work … all right.

After my first Gay Softball World Series, there seem to be some glaring issues that need to be addressed, and things that could be done to improve the event and NAGAAA. Here are a few of my recommendations:

• STIFFER PENALTIES FOR CHEATING. If a team is disqualified from the tournament, that means that have broken a code of ethics. Not only should that team be disqualified for that year, but the league, team and all of its players should be disqualified for the following year. There is no room at the World Series for cheating and this stiff penalty will make a commissioner reconsider fixing the players cards.
• NO OUT OF TOWN PLAYERS. Building a franchise by going out and finding the best players available is an absurd notion for this League. Players should be mandated to play for a team in the city nearest them. Period. There’s no reason someone from Ohio should be playing on a team from Los Angeles.
• PRO PLAYERS MUST PLAY IN THE HIGHEST DIVISION. The open division has a rule that says a former professional ballplayer must play in the A Division (e.g. Billy Bean). The women now need to adopt the same rule, after a professional softball player was allowed to play for the Alternative Division Just For Kicks - who won the Championship.

It’s not about winning the trophy - though it’s pretty cool when you do. Here are some teams I felt stood out this past week - for one reason or another:

SPIRIT AWARD - San Diego’s Womenmoto.com (Cinderella made it all the way to the finals singing "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog" and doing the Funky Chicken, despite getting into an intra-team brawl in the parking lot).

BEST UNIFORMS AWARD - Virginia Cavaliers (classic look) and Dallas Poison (red red red).

CUTEST TEAM AWARD - Twin Cities Boom (though Bruce of Berkeley tells me it was Brian’s Bears from San Diego).

BEST FANS AWARD - Gold: Texans; Silver: Women; Bronze: Minnesotans.

TEAM ON THE RISE AWARD - Seattle Monarchs (B) & San Francisco Seals (A).

See you next year!