Somewhere along the road to lover’s lane, baseball has become the standard by which adolescences judge how far one got in the groping-to-sex department.
Baseball, as you may know, has four bases.
First Base - Kissing
Second Base - Touching above the Waist
Third Base - Touching Below the Waist
Home Run - sex
(this is my take on it, your standards and mileage may vary.)
Which gives a whole new meaning to the phrases:
“He’s on first but stealing second.”
“He could go all the way!”
“Home Run on the first pitch…”
Dopers who live elsewhere, what is the sport(s) that is the metaphor for sex where you live. How do/did you metaphorically say you made it to kissing/fondling as a teen?
You’ve misinterpreted the intent of this figure of speech. It’s not about prudishness … it’s about speaking colorfully. All languages contain figures of speech completely unrelated to taboo subjects.
Now then …
Shirley, I’ve heard of “The Four F’s” used in place of the baseball analogy you described. Those would be Frenching, Feeling, Fingering, ****ing.
The baseball analogy works better, though, because there are so many corollary figures of speech about baseball that can be applied to sex. “Thrown out at home (or second)”, “Didn’t even get out of the dugout”, “Didn’t even pick up the bat”, etc.
If soccer lingo didn’t get used to refer to sex somewhere, I’d be astonished. It seems like such a natural.