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The testosterone molecule

You can blame it on my gender or my graduate degree from Sarah Lawrence, but I never really got testosterone. Lately, however, the idea has been hard to avoid, what with so many professional athletes using anabolic steroids and other drugs that mimic testosterone's effects. The bigger controversies involving Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens aside, Giants relief pitcher Guillermo Mota was recently suspended for a second time for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, while Manny Ramirez of the Oakland A's (another two-time offender) is due to reach the end of a 100-game suspension later this month.

Digging deep into the recesses of my memory, I remembered that an adult male produces seven to eight times more testosterone than does an adult female. It's associated with a wide spectrum of physical development and aggression, including the kind baseball players would need. I would assume, then, that Mota and the always colorful Ramirez produce plenty during a competitive game.

All these suspensions pose a rather basic question: Don't most men -- particularly professional athletes -- naturally produce bountiful levels of testosterone on their own?

Not necessarily.

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Cultural institutions in San Francisco continually search for new acquisitions. Alexis Coe brings you the most important, often wondrous, sometimes bizarre, and occasionally downright vexing finds each week.

To my knowledge, real estate maneuvers and pinball machines have little in common, but when Michael Scheiss offered to explain, I went to Alameda in search of answers.

Scheiss' Pacific Pinball Museum is open to the public, but his warehouse is not. Let's just say I knocked on a slew of unmarked doors lining a seemingly abandoned "street" before a big metal portal swung open. I tentatively stepped inside and stopped in my tracks, met with the incredible sight of more than 1,000 pinball machines and related effects, from 15-foot murals to unidentifiable thingamabobs, crammed into an elephantine space.

When my eyes adjusted, I was warmly greeted by two middle-aged gentleman in stonewashed jeans and shirts bearing script that time has made indecipherable, unwrapping sandwiches atop a card table. I politely declined half of Scheiss' turkey on white.

I came for the Foos.

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Not that long ago, it was common for Major League Baseball players -- All-Stars and minor leaguers alike -- to hold day-jobs in the off-season so they could pay the bills. There was no players union, and there was no minimum salary. Baseball did have heroes and celebrities, but they were paid abysmal wages most of the time. And when players' careers were done, they were on their own in terms of health care.

Giants legend Willie Mays played during this era, and we're sure he knows players who had to struggle to get by. Mays is scheduled to appear this spring at a tavern near AT&T Park to help raise money for older people with lower incomes. Entry to the event isn't cheap -- tickets start at $120 -- but it benefits the Institute on Aging, and it's a rare chance to meet a Giants legend face to face and have him autograph your cap, jersey, ball, or baseball card.

As Giants go, there are none truer than Mays, who turns 81 on May 6. There's a statue of him outside AT&T Park, and the street where the park was built carries his name -- Willie Mays Plaza. He began his career in the Negro Leagues in the mid-1940s, joining the New York Giants in 1951 and moving with the team to San Francisco in 1958, where he stayed until 1972. The outfielder is probably best remembered for "the catch," a play he made in the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians. Mays raced toward the outfield wall chasing a deep fly ball and made the catch over his shoulder as he ran.

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SF Weekly art director Andrew J. Nilsen gives you a first-person perspective of what it took to compete with the top-notch racers in the recent Bring Your Own Big Wheel 2012, a race down Vermont Street, which is as twisty and curvy as the famous part of Lombard Street, except it's not famous (and its surface just looks like road, rather than fancy-schmancy bricks).

The video (set to the Dead Kennedys' "Police Truck" among other tunes) also includes pre-race tuning and customization as well as front- and rear-view perspective of the downhill action.

Nilsen got such a kick out of this project he created another video on what the race looked like from the sidelines -- except things are going backward, at four times their normal speed.

"Party!" says Nilsen.

Click through to see his creation.

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David Levenson

Hit and Run

Baseball is a sport. It's also an art. And it's a cultural institution. All this keeps fans hanging on each year for 162 regular season games, two rounds of playoffs, and a World Series. Giants fans know this all too well -- they had to wait 52 years before winning a series in San Francisco. "The Art of Baseball," an exhibit that opens this weekend at George Krevsky Gallery, goes far beyond an opportunistic attempt at capitalizing on the Giants' recent success to show not only the hometown nine but also parts of a game that in many ways defines American society.

The exhibit depicts numerous facets of the game -- the heroism and precision, the history and cultural significance, the dirty physicality, the larger-than-life aspect that professional sports can take on -- while also exposing some not-so-pretty aspects such as racial divisions and legendary players who had extremely troubled personal lives. It does so through various media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and found-object assembly. As baseball exhibits go, this is among the best we've seen.

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We don't usually think of sports bets in the same sentence as art, but here's one based on the game tonight (Monday) between the 49ers and the Steelers. Andrew Farago, curator of San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum, has issued a challenge to Joe Wos, director of Pittsburgh's ToonSeum: The losing team's fan must show up at the winner's museum to lead a workshop on cartooning -- clad in the opposing team's jersey.

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I had way too much fun (and stress) making the "Fighting Chance" cover with photographer Kelly Nicolaisen and boxer Karim Mayfield that it seemed silly not to share some details and more of the interesting shots we got during the crazy trial-and-error process.

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Sylvie Kim

The finish line couldn't come soon enough Sunday at the 2011 Nike Women's Marathon

​It's a little before 7 a.m. and I'm one of 22,000 women (and some dudes thrown in for good measure) standing in Union Square. Most everyone wears spandex short-shorts, while I don a pink shirt with the words STRONG, SEXY, and FIERCE emblazoned on the back, which is as anathema to my character. [Note: the shirt was free]. Suddenly, Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)" blares on a loudspeaker. A collective "Whoo!" is chanted, and arms pump the air.

The 2011 Nike Women's Marathon has begun. And I'm wondering how in the hell I got here.

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We think it's cool the Bay Area has two baseball teams. Not that anyone should root for both teams -- but that's just the point. It's a crosstown rivalry. The tradition goes back to the Oakland Oaks and San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League, and it's shared by metro areas including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Even the two baseball teams in Missouri fight for that state's bragging rights.

So where does Moneyball come in? Good question. The movie opens today, and at first we thought it was weird to premiere a baseball movie -- based on real things that happened to a real team -- a week before the regular season ends, when the team in the movie hasn't been in contention for, well, let's just say "a couple of years."

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Anna Fischer

Chairmen of the 'board.

And lo there comes a day in each childhood when a weapon shall reveal itself, and a child shall seize that weapon, and that child shall proceed to thwack the living shit out of all others, until such time as that weapon -- the cardboard tube from a roll of giftwrap -- either peels apart or is seized by a parent. Likewise, it is written that, long after previous generations have set aside childish things, those of youthful heart shall at summer's end take up again the armaments of their youth, and again shall they thwack each other, this time with tournament rules, and referees, and cardboard swords called sabers and claymores, and all throughout the kingdom of Saint Francis the people will know this to be awesome. Awesome is what we're hoping for Saturday when the warriors (including you, if you want) take the field for a free tournament of gallant whackery in the Cardboard Tube Duel and Costume Contest at Hayes Valley Farm.

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