“Other women dream of papaya facials and mango pedicures. Give me a hot dog, a pitchers’ duel and a late-inning suicide squeeze (risky tactic to score), and I melt like hot pine tar.”

Alyssa Milano, either trying to describe a date and she’s stuck in euphemism hell or actually talking about sports, in her new book, “Safe at Home:  Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic.”

In regards to her break up with Barry Zito, she writes, “To be completely honest, after Barry and I broke up, I swore off baseball players. (But) Brad had me at, ‘Let’s go down to the clubhouse.’”

How was this book not titled, “How To Get To Home Base With Alyssa Milano”?  I had no idea who Barry Zito was.  I still don’t and don’t care either but based on what his Wikipedia page says, I’m surprised Alyssa just swore off baseball players.  If I dated this Barry Zito, I’d be racing to my local Sisters of Sappho chapter.

At his introductory press conference with the Giants, Zito said he liked the way his uniform number 75 looked, because the 7 and the 5 are like a “shelf” to hold the name “Zito” up. He carries pink satin pillows on the road, collects stuffed animals (such as a good luck teddy bear, with which he used to travel), and burns incense to relax.  Early in his career, Zito dyed his hair blue. He plays guitar, surfs, practices yoga, and follows Zen. He has done yoga poses in the outfield, and meditates before games.  In 2001, Zito espoused a universal life force that he credited with his midseason turnaround.

And my favorite quote-the one that has me racing to Borders to snatch this ground-breaking piece of literary genius right off the shelf?

“The big difference between injecting Botox and with taking human growth hormone is that there are no rules against Botox.”

Oh, Alyssa, aren’t there?  Hello, mirror.

 

This is the chick that could make me switch tracks.  Perfect body, perfect face, perfect smile.  I worship her.  I hate her.  She makes me want to stuff my face with Twinkies; I’ll never be good enough for her.  It’s complicated.

Alyssa Milano at the launch of her clothing line TOUCH.

Listen, I’ve worked with paparazzi agencies for a few years now, and I’ve learned one important thing: trust your instincts above their captions. They may have tagged a photo as “Jennifer Aniston,” and it’s kind of far away and blurry, but it doesn’t quite look like her, so you email them like, “Hey, are you guys totally sure that’s Jen in that shot?” and they write back like, “Yes, we’re sure,” and you still have your doubts so you write them again, “Like, totally sure?” and they’re like “Totally sure” and so you run that photo as Jennifer Aniston and it turns out the next day it was actually her housekeeper and you feel like an ass. This sort of thing happens WAY more often than you’d think, especially considering that this is an entire career for these people. It’s hella frustrating.

But imagine how frustrating it is when you’re Alyssa Milano, and your Z-list lookalike, Christina DeRosa, hits the Emmy red carpet in the most hideous dress ever and the photo agency tags it incorrectly as you.

You’d resort to measures like this, too, even if your first opportunity presented itself at a formal Kate Spade dinner.

I just want to add that I had the opportunity to do a brief interview with Christina about a year ago, at some Hollywood charity event that she had no business being invited to. Nobody knew who she was, but her PR guy thrust her in front of our cameras and was basically like “Her breasts were on Entourage and her website gets 20,000 hits a month.” At that point, I was running a fairly successful website of my own, and my non-verbalized response was something along the lines of “Then they must not have been very impressive breasts,” but, whatever, I interviewed her and found her to be grossly overcoached and famewhorish and annoying. But I’m sure nowhere near as annoying as Alyssa Milano finds her.