Lifestyles

One guy is a sergeant who served in the Army reserves in Iraq. Another is a fireman who has pulled people from burning buildings and wrecked cars. A third is a martial arts trainer who trades punches, jabs and kicks in the ultra-violent sport known as ultimate fighting.

If a director was looking to cast a beer commercial, he might phone these guys.

One thing that they have in common: They all have man crushes. They all want the company of that one guy whose work they enjoy and whose coolness or charisma speaks to their inner Clint Eastwood.

Go ahead -- tell them it's a sissy thing. But make sure you do it over the phone.

Show us the guy who hasn't had a hetero crush on another man, and we'll show you a guy who doesn't like the Three Stooges.

The online Urban Dictionary defines "man crush" as "When a straight man has a crush on another man, not sexual, but kind of idolizing him."

Or consider the example of Jim Krenn, stand-up comedian and morning drive-time personality on WDVE-FM. The beefy, cigar-smoking Krenn freely admits to having a man-crush on Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

"I'm lucky," he says of his job, which affords him the chance to rub elbows -- and nothing else, mind you -- with Big Ben. "I get a chance to meet this guy. He's so humble. He's a guy's guy. You say, 'Geez, he's a great guy.' He's a guy you want to hang out with or live vicariously through."

He also might be the type of guy you dress for. Think of that "Seinfeld" episode titled "The Boyfriend," where Jerry fretted over what shirt he should wear when he went to dinner with his new friend, Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez.

"Jerry," Elaine patiently admonished him, "he's a guy!"

Before Sally Murdoch started her own PR firm in Portland, Ore., she worked in sports marketing and with professional athletes for 13 years. She isn't quite sure when the term HMC or heterosexual male crush became an inside joke among her colleagues, but once it was out there, she says, it was hard to find a guy in the business who didn't have one.

"Every guy I worked with had an HMC on some athlete," she says. "Most would deny it until the day they die, but everyone I worked with knew that every guy would have one person, a pro athlete that they would pay an inordinate amount of attention to, make excuses for, drop everything they were doing for."

Toni Coleman, a psychotherapist and relationship coach in Washington, D.C., points to the way that men bond as opposed to women. They roughhouse, pursue common interests and trade insults "like a couple of puppies rolling around on the floor and biting each other," she says.

"Males bond this way because this is a comfortable and familiar way for them to feel close," Coleman says. "It meets their needs in the way deep conversation and sharing confidences work for women. As in all relationships, when two men have a strong rapport and a high level of comfort with one another, this would be the man crush."

Eric Hibler isn't the type of guy you want to get into an argument with. Hibler, 42, competes in ultimate fighting matches, using a combination of wrestling, Thai boxing and martial arts against his opponent, who might come at him with his own arsenal of karate, judo or kickboxing moves.

Hibler owns Eric Hibler's Pittsburgh Fight Club in Collier, a gym devoted to training fighters for competition, self-defense or general fitness.

Not surprisingly, his man crush is on another ultimate fighter, Randy "Captain America" Couture. A former alternate on the Olympic wrestling team, Couture, now retired, was the only athlete to win Ultimate Fighting championships in both the heavyweight and Lightweight divisions.

"He's very super pro-American, very patriotic," Hibler says. "He's a heck of a fighter. He won it in two different weight classes. In addition to that, he's a super nice guy. He's an Olympic wrestler, just a very high-standard person. ... If I had to have a man crush on somebody, it would have to be him."

Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Stainbrook, 30, of North Fayette, idolizes country signer George Strait.

"He's always stuck to his music, his style. It's considered old school. He hasn't wavered from that," says Stainbrook, station commander at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Ross.

Strait also has survived the tragic death of his teenage daughter in a car crash, served in the Army and stayed true to old-fashioned family values, Stainbrook says.

"If I could have one day, that would be onstage with him singing one of his songs," he says.

Fellow recruiter, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Holder of Brackenridge, sometimes imagines what it would have been like to hunt bighorn sheep and bear in Yellowstone Park with Teddy Roosevelt. On horseback.

"He's the quintessential man's man at the turn of the century, when America was stretching its power and coming into its own," says Holder, who served with the 458th combat engineer battalion Army reserve unit in Iraq. "He was at the center of that."

As a boy, John Brasile, fire chief at Latrobe Volunteer Fire Department, developed a devotion to retired Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw. As a teenager, Brasile worked as a dishwasher and busboy in the cafeteria at St. Vincent's College during Steelers training camp. This was during the Super Bowl era of the '70s, and Brasile had a lot of potential man crushes to choose from, including Joe Greene, Jack Lambert and L.C. Greenwood. But says he developed a particular admiration for Bradshaw.

"I've idolized him my whole life," he says of Bradshaw. "He was the one I would like to pal around with."

Needless to say, he's going to take ribbing from the other guys in the firehouse about it.

His planned reply: "You're just jealous it's not you. You're not my hero."

Male bonding has gone into hiding over the years

Geoffrey Greif, associate dean at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, is the author of a forthcoming book on male friendship, "Guys Will Be Guys."

"Guys bond in a way that is less physically affectionate and less interpersonally revealing," says Greif, who interviewed 386 men for his book. "Men have what are called shoulder-to-shoulder friendships, while women have face-to-face friendships. Men get together with other guys and do things, where women are more apt to get together and interact in a more face-to-face way."

Man crushes -- whose symptoms might include adopting certain slang expressions or dressing similarly to another guy, probably attract more comment today than they would have a century ago, Greif says. Abraham Lincoln, for example, could express affection for heterosexual bedmate Joshua Speed without it being misinterpreted.

"Fear of appearing homosexual is a relatively new fear for men," Greif says. "It was not as large a concern in the past as it is now."

And because life expectancy was shorter centuries ago, that meant the average male lost his father at a much earlier age than today. Therefore, Greif says, they were more apt to look for other male role models.

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