Pride is one of those ambiguous sins. A little bit is good — maybe even necessary — if you want to get through life without getting squashed like a bug.Pride is what gets us up in the morning. Pride is why we brush and floss our teeth, use deodorant and refrain from picking our noses in public.

It is only when we suffer from too much pride that we start getting into trouble and annoying others.

Example: It's good to take pride in your work. But not good when you're so obsessed with perfection that you fiddle and procrastinate until a whole string of people who are depending on your timeliness have to drum their fingers waiting for your precious work — and then don't have enough time to be perfect themselves.

That's selfish pride, workplace variety. (Should I admit that the usual culprit is me?)

Here are some other examples.

Foolish pride: A guy straps a mattress to the roof of his car and pulls into heavy traffic on Dale Mabry or U.S. 19. For safety's sake, he reaches out the open window and rests his bare hand on the mattress – as if he could hold everything down when a heavy wind loosens the straps and turns the bed into a fat, deadly missile.

Heedless pride: The human race mostly believes that our technological inventiveness will always outpace our degradation and depletion of the world's resources. Fossil fuels in short supply? No problem. We'll figure out cold-water fusion eventually. (Meantime, there's always the option of war.) Holes in the ozone layer? We can always make a better sunscreen.

Boastful pride: In Canto XI of Dante's Purgatorio, our pilgrim encounters Oderisi, an illuminator of manuscripts who is just now learning how to deflect a compliment. When he was alive, Oderisi explains, he would have advanced his own reputation by making catty remarks about everyone else's. Now he sees the folly of those ways: "Oh empty glory of human power. How soon the green fades from the topmost bough, unless succeeding seasons show no growth. Once Cimabue thought to hold the field as painter; Giotto now is all the rage, dimming the luster of the former's fame."

Dante wrote this in the 14th century. It seems the art world is always the same.

So where best to indulge your appetite for pride this summer?

I say, go to a baseball game.

No other sport achieves such a sublime balance between humility and pride. (Baseball, of course, is all about balance. The difference between success and failure is a razor's edge, and a knowledgeable fan can feast on the tension that is resolved one way or the other each time the ball is thrown. Baseball has many layers; but pay attention, and you'll never miss a thing.)

In the second Devil Rays game this season, Lance Carter, a 28-year-old semi-rookie from Bradenton, was called in to pitch. It was the top of the ninth inning, and the game was tied. Carter dispatched three Red Sox batters in a row, holding the score and giving his team a chance to win. On his way back to the dugout, Carter kept his head down, his expression grim.

In any other sport, a player who had just completed a successful play under pressure would be compelled to call attention to himself. (Think Keyshawn Johnson or Warren Sapp.) But that isn't baseball. My first thought that night was how Carter was the exemplification of humility, in the understated spirit of a game in which anything can go wrong and often does.

Then I realized that pride is what enables him to behave this way. His studied nonchalance says this to the opposing team: "Of course I got those batters out. That's my job. That's what I'm good at. And that's what I'm going to do."

The Devil Rays' season lasts through September. Cheap seats are available if you don't need to sit in the sections closest to the diamond. I kind of like the mezzanine on the first level, above the main concourse that circles the field. A seat costs $19, and if you're lucky you can get one pretty close to home plate. Or you can sit in the outfield for $14, upstairs for $9, or in "the beach" for $5 ($3 for kids and seniors). 727-898-RAYS, 813-282-RAYS or www.devilrays.com.

Postscript:The lavender mafia will take away my toaster oven if I don't mention the gay pride celebration taking place next month in St. Petersburg. A grassroots committee is planning a parade, a picnic, a street fair and several community outreach parties during the weekend of June 27-29. The whole shindig should be a welcome change from the last few pride celebrations in Tampa, which had become increasingly bloated and disconnected from the community. For more information, go to www.stpetepride.com.

This article appears in May 14-20, 2003.