Haunting Hillary on tour.

I'm making a living off of Hillary Clinton.

For the past couple of weeks I've been following the former first lady around to her various book signings. I am not there as a fan, but as a fellow author. I recently published a book, Damn Senators, about my grandfather, who was a baseball player for the old Washington Senators. His name was Joe Judge, and he played for the team from 1915 to 1932?including the 1924 World Series, which Washington won. He is a forgotten but great player?he still holds fielding records, hit over .300 nine seasons and was the prototype for Joe Hardy, the character in Damn Yankees. He coached at Georgetown University for years after retiring.

You would think that such a book would be worthy of review in the Washington Post?after all, there is constant buzz in Washington these days about the possibility of us getting a new team, and in early July an announcement will be made about it. But between Hillary hogging space and my publisher being Encounter, a reputable and conservative new house that also published William Kristol, liberal sheets like the Post haven't touched it?despite the fact that Damn Senators has received favorable notices from Bob Costas, Bowie Kuhn, who was the commissioner of baseball for almost 20 years and introduced me at a talk I gave in May (the Post didn't attend), and the Weekly Standard.

I was recently notified that it will be used in an American Studies class at Georgetown University and a communications department class at Loyola in Baltimore.

So between the liberal blackballing and my low advance?considerably less than $8 million?I've been forced to become a guerrilla publicist. I've left flyers in church, inviting comparisons to the moneychangers. I've found full parking lots at the mall or metro station and started plastering. Anyone who thinks journalism is a glamorous life should spend four hours in a commuter parking lot slipping pieces of paper onto windshields, only to have the sky unload a thunderstorm as you drive away. It's a good thing I don't drink anymore.

After the second downpour, I decided on a different approach.

I would simply go to bookstores?where the readers are?and hand out the flyers directly. Then the light bulb went off: Why not go to a bookstore during someone else's book signing? I mean, not do it in an obnoxious way, interfering with another author's sales, but just quietly stand in the front of the store? It just so happened that when I came across this idea, Hillary Clinton's book had just come out, and she was scheduled to be in the Washington area for the next couple of weeks. There would be enormous lines of Washingtonians just sitting there. Hillary fans with husbands and boyfriends. Husbands and boyfriends who liked baseball. My campaign would be like selling fire extinguishers at the Hindenburg crash.

It was a plan. Still, a lot of my friends found this to be very ironic. I am a conservative journalist and though I've never written anything about Hillary, I've written for some of the places that consider her a cross between Pol Pot and Lady Macbeth. But since she ultimately helped me sell a few books, I owe it to her to come clean: I've refrained from writing about Hillary Clinton because I think she's attractive. Physically.

I disagree with every policy recommendation that has come out of her mouth, I detest the 1960s generation for whom she is an icon, I bristle when her voice drones with anger over some evil policy that my beloved right-wing conspiracy has cooked up. But, God help me, I think Hillary Clinton is hot. It prevents me from criticizing her for the same reason she won't criticize Bill. There is no reason in matters of the heart.

A shrink could probably best explain the phenomenon of loving the one you hate, but I do have a history of it. I'm the male Mary Matalin, drawn to those whose ideology I despise. A couple years ago I had the magical and unfortunate experience of quickly falling in love with a beautiful Jewish girl who worked for the Democratic National Committee. In that case, the feelings turned out to be mutual, and we spent half of our time calling each other names and the other half making out.

I even harbored the perverse fantasy that somehow my crashing Hillary's party might result in a hook up with the senator from New York. Indeed, I must admit that I felt a rush of excitement when I headed down to the Trover Shop on Capitol Hill, the scene of the crime. I got there just as the lady herself arrived. Knocking a couple soccer moms and one old lady out of the way, I hustled up to the curb where her car was pulling up.

I was mere feet away when she stepped out of her car. It would be like that great issue of Spider-Man when the Kingpin brushes past Peter Parker, only to hesitate, sensing there was coiled power in this harmless kid. Better yet, it would be like the gym scene in West Side Story: The humming of the rowdy throng would fade away and the crowd part as destiny inexorably drew us together.

A flash of blonde hair, a glimpse of a sensible pant suit and she's gone. At least as far as the flyers went I had made a good strategic decision.

The line to get Living History signed was the longest I have ever seen, including the opening of Star Wars in 1977 and the herd to see the hickey I got during beach week sophomore year of high school. The thing stretched halfway into the neighborhood behind the store.

And it was full of people interested in baseball, due in large part to the rumors of us getting a team back in D.C.

"Baseball?" I asked, holding out a flyer, then moving to the next person.

"Baseball?"

Some literally jumped when they heard the word. Some people looked angry or irritated as I approached, thinking I was a protestor of some sort?they didn't know my dark secret. Protest Hillary? Better Marcia Brady protest Davy Jones.

I brought 1000 flyers and ran out before I got to the end of the line.

My ranking on Amazon bounced up a point or two, but I still couldn't even see, much less eat, Hillary's dust. If she's the red hot sun of the publishing world right now, I'm the tenth planet?that unnamed one that they think lies beyond Pluto.

Still, a sale is a sale. And please, Hillary, don't become president. I make a few bucks writings about pols I hate, and I can't write about one I love. I need to make a living.