It is powerful. It is secret. It is unreturnable, even with a receipt, at most department stores.

The thong.

It had seemed, until this past week, that the thong achieved its pop culture pinnacle a decade ago. That's when a certain intern flashed hers at a certain president, who — to the disbelief of everyone, except perhaps that president's wife — reacted almost exactly like a dog stumbling upon a stockpile of Slim Jims. Unwrapped Slim Jims.

Naturally, that president denied this behavior for quite some time, presumably out of intense embarrassment. But maybe he shouldn't have been concerned. Because most men understand the pull of that particular undergarment, publicist Marty Appel said, "He could have avoided a lot of trouble if he just said, 'Hey, she showed me her thong.'"

For the greater part of his career, Appel has worked as a press agent for the New York Yankees, which means that for the past few days, he has been following with interest the latest thong in the news: Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi's. In an interview with Portfolio magazine, Giambi admitted that when the going gets tough, the tough wear women's underwear. Or at least, he does. Apparently, he favors a gold lamé tiger-print model. Those Yankees love their stripes.

While you'd think an admission such as that might make a guy a little less inclined to show his face — or any other body part — in public anytime soon, the fact is Giambi was man enough to do so. And like any undergarment worth its elastic, the thong did not let him down. Though he'd been batting a dismal .191 this season, a day after he made his underwear public, the troubled slugger stepped up to the plate and belted one out of the park. The right man at the thong time.

Anyway, the Yankees still lost. Then they lost again the next day, making one wonder about the mercurial nature of luck — and Lycra. Giambi, however, swears by both. He even told Portfolio that in the dozen years he's owned the tail-tickling talisman, he has lent it to other players when they hit slumps. Among them were Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon, Robinson Cano and Robin Ventura — making you picture the team in a whole new way.

"When I heard about the baseball players and the thong, I thought, 'This is a video I have ,'" said my friend Christopher, who's gay.

"You'd think that guys who make $500 million a year for the Yankees could have afforded their own thongs," another guy opined.

Which brings us to the issue of icons. Icons in thongs.

Aren't ballplayers supposed to be role models (when they're not shooting steroids)? Do we really want more boys in G-strings? Or even girls? Mothers today have enough trouble luring their daughters away from Lolita-wear. "My 12-year-old knows about them, and she wants them — absolutely," a mother of two told me. "I said: 'No way! Forget it! Wait until you're, like, 25 and buy them yourself."

This feeling has a simple source: sex. The female thong first took America by storm during the 1939 World's Fair in New York, when the mayor ordered dancers to wear something — anything!

It took another generation, but in about 1980, the item leapt from stripper gear to hipster standard when it made its way up from Brazil, along with all the other grooming standards that country bequeathed us. The 1999 "Thong Song," by Sisqó, just cemented the silly string's salacious status. It has been engaged in a good-undies/bad-undies war with old-fashioned underpants ever since.

Now perhaps the thong is poised to undergo one last transformation, from tarty triangle to ballpark basic. I can hear it now: Get yer peanuts! Popcorn! Panties!

And come the seventh inning, we'd know exactly what to stretch.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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