It was no more specific than that, although both Kretchmer and Baber knew they did not want a ''men-as-brothers'' entry where the author stumbled over himself in an attempt to be a caring, sensitive Phil Donahue/Alan Alda type.

Baber`s first column, ''Role Models'' appeared in April 1982. It was about his Marine Corps drill instructor and what he taught Baber about staying alive. It was a strong, macho start and the beginning of a rocky but groundbreaking run.

''I rejected two columns for every one I printed,'' Kretchmer says. ''Asa wasn`t comfortable. He wasn`t deft. We argued about his voice. When he was strident and lecturing, I could feel my hackles rise. It took a half year before he hit his stride, when he really became confident. And he killed himself to do it.''

Little support came his way from Playboy`s other quarters. The column was something very new for the magazine, and few of its editors knew what to do with it. At a staff retreat in Arizona in 1984, several editors, particularly Playboy`s female staffers, who are often skewered for working at the magazine in the first place, lobbied to drop the column.

''If he`d been there, they`d have fried him,'' Kretchmer says. ''They all hated it. The women said they were annoyed by it and that it attacked feminism and trivialized feminist issues.''

Former Playboy associate editor Kate Nolan, who was present, remembers.

''There were some women on the staff who disagreed with him, and others who couldn`t even read him at all. They were out to lynch him. Personally, I had problems with him when he stereotyped feminists and when he charged us all with rigid, unyielding feminist-think.''

Other staffers wondered about the validity of such a column.

''I always thought that it was an odd column for a men`s magazine. Why make a special case for being a male? There is always a defensive quality about it. Asa is always bleeding. And I never thought an occasional moment of self-indulgence was worthy of the space,'' says one.

The disgruntled editors` final beef, Kretchmer says, was that they were convinced nobody read the column.

Was he tempted to fire Baber?

''Never. One reason was out of stubbornness. I just felt my instinct in running it was right. Another came from Jim Petersen (Playboy senior staff writer and author of the long running ''Playboy Advisor''). He was speaking at colleges all over, and he said people were asking him, `Who is this guy Baber?` ''

Make no mistake about it, Asa Baber loves women. He is crazy about them. He confides in them, laughs with them, venerates them and lusts after them. Ask him and he will tell you God created no finer creature.

Baber also fights with women, chides them, howls in anger at their rhetoric and their strategies. He pens vehement diatribes against them. He counsels other men on how not to fall into their terrible female traps.

And he never apologizes for maleness or the aggression inherent in it.

''The aggressive male who is being roundly mocked and put down today is absolutely necessary to a successful society,'' he says. ''It is part of the male makeup.''

Another vital part is sexual energy, something Baber relishes. ''The sexual energy of the normal male is the equivalent of a nuclear power plant.'' Yet he is very much against promiscuity. ''When you start to wander, you voluntarily take an ax and split yourself into pieces,'' he says.

That comes from one who can walk into offices and turn heads like a leading man. At 54, he easily looks 10 years younger. He is Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti western days, a craggy, solid guy with a strong jaw and steel eyes. He is in great physical shape and still wrestles with his grown sons. He can flash a smile that will stop a truck.

Yet for most of his waking hours, Baber is as serious as a surgeon, his mug a metal jacket of no-nonsense. His shoulders sag from the weight of the world. He is certain every cab will jump the curb. He not only reads between the lines, but to him all print is fine print. He believes in the grassy knoll. No mundane activity, be it a trip to the Jewel or a stroll on the lakefront, goes without a measure of fear and loathing.

Says a former colleague, ''He is one of the most complicated individuals you and I will ever know.''

Says a friend: ''I was standing outside a theater one night, and I saw Asa walking with a woman. I didn`t know the woman, but I did know the expression on Asa`s face. It was the face of death. The evening had gone badly, and it was going worse. His expression looked like it belonged on Mt. Rushmore, and needless to say, I didn`t bother him.''

And yet his humor is undeniable. He finds sex extremely funny. His column on masturbation was a sensation in-house and out. Readers also enjoyed an unscientific poll of remarks men least like to hear-''I`m So Glad You Can`t Tell I`m a Transsexual.'' Best of all are his female sensitivity quizzes, which turn the tables on the Phil Donahue/Alan Alda soul-searching exercises. One of his criteria for a great mate is that she ''must have a sense of sexual humor.''

For their part, women, colleagues and friends, are alternately fond and not so fond of him.

''He`s interesting, full of contradictions, full of beans and enormously brave,'' says writer Susan Margolis.

''He`s really sweet in person, and I don`t think that always comes through in his column,'' says Chicago magazine`s Women columnist Marcia Froelke Coburn.

''He has an unerring sense of where people`s vulnerabilities are,'' says Kate Nolan.

Other women aren`t so sure.

''He really scares me. I`m afraid of him. Not that he`s going to hurt me but that he will blow up in a major way,'' says a woman who preferred anonymity.

''I love him dearly,'' says another, ''but he`d be hell to live with.''

Baber`s second marriage, to Deborah Allen-Baber, a former English instructor at the University of Hawaii, where the couple met, recently ended after 16 years and no children. The two remain good friends. ''They went through a lot to try to save the marriage,'' says a friend. ''There was great sadness, not rancor, that it didn`t work out.''

No person has found him more difficult to contend with than Cynthia Heimel, who writes Playboy`s Women column. The two have sparred in print off and on, though Heimel`s column is more of a narrative of her on-again, off-again relationship with men.

Heimel wrote in ''Working Woman'' that she often wants ''to throttle Asa Baber.'' Baber once wrote a column entitled ''Spanking Cynthia'' that scolded her for her male bashing and caused somewhat of an in-house furor. That column never saw the light of print.

Heimel is decidedly uncomfortable in talking about Baber. ''He`s written columns responding to me, but there`s really no dialogue between us. All his claims of men being beaten and bashed are bull----. The media has focused on radical feminists who are insane. All we want are our rights.