one.

i just realized it's almost over. yes yes, the excitement is really just beginning, BUT.

All of these fine young men still play for the Yankees, but I speak about them in the past tense as a way to distance myself from them during these last few days of the season. They have wives and girlfriends and children to attend to and I, like other New York baseball gals, have learned to repress my desires on cue, at least until the next season rolls around and the guys -- conditioned, well-fed and well-rested -- are back in town. The winter will be lonely for us. There will be barren, cold nights characterized by too many glasses of wine for too much money when, just months earlier, we shrugged off the same drink dates and after-work parties in order to be home in front of the TV with our boys. It will be -- as it always is -- a difficult winter without them.

... I'm losing my friends soon. It's the beginning of the end of the season for the Yankees and I'll be watching each player closely, soaking in their faces and their bodies; all those details will be memorized and memorialized in an effort to keep me company during the long winter months ahead, when life will be characterized by cold nights, too many carbohydrates and dysfunctional family get-togethers. During those times when a date goes horribly wrong, when the nightly news reports that another war has broken out in the Middle East or when the 300-thread count of my sheets is not enough to compensate for the lack of another warm body in my bed, I will think of Tino and Derek, of Chuck and Paul, of Bernie and Clay, and dream of spring training. [harriet archer]

i am going to go hyperventilate now.