Now, where was I?

Personal note: this was my first year wholly back in the classroom, after a dozen years as head of some department, call it English or Arts & Humanities or what have you. Hence, I was, for the first time since 1995, taken wholly by surprise by the storm surge of papers, finals and end-of-semester paperwork that hit me--always, always worse in spring than in fall.

My sister-in-law's son is two-and-a-half. I stacked everything I would need to read and mark up, as a prelude to addding up and assigning a grade, and had my nephew stand next to the stack. The pile reached the top portion of his kneecap.

What happens in these times is that baseball games race past you like picket fences on Route 95--you find out, Wait, an afternoon game? Who knew? You hear Moose has won his fourth game in a row--another step closer to an improbable Hall of Fame plaque, and you missed the whole thing.

Then, step out on a Friday night--bang, a loss.

Then, Saturday, another Fox plot to rob you of your viewing pleasure. A Yankee-Tiger game taken off YES, and put on Fox, but not your Fox affiliate, since Fox has determined that everyone who lives between Philadelphia and Denver must be a Cubs fan. A hundred-and-twenty Cubs games go out on basic cable every year, yet Fox grabs the Cubs, then grabs the Yankees, and freezes seventy percent of the country out of the Yankee game.

The current Fox arrangement is almost as bad as CBS's brief, unfortunate foray into baseball starting in 1990, during which the network bought baseball in order to bury it, save for the All-Star Game, the post-season, and a mere nine Saturday games, which qualified as a sop to real baseball fans (like my father, my brothers, and myself) who had fallen in love with baseball mainly through NBC's annual 25 Saturday Games of the Week.

So: I've caught up. And Rasner and Moose have won a combined six in a row.

Finals, man. You have no idea.

Some ideas about the Yankees. Tomorrow.