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Which is to say I didn't feel extremely tired, but certainly wasn't at my peak of performance. Nor was I in an especially good mood or bad mood. Life wasn't going badly, but things could have been better.

Fatigued. It was nothing in particular. Just the usual stew of family stuff, work deadlines, and so forth. You know. We all deal with it. All the time.

And then there were the Yanks. Weeks of losing, losing, and sinking lower and lower in the standings. That hadn't helped energize me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd beaten my insomnia by thinking about baseball to relax. In fact, thinking about the Yanks after I hit the sack was one of the reasons I had bags under my eyes. If I thought about the Yanks on a given night, I could almost guarantee I wouldn't be catching eight hours' sleep.

Really, they hadn't helped for the longest time . . . though signs of an upswing were showing. They'd taken two out of three games in Boston, then three out of four in Chicago. We'll omit for a second that letdown in Toronto. You had to pay attention to how they were playing overall. And here at the beginning of June, about to head into the series with Pittsburgh at the Stadium, they were, finally, finally playing well with consistency.

So, I was kind of upbeat about the Yanks. I was even thinking they could maybe trim their deficit in the AL East to single digits, and jump over a couple of teams for the-arrgh-AL Wildcard slot by the end of that above mentioned Pirates series. And I looked forward to listening the Rocket's Saturday return on Internet radio. I say "listening" because I couldn't watch it on television. The national Fox TV blackout prevented out-of-market Yankee fans from watching the game live. Instead we could watch golf, which was what Fox was airing at the time. Or maybe wait till four o'clock or so and watch the Mets.

Anyway. Not only did I like how the Yanks were playing, but I liked how the Red Sox were playing as well. Because the Sox had cooled. The Sox were coming down to earth. The Sox were on the West Coast, where they are traditionally pretty average. Take them away from Fenway and its absurd wall for a while, remove them from the cracklingly belligerent energy of that place, and they lose some of their mojo.

On the day of my fatigue, however, I was kind of dragging more than usual from an accumulation of mundane frustrations, exasperations, and annoyances. I figured I needed to get out of the office, leave my close associate The Computer on its own for a few minutes, and hope it didn't miss me too much. I would be back, I assured it. I always come back.

Downstairs, then. I headed downstairs and walked the dog. She is a large rescued greyhound, incidentally. Not a little "yapper" who probably aggravates my neighbors, as some Red Sox fans have posted on their idiotic message boards. If they read my column regularly, which I always recommend, they would know this. And if they knew anything about greyhounds, they would realize greyhounds are silent by disposition. When they do bark, which is rarely, it is a deep, husky basso sound that can be startling. Greyhounds annoy no one, except perhaps the racetrack owners who subject them to unspeakably inhumane conditions and slaughter them by the thousands every year.

Now, outside, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the trees were green. It was June. Summer had come to Port Getaway, officially or otherwise. You surely would have called it a fine day.

I walked the dog. In the field around the corner, she ran freely off the leash. Sometimes when I watch her romp, I think about her living in a box all those years at the track. Watching her run makes me happy to know she has an easy existence now, but sad to know she had to go through four and a half years of deprivation and abuse before that. This is how my emotions tend to be, joy and sadness always intermingled. I've been that way since I was a kid.

After about fifteen minutes of letting the dog run, it was time to head home. I would give the dog her treat for being a nice girl, grab a quick lunch, brew some coffee, and get back to work. I didn't want to work any more that day. But I had to. Deadlines.

I headed up the road toward home.

That was when I saw my neighbor the Retired Educator riding past me on his electric trike. He is a Red Sox fan, and has been for most of his ninety-something years on earth. With the Yanks stinking for so long, and the Sox playing winning baseball during the same period, I concede to having gotten a bit thin-skinned, and started walking the dog in a different direction from his house. I hadn't really felt like bantering about the game with him. It had seemed pointless. Most of the first two months of the Yankee baseball season had seemed pointless.

Today, though, I was feeling its upswing. I was glad to see the Retired Educator. We weren't quite on level terms yet baseball-wise, but I sensed the day might yet come before all was said and done. And besides, it had been a while, and I liked him. And sometimes we did talk intelligent baseball.

"Halloo!" he said, pulling the trike to a halt at the foot of my driveway. Even at its top speed of 15mph it could stop on a dime. "We're rolling!"

I knew he was talking about his team.

"And we're coming on," I said. About my team. As if you could really consider eleven and a half games back coming on.

"So," I said after a minute, getting serious, "your guys are doing well."

The Retired Educator nodded.

"They're really a solid, wonderful team this year," he said. And paused. "Your guys are terrible, though. Really awful. I've never seen a team with less heart."

I looked at him and reminded myself he was in his nineties. I try to be less contentious with people of age than with younger people.

"Well, the Yanks did look like that for some time," I said. "Or some of them anyway. But they really look like they've turned a corner."

The Retired Educator looked at me.

"They have no heart," he said. "I think it comes from the top. That Torre . . . I don't know how they can stand him glowering from the dugout."

I considered that. It was difficult to picture Joe Torre glowering at anyone. In fact, I sometimes wished he would glower a little. But the truth was that I probably glowered more at his players during the course of a single game than Torre had during his entire tenure as manager of the Yanks.

"I don't think he glowers," I said. "He's not the type."

"Well, then, he's morose," the Retired Educator countered.

A moment passed. I was fatigued, remember. And, tell the truth, a little desperate for social intercourse. I didn't want to argue, and I didn't feel like pointing out that my terrible, awful team with the morose manager had won four out of their last games versus the Red Sox. And then those three in Chicago.

"If I was Torre and had to deal with what he's been dealing with lately, I'd be morose, too," I said, trying make light of things.

The Retired Educator was not prepared to make light, however.

"The Yankees stamp out individuality in their players," he said. "Look at what they've done to that centerfielder . . . the one that used to be on my team."

"Damon?" I said.

"That's right. He's a different person than he used to be."

I didn't think that was true. I just thought he had shorter hair nowadays. I also thought that maybe I hadn't tried hard enough to lighten things up.

"Tell you something," I said. "We've got one guy who's definitely been showing his, ah, individuality these days. Whether he likes it or not. Maybe that's why he's been having a heckuva season."

"Oh?"

"Alex Rodriguez," I said. "The guy lets it all hang out, and he's turned into a demon at the plate."

"You can keep him," the Retired Educator said. "He's a horrible player. Detestable."

I inhaled. Okaaay. Maybe my computer wasn't such awful company after all. I was starting to miss it. "Well, I've gotta get back to work-"

"I love my new shortstop," the Retired Educator interrupted. "Have you watched him?"

I had. I'd watched Julio Lugo a lot for many years when he was with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and a little after he was traded to the Dodgers in the '06 season. I thought he was a fair-to-decent offensive player, and a subpar infielder. It kind of surprised me that the Retired Educator was impressed with him. A year ago, the Sox had had a far better defensive shortstop in Alex Gonzalez. Before that, that they'd had a better offensive and defensive shortstop in Orlando Cabrera. And before him there had been Garciaparra in his prime. That made three better shortstops than Julio Lugo. In a row. "I don't think Lugo's that great," I said. "Lugo?" said the Retired Educator.

"Your shortstop," I said, confused. "The guy you love."

He looked at me.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "I didn't mean him. I meant the second baseman. What's his name?"

"Dustin Pedroia," I said.

"Yes!" he said. "I love Pedroia."

I shrugged. Pedroia was all right. Probably not what Sox fans were cracking him up to be after just one solid May in the big league. But better than serviceable at his position.

"I also love that Japanese pitcher," said the Retired Educator.

"Matsuzaka," I said, wondering how come I had to remind him about the names of all these guys he loved and I didn't.

"Everything about his game is superb," he said. "His energy. His poise. His attitude on the mound."

I didn't comment about The Legendary Dice-K's five-something ERA thus far this season. I didn't say that he'd pitched so poorly against the Yanks in his two April starts against them that the Sox had kept him hidden away from anything pinstriped ever since. I didn't tell him that I'd rather have Andy Pettitte's left pinky in my team's starting rotation, let alone his arm and body too, than the much-ballyhooed and prematurely crowned ace of the Red Sox pitching staff.

Keeping in mind, again, that the Retired Educator happened to be many years my senior, what I did say was, "I think Matsuzaka's probably going to be a fine pitcher. But we'll need to see how he does after he gets used to American League hitters, and the American baseball schedule."

The Retired Educator harrumphed at that.

"No, we don't need to see anything, he's wonderful," he said. "The only one who needs to go is that knuckleballer."

"Wakefield?" I asked

"Yes, I've had enough of him," said the Retired Educator.

I shrugged. I'd frankly had enough of him about ten years ago. But lately the Yanks seemed to have gotten his number, and I was hoping he'd stick around for as long as they did.

"Well, you know, he's been with the team a while, and can still pitch well sometimes," I said, amazed that I was actually sticking up for one of his players. "I kind of think of him and Mussina in the same light. On the downside of their careers, but valuable."

The Retired Educator pulled a face . . . actually glowered, you might say.

"Oh, no," he said. "Mussina has never been anything. He's never delivered. And you people don't like him in New York."

"Actually, I think he's delivered plenty. And a lot of us kind of do like Moose-"

"But what can you expect?" The Retired Educator went on, as if I hadn't spoken. "He's a Stanford graduate!"

I stood in silence a moment. Then I looked down at my dog. It was very warm out, and she was panting. Greyhounds have very little body fat and that makes them intolerant of extremes in temperature. She shivers when it's cold and gets easily dehydrated when it's warm.

"I need to take the dog inside," I said.

"How is she doing anyway?" said the Retired Educator.

"She's okay" I said. "Just needs to get going."

The Retired Educator made a chuckling sound.

"Well, see you," he said,

"Yeah," I said.

He rode off on his motorized trike. I strode up the driveway, went inside, poured some water into the dog's bowl, and then went upstairs to my office and got back to work.

"Hello, computer," I said.

It stared at me the way it always does. But I was happier looking at it than I'd been talking to the Retired Educator.

Sometimes having to work is preferable to talking to a Red Sox fan. Sometimes, the whole Yanks-Sox thing gets tiresome.

I'm glad the two teams aren't playing each other again till August.

I'm also glad the Sox lost to Arizona yesterday.

The Yanks are 9 ½ games back. The deficit is now in single digits. And they are playing well again.

Things could be better, but they could also be worse.

For today, I'll take it.