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“Hah!” Replays are inconclusive, and Michael and I discuss whether A-Rod has a tendency to do bush league things. He is carrying the Yankees on his back this season, bush league or not.
    The Yanks go on to beat the Jays 10–5, avoid the sweep, and snap their five-game losing streak. Mo gets his first save since May 3.

    Thursday is an off day before the Yankees open another series against the Red Sox at Fenway. I focus on the e-mails about the divorce essay that continue to flood my in-box. Mixed in with the ones telling me that I am a despicable person are suggestions that I expand the saga of my relationship with the team into a baseball book.
    A career in baseball is all I ever wanted. When I got out of college in the ’70s, I wrote a letter to Michael Burke, president of the Yankees, asking for a job. He passed it along to Bob Fischel, who was head of PR then. I got my interview with the Yankees, but the job Bob Fischel offered me was secretarial, and I had bigger ambitions. I also interviewed with a vice president at ABC Sports, thinking I could be an on-air baseball reporter. The job he offered me was “sponsor hostess”—I would serve cocktails to sponsors at sporting events and “look pretty.” This was before such jobs were not only objectionable to women but also illegal. And then there was my interview at Major League Baseball. Bowie Kuhn was the commissioner, and baseball was losing young men to other sports, to college, to the military. His office needed a recruitment campaign along the lines of the army’s “Uncle Sam Wants You!” I said I would be thrilled to work on the campaign. But a few weeks later they explained that Major League Baseball was just not ready to hire a woman to promote it. I was disappointed, but I could not afford to be a pioneer and go door-to-door trying to break through any glass ceilings. I needed to make money. I answered an ad in the New York Times ’ classified section for an assistant in the publicity department at a book publishing company. I spent 10 years climbing the ladder in publishing, promoting dozens of novelists before becoming one myself.
    But here I am in the present, and the novel I am supposed to be writing is going nowhere. Writing a book about the Yankees,however,would prove to those people who trashed me that I am not a bandwagon fan; that I am the most devoted fan a person can possibly be.

    If I were Derek Jeter, I would not want to begin the month at a miniature park stuffed with Red Sox fans chanting, “Yankees suck!” The infield at Fenway is what sucks. I bet Jeter sees more bad hops there than anywhere.
    Actually, I wonder what Jeter is thinking these days. His offense, unlike that of most of the hitters,has been very reliable. I am dying to know whether he really thinks this team will pull out of the hole they have dug for themselves or if he is just bullshitting the media when he says, “We’ll be fine.” I would also like to know if he still hates A-Rod or if they are good teammates now. And what is up with all the high-profile women he dates? Mr. and Mrs. Jeter always look so down-to-earth when the camera finds them in their seats. I can’t picture them embracing a Mariah, Jessica, or Scarlett as their daughter-in-law.
    The Yankees win the June 1 game in Boston 9–5. Wang struggles through five-plus innings, but it is in the fourth when things get heated. Wakefield hits Phelps, and Kyle Snyder hits A-Rod. In the top of the ninth, Javier Lopez hits Cano. And in the bottom of the inning,Proctor,the enforcer, throws at Youkilis’s head. Both benches empty, but no punches are thrown. They all just stand around looking pissy. Typical Yankees–Red Sox.
    Boston takes the Saturday game 11–6. Neither starter, Mussina or Schilling, gets the decision, as it is a battle of the pens and a sloppy display by the Yankees, who blow the lead three times. Jeter commits two errors,