This is my 100th post. Unlike most of its predecessors, this post is written mid-day. Sunlight's falling on the mouse pad and keyboard, having been strained through the window screen as if by cheese cloth. Ray Charles's group is smearing keyboards and horns all over the living room; they are drenching the carpet and furniture, and the funk content in the air is even higher than when Flagg walks by.

Jeff woke me at 11 this morning and shouted at me to look at highlights from last night's game between the Yankees and the Red Socks. I watched as Derek Jeter caught a ball and, propelled by inertia, tumbled head-first into the stands. I saw the two home runs hit in the twelth inning. I heard the fans exult, and saw the team rise up and devour each other in a pile as if they had just won the pennant. Then Jeff left, and I went back to sleep.

Jeff has been a fan of the Yankees since the early 1980s, when they sucked. My father has been a fan since the early 1950s. Some time in the last forty years he has developed a neurosis that whenever he watches them as they are playing, they begin to lose. He knows this cannot be, but he believes he is cursed. Jeff tells me that every time he calls my father in to watch, when the Yankees are up the the ninth inning, things begin to go wrong. The oppossing team begins to get a few hits, and Rivera turns at the camera to shake his fist. When my father passes by the tv when a game is on, the other team gets a double play against the Yankees, or the Yankees begin making errors.

He tapes the World Series when the Yankees are in it, so that he doesn't have a heart attack. He stays up at night if he has heard that the Yankees have lost, thinking about God knows what.

The pop-psychological diagnoses are, of course, fascinating, but I find the symptoms themselves to be intriguing enough. This is a man who uses reason in most every aspect of his life. He is not religious. His biggest faults are quickness to anger and excessive worrying, but he rarely displays fear. And yet he experiences an intense and irrational effect on events that are taking place hundreds of miles away, which prevents him from taking joy in watching his childhood team.

Whenever Jeff sees the Yankees losing, he gets sick to his stomach and turns the game off. He also gets feelings about what Yankee batters are going to do at the plate, and he is frequently exactly right. "Gonna ground out at second. Gonna get a hit way into left field. Gonna hit it right down the line for a triple." He has no such ability to predict the performance of other teams.

For those who don't know, my family is from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, and my father was born in 1951, long before the existence of the Mets. They are not Yankees fans because of the team's outstanding abilities, or because it is trendy. They do not have a hatred for the Orioles, but simply feel no connection to that team.

That is all, 100th post.