All My Little Words: It was a dark and ever-so-slightly stormy night.

(Apologies to Snoopy. Although I do intend, fully, to write a novel [or at least a short story; not that I view short stories as anything less significant than novels] that begins with the words, “It was a dark and stormy night.”)

Right now, though: Mostly just rain. An occasional boom of thunder — and by “occasional” I mean approximately once every 4 hours.

The lights and the TV are off. The monitor is glaring, and sometimes the hard drive flitters and the gold light flutters. The only other sounds are the raindrops landing on the awnings and in the puddles, the rain-soaked tires driving over the new black asphalt and, occasionally, my fingers striking the keys — and by “occasionally,” I mean once every 15 seconds or so, once a thought has rattled around in my head long enough for the words to form into a sentence or two.

(I type very quickly. I am not sure how fast I am, in terms of WPMs or whatever, but I can assure you that I would hold my own in a typing contest. And I am accurate, too, just in case anyone thinks it is all about the quickness. If you were to sit me down right now, though, in front of that IBM electric I learned to type on freshman year of high school and tell me to prove just how fast and accurate I am, well ... that might be a problem.)

(I am nothing without my Delete key.)

: )

I am exhausted, a little, from the excursion last night to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. (Rastros 5, Cardinals 1; Houston wins the NLCS and advances to the World Series.) Home by midnight, lively 20-minute discussion of the Cards with Tim, in bed by 1 a.m. All that combined with a generally overall gloomy day here, weather-wise.

It remains to be seen whether this player, Albert Pujols, will go down as one of the all-time greats; as for now, in my opinion, he is the best player in Major League Baseball. He should win the National League MVP Award for 2005.

Those pictures are from the game last night. I actually prefer this photo of Pujols, taken during Game 1 of the NLDS against San Diego:

It looks even better at 4-column width, in color, on the front page of the newspaper.

: )

Last night ended up being the last game ever to be played in Busch Stadium. With I could say it was one of the most memorable nights of my life; however, it was not. Great dinner with the girls at Charlie Gitto’s, great seats — except for the fact that they were not together, so we were scattered about throughout the loge boxes; great first couple of innings — until Houston took the lead, and then all the Cardinal fans sort of flat-lined for the rest of the game.

I wanted to be sad, but I really wasn’t. I like the Cardinals players, I enjoy watching them play, but when it’s all said and done, they are simply not MY team.

Maybe they’re simply too successful ever to be MY team.