"And when they light up our town I just think, what a waste of gunpowder and sky."
-Aimee Mann "4th of July"

It started slowly. A fastball that got by, he once would have turned on. Reporters he once would have eluded, catching him coming out of a strip club in Toronto with a woman not his wife. Reflexes which once would have turned from the camera, now caught like a deer in headlights. The numbness working it's way up, until finally the ability to think and see straight was lost. A once great athlete, now a shell of himself pursuing a broom factory test pilot old enough to be his stepmother.

So it was 69 years to the day after Lou Gehrig made his famous speech that ARod, Alex Rodriquez, made his way to the microphones.

Fans, for the past week you have been reading about the bad break I got. Who knew apartment house doormen were such gossips? Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for fifteen years and have never received anything but ever increasing paychecks and an ever decreasing sense of personal responsibility.

"Look at you poor saps. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to hang with me for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Madonna? Also, Lenny Kravitz? What a guy. And so concerned about my wife. To have spent seven years in that wonderful little town, Seattle, and set an example the Seattle Supersonics have emulated by running as fast as they can away from there? Then to have spent the next three years with that outstanding leader, that endless bucket of cash, the best owner in baseball today, Tom Hicks? Sure, I'm lucky.

"When the Boston RedSox, Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers, and Cleveland Indians, all teams you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, send you a gift basket of doughnuts for reasons I'm not entirely clear on-that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats walk up to you so concerned and ask if you're crazy - that's something. When you have a wonderful ownership team here in New York who takes sides with you when you're out doing things they would never tolerate being done to their own daughter - that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can end up being on TMZ more often than Lindsay Lohan- it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and has never once registered to carry a concealed handgun (I know, my lawyers checked)- that's the finest I know.

"So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have a lot more to live for, assuming the checks keep rolling in."