Alone in my newly leased, far from affordable Manhattan apartment, sans my girlfriend and living partner for the evening, and at the moment without any garment adorning my body other than a pair of sweaty jockey boxer briefs I take this moment of solitude to reflect on the events of recent months. In a life that rarely allows it, and a profession that enforces to me daily that it matters little what is happening ten minutes from now comparable to what is occurring at the present nanosecond, I relish an opportunity of placidity that occurs for me so infrequently.

As I pick an unexpected piece of imported gouda from the midst of a slew of my chest hairs and nosh on the only remnant of the entire block I have savagely consumed, I think back to my avid readers and felt it important to reach out to all of you, all five to ten of you, to let you know the buffoon is back---back for good---at least back with a modicum of regularity now---now that Time Warner has installed his Internet in his new digs at an alarmingly irrational monthly rate.

So to summarize since we last spoke:

Big Ben crashed his cycle, almost kicked it, but isn’t sure if he’ll rock a helmet next time he takes the ol’ Chopper out for a spin.

E, the de facto star of Entourage now that the producers have fashioned Season Three as the season they decided to put a halt to the show’s rampant success, had a painfully uncomfortable and extraordinarily awkward attempt at a threesome, only to further reinforce that both E and Kevin Connolly are in fact, in a word--not straight.

Ozzie Guillen’s season of personal and team destruction has continued throughout the summer as he has challenged his pitchers for not manning up and beaning opposing batters and challenged sportswriters by insinuating they are “faggots.” His public apology for his insensitivity to the homosexual population included but was not limited to the ingenious explanation of how he enjoys WNBA games so clearly with this fact in mind he could never have been maliciously insulting the gay community. Rock on Ozzie. You are living proof any schmuck can be handed the keys to a Masserati and get the prom queen to give you road head when the car is brand spanking new. But the more you hang around, the more she learns to hate you, and ultimately she’ll be out the door faster than Tim Montgomery runs the 100 meters on the sauce. Miss the playoffs with this bunch, and Kenny Williams will be showing you Senor Ozzie, la puerta at season’s end.

What else do we have? Oh how could we forget? The story of the summer. No no…it wasn’t Tiger Woods overcoming the death of his father and mentor to win two consecutive majors, further cementing his status as the most dominant athlete of the post-Jordan era. No, it definitely wasn’t the new found success of Team USA in their latest attempt at reclaiming our rightful ownership of worldwide hoop dominance. It couldn’t be the T.O/Tuna saga enveloping Dallas threatening to ruin a season of promise, could it? Nope boys and girls---none of these stories came close to the sports story of the summer.

The man’s name is Eddie Griffin. His claim to fame to this point was that he was a nasty baller in high school with an attitude to boot. He went to Seton Hall, played a year, knocked out his most talented teammate Ty Shine in the locker room before a game, then declared for the NBA Draft. A few years of mediocrity in the league later, a fledgling career was on the brink of anonymity when Eddie did something to turn it all around. Something so big he trumps Tiger, T.O and even my Yankees mutilation of the Red Sox this fine summer.

Easy Eddie Griffin honed his skills of hand eye coordination in the schoolyard playing ball. For Griffin, things came easy. For him multi tasking to the tune of setting a screen and rolling to the hoop, receiving a pass and flushing it home, that’s just not a challenge---that’s what he knew as second nature. So Eddie decided to try his hand, literally, at something a little bit bigger. While driving, presumably drunk but we dare not make those accusations until proven to be true, Eddie was taking a look at some porn on his television that was properly placed on the dashboard of his SUV, and while looking at said porn, drunk, he decided that now would be as good a time as any to relieve himself of the stress that has encumbered his life. As it turns out the booze and the porn, those two weren’t enough to endanger Easy E. But, in rubbing one out, the no hands on the wheel policy in full effect, he might have gotten a tad carried away with ambition, and thus his car ended up rear ending a parked vehicle.

You couldn’t make that story up if you tried. Kids, don’t try that at home.

Anyway, it’s great to have returned. Now that the AL East has been wrapped up and the Mets are tanking it for size heading into their imminent entrance into the postseason, I feel a sense of normalcy hovering over the land of New York baseball. And as the season winds down and the NFL season is about to rev up, we surely will have a helluva lot to discuss over the coming weeks.

But, we will never forget about you Eddie. Never.

Thanks for the memories.