He made millions in the markets

and then settled down to be a cab driver. That should be in my obit. But no, not the markets. God, anything but the markets. (Shoo, spectre of my father, shoo!) I've got to get some dough rolling, so that once I've got a comfortable amount nested in some savings accounts accruing interest, I can do what I really want to do - shell out twenty five grand for a cabbie medallion and drive one o' them yellow late night puke-pods around the city. The New York City cabbie, what a historical figure he is, leaning out his window and weaving cursewords together into verbal rants as colorful as a Navajo tapestry, swerving through congested avenues and alleyways like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on a hefty dose of acid, cat-calling Friday night lookers on a swing through the East Village. For much of America, New York City is no more than a collection of images stamped in their minds, and in the forefront among these are the darting yellow cabs that stream the length of Broadway. Oh, to be one of them.

And the best part of the cab experience? The radio. You see, it's October, and October means one thing - postseason baseball. October is one of the best months all in all, and baseball makes this true even moreso, giving us championship-caliber competition throughout the month as the earth tilts us away from the sun and the days get shorter and the nights grow brisker. All summer these finely tuned physical specimens are running batting catching and throwing under a hot sun and in the end it's for a shot at this, to give it their all in the last dying rays of summer as it passes on and autumn rises in its wake. Last night I was more than ready for the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers to take the stage for Game 2 of their division series, but lightning struck and rain fell and it was pushed back and now here I am surrounded by my 3-walled cubicle with no AM radio, two hours away from the first pitch. It aches to be away from baseball in October.

Now if I were a cabbie, I'd do nothing but live breathe and talk baseball, and rightfully so - this is New York, and New York is a baseball town. You can say what you want about the Knicks the Giants and the Jets but the Mets and Yankees own controlling stakes in this operation. Ever talk baseball with a cabbie? They've got time to really soak it all in, they listen to the games on their AM tuner and they spend their days soaking up talk radio. To the outside observer, talk radio is a harsh kind of music; male bravado pumps out of the speakers, voices overlap as they yell a mixture of superlatives and expletives, and all in all nothing really gets said. Sports spectatorship is a mix of statistical analysis and oratory, and the most interesting voices (deadspin.com, anyone?) are the ones who can put it all into a historical context that backs up whatever opinion they might have.

The cabbie, with this windowed office on wheels, is often the most refreshing of all sports commentators. Get in a cab, bring up the Yankees or the Mets, and your Italian-accented driver will talk your ear off from midtown to downtown. He'll tell you about his younger days, when his dad walked up to Yankee stadium and everyone at security knew him and they'd walk right in and sit in a box near the Yankee dugout. He'd tell you about watching Mantle hit, Maris get booed, Billy Martin get fired, and Mattingly make a legend out of himself. He'd tell you about how it was and how it is, and he'd tell you how it's gonna be. He'd make traffic worthwhile.

You don't get these sorts often these days. The face of the New York cabbie has changed. Getting into a cab is these days an unpredictable process, but one constant is that your driver will usually be on a hands-free cell-phone conversing with friends and family members halfway around the globe. He will have on the radio, some trance music or 1010 WINS or BBC radio. But when you do find one that's ready to talk about the ballgame, it's worth it.

This tradition has to live on. That's why sometimes I see myself having made a ton of money and settled down to a life of shuttling businessfolk back and forth. Baseball needs to be talked about. Baseball is our greatest real fiction. It's a story told by its statistics, but it needs a voice to bring it to life. If only to be today out on the cold hard concrete, tearing rubber across town to get Mr. Big to his meeting or Mrs. Priss to her salon appointment, listening to Mike and the Mad Dog or who the hell ever talk about Matsui's stance or Jeter's ability to come through in the clutch. To be sitting in traffic with coffee in hand listening patiently to John Sterling describe the movement of a cut fastball as it nips the outside corner of the plate and A-Rod goes down on a called strike.

But you know, it isn't just the baseball that makes me want to be one of those grizzly automotive stewards, it's the moments they inevitably play a part in. Some cabbies are with you for such a short amount of time, and they know it, and they really leave their mark on you. There's a thousand stories to tell but one in particular stands out. It was around 9 P.M. on a weekday evening and Lucy and I, walking home, suddenly got caught in a windstorm. The way the breeze picked up into a full-forced wind was astonishing and sudden, and you could feel some sort of static electricity dancing around on the different currents of air that were whipping through Manhattan canyons playing pinball with stray bits of refuse. We hopped into a cab driven by a grey-haired gent wearing a red and black flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like the type that'd be wearing shades during the daytime, with a cigarette lazily hanging out of his mouth as he waited in rush hour traffic.

But the streets were nearly empty at that time, and as he put his foot down on the gas once the red light we'd stopped him at turned green, he peeked over his shoulder and spoke to us like a peddler pushing a new kind of drug, a high more hardcore than heroin.

"You know, on nights like these, I just love to roll down all the windows and feel the wind coursing through the car. You can feel the electricity in the air."

More than just making conversation, it was an invitation, an invitation to join him on his trip, wherever it was he went on nights like this, and we silently agreed and I don't know how it happened but the windows went down and the classical music on the radio got louder and it all converged into one otherworldly cruise down an otherwise ordinary 9th Street. It was the kind of ride that made you wonder whether you'd rather get to where you're going, or just keep the meter running until you couldn't afford to go any further.