Today, New York Yankees pitchers and catchers reported for duty. But the work-a-holic Yankees are mostly already in Tampa, having their own workouts. A bunch of guys took batting practice yesterday. Jorge Posada threw sixty times on his surgically repaired shoulder.

I wish I was there.

Let me clarify. Of course I wish that I, the spectator and baseball-lover, was there in the sun, listening to the sound of ball land in glove, the sun on my face. But that's not what I'm talking about.

Maybe it is the Olympics--which I have been glued to every night this week--that has me thinking about something I don't even have a word for. Is there a word for pursuing something single-mindedly to the point of success?

The Yankees who are on site at the minor league complex are pursuing excellence in their chosen field (no pun intended). They have the luxury of doing so because they are well paid to do what they do, because their families and friends all respect that priority for them, and because they are already at the top of the game.

But what about those athletes who have to hold down a job, like the Austrian women's luge champion they were showing yesterday? Or those who are trying to raise a family, and I don't mean those who have a wife or other spouse who stays home with the kids for them who they visit once in a while or in the "offseason."

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that it is a luxury to be allowed to pursue greatness. Major leaguers (and many of the Olympians) have worked hard for that luxury. Every man on the team has had to work to be the best since they were kids. While their friends were watching cartoons and hanging out at the 7-11, they were working. I'm thinking of Derek Jeter taking two hundred swings a day in his family's garage in Kalamazoo.

No, I don't feel sorry for the kids who missed birthday parties to be at ice rinks (except those whose parents were forcing them to against their will...). Nor am I upset my parents didn't get me into gymnastics when I was five--gymnastics was not my thing. (For the record, my parents did send me to gymnastics lessons after Nadia Comenici, and to figure skating lessons after Dorothy Hamill...) The paths we each take in life are determined by so many things, the circumstances we're born into, our parents and coaches, our early successes and failures, our own desires, and the things we think are important.

In my life, I sometimes wish I could capture that kind of single-minded focus, just do one thing and do it right (damn, now I am having a craving for fried chicken...), and be the absolute best at something.

But I know that thing, that whatever it is I don't have a word for, could be an illusion, too. Maybe no one is really ever allowed that "luxury." The luxury to sacrifice everything for one thing? Maybe it's a myth that anyone really gets to forget everything else in life to pursue a single goal. We're humans, not machines, and even if we're able to block out the world while we're on the field or in the moment, in life? Jorge Posada's son has had to have several surgeries on his skull. Andy Pettitte's father's heart is so weak his doctors don't want him to watch his son play anymore. Derek Jeter's sister suffered cancer. I don't think for a minute that any of these three athletes has been able to wall himself off in an ivory tower of sport.

Nor would they want to. It's a dream then, a nice but unrealistic dream, or one that could only really be pursued by the heartless, the selfish, or the deluded.

I do too many things in my life to be able to sacrifice some for the pursuit of greatness in one. Because I live under the constant hope that I can excel in many things, and succeed in many arenas, even if sometimes each thing takes me away from the others. I do, sometimes, need to shed some activities so that I do not completely pull away from the things which are most important to me, and most central to my being. Those are my family, my partner corwin, and my writing.

Oh, um, and the Yankees. Coming back to that sun-loving spectator in me, I realize that there is a word for complete and utter single-minded pursuit. Fanaticism.