A day after Joe Torre was reduced to blaming crap umpiring (on behalf of the underachieving Bobby Abreu), the Yankees are trying to avoid being swept at the Stadium by the Angels, where they currently hold a 2-0 lead in the 4th inning. Today’s efforts, however, might be too little, too late for novelist Jane Heller, who uses the New York Times’ “Cheering Section” to make the following dramatic announcement.

I gave it everything I have. I am sick and tired of the œI trieds and the œWhat do you expect me to dos? I™ve been begging for answers and all I have gotten are platitudes. Enough is enough.

And so I am divorcing the New York Yankees ” all 25 men on the active roster, in addition to the manager, the coaches and the general manager. Oh, and the trainer, too. And, of course, the owner and all his baseball people.

The grounds for the divorce will be mental cruelty. I mean, I made a commitment to these guys, emotional and financial, and they betrayed and humiliated me by allowing the Red Sox ” the Red Sox! ” to run away with the division. When I think how I defended the Yankees to their legions of detractors, it hurts. It really hurts.

I was so loyal, so trusting, so willing to shell out $165 so I could buy Major League Baseball™s Extra Innings package and watch all the games from my house in California. And yet look at how they treated me. I will tell you how they treated me ” as if I were a Kansas City Royals fan.

Yeah, I know. There have been injuries. A sore back. A cracked fingernail. A bone spur. A hammy. Please. I am not stupid. If a guy does not want to show up for me, he should simply say so and stop making excuses.

And yeah, there have been disruptions in routine. But again. A rainout is no reason to act all out of sorts and say, œI guess I just didn™t have good stuff.

maybe the love died when Zimmer quit and Torre had to make managerial decisions on his own. There were all those nights when Joe would call for Tanyon Sturtze in relief ” so many nights that he turned that poor guy™s arm into a pretzel, the way he is doing now with Scott Proctor. There were also the nights when he would pull Mussina or Wang or whichever starter was actually pitching brilliantly and efficiently in favor of a reliever who would blow the game. (See Sturtze.)

And then there was his flip-flopping: œI won™t use Mo in the eighth; œI have to use Mo in the eighth. Those mixed messages can really get to a person in love. We all need to know where we stand, don™t we?

Coming to next Sunday’s cheering section : Andrew Vachss on why he’d rather witness child abuse than watch Bronson Arroyo pitch.