by Michael Sanibel

Created on: May 30, 2008

The Bachelor Who Missed The Boat.

"It ain't over til it's over" is one of Yogi Berra's most remembered quotes. It's just one of several that might be applied to the first season of The Bachelor. Others that come to mind are: "I really didn't say everything I said," "you can observe a lot by watching," "if the world were perfect, it wouldn't be," "the future ain't what it used to be," "we made too many wrong mistakes," "it's deja vu all over again," and "when you come to a fork in the road, take it."

With that kind of philosophical insight, I think Yogi just about summarized what transpired on this show from week to week. I don't think it's a coincidence that these quotes apply more to the relationship between Alex Michel and Shannon Oliver than with any of the other ladies. Partly through design, accident, timing, crafty editing, and the personalities of these two people, I thought theirs was the most intriguing and least understood of all the interactions that Alex engaged in. For these reasons, I guess it should come as no surprise that I found Shannon to be the most alluring woman of the entire group.

The last thing that Shannon probably needs (or wants) is another person like me to write about her. That said, I hope she reads this article because I'm really interested to know if I'm even in the right ballpark with what I have to say. I figure if the great Yogi can't put me there, no one can.

On the ABC message board, I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said that the men seemed to support Shannon more than the women. This could be explained in any number of ways, but I can tell you from my personal perspective, the reasons went well beyond her looks. Way beyond.

I'm a single man who has never married but has thought about it seriously on two separate occasions. In both cases, I had serious relationships with women for about a two-year period. They both wanted to get married and I didn't. For me, it was the simple matter of discovering what these women were really like very late in the relationships. In fact, I learned more about them in the last six months than I did in the first eighteen months. How can this be explained? Only in one way. These women had put up pretty good fronts for as long as they could, but when they finally broke down, their true colors shone through.

Those unfortunate experiences have not deterred me from finding my true love. I only bring this up to point out one very obvious fact. That is that there is no way on earth that Alex knew

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