For the past few months, Mark Teixeira’s life has been one of relative quietude: Mornings of exercise and chauffeuring young students to school, afternoons attending charity functions, a quiet dinner with his wife, Leigh, and their three children at their comfortable Greenwich home. For him, much of the effort these days is just in showing up. But everything will soon be different. It’s almost time for him to stop picking up the kids and start picking up a bat.

The New York Yankees first baseman since 2009 and for almost a decade one of the top players in baseball, Teixeira wears the number 25 on his uniform, but as all Yankee fans know, the number 28 means more to him and his teammates. That is the number of world championships the Yankees will have if they win it all in 2012. With 2011’s best record in the American League, expectations for 28 are high this year. Teixeira wouldn’t have it any other way.

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