Pulled from the comments. This, from the Chicago Tribune deserves to be read. Yes, it celebrates the Sox victory, but it also lovingly describes the glory of baseball.

"Baseball is played in the summer but ends in the autumn, when the light starts to fail and kids are called inside early, taken reluctantly from their games in vacant lots and dead-end streets. The moments are precious because they perish. The joy is special because it's temporary. 'Death is the mother of beauty,' wrote Wallace Stevens. What makes today so amazing--the first full day after the Sox victory--is that it is unique in the history of the world. And will remain so. Cherish it, because it is moving steadily out of your reach."

EDIT And here, thanks to BatBandwagoner, is the NYTimes article from the game Kirby Puckett singlehandedly won for us in the '91 World Series, another gorgeous piece of baseball writing.

NOTHING was happening, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing but increasing tension. The zeros on the scoreboard last night in the Metrodome were dropping inning after inning after inning, as if a row of hens were working overtime. It appeared that the best and concluding moments of this baseball season -- maybe the best of any baseball season -- might last forever.

This was the seventh game of the World Series, and, after three, four, five, six, seven innings, nobody could score. People tried: The Minnesota Twins got a runner to third in the third inning; the Atlanta Braves did likewise in the fifth. But nothing happened. The pitchers, Jack Morris of the Twins and John Smoltz of the Braves, were matching sets of excellence, bookends of bravado.

It was preposterous. It couldn't get more dramatic. It did.

In the eighth, both teams loaded the bases with one out, but the Twins turned a double play to end the Braves' threat. In the bottom of the inning, the Braves did precisely the same thing to the Twins, behind Mike Stanton, who had replaced Smoltz.

It went into the ninth inning, 0-0. That is, 16 zeros. Nothing had happened, and it just kept on happening. And into the 10th: zero, of course, to zero. The longest Game 7 with no score in the history of the World Series.

And there it ended. Dan Gladden hit a broken-bat double, and there was a sacrifice bunt and two intentional walks, and then with the bases loaded and a pulled-in outfield, Gene Larkin, a seldom-used infielder, stepped up to pinch-hit. He was facing Alejandro Pena, now on the mound for the Braves. The noisy home crowd of 55,000 was on its feet and creating a snowstorm by waving its white homer hankies. And Larkin responded. He looped a fly ball over the outstretched glove of left fielder Brian Hunter, for a single to score the lone run of the game.

Suddenly it was over. Suddenly the Twins had won. But the Braves did not lose. They just didn't win the World Series, is all.

Sometimes the gods are just. Sometimes even they, taking time from their flutes and lyres and various dalliances, will determine that we, too, down below, could use a bit more pleasure, especially in these times of gloomy national recession and despairing world affairs and the football season. And so they, along with Kirby Puckett, in the guise of a mere mortal, conspired to give us one more game of baseball.

Not just any game, of course, but a Seventh Game of the World Series. And not just any World Series, either. But one that has gone from the dramatic to the melodramatic, from suspenseful theater to the old Saturday afternoon serial thriller.

Four of the first six games between the Braves and the Twins had been decided by one run, and three had been determined only in the home half of the final inning, to break up a tie game -- one concluding in the ninth inning and one in the 12th, with plays at the plate, and, on Saturday night, in the 11th, with Puckett's game-ending home run.

But we needed this game, Game 7, and that's the simple truth. It was only fitting and proper. It was all so unlikely, all so upside-down, but this seems to restore the cosmic balance: Two teams that finished last in their divisions the year before win the pennants. Each team knowing in its heart that it cannot lose, that the fates have ordained that this is their season.

Each team understanding that it has come this far, that it has done it by coming from behind not only during the season, but in game after game, and thus overcoming all the odds fashioned by Las Vegas and Olympus.

Each team has had its improbable heroes: Mark Lemke, brought in for defensive purposes, hits a trio of triples, and is prominent in winning Games 3, 4 and 5; Scott Leius, who was only iffy on making the team in spring training, homers to win Game 2; and Jerry Willard, who had left baseball for a season a few years ago because he was going nowhere, is called in to pinch-hit and hits a sacrifice fly to win Game 4. And finally Larkin.

It just had to come down to the wire, to a photo finish.

The Twins went up two games to none, and then the Braves came back to take a 3-2 lead, and then the Twins tied it up, three games each.

The dream season would end on a dream: Game 7 of the World Series. "Every kid has dreamed about this," said Jack Morris on Saturday night. "When I was a kid, my brother and I used to play whiffle ball and I pretended that I was Bob Gibson and he was Mickey Mantle."

But since this is real life, we know that the gods can be cruel, and, using us for their sport, may turn dreams into nightmares.

Ask Charlie Liebrandt, who got knocked out of Game 1, and then in Game 6 was brought back in relief to start the home half of the 11th inning. He faced one batter, Mr. Puckett, and threw a total of four pitches. Two were balls and two were strikes, including the last, which ended up in the left center field bleachers.

After the game, a large group of reporters gathered around Charlie Liebrandt's locker. After a long period in the trainer's room and the shower, with most of his teammates gone, Liebrandt, lean, grim, a cup of beer in his hand, and his eyes looking only straight ahead, parted the crowd around his locker. "Nothing tonight, guys," he said to the newsy assemblage.

There was nothing tonight, guys.

Except, of course, for the memory, and the dream, and the nightmare.

And there was the tingling anticipation that all this set up: Game 7. It had to be. And better than anyone could have imagined.

As the scoreboard, in its way, had been reminding us: Oh, oh, oh yes.

Posted by Batgirl at October 27, 2005 05:46 PM