Red October.

• Author: Barrett, Wayne M.
• Position: SPORTS SCENE

BASEBALL, EVEN IN THE grotesquely mutated form that pervades today's game, remains capable of tugging at the heartstrings (and actually can be a joy to behold) if viewed from the right perspective--in this case, from the eyes of an eight-year-old boy whose favorite team just won the World Series.

"Dad," he said in the early innings of Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, "it's going to be really tough to go to school tomorrow if the Cardinals don't win. The guys have been razzing me pretty good." I knew from whence he spoke, having grown up a San Francisco Giants fan stranded in New York--still am, actually--left to fend off the barbs of Met and Yankee rooters whose clubs rang up championships while my team couldn't even reach the postseason. Somehow, though, I knew that, unlike his father--whose acid tongue and quick temper were a constant source of schoolyard troubles--he, being such a sweet kid (that's his mother's doing) would have the baseball gods smile kindly upon him, and they did with a ninth-inning home run that silenced Shea Stadium and catapulted St. Louis into the history books.

Of course, Alex never did get to see his Redbirds win their 17th pennant or 10th World Series live, the national pastime's greedmongers saw to that with their late-night starts and after-midnight finishes. Instead, I set the VCR tape each night and Alex would get up early the next morning to watch before school. Yet, even he couldn't rise early enough to see the entire contest, so I'd cue up the tape to a key spot late in the game and let him sweat out the last few frames. It was great to hear him come to the breakfast table, jabbering away in great detail about how his Cards had pulled off their latest conquest, as if I hadn't seen the game and had no idea what had happened. Even the losses commanded his attention to detail.

Having gone to college in Missouri, way back when my only ambition in life was to be a sportswriter--specifically, a baseball beat reporter, hopefully covering the Giants--I still have friends who are scribes for the Cardinals. They were only too glad to shower my son with pennants, souvenirs, newspaper clippings, victory parade tapes, and other assorted Redbird paraphernalia. In fact, Dan, my closest pal from those halcyon days at old Mizzou, acting like a favorite uncle, was in regular phone contact with my boy throughout the playoffs. It brought back a lot of wonderful memories, and Alex, reserved though he is, got...