Although the world proved not yet ready for the brotherhood of baseball, that would be only a matter of time, baseball magnates believed.

Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.

If I haven't made myself clear, this worrisome chain of events describes the game of the nineteenth century.

And then came the nineties, when management, suddenly frightened that they had ceded control to the players, sought to restore baseball's profitability by 'running the game like a business.'

As the game enters its glorious final weeks, the chill of fall signals the reality of defeat for all but one team. The fields of play will turn brown and harden, the snow will fall, but in the heart of the fan sprouts a sprig of green.

Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come.

I am opposed, naturally, to regurgitating anecdote or any other form of received wisdom, unless it is characterized as such.