The Last Shall Be First

By RICHARD CORLISS

They picked Cinderella for last place too, and she did all right. But even in a fairy tale, no one expects Prince Charming to be that ungainly lad who'd been kept in the cellar for the past three years.

The improbable is for fables; baseball, right now at least, is the art of the impossible. In a century of the sport, no team had vaulted in a single year from worst in its league to best. Last week two teams did. And over the weekend, the Minnesota Twins (last in the American League West in 1990) and the Atlanta Braves (cellar dwellers in the National League West for three seasons) played the first two games in the "Worst World Series."

Fans hoped it would be one of the best. Seven close games would offer a shiny showcase for two nicely matched teams that took a steep new route to the top. After a decade or so of balky, highly paid superstars, the Twins and Braves built their franchises on has-beens and gonna-bes. Call it postmodern baseball.

In the free-agent era, when players can sign with the highest bidder, owners find it tough to produce a consistent winner. Yes, the Oakland A's reached the Series the past three years. But a $37 million payroll this season couldn't keep the dynasty from turning nasty. The A's limped and sulked, finishing 11 games behind the Twins.

The specter of free agency can make even a shrewd organization nervous. The Pittsburgh Pirates, with a core of fine young stars, got that now-or-never feeling this year. Why? Because slugger Bobby Bonilla is expected to become a zillionaire elsewhere this winter, and Most Valuable Player candidate Barry Bonds may walk next October. Pittsburgh, in a modest TV market, certainly can't afford them both. So the bucks -- and the Bucs -- stop here.

In baseball, as in other businesses, two cardinal rules apply: be smart and be lucky. The postmodern era adds: but first you must be inept. If a franchise is bad enough long enough, it gets to draft some good young talent (as the Braves did with Steve Avery, David Justice and John Smoltz). Then, if it is canny, it will trade one pricey player for two or three prospects (as the Twins did last year, losing Frank Viola to the Mets and gaining three blossoming pitchers in return). Finally, if fortune is kind, the team will find a few middle-income free agents ready for superior years (Atlanta's Terry Pendleton, Minnesota's Jack Morris and Chili Davis). The 162-game plan: get the kids before they cost too much and the veterans because they know so much. Well, it worked.

In the American League championship, the Twins shrugged off Toronto in a five-game series that for most TV viewers was overshadowed by a sorrier sporting spectacle on Capitol Hill: the Senators vs. the dodger. Truth to tell, the AL snoozathon didn't need the Clarence Thomas hearings to upstage it; a church social could have done the job. Here, after all, were two teams from above the timber line playing in domed stadiums of spaceship sterility on synthetic carpets that made the games look like Brobdingnagian billiards. Only one contest was close all the way. Only one rooting interest tickled fans' fancies: seeing the Twins earn their spot in baseball's unlikeliest finale.

The Braves-Pirates clash promised more sparks. Atlanta had located a lode of blithe character in its September pursuit and capture of favored Los Angeles. It helped that everybody hated the damn Dodgers. It didn't hurt that Braves partisans urged the team on with toy tomahawks and a war-chant mantra, which the votaries could moan for innings on end (the dumbest mass spasm since the Wave). By playoff time, the Braves were high and loose. All the Pirates' edgy swagger could not mute the magic -- or solve the riddle of a brilliant Atlanta pitcher, as young and ageless as Lefty Grove.

Steve Avery is 21. Others guys his age are working the checkout counter or getting ill on the fraternity porch; he tossed, with wondrous poise and heat, two near perfect 1-0 games. In the second of these, when a single fat fastball would have snuffed the Braves' dream, Avery gelded Pittsburgh on three singles and never allowed an opponent to reach second base. In the ninth inning Atlanta finally scored and the lad spent the game's last few, beautifully tense minutes in the dugout. Only then, as he watched reliever Alejandro Pena flirt with catastrophe, did Avery look his age and less. Shivering under a black coverall in the Halloween weather, he peeked out like an anxious trick- or-treater in a Batman cape.

The following night, after he was declared the series' Most Valuable Player, * Avery got baptized in champagne he was barely old enough to purchase legally. And the Pirates, who carried the curse of being the best National League team for the past two seasons, were left to dwell on the melancholy baseball maxim, "Losing hurts more than winning feels good."

Maybe not this year, though. The Braves did become America's team, just like they said on TV, and the Twins happily recalled the secrets of their 1987 Series-winning form -- as they showed by mauling Atlanta, 5-2, in Game 1. Winning feels great, redemptive, to yesterday's losers. And the giddiness is contagious. What are these guys doing in the Series? Having fun.

For bringing the shock of joy back to baseball, both the Braves and the Twins deserve cheers. Or at least a toast. Bottoms up!

With reporting by David Thigpen/New York