The First Real World Series

BASEBALL NEEDED A LIFT. THE SEASON HAD BEEN ONE long raspy bore, both on the field (with its dearth of thrilling pennant races) and off (with the resignation of contentious commissioner Fay Vincent). But many middling fans think of baseball as the October game. All might be redeemed if the league- championship series could provide an emotional home run.

Even sweeter, for the Atlanta Braves, was a seventh-game, ninth-inning / single by anonymous Francisco Cabrera, the answer to many a bar bet in the next century. Sid Bream chugged toward home plate and slid in under the catcher's tag. In a melodramatic rally that matched Bobby Thomson's "shot heard around the world" for the New York Giants in 1951, the Braves edged the Pittsburgh Pirates to send the team with baseball's best recent record home heartbroken for a third straight year.

The Braves -- last year's Cinderella, this year's proud prince -- are spending the World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays. Canada's best team shook off its decade-long notoriety as a talented squad with no guts by playing a six-game swan song for the once dynastic Oakland A's. Now the Jays and Braves do battle to decide whether the last song of the baseball year will be O Canada! or Georgia on My Mind.