St. Louis v. Texas: Game 7

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October 2, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.

This is my favorite paragraph about sports. It was written by Bart Giamatti after his beloved Red Sox were eliminated on the last day of the 1977 regular season, and it says so much about baseball, and about being a fan, that I think of it every year at around this time. Those of us who love college basketball are much more fortunate -- our sport ends just as spring is beginning. But baseball fans always have to suffer their most painful defeats in a world that is getting colder and darker.

The fans of whichever team loses tonight will be truly heartbroken. The Rangers and Cardinals, who were widely derided when the Series began, have thrilled fans across the country through the vibrancy and determination of their play. Most of us didn't know much about these teams a month ago. But now Rangers like Mike Napoli and Nelson Cruz, or Cardinals like Lance Berkman and David Freese, are like old friends. We have followed them through a remarkable saga, and have seen them struggle through what, for most of them, will be the high point of their professional careers. Tonight one group will achieve its goal, while the players on the other team will spend the rest of their lives answering questions about why they lost.

In a few hours, we will know how it finally turned out.