2003-10-19 - 2:09 p.m.

Baseball, tragic baseball.

I trained myself long ago not to believe. I did believe once, as I sat at the edge of the living-room couch, when I was ten. They were the miraculous �86 Red Sox, who could do no wrong, who had been down three games to one, five runs to two, in the bottom of the ninth and came back. Who were one strike from defeat when Dave Henderson cranked one against the California Angels. The pitcher who threw that ball, Donnie Moore, had perhaps let himself believe too much. Moore committed suicide a few years later.

But the Red Sox were blessed, having rolled to the World Series and gone up three games to two, up two runs in the tenth, nobody on base, two outs. And then it came crumbling down in a torrent of bloop hits, wild pitches, and a ball through Bill Buckner�s legs, and instead of jumping off that couch I wandered to bed with tears in my eyes, my heart broken.

You become jaded after an experience like that. You root for the team, but you cannot believe. You cannot risk your heart again.

Hearts have been broken again here in Chicago. I work in Wrigleyville, where the Cubs are the source of lunchroom chatter and the team logo is everywhere. Cubs fans generally don�t have to worry about believing in their team because they usually lose. But suddenly this year, they were good. Their pitching was unstoppable. They dispatched the Braves and there was hooting in the streets, people hanging from lampposts. Then they burst ahead of the Marlins, and everybody was saying yes, finally I can believe.

�I don�t know. We�ll see,� my coworker Joe said over lunch. He had witnessed a Cubs collapse in 1984. �These are the Cubs.�

But they were up three games to two, with their unhittable aces coming up at home. �Come on, how about some confidence for once,� my buddy Aaron said.

And then they had it, up 3-0 in the eighth, the perfect Mark Prior on the mound, and then one out, and then two? � but no, a foul out is swatted away by some fan, one of the 38,000 people who come to Wrigley every day, win or lose. A fan who perhaps had come to think of Wrigley as just a place to party because their team never wins, who grew careless enough to just reach for the ball when he saw it coming towards him, not thinking about whether Moises Alou is about to catch the ball � he swats the ball away, and Wrigley groans. The batter walks, and then there�s a hit, and an error, and the floodgates open for eight runs, and the party-in-progress comes to a crashing halt.

A pallor hung in the office the next day. Few words were exchanged. �Were you crying into your soup last night?� I asked Aaron as I microwaved my lunch. �That was the most painful loss I�ve ever�� he muttered as he trudged back to his cubicle.

Nobody really thought they could win after that. The next night, Game 7, was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The whole city could not look away, though they knew it would end in tears, and it did. An old woman sat staring off from the stands long after it was over, tears in her eyes, knowing perhaps that her last best chance to see her Cubbies finally win had just slipped through her fingers.

I was depressed, though I wasn�t even a Cubs fan. I felt their pain and remembered my own, and suddenly I was certain the Red Sox would lose their game, too. The Red Sox, who had pushed their series against their nemesis to Game 7, who were suddenly not afraid of the ghosts of the past. Who had gone toe to toe with the Yanks, and now finally had a chance to make George Steinbrenner cry. Who rode the indomitable Pedro Martinez to a 5-2 lead in the eighth. Pedro the punk, who had come unwound in Game three, headhunting and threatening, and finally tossing 72-year-old Yankee coach Don Zimmer to the ground.

It played out like a Greek tragedy, and it took a deus ex machina to bring this seven-act play to its dramatic conclusion. Derek Jeter saw it coming. �October is when the ghosts come out in Yankee Stadium,� he tod a teammate in the eighth. That one big ghost who was looking over everything � Babe Ruth, the Bambino, the greatest player in the history of the game, whom the Red Sox sold to the Yankees in 1918, and never won the World Series again. Yankee players had rubbed the Babe�s plaque for good luck before the game. They believed the Bambino was there, watching over them.

But not Pedro. Pedro the Punk had shown no respect for the Yankee deities, promising to �drill the Bambino in the ass,� and there he was in the eighth, about to do just that. Then the ghosts came out and the Yankees drilled him in the ass, unleashing hit after hit. Red Sox nation pleaded into their televisions for manager Grady Little to pull Pedro out of the game, but instead Little sat in the dugout, seemingly transfixed, unwilling to pull the great Pedro out of the game until the damage had been done.

I knew it was over long before Aaron Boone won it with a homer in the eleventh. This time, my heart wasn�t broken. That sort of thing only happens to you once. I had seen this tragedy play out before. Now a whole new generation of Red Sox and Cubs fans have seen it, too.

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