With the first game of the World Series complete (a win for the Yankees, shockingly), the Sunday Times' American sports writer reflects on the return of America's Pastime.

	The atmosphere of national celebration that pervaded the summer came from much more than enjoyment of the hit parade.	SOME OF us found it hard to accept that one o'clock this morning was a time for sleep. We knew that 3,000 miles away it was 8pm in the Bronx and the most compelling and uplifting sports story of 1998 was starting towards what should be the climax it deserves. The sustained head-to-head battle for a home-run record between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa would probably have been enough in itself to make Americans regard this baseball season as the greatest blast in the long history of the game they cherish above all others. But the atmosphere of national celebration that pervaded the summer came from much more than enjoyment of the hit parade. It was a homecoming party, marking the return to a central place in the country's affections of a sport that had looked like a hopelessly lost prodigal as recently as 1994, when a prolonged players' strike threatened to cause terminal disillusionment. And who needs a fatted calf when all the months of thrills and high achievement have produced a World Series that literally spans the nation by setting baseball's most famous institution, the New York Yankees, against the underdog San Diego Padres in a best-of-seven confrontation to be played out on the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific? When the first game began at the rough northern edge of New York City last night, the Yankees were clear betting favourites to take the title. Tradition alone would have guaranteed that. They had won 20 championships before the Padres were even founded and have since added three more, while San Diego's only previous involvement in the World Series ended in defeat by the Detroit Tigers in 1984. Contemporary form, too, confirms the Yankees' right to favouritism. In the 1998 regular season they broke the record for games won in the American League with the astonishing total of 114. Only the Chicago Cubs of the National League have gone beyond that figure, and that was in 1906.
	In the 1998 regular season they broke the record for games won in the American League with the astonishing total of 114.	But the Padres have more than their 98 regular-season victories to suggest they can provide respectable opposition against the frightening roster of deadly pitchers that is the Yankees' principal strength. For a start, the west coast challengers have a golden arm of their own, one as impressive as any in the major leagues. It belongs to Kevin Brown, who launched the Padres' assault from the mound yesterday and is so highly rated by his club that he could be asked to pitch in three games if the contest goes all the way to a seventh collision. Brown was a vital component of the Florida Marlins when they became champions last October and his move to California was part of the dismemberment of the successful team instantly perpetrated by the Marlins' owner, Wayne Huizenga. Having virtually bought the title, Huizenga then conducted the equivalent of a gigantic car-boot sale that scattered talents across the land and vividly reflected the mercenary values widely seen as swamping the intrinsic romance of baseball. With the game assailed by such behaviour, and the alienating effects of the strike still fresh, there appeared to be scant hope that the popularity lost to the less subtle appeal of basketball and American football could be swiftly regained. Then suddenly the charge was on to improve on the 61 home runs struck in a major-league season by Roger Maris in 1961 and by the time, several months and many dramas later, a captivated populace had witnessed McGwire of the Cardinals send his 70th homer streaking into the delirious crowd at Busch Stadium in St Louis, a vast transformation had occurred. For a sport as awash with mythology as baseball, what happened was bound to have the feeling of spiritual regeneration. Even a 40-year veteran of the diamond wars like Felipe Alou, manager of the Montreal Expos, whose inexperienced pitchers were the victims of McGwire's climactic bombardment, could not resist a poetic response.
	Then suddenly the charge was on to improve on the 61 home runs struck in a season by Roger Maris in 1961.	"As far as I'm concerned, it's the best season ever," said Alou. "The game has emerged from the grave with thunder. You don't hear about the strike any more. Sometimes, something has to almost die, like baseball did, for the miracle to take place." Alou had sympathetic thoughts for his fellow Dominican Sosa, who finished with 66 homers, but for once nobody is likely to forget the man who came second. He was still centre-stage last night, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to get Game One of the Series under way. Sosa, who does his damage for the Chicago Cubs, is dwarfed by McGwire's huge (6ft 5in, nearly 18st) physique, which an American friend of mine likens to a "gunnysack full of cannon balls". But the man from the Caribbean showed immensity of spirit. Whereas McGwire, understandably, often looked drained by the pressures of the pursuit, Sosa apparently relished every swing of the bat. Both are engaging men and their mutual respect and brotherly warmth added to the pleasure of the countless millions around the world who were enthralled by their exploits. Nowhere was appreciation of their deeds more profound than among their rival professionals, who knew best how magnificent the two-man competition was. When the ball is hurled the 60 feet, six inches from the pitcher's mound and over a plate in the ground roughly the size and shape of a large shovel blade, it is frequently travelling at close to 100mph and it is difficult to argue with the assertion that making a clean hit with the rounded ash bat is one of the most exacting feats demanded of any games-player. As the wise Mr Alou reminded us: "To hit 70 balls out in batting practice during a season isn't too easy for many people."
	"To hit 70 balls out in batting practice during a season isn't too easy for many people."	The example of McGwire and Sosa seemed to imbue the entire season with a sense of magical possibilities and the saga of their struggle was punctuated by accomplishments which, in another year, would have been recognised as wonders. Cal Ripken, the iron man of the Baltimore Orioles, voluntarily concluded his 16-year run of consecutive games played at 2,632, the Yankees amassed that monstrous games-won tally and their leading pitcher, David Wells (who started in opposition to Kevin Brown last night), threw only the fifth perfect game ever achieved by a left-hander. And Wells's refusal to allow a single base hit in nine innings was perhaps a fraction less dominating than the performance of the Cubs' Kerry Wood, who made himself a god for a day with a game that included 20 strikeouts, no walks and one infield hit. "It was little wonder that the game reclaimed its status as a natural topic of conversation at every level of US society. People jaded and demoralised by all the sleaze and hypocrisy unloaded on them by politicians have found relief in being riveted by an activity which, however unmomentous, at least has innocent beauty and an unambiguous measurement of worth to commend it. Football, though well into its short season, has been pushed to the background. Basketball, with the first two weeks of the NBA season that was due to begin in November already cancelled because of a financial dispute between players and owners, is facing genuine crisis. When they consider the role-reversals being experienced by America's three main sports, some may recall an eloquent tribute once paid to the oldest of them by the late A Bartlett Giamatti, a literary scholar who left the presidency of Yale University for the presidency of the National League and before his sudden death became Commissioner of Baseball.
	Football, well into its short season, has been pushed to the background. Basketball, with the first two weeks of the NBA season already cancelled, is facing genuine crisis.	"I've always been struck by baseball's fundamental pastoralism," said Giamatti. "It's played in a park! It's not an industrial game on an assembly line that imitates war the way football does with its bombs and territoriality. Baseball grew up with America. It has genteel origins and proletarian energies . . . more than any other sport, baseball is part of the country's memory of itself, of its best hopes. Things change - baseball is no longer just a rural game - but it is still that green space in the city that reminds you of an earlier time, not just in a nostalgic sense, but in an idealistic sense, too." Baseball could hardly be less rustic than it is in the Bronx but romance flowers readily enough in that raw urban landscape. No individual embodies it more naturally than the pitcher who is scheduled to go to the mound for the Yankees today in the second game of the World Series. Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez is credited, in his growing legend, with making a refugee's escape from Cuba last Christmas in a 20-foot home-made boat that was about as seaworthy as a cardboard box. After establishing himself as probably the finest amateur pitcher on the planet, a pillar of Cuba's prodigious national team, he had been banned from baseball for life in 1996 for allegedly plotting to follow the path of his younger half-brother, Livan, who defected in 1995 to play professionally in the States and made such a success of it that he was named MVP in the Marlins' triumph last season. Already - having been summoned to the Yankees' roster in June, after wreaking historic havoc on minor-league opponents - El Duque has easily outstripped Livan's celebrity. The man who was an impoverished outcast in his homeland in December now has a four-year, $6.6m contract and the cunning, variety and technical finesse of his arsenal are making that deal look like the bargain of the decade for the club. He is an ebullient charmer who has taken New York by storm. There is speculation about whether he is 28, as he claims, or actually 32 but nobody in the Big Apple cares much. New Yorkers won't even mind if his enjoyment of his newly acquired wealth leads him into the extravagances displayed by his half-brother. Livan once went out to buy a roof rack and came back with a new car. If El Duque wrecks San Diego, he will travelling by cloud.