The final innings gave symmetry to the triumphant model. Yastrzemski led the team. He was always the first man out of the dugout, the last to come to rest on the field.

In the eighth inning, with the Twins threatening, Adair fielded a ground ball, tagged the runner on his way to second and threw to first for the double play. The old man was spiked. So he was replaced--by Andrews. And in the last inning Andrews made the very same play. He was also dumped by the runner. Being younger, however, he was not hurt. Everything fit.

As Petrocelli cupped a feeble pop-up for the final out, the crowd spilled on-to the field. The Fall had begun. It was a reckless, selfish attempt to prolong that wild earlier feeling. But delirium turned to confusion, and the unskilled, inexperienced teenagers seized on greed to disguise dismay. Love became violence. They tore at Lonborg's uniform, dug their fingers into the mound, striped the bases, raped the scoreboard.

Then, catching sight of the television cameras, they flocked together and. . . nothing, just sporadic cheering and aimless waving. Violence became farce. The cameramen made empty signs of victory to incite "the surging crowd" to new heights of prime time enthusiasm, suitable for national consumption.

One was sorry for them because they dimly remembered the powerful joy that had been theirs. They wanted so much to experience it again. But that joy was not to be found on the trampled field or within the steel scoreboard--and certainly not in the dumb, sexless eye of television. The joy was gone, locked into the past, into that time of great achievement when we were all heroes in raucous love.

On the way out I saw seven cripples in their wheelchairs, waiting to be trundled away.