So, Game Six: We begin it in a bar, and are still there, since the bleacher line across the street is extensive, when Giambi hits a first-inning homer off our semipro bowler. The bar explodes in excitement. Bob is truly sympathetic: "This must be hard for you."

"Brutal," I admit. "Just brutal." We finish our beers and head for the Stadium. Bob seems to have a spring in his step.

In Section 57, I'm still keeping my Red Sox affiliation under wraps. I'm not into the games-playing with my neighbors that enlivened Game One for me here, though I am still cordial with my beefy friend in the Row M. When the Sox go meekly in the second, I offer to Bob, "I'm miserable. You know, the only thing this club did all year was hit. And the only thing they haven't done a bit of in this series is hit."

In the third inning, they start to hit — even against Andy Pettite, who's pure money, they start to hit. Varitek hits it a mile; Nomar gets a hit, even though it's not much of a hit. "He's on his one-base-at-a-time recovery program." But finally, just as suddenly as the Yanks were up 3-0 against Lowe, the Sox are ahead here 4-1. Then Grady gives it back, sticking with the bowler way too long in the fourth. Five-four Yanks, then 6-4 when they add a run in the fifth. We're using young Arroyo and barely-on-the-roster Jones, and they're getting nicked but not nailed.

Nomar, who earlier booted the ball that led to the four runs, thus prompting his goat horns to grow longer at a Pinnochioian pace, is in the dugout figuring he likes the look of that Contreras split about as much as I do. So he says to himself, whatever he throws me first, I go after. I can't let him get to his out pitch. What Jose throws is a slider, and his next pitch to Manny is a fastball. Two pitches into the seventh inning and the Red Sox have sent spheroids a cumulative 820 feet, the wind helping them accelerate as they zoom over Bernie's head in center. Ortiz's hot shot hits the first base bag — we're hitting, and we're getting lucky, too — and suddenly we're tied. Mr. Torre elects to walk Varitek intentionally to load the bases, and his reliever Heredia elects to walk Damon on four more straight pitches, handing the Red Sox a 7-6 lead. "This," I say to Bob, "is the great game this series has been waiting for."

It's madness at the Stadium, 56,000 disbelieving fans watching plastic bags whipped around in the whirlwind — make that maelstrom — screaming, desperately, for their boys to come back. I paid 200 bucks to be here and I want to see the celebration! But Embree, Timlin and Williamson are doing a fair impression of the Nelson, Stanton, Rivera act of old — eerily familiar, in these confines — and the Yankees will be denied this night. Trot adds two with a mighty blow in the ninth — third deck, way up, deep rightfield — and there it is. Nine to six, but just as important: 16 hits by our side. We are hitting again.

Will we hit Clemens tomorrow?

Yes, I reflect on the train ride home, everything is in place: Game Seven, Roger's last game, Pedro's redemption . . . Too bad, I reflect as I watch the Marlins prevail on the tube, the Cubs won't be joining us. Weren't those fans smiling, ever so recently? Ah, the vicissitudes of fate.

Thursday dawns lover-ly; it is a crisp and clear and somewhat calmer day, a perfect day for baseball or anything at all. Ernie Banks, were he still swinging the bat, would choose to play two today. But Mr. Cub and all things Cubby are yesterday's news, and today is about Sox-Yanks, a historic 26th meeting in a single season (Yanks ahead 13-12; about two-thirds of the contests thrillers). It's about Pedro-Roger redux, probably with a chin-music soundtrack. "It's every kid's dream," according to the Sox Embree, who slew the arogonautic Jason so heroically last night. "You sit in your backyard growing up and you dream up these kind of matchups in your head, a showdown between two Hall-of-Fame-caliber guys." According to Theo, the wunderkinder GM of the Bosox, it is fate and destiny: "We've been on a collision course for 100 years. It's definitely appropriate, definitely meant to be and certainly poetic. It's special for both franchises, regardless of the result." The sage Mr. Torre, who doesn't strike me as the mystical type, allows merely: "I guess it was supposed to come down to this." No fewer than five different folks involved with the ongoing fracas that is this series, including a manager, a GM and a few players, are quoted in the morning sports pages in echo: "It doesn't get any better than this."

At the schoolbus-stop, young Reed and I share a handshake and a pledge, that our friendship will endure whatever might transpire at the Stadium tonight. I hand over the ticket stub from last night's game, and he thanks me for this third souvenir. Then he and Caroline, who finally told me this morning that she is officially a Red Sox fan (she has been taunting her dad, as six-year-olds do), board the bus. Reed in that Yankee shirt of his goes west, and I in my Bosox cap turn east and hoof it down to the train station. What will the day bring for both of us? For Stan, too, who lives right over there, and for the folks up in Massachusetts — Gail, Scott, Millie, Bag, Annie, Mike, Bruce — and the fellow exiles down here like Jane, the traitors like New Hampshire-native Mike, for anxious Thomas of Toledo, who never forsook his Nomar . . . What will it bring, for all of us?

At the office, work has little to do with work today. I begin by fielding the many emails and voicemails left last night by other citizens of Red Sox Nation. (A representative excerpt, this from Bruce: "Gentlemen, In Latin, the translated phrase is 'the thing speaks for itself.' A day ago, we were in mourning. Tonight, a different tale. Anyone wonder about the strength of the winds, and the demeanor of the sky all day? I looked at it as a cleansing of all that had taken place in the past. I say New England is due. Anything can and will happen in Game Seven. I say, bring it on. It's the middle of October and the Yankee fans are still worried — how about that? If security allows the game to take place, Pedro will rule, Wake will save and destiny will be fulfilled. God Bless America! Red Sox Nation, sleep well. Battle looms. Be courageous and unafraid. The Yankees do not suck, in fact, but they are beatable! Go SOX!" And this from Bag: "I can see and hear it now at the victory celebration at City Hall Plaza a week from next Monday. After first trooping out for the crowd's adulation — to the tune of "When the Saints Come Marching In" — Pesky and DiMaggio from '46, Yaz, Scottie and Lonborg from '67, Carlton, Rice, Evans, Lynn and Luis from '75, Bruce and (again) Dewey and Jimbo from '86, and after a moment of silence for all who could and should have lived long enough to see this day, but especially Ted, Ned Martin and Ken Coleman, each of whom would have been there if the same event had happened in '99, when it should have, the crowd welcomes this year's heroes as Bing sings, "Fairy Tales Can Come True...")

Obviously I agree with all sentiments, in these missives and the many others.

My bleachermate for the ultimate game will finally be my ultimate partner and beloved wife, Lucille, who was briefly described way back at the beginning of this ramble as "a seventh-game kind of fan." So she is, and here she is at last: Having lost an earlier chance to the rainout, she now enjoys a second opportunity. Just like Pedro.

Lucille and I ride the subway up to the Bronx. I'm still in my Cowboy Up duds, still minus the hat. As mentioned above, I don't necessarily believe in jinxes, but I'll dance with what brung me.

Section 57 is a tense place tonight, and juiced to a degree it hasn't been during the three previous games in the Bronx. My pal arrives and I introduce him to my wife, learning finally that his name is Billy.

There's no sense in recapping the game; you know how it unfolds. As for us, our evening is, for the longest time, not only tolerable but enjoyable. As opposed to The Brutal Game, this one is a delight — our guys on top, Pedro cruising, not an exciting game but moving toward a thrilling denouement, for perhaps we are indeed going to . . .

I don't believe in Curses, but is it interesting that the last time Lucille was by my side at a post-season baseball game was Game Six of the 1986 World Series in Shea, as we both gazed in awe as a ball went directly through our first baseman, Bill Buckner, and wound up in right field?

In any event: Yes, sure, Grady left Pedro in much, much too long, and I told Lucille that Grady was doing so even as he was doing it. But then, someone had to leave him in too long, or make some other equally egregious mistake.

In the ninth, Lucille and I aren't feeling too good, and we know pretty much how it will end. Billy still doesn't know I'm a Red Sox fan, and genuinely commiserates when I tell him that, hey, when you bring the wife, you've got to free up the nanny by 1 a.m. What can you do? We shake hands; he asks if I'll be there for the series. He means the World Series. The Yanks are there already, the way he sees it — and the way I see it, too. I tell Billy, my friend, that I just don't know.

We're heading up the Saw Mill Parkway, maybe about White Plains, when Boone hits the homer. Perhaps the car slows a bit, but there's not even enough energy in this fan to issue an expletive. And besides, this had already happened, hasn't it? Didn't this happen five minutes or an hour ago?

On the radio they're talking about the game as the most dramatic post-season win in the history of the Yankee franchise, because of all that attended it: the Sox, Pedro, the comeback, the finish. Maybe it is that. Who knows?

My five-year-old daughter Caroline, a newly committed Sox fan, asked me this morning to open her door and tell her who won, no matter how late I got home. I walk upstairs at 1:20 a.m., still feeling numb, beat up, tired but hopelessly unable to seek sleep. I'm trying to remember just now what I told her when she asked. Did I tell her, oh, Sweetie, I'll fill you in tomorrow? Or did I promise to open her door and whisper in her ear? Did I commit myself to committing her to this fanship? To this fate?

I'm typing because the longer I type, the longer I have before I decide what to do.

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