Sport: What a Series!

Seventh game: Cincinnati Reds 4, Boston Red Sox 3. World Champions: Cincinnati, for the first time in 35 years.

Rarely have statistics said less about quality. Even the jubilant crowds that danced in Cincinnati last week will probably remember the Series more for its melodramatics than for the outcome. For a few days, baseball showed why it had once captivated an entire nation.

The first five tense, volatile contests (TIME, Oct. 27) were merely a prelude to the final fireworks. Game six opened with the Reds one win away from the championship. When it ended at 12:33 a.m., they were still one short. "What the hell," said Cincinnati Third Baseman Pete Rose, later voted the Series' most valuable player, "it had to be the greatest World Series game in history." Indeed, aside from Fred Lynn's numbing collision with the centerfield wall after barely missing a long Ken Griffey fly, at least three Red Sox feats outdid Hollywood. There were Pinch Hitter Bernie Carbo's eighth-inning, three-run homer that tied the game; Rightfielder Dwight Evans' game-saving catch of a Joe Morgan drive in the eleventh; and, most Homeric, Catcher Carlton Fisk's game-winning home run in the twelfth.

Reds' Squeaker. In game seven the pace barely diminished as the Reds, on the strength of slam-bang base running by Rose and decisive hits by Tony Perez and Joe Morgan, won a squeaker and the championship. The Boston Globe said it all the next day in a frontpage banner headline: REDS WIN—BUT WHAT A YEAR WE HAD! And what a Series.