A Sizzling Series

All that stuff about the agony of defeat aside, both the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks have reason to be proud of the 2001 World Series. This was as good as baseball gets: tense pitching duels, bursts of hitting (including a series-winning single by Arizona's Luis Gonzalez), and home runs at just the right moments.

The series was a suspenseful drama that gave welcome relief from the world's other suspenseful events.

For the Yanks, there was irony in a rare World Series loss, just when the team had sympathetic fans beyond the Bronx regulars because of what happened to New York in September.

For the victorious Diamondbacks, there was ecstasy that this could happen at all. Underdogs despite two ace starting pitchers, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, the Arizonans managed to outscore their presumably more powerful opponents by more than 2 to 1. And this in only the fourth year of their existence as a team.

So thanks to the whole cast of this World Series. It was "normalcy" at its most exciting.