Bill Conlin | Nothing like feeling the pain before the joy

And the destruction of the East would have been exacerbated had Helms been the league's hottest hitter the first half of this season, just as he had the highest average last season for the Marlins after the All-Star break. And hit closer to the 23 homers he managed for the Brewers in 2003 than the piddling five he hit here during his puzzling offensive meltdown.

Which gives us Barajas, as they used to say in Jerusalem . . .

Thanks to a perfectly wretched performance on both sides of the ball by the free agent brought in by Gillick to add a little more cement to his veteran rotation, Manuel was forced to hand the bulk of the catching to Ruiz. The stubby Panamanian responded with aplomb, not to mention an aggressive catching style where he bounced back from spring-training arm miseries to keep his staff honest.

My take? I've always been a fan of the desperation baseball that must be played in tight pennant races by teams that are not as good as a typical Yankees dynasty team or a Big Red Machine. I mean, how much urgency was there in 1976 when Sparky Anderson's Red Berets took out the Phillies and Yankees in a seven-game table run - they outscored them 41-19 - so total you swore the team of Morgan, Rose, Bench, Perez, Foster, Concepcion and Griffey was wearing jackboots instead of baseball shoes.

This season was a test from on high to see whether you could handle a summer of exquisite tension, nightly near-nervous breakdowns and many more bellowed four-letter words than the children should be hearing. And that was just you, Mom.

Next season, you will have permission to walk with a swagger, talk New York-style smack and act as if baseball championships are part of your birthright. *

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