A baseball showcase in football land
The first World Series game was played in Boston, just off Huntington Avenue, a spot where today iPod-wearing Northeastern students walk to classes oblivious to the hardball history in the ground beneath their Nikes.
The last World Series game was played in the South Side of Chicago Sunday night when fireworks crackled in the chilly, dark sky as a leadoff batter named Scott Podsednik circled the bases after hitting the 14th walkoff homer in Series history.
In the 102 years in between, America's fall classic has moved around quite a bit. It's been played in three boroughs of New York City, at the site where Boston University now plays soccer, in the Canadian province of Ontario, in two cities in Pennsylvania and Missouri, and in five cities in California. It's been played in Arizona and in Florida. It's been interrupted by an earthquake in San Francisco and postponed because of snowfall in Baltimore. It's been played at Fenway Park nine times, most recently one year ago yesterday when Curt Schilling gave ''red sock" a whole new meaning and sent the Townies to Missouri in quest of a curse-busting sweep.
Tonight the World Series will be played in Texas for the first time.
Hard to believe it took this long. The team formerly known as the Houston Colt 45s was born in 1962 and the Washington Senators moved to a city between Dallas and Fort Worth (Arlington, Texas) in 1972, but neither franchise made it to the World Series until ths year when the redoubtable Astros recovered from a 15-30 start, earned a wild-card playoff berth, and beat the Braves and Cardinals for the right to play the White Sox in the 2005 World Series.
All I can say is, it's a good thing the Series didn't start in Houston last night. Why? Because it would be embarrassing to see Texas fans giving away World Series tickets so they could go back home to watch ''Monday Night Football" on television.
This is an exaggeration, of course. The Astros drew 2.8 million fans this year, and having them in the World Series is almost as big as having a Texan in the White House . . . but we all know that football is the lone sport in the Lone Star State.
Twenty years ago, I was sitting with a couple of writers and a couple of Celtics in the atrium lounge of the Dallas Hyatt when hundreds of young people started pouring through the lobby en route to a Bruce Springsteen concert next door at Reunion Arena.
''Springsteen, who's he?" asked Larry Bird.
''Larry, he's the you of rock and roll," I told him.
''Well, he must be pretty good, then," offered Larry.
That exchange is sort of beside the point, but I love telling the story. The point is that after this little exchange, one of the other writers and myself went outside to see if we could scalp some tickets. Bird's cute cluelessness aside, this was the ''Born in the USA" Tour, when the Boss was back on the cover of Newsweek.
No problem. Texans were virtually giving tickets away outside the arena. It seemed that everyone had a pair to sell, and we bought seats for face value. Later, we figured out why it was so easy.
''Monday Night Football." The Cowboys or Oilers must have been playing. No time for the Boss. Not even in the Glory Days.
''I think that Houston has been a pretty good football town," acknowledged Astros manager Phil Garner. ''But it's never been specific to one sport. I think our base for baseball has gotten much bigger. Boston has a long tradition, a long history. Chicago has a long tradition, a long history, something at a hundred years. You can't condense it down to 44, but we're well on our way."
Texas may not be specific to one sport, but I have been there when summer droughts call for water rationing and the only patch of green was on the local high school football fields, where the sprinklers never sleep.
Still, it's nice that Texas finally gets baseball's showcase event, and better for the World Series to visit Houston than Arlington. Minute Maid Park is in downtown Houston, unlike the Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington (built by George W. Bush), which is located in the prairie near
Besides, Houston deserves something special after the way it embraced so many thousands of hurricane victims. ''Too close to New Orleans" turned out to be something more than a throwaway line in the Grateful Dead's classic, ''Truckin'. "
Houston has been good to Boston sports. It's where Bird's Celtics won two of their three world championships and it's where Bill Belichick and Tom Brady won the second of their three Super Bowls.
The ballpark, originally named
The Astros hope the roof will remain closed. They love it when it's closed. Meanwhile, brace yourselves for a lot of television shots of former president George H.W. Bush. And Barbara. And Nolan Ryan. Nolan is Houston's Ted Williams. If the Astros lose again to go down, 3-0, half the newspapers in America tomorrow will feature ''Houston, we have a problem" headlines.
With any luck, we'll have appearances by some real live Tang-drinking astronauts. How about Neil Armstrong throwing out a first pitch? We always said there'd be a man on the moon before another team from Chicago ever won a World Series.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com. 
