This Cinderella Series between two teams that finished last the year before is one that could lay claim to being the best ever. Five of the seven games were decided by one run, three of them in extra innings and four in the home half of the final inning.

It introduced an array of unknown heroes. Minnesota third baseman Scott Leius won the second game with an eighth-inning homer, Atlanta second baseman Mark Lemke, a career .225 hitter, won the third game with a 12^th-inning single and scored the winning run in the fourth game after hitting a triple, the first of three he belted in the Series. And the whole shebang came down to a last at bat by Minnesota utilityman Gene Larkin. Most of all, though, this Series finished with two of the most tense and thrilling games ever played on the big stage.

The Braves, winners of all three games in Atlanta after losing the first two at Minneapolis, were trying to finish things off in the inhospitable Metrodome. They were greeted by a revived Kirby Puckett. A .167 hitter in the first five games, Puckett had already a single, a triple and a sacrifice fly, stolen a base and made a brilliant catch before coming to bat as the leadoff hitter against Charlie Leibrandt in the 11^th inning with the score tied 3-3. Then, in a moment reminiscent of Carlton Fisk's climactic clout in Game 6 of 1975, Puckett hit Leibrandt's fourth pitch into the left centerfield bleachers to send his team roaring into a seventh game.

The best was saved for last. With Minnesota's Jack Morris and Atlanta's John Smoltz pitching superbly, the two teams were scoreless through seven innings. Then, in the Atlanta half of the eighth, Lonnie Smith, playing in his fourth World Series for his fourth different team, led off with a single. The next hitter, Terry Pendleton, poked a long drive off the fence in left center. Smith, running with the pitch, never saw the ball, and when Minnesota infielders Greg Gagne and Chuck Knoblauch decoyed him with a fake fielding play, he paused at second base. Then he saw the ball in the outfield. Too late. He was only able to reach third on the long double, a costly blunder since he was still on third when a bases-loaded double play ended the inning.

And so they battled on to the 10^th inning, Smoltz gone by now, Morris still pitching goose eggs. Dan Gladden led off the home half with a bloop double to left center. Knoblauch sacrificed him to third, and after Puckett and Kent Hrbek were intentionally walked, Twins manager Tom Kelly sent Larkin up as a pinch-hitter against Atlanta reliever Alejandro Peña. Larkin hit the first pitch over a drawn-in outfield, and Gladden hopped on home with both feet as the Homer Hankie-waving Twins fans went wild.

The Series had been so closely fought that, as Lemke suggested, perhaps seriously, "Maybe they should have just stopped this game after nine innings and cut the trophy in half." It does seem a pity someone had to lose.