Amid last night's revelry and celebration I cried like a baby. When Renteria singled up the middle in the eleventh to bring in the winning run and the bar exploded into one huge, unified, high-fiving cheer all I heard was Algun dia . . . yo posiblemente no lo llegare a ver, pero tu si. (One of these days....I might not live to see it, but you will.)

I wish I was ten again. I wish I hadn't quit little league because of the wild pitch that broke my thumb. I wish I hadn't learned so much about life or about death and had been able to learn more about baseball. I wish I knew every play, every stat, every subtle little nuance. I wish my grandfather were still here. I wish he could have seen it. I wish I could have said last night after eleven gruelling innings "See, Abuelo, you lived to see your dream."

The Herald's headline reads "CHAMPIONS!" and as I soak up every single baseball word I'm reliving my youth, my adolescence, my maturity. I have to read some things twice because my eyes are full of tears and I can't concentrate on the words in print. Peripherally I can see the bill of my cap, faded and tattered as it is, and remember the exact moment I bought it. As I read I'm a little kid at his first ballgame with his grandfather, at the inaugural Marlins game with my girlfriend years later and in Sunday night's Moet soaked locker room at the same time.

I bought my Marlins cap at the first Marlins game ever, continuing a tradition that was instilled in me by my grandfather when I was a kid, and which had left me when he died, but was resuscitated the minute the name-plated guy took his half of my Inaugural Season ticket at the turnstiles that day. Stop at the booth and buy a little something. A baseball, a pennant, a hat, a program. Hook your glove onto your belt so you don't lose it and so your hands are free to carry the hot-dog, the peanuts and the Coke with the fuzzy little things swirling around in it. The minute I emerged from the tunnel and saw the field-- serene green with the combed clay diamond and four square, white freckles spread apart like islands --I was a kid again. Ten years old and awestruck. How wonderful it is to have the wonder of a child, and to not know, to have and ask questions and wait for the responses without doubts from someone whose eyes have seen it all and hug you every time you look into them.

At that Stand and hold your hand up to your heart during the National Anthem. Sing it if you know the words. It doesn't matter that you're not American. Respect is mutual. In his absence I learned to appreciate what I have and what I've had. Loss is what you make of it.

Standing in line at the concession stand that day, missing a part of the game because I like beer as much as baseball, I had a white-haired man with a belted glove boy in front of me. It was like standing in front of a temporal mirror.

"Can I get a Cherry Coke, Grandpa?"

"Of course you can."

"And a pretzel?"

"Maybe. After you eat your hot-dog."

"Do you think we're gonna win, Grandpa?"

"We got a good shot. Good line-up. Ole Charlie Hough's on the mound. He's a good knuckleballer."

"I want Conine to hit a homer. He's the best."

"He's got good eye. If he gets one in his wheelhouse it'll be a screamer."

The old man paid for their hot-dogs, the Cokes, the peanuts and the pretzels and turned to leave. Tears rivered down my cheeks. I couldn't swallow. He let the boy walk in front of him, caught my eye and asked "Are you alright, son?"

I apologized. "I haven't been to a ballgame since I was about his age," I said, my breath bouncing. "With my grandfather."

The old man smiled, patted me on the shoulder. "Baseball," he said, placing his hand atop the teal cap on the boy's head and nodding with pride, "Don't you just love it?"

My grandfather always said we'd have a major league team someday. And if he were still alive I probably wouldn't have been able to watch many Marlins games with him this season. But I know we would have shared every pitch, every strike, every call of the post season just like we used to. Abuelo the calm statistician, hardly showing any emotion, waiting for whatever call was just made to come through in Spanish from the transistor radio held up to his ear so he could log it into his blue denim baseball stat binder. Me the screamer, the hot head, superstitious to the point of turning the bill of my cap to the back when we're fielding. I'd do just like I did in the last few games I ever saw with him: buy a six-pack on my way to their apartment and split it the usual way-- one beer for him from a cup, which he'd stretch until the third or fourth inning and five beers for me before the fifth.

But it's not the beer drinking that would be important (although having a cold one with your grandfather is a pretty cool thing), it's the experience, the togetherness of rooting for the same team. It's the fact that I always came away with something after watching a baseball game with my grandfather. Baseball was his blackboard and wisdom was his chalk.

Watching a game with my grandfather when I was a kid meant lessons. Not only did I learn when and why you go to a left handed reliever or when it's the right time to steal second, but he and baseball taught me things I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. I went through Abuelo's world of baseball and learned about the world around me.

The slow tempo of the game and Abuelo's patience for it taught me patience. Mucho ojo y espera la tuya. (Good eye and wait for your pitch). I learned that sometimes in life you have to take chances. If you know the pitcher's stuff and feel you can hit it, swing at the first pitch. And how to deal with disappointment. If you swing at the first pitch and pop it up, you got no one to blame but yourself. When he told me that you should never take too much of a lead off of a base, I was too young to know that he meant for me to be prudent, to take what I can get and not push it too far.

With baseball he taught me that sometimes life is about sacrifices. There's no outs with a man on first, pop one up deep in the corner to get the runner to second. Pisa y corre. (Hit and run.) And how some things are a team effort. Bunt!

"If you win," he told me once, "shake the loser's hand. Y si pierdes, dale la mano al que te gano." (And if you lose, give the winner your hand.)

I can imagine what my conversations with Abuelo about Livan Hernandez would have been like.

"Que lastima que no le han dejado salir a la madre." (It's a shame they didn't let his mother come.)

"La vida a veces es asi, mijo. Pero despreocupate que el orgullo es algo que no conoce distancias." (Life is like that son. But don't worry, pride is something that doesn't recognize distance.)

"Abuelo, tu te imaginas como se debe sentir ese muchacho en estos momentos? Pichando en la Serie Mundial con el estadio repleto y tantas banderas cubanas?" (Can you imagine how he must feel right now? Pitching in the World Series with so many Cuban flags waving?"

"Esta muy emocionado. Tiene que tranquilizarce un poco." (He's too emotional. He needs to calm down.)

"Yo no pudiera." (I Couldn't)

"Muchacho, el que realmente debe de estar nervioso ahora es Fidelito. . .Mira pa eso, ya le ha tirado tres bolas seguidas a el tipo este que es una croqueta. Si Livan no empieza a tirar estraik lo van a sacar." ( Son, the one that should be nervous now is Fidelito... Look at that, he's pitched three staight balls to this guy thats a croqueta. If he doesn't start pitching strikes they are gonna take him out.)

"Yo no creo que lo iran a sacar ahora. Se forma el alboroto." (I don't think they could take him out now. The fans will go nuts.)

"Acuerdate que la politica es una cosa y la pelota es otra. . ." (Remember, politics is one thing and baseball is another...)

Livan pitched two winning games in the World Series without knowing that with each throw he was bringing me a little closer to my grandfather. I can imagine the pride Abuelo would have felt. Un cubanito MVP. Maybe this pride I feel is partly his.

I sat at the bar that I call home in Coral Gables and watched every single postseason game with my fellow bar flies. They know the story of my grandfather and told me similar ones of their own. Maybe they're emotionally stronger than I am for they consoled me when the Marlins lost, or when I lost it because they won and Abuelo wasn't there to see it with me. He's here with you, they said. And they were right, he's always with me. But just to make sure that he didn't miss a single play, I took his picture with me. Placed it upright on the bar facing the television. He's here for luck, I said.

And when the Marlins were down by a couple of runs or in a jam, my friends would come over and talk to his picture. Vamos viejo, we need your help here. That's what happened in the eleventh inning of game seven. And that's just like my grandfather, too, anything for his team.