You think you have busted loose from its orbit, gladly leaving behind the endless three-ball counts, the batters taking aimless strolls after every pitch and games that end long after most television sets have clicked off. The 1997 World Series surely lost you as a result of some of the worst pitching in Series history; some of the worst weather; the longest games, on average; and in general, such laggardly play that even baseball's No. 1 spinmeister, acting commissioner Bud Selig, threw up his arms before Game 6 and said, "We need to address the pace of games and quit talking about it. In the next 30 to 45 days changes will be in place."

Then, just as you begin to feel untethered, the gravitational pull of the game tugs you back. What the Florida Marlins and Cleveland Indians did on a steamy night in Miami on Sunday did not just save their Series from ridicule, but also proved one of the fundamental laws of sport: Nothing on the American sports landscape is more powerful than Game 7 of a World Series.

We had waited six years for baseball to stage a Game 7, the longest span that has elapsed between such games since 1924. And after what had transpired in the first six games this year, we have never needed one more. What separated the Marlins and the Indians after nine innings of the last game of the 93rd World Series, the 2,300th game of the year, was...nothing. They were tied at 2—only the fourth time a Game 7 had extended into extra innings. Not until two men were out in the 11th inning, and six minutes had passed since midnight, did the 1997 season end. It did so when shortstop Edgar Renteria gave Florida its first World Series championship with a line drive that flicked off the glove of righthander Charles Nagy and into centerfield, a single that sent second baseman Craig Counsell bounding happily home with the winning run. No one complained that, at four hours, 11 minutes, the 3-2 victory took too long. This was seventh heaven.

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"We put on a show for the whole nation that baseball can be proud of," said Cleveland righty Orel Hershiser. "It's just fortunate that two organizations were able to rise above everything baseball people are doing to [the sport]."

Super Bowl Sunday is a national holiday in which the game itself is dwarfed by the hysteria of its build-up. The Stanley Cup and the NBA Finals, which have staged only one seventh game apiece since 1988, lack the historical weight of the World Series and don't usually match its level of drama. Baseball's showcase, even when it appears to be at its worst, is seldom disappointing. Every World Series this decade has ended on a game-winning hit (three times) or with the tying run on base or at bat (four times).

"Around the seventh inning I started to think it was going to be a classic, maybe go to extra innings," Florida pitching coach Larry Rothschild said. "The tension was there with every pitch. When you get to the seventh game of a World Series, whatever people have said about it before doesn't mean anything."

Only a Game 7 could make the 76 walks in this year's Series (a record), and the 81 runs (one short of the record), forgettable. Posterity, too, might overlook the fact that the television ratings hit alltime lows; none of the five pitchers to earn a victory had more than 38 career wins; a 14-11 Florida win in Game 3 included 17 walks, six errors and an unprecedented 11-run ninth inning that prompted Indians manager Mike Hargrove to groan, "That was as ugly a game as you'll ever see"; and Cleveland's 10-3 victory in Game 4 was played in 18° windchill with flurries that made Jacobs Field resemble a gargantuan version of those snow globes you can buy at a knick-knack shop.

Instead, Game 7 gave us more lasting souvenirs. It reminded us of what is best about baseball. The game is still about fathers and sons—four second-generation major leaguers played in the Series finale: catcher Sandy Alomar Jr. and righthander Jaret Wright for the Indians, and outfielder Moises Alou and closer Robb Nen for the Marlins. Sometimes it is about mothers and sons, too. About an hour before the game, 22-year-old Florida righthander Livan Hernandez walked into suite 251 of Pro Player Stadium in full uniform and threw his arms around his mother, Miriam Carreras. It was the first time he had seen her in two years, since he had defected from Cuba. She had just arrived from the island on a special visa, which was made possible in part by a petition signed by the Marlins players and sent to the Cuban government after the league championship series. The mother and son embraced, teary-eyed, for 10 minutes without speaking. Then they were introduced to a special guest in the suite: Joe DiMaggio.

Carreras left the stadium in the sixth inning for Hernandez's apartment. He came home with some hardware: the MVP trophy, which he earned by becoming the first rookie in 50 years to win two World Series games.

Baseball is also about confirming that players are human with a single letter: E. When Cleveland second baseman Tony Fernandez muffed a grounder to make the winning run possible, he took his place in October infamy alongside Fred Snodgrass, the New York Giants' centerfielder whose dropped fly ball in 1912 allowed the Boston Red Sox to win in their last at bat. "I believe," Fernandez said in explaining the play, "the Lord doesn't send you more than He thinks you can bear."

The Indians made Game 7 possible by beating Florida's ace righthander Kevin Brown 4-1 in Game 6, the second time in the Series that Brown had lost. That night lefthander Al Leiter, who would start Game 7 against Wright, went home and said to his wife and mother, "I don't want to see, read or talk about baseball. I know what tomorrow means." On the day of Game 7 his telephone rang about 40 times. He took only two calls: from former New York Yankees teammate Dave Righetti and former minor league coach Gil Patterson, both of whom encouraged him to throw more curveballs to keep the Indians from sitting on his fastball and cutter.

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